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MBE Advance Access originally published online on July 26, 2007
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2007 24(10):2180-2195; doi:10.1093/molbev/msm155
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© 2007 The Authors.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Research Articles

History of Click-Speaking Populations of Africa Inferred from mtDNA and Y Chromosome Genetic Variation

Sarah A. Tishkoff*,1, Mary Katherine Gonder*,2, Brenna M. Henn{dagger}, Holly Mortensen*, Alec Knight{dagger}, Christopher Gignoux{dagger}, Neil Fernandopulle{dagger}, Godfrey Lema{ddagger}, Thomas B. Nyambo{ddagger}, Uma Ramakrishnan||, Floyd A. Reed* and Joanna L. Mountain{dagger},1

* Department of Biology, University of Maryland
{dagger} Department of Anthropological Sciences, Stanford University
{ddagger} Department of Biochemistry, Muhimbili University College of Health Sciences, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
|| National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India

E-mail: Tishkoff{at}umd.edu.

Accepted for publication July 3, 2007.

Little is known about the history of click-speaking populations in Africa. Prior genetic studies revealed that the click-speaking Hadza of eastern Africa are as distantly related to click speakers of southern Africa as are most other African populations. The Sandawe, who currently live within 150 km of the Hadza, are the only other population in eastern Africa whose language has been classified as part of the Khoisan language family. Linguists disagree on whether there is any detectable relationship between the Hadza and Sandawe click languages. We characterized both mtDNA and Y chromosome variation of the Sandawe, Hadza, and neighboring Tanzanian populations. New genetic data show that the Sandawe and southern African click speakers share rare mtDNA and Y chromosome haplogroups; however, common ancestry of the 2 populations dates back >35,000 years. These data also indicate that common ancestry of the Hadza and Sandawe populations dates back >15,000 years. These findings suggest that at the time of the spread of agriculture and pastoralism, the click-speaking populations were already isolated from one another and are consistent with relatively deep linguistic divergence among the respective click languages.

Key Words: mtDNA evolution • Y chromosome evolution • human evolution • genetic variation • African diversity • language evolution

1 These authors contributed equally to this work.

2 Department of Biological Sciences, University at Albany, State University of New York, 1400 Washington Ave., Albany, NY 12222.

Lisa Matisoo-Smith, Associate Editor


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