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MBE Advance Access published online on July 26, 2007
Molecular Biology and Evolution, 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 Article

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

Sarah A. Tishkoff1,*, Mary Katherine Gonder1, Brenna M. Henn2, Holly Mortensen1, Neil Fernandopulle2, Christopher Gignoux2, Godfrey Lema3, Thomas B. Nyambo3, Peter A. Underhill4, Uma Ramakrishnan5, Floyd A. Reed1 and Joanna L. Mountain2,4,*

1 Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
2 Department of Anthropological Sciences, Stanford University, CA
3 Department of Biochemistry, Muhimbili University College of Health Sciences, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
4 Department of Genetics, Stanford University, CA
5 National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India

Corresponding Author: Sarah A. Tishkoff, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of Biology, Biology/Psychology Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, Tel: 301-405-6038, Fax: 301-314-9358, e-mail: Tishkoff{at}umd.edu

Received for publication May 7, 2007. Revision received June 29, 2007. 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 two 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

* These authors contributed equally to this work


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[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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