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The study of human evolution and cultural patterns relies on empirical evidence provided by the archaeological record. Accessing dependable archaeological data from scholarly publications can often be challenging due to the variability in site documentation and the diversity of academic practices in publication processes. This study presents a comprehensive synthesis of the published literature documenting dated and undated archaeological materials from the Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age in Northwest Africa, notably Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. No previously published open-access database exists for these chronocultural periods in the region. Our dataset encompasses 993 sites and 1152 dates spanning approximately 370,000 to 8,000 years ago. Through a critical evaluation of the dates, we reveal qualitative and quantitative disparities and highlight the potential of the current archaeological record. While only ~10% of sites are dated and ~4.5% have reliable dates associated with a human occupation, this database holds significant potential for demographic and taxonomic meta-analyses as well as for methodological studies associated with chronological data in archaeology.

L’articolo tenta una ricostruzione delle origini della più piccola entità etnica dell’Etiopia e una delle più piccole in Africa: gli Ongota. I circa cento membri di questo gruppo etnico vivono in un solo villaggio, Muts’e, sulle rive del fiume Weyt’o, nell’Etiopia sudoccidentale. Gli Ongota sono interessanti sia dal punto di vista etnografico che da quello linguistico. Sono uno dei pochissimi popoli a non aver sviluppato pastorizia e agricoltura tra le numerose popolazioni dell’Etiopia sudoccidentale; un numero limitato di anziani parla una lingua a tutt’oggi non classificata all’interno dei gruppi linguistici dell’area, cuscitico, omotico (entrambi afroasiatici) e nilo-sahariano. La lingua di comunicazione quotidiana degli Ongota è lo ts’amakko (cuscitico orientale, gruppo Dullay). Il passaggio allo ts’amakko è il risultato degli attuali stretti legami sociali, ma l’analisi comparata del lessico ongota mostra che nella loro storia si sono succeduti periodi di interscambio con altre popolazioni dell’area. Sulla base delle fonti storiche orali è possibile individuare un’affiliazione con i Maale, una popolazione di lingua omotica settentrionale che vive a nord degli Ongota. Due ipotesi storiche vengono analizzate per rendere conto delle peculiarità degli Ongota e della loro lingua. La prima ipotesi (“top-down”) vede negli Ongota un gruppo originario di cacciatori raccoglitori la cui lingua è l’ultima traccia di un gruppo linguistico scomparso e, quindi, geneticamente isolata. Sulla base del secondo scenario (“bottom-up”) il gruppo Ongota sarebbe invece un gruppo minoritario che per motivi ambientali, come la massiccia presenza dalla mosca tsetse, avrebbero abbandonato la pastorizia per dedicarsi maggiormente alla caccia e alla pesca. L’affascinante scenario “top-bottom” non pare in effetti sostenibile, e, sulla base di un’accurata analisi del lessico, si propende piuttosto per una soluzione “bottom-up”, ovvero un’origine degli Ongota in quanto gruppo marginale o fuori casta.

The characterization of the structure of southern African populations has been the subject of numerous genetic, medical, linguistic, archaeological, and anthropological investigations. Current diversity in the subcontinent is the result of complex events of genetic admixture and cultural contact between early inhabitants and migrants that arrived in the region over the last 2000 years. Here, we analyze 1856 individuals from 91 populations, comprising novel and published genotype data, to characterize the genetic ancestry profiles of 631 individuals from 51 southern African populations. Combining both local ancestry and allele frequency based analyses, we identify a tripartite, ancient, Khoesan-related genetic structure. This structure correlates neither with linguistic affiliation nor subsistence strategy, but with geography, revealing the importance of isolation-by-distance dynamics in the area. Fine-mapping of these components in southern African populations reveals admixture and cultural reversion involving several Khoesan groups, and highlights that Bantu speakers and Coloured individuals have different mixtures of these ancient ancestries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of modern humans was a complex process, involving major changes in levels of diversity through time. The fossils and stone tools that record the spatial distribution of our species in the past form the backbone of our evolutionary history, and one that allows us to explore the different processes--cultural and biological--that acted to shape the evolution of different populations in the face of major climate change. Those processes created a complex palimpsest of similarities and differences, with outcomes that were at times accelerated by sharp demographic and geographical fluctuations. The result is that the population ancestral to all modern humans did not look or behave like people alive today. This has generated questions regarding the evolution of human universal characters, as well as the nature and timing of major evolutionary events in the history of Homo sapiens. The paucity of African fossils remains a serious stumbling block for exploring some of these issues. However, fossil and archaeological discoveries increasingly clarify important aspects of our past, while breakthroughs from genomics and palaeogenomics have revealed aspects of the demography of Late Quaternary Eurasian hominin groups and their interactions, as well as those between foragers and farmers. This paper explores the nature and timing of key moments in the evolution of human diversity, moments in which population collapse followed by differential expansion of groups set the conditions for transitional periods. Five transitions are identified (i) at the origins of the species, 240-200 ka; (ii) at the time of the first major expansions, 130-100 ka; (iii) during a period of dispersals, 70-50 ka; (iv) across a phase of local/regional structuring of diversity, 45-25 ka; and (v) during a phase of significant extinction of hunter-gatherer diversity and expansion of particular groups, such as farmers and later societies (the Holocene Filter), 15-0 ka. This article is part of the themed issue 'Major transitions in human evolution'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Haplogroup E, defined by mutation M40, is the most common human Y chromosome clade within Africa. To increase the level of resolution of haplogroup E, we disclosed the phylogenetic relationships among 729 mutations found in 33 haplogroup DE Y-chromosomes sequenced at high coverage in previous studies. Additionally, we dissected the E-M35 subclade by genotyping 62 informative markers in 5,222 samples from 118 worldwide populations. The phylogeny of haplogroup E showed novel features compared with the previous topology, including a new basal dichotomy. Within haplogroup E-M35, we resolved all the previously known polytomies and assigned all the E-M35* chromosomes to five new different clades, all belonging to a newly identified subhaplogroup(E-V1515), which accounts for almost half of the E-M35 chromosomes from the Horn of Africa. Moreover, using a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis and a single nucleotide polymorphism-based approach we localized and dated the origin of this new lineage in the northern part of the Horn, about 12 ka. Time frames, phylogenetic structuring, and sociogeographic distribution of E-V1515 and its subclades are consistent with a multistep demic spread of pastoralism within north-eastern Africa and its subsequent diffusion to subequatorial areas. In addition, our results increase the discriminative power of the E-M35 haplogroup for use in forensic genetics through the identification of new ancestry-informative markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into Canarian rock art, Libyco–Berber inscriptions, and the colonization of the Canary Islands—within the North African context—has presented several problems since the emergence of Canarian archeology in the nineteenth century. This paper analyzes the evolution of research into Canarian rock art and Libyco–Berber inscriptions from a historical and diachronic perspective and develops a thesis concerning the origin of the Libyco–Berber script based on new discoveries of inscriptions on the Canary Islands as well as in Morocco. In light of this new thesis, we propose a diachronic hypothesis for the ancient colonization of the Canary Islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the most part, the boundaries of African Studies remain fixed at the shores of that continent, with periodic excursions into diasporic communities across the seas. The northern limits of this enquiry into 'Africa' are, however, more vaguely located, placed somewhere in the Sahara when they are thought of at all. This imprecision in the northern frontiers of 'Africa' is closely related to traditional conceptions of race on the continent, and especially of a distinction between 'Negroid' and 'Caucasoid' peoples and histories. Recent genetic research in and to the south of the Sahara suggests that such distinctions are false, and that human biological variability in these regions does not accord with racialized models. Nevertheless, such models continue to be widely used in popular interpretations of events in these regions - most strikingly, today, in Darfur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of modern humans was a complex process, involving major changes in levels of diversity through time. The fossils and stone tools that record the spatial distribution of our species in the past form the backbone of our evolutionary history, and one that allows us to explore the different processes-cultural and biological-that acted to shape the evolution of different populations in the face of major climate change. Those processes created a complex palimpsest of similarities and differences, with outcomes that were at times accelerated by sharp demographic and geographical fluctuations. The result is that the population ancestral to all modern humans did not look or behave like people alive today. This has generated questions regarding the evolution of human universal characters, as well as the nature and timing of major evolutionary events in the history of Homo sapiens The paucity of African fossils remains a serious stumbling block for exploring some of these issues. However, fossil and archaeological discoveries increasingly clarify important aspects of our past, while breakthroughs from genomics and palaeogenomics have revealed aspects of the demography of Late Quaternary Eurasian hominin groups and their interactions, as well as those between foragers and farmers. This paper explores the nature and timing of key moments in the evolution of human diversity, moments in which population collapse followed by differential expansion of groups set the conditions for transitional periods. Five transitions are identified (i) at the origins of the species, 240-200 ka; (ii) at the time of the first major expansions, 130-100 ka; (iii) during a period of dispersals, 70-50 ka; (iv) across a phase of local/regional structuring of diversity, 45-25 ka; and (v) during a phase of significant extinction of hunter-gatherer diversity and expansion of particular groups, such as farmers and later societies (the Holocene Filter), 15-0 ka.This article is part of the themed issue 'Major transitions in human evolution'., (© 2016 The Authors.)