A new paper confirms and more specifically describes the paradigmatic understanding of Bantu expansion.
a,b, Putative migration routes of BSP inferred using pairwise FST values (a) and after removing the Zambian Lozi population from the analyses (b). Arrow colours correspond to north-western Bantu speakers 2 (NW-BSP 2; brown; one arrow between Cameroon and CAR), west-western Bantu speakers (WW-BSP; green), south-western Bantu speakers (SW-BSP; dark blue) and eastern Bantu speakers (E-BSP; red). c, Spatial visualization of effective migration rates (EEMS software) estimated with the masked Only-BSP dataset. log(m) denotes the effective migration rate on a log10 scale, relative to the overall migration rate across the habitat. Populations are coloured according to each Bantu-speaking linguistic group (brown, green, dark blue and red dots). d, GenGrad analysis using FST as the genetic distance for the admixture-masked BSP dataset. Hexagons of the grid were plotted with a colour scale representing the FST gradient (key).
The expansion of people speaking Bantu languages is the most dramatic demographic event in Late Holocene Africa and fundamentally reshaped the linguistic, cultural and biological landscape of the continent.
With a comprehensive genomic dataset, including newly generated data of modern-day and ancient DNA from previously unsampled regions in Africa, we contribute insights into this expansion that started 6,000–4,000 years ago in western Africa. We genotyped 1,763 participants, including 1,526 Bantu speakers from 147 populations across 14 African countries, and generated whole-genome sequences from 12 Late Iron Age individuals.
We show that genetic diversity amongst Bantu-speaking populations declines with distance from western Africa, with current-day Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo as possible crossroads of interaction.
Using spatially explicit methods and correlating genetic, linguistic and geographical data, we provide cross-disciplinary support for a serial-founder migration model. We further show that Bantu speakers received significant gene flow from local groups in regions they expanded into.
Our genetic dataset provides an exhaustive modern-day African comparative dataset for ancient DNA studies and will be important to a wide range of disciplines from science and humanities, as well as to the medical sector studying human genetic variation and health in African and African-descendant populations.
Cesar A. Fortes-Lima, et al., "The genetic legacy of the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples in Africa" Nature (November 29, 2023).
Background from the introductory part of the body text:
African populations speaking Bantu languages (Bantu-speaking populations (BSP)) constitute about 30% of Africa’s total population, of which about 350 million people across 9 million km2 speak more than 500 Bantu languages. Archaeological, linguistic, historical and anthropological sources attest to the complex history of the expansion of BSP across subequatorial Africa, which fundamentally reshaped the linguistic, cultural and biological landscape of the continent. There is a broad interdisciplinary consensus that the initial spread of Bantu languages was a demic expansion and ancestral BSP migrated first through the Congo rainforest and later to the savannas further east and south. However, debates persist on the pathways and modes of the expansion.Whereas most recent human expansions involved latitudinal movements through regions with similar climatic conditions, the expansion of the BSP is notable for its primarily longitudinal trajectory, traversing regions with highly diverse climates and biomes, including the highlands of Cameroon, central African rainforests, African savannas and arid south-western Africa.
26 comments:
Both the Bantu expansion and the Pama-Nyungan expansion were nearly continental in scope, included new technologies & domestics, occurred about the same time ~ 4.5ka. (The Indus Valley civ. began 5.3ka, the Olmecs began 3.6ka). I wonder if proto-writing on non-enduring materials played a part in these. And if Austronesians in dugouts with canids seeking beche de mar kickstarted the Pama-Nyungan expansion by instituting a new form of long-distance trading.
Proto-writing (at least) was present in the IVC, the Olmecs, and the Vinca people in this time frame.
I very much doubt that this was the case for the Pama-Nyungan expansion, as they made other markings of a non-linguistic or proto-linguistic nature that survived.
The case that Bantu writing or proto-writing could have been lost to the use of non-durable materials is stronger. But we also have a lot of cultural continuity there in multiple independent groups that didn't have traditions of writing or proto-writing, so I doubt it there, although less strongly.
I was thinking of IVS similarity to Rapa Nui dancing figure "script", Borneo "scripts" on boards in longhouses, and maybe Austl Aboriginal Tzuringa storyboards telling of ancestor travels. Wood rots in tropics unless buried in anoxic conditions, clay crumbles unless burnt, papyrus & palm leaves rot / burn quickly, skins too. Just seems to me big expansions over already-occupied lands required some sort of 'reading from the same playbook' origin, while over non-occupied lands didn't.
For context, if not directly related, Queen Kubaba reigned over Sumeria 4.5ka, recorded in writing, by giving bread & water (-> beer) to god Marduk. The word for flat bread in Hebrew is pita, and the word for flat bread in one Australian language is pita (pounding into flour).
Correction: the Australian word is pita-ru meaning 'always pounding the waterfern spores into flour', the bread is actually called nardu, in a Pama-Nguyen language: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandruwandha_language
@DDeden
Not buying the Sumerian and Pama-Nguyen connection as anything more than a coincidence.
"Just seems to me big expansions over already-occupied lands required some sort of 'reading from the same playbook' origin, while over non-occupied lands didn't."
I don't find this reasoning very persuasive either. There were conquests of occupied lands by lots of people without scripts and even when writing was developed, often it was confined to scribes in central temples and cities and absent among soldiers until much later.
Coincidence is often claimed when distant cultures/languages apparently converge on the same or similar words. When both meaning and sound align AND some other traits are shared, then I accept that there may a connection. The pounding of nuts, ochre, barkcloth, flour etc. was universal in Homo sapiens. Pita, pita-ru, pizza, pan, tapa, pound, patty, pummel (meal, mill) powder, pestle, peal, beat etc. Words mostly evolve over time, but they don't have to.
There's a difference between warriors (fighting for camp, culture & kin) and soldiers (fighting for a symbolic king). Kings followed (proto-) writing, needed scribes/clerks to process data. Both Bantu & Pama must have had some sort of trading system beyond basic barter.
Dingos are most similar to India's pariah dogs. Proto-Tamil traders may have pushed or joined Austronesians to go to Australia.
Is it a coincidence or shared derivation: pariah & drum pounder cf pita-ru? Were drums used to set the pace of canoe paddlers?
Pariah dog
an ownerless, half-wild, free-ranging dog that lives in or close to human settlements throughout Asia. The term is derived from the Sanskrit para, which translates to "outsider". [DD: derived from Tamil?]
pariah (n.)
1610s, "member of a low caste in southern India, shunned as unclean," from Tamil paraiyar, plural of paraiyan "drummer" (at festivals, the hereditary duty of members of the largest of the lower castes of southern India), from parai "large festival drum."
https://youtu.be/s6I44F743MM?si=-61c53mlJACAxL1H
Dragonboat big drum & paddles up
Now imagine 2 dogs (tails thumping the hull) used to pull the canoe when paddlers tire and winds are absent especially around endless shallow coral reefs, derived from ancestral isolated wolf-dogs at Vietnam's Phu Quoc island, were used to pull coracles to/from mainland, resulting in the Phu Quoc ridgeback dog (mane held while paddling).
I don't know how long the Rhodesian ridgeback dog has been in southern Africa, but I'd guess ~4,500 years associated with the Bantu expansion and the Pama-Nguyen expansion & dingo introduction. The oldest known written joke, written in Sumerian, starts out with "a dog walks into a bar". Bars commonly have beer which like bread is fermented. Were seed-pounded breads, fermented-flour drinks, boat-pulling dogs & rhythm-setting drums in fashion 4.5ka?
"Kings followed (proto-) writing, needed scribes/clerks to process data." This was mostly for trade and command economy ration processing, not for waging war or occupation.
"Both Bantu & Pama must have had some sort of trading system beyond basic barter."
You're probably right about the Bantu, I'm skeptical when it comes to the Pama.
"Dingos are most similar to India's pariah dogs."
Genetically, they're closer to SE Asian dogs.
"Proto-Tamil traders may have pushed or joined Austronesians to go to Australia."
Profoundly unlikely. Almost certainly just Austronesian. Austronesian sea farers hadn't reached India yet when they probably made contact with Australia. South Asian dogs are not more similar than SE Asian dogs to Dingos. Tamil society wasn't very advanced at the time of dingo introduction.
"Were drums used to set the pace of canoe paddlers?"
Drums and paddling were independently developed many places. The Mediterranean to China.
"Pariah" the linguistic musings aren't very convincing and don't hold together.
"Now imagine 2 dogs (tails thumping the hull) used to pull the canoe . . . " Dingos definitely got to Australia on manmade boats. But you've lost me on the rest which has little or nothing to do with dragon boats. They don't pull boats over open seas.
"I'd guess ~4,500 years associated with the Bantu expansion and the Pama-Nguyen expansion & dingo introduction."
Guessing doesn't cut it without some evidence to back it up.
Dogs were domesticated tens of thousands of years ago. After the aboriginal migration to Australia, but before modern humans made it to the Americas. Of course dogs were part of all subsequent human expansions, including those long before the domestication of grains, which came much later (incidentally flour from wild grains preceded grain domestication) and before organized fermentation of alcohol.
Regarding pariah, related to :
Proto-Germanic: *farjaną (“to carry, to ferry”), *farjǭ (“ferry")
Proto-Germanic: *fōrijaną (“to lead”)
Proto-Indo-Iranian & Sanskrit: पारयति (pāráyati, “to make cross”)
Ancient Greek: ἔπορον (époron)
Proto-Tocharian:
Tocharian B: pere[4]
*pí-por-ti (o-grade reduplicated present)
Proto-Indo-Iranian: *píparti
Proto-Indo-Aryan: *píparti
Sanskrit: पिपर्ति (píparti, “to bring across”)
*pr̥-t-eh₂-yé-ti
Proto-Italic: *portāō
Latin: portō
Umbrian: 𐌐𐌖𐌓𐌕𐌀𐌕𐌖 (purtatu), portatu, portaia, portust
*pr̥-h₂-k-yé-ti
Proto-Hellenic: *prā́ťťō
Ancient Greek: πρᾱ́σσω (prā́ssō)
*pér-tu-s (“crossing”)
*pér-wr̥ ~ *pr̥-wén-s
*por-dʰmo-
Proto-Hellenic:
Ancient Greek: πορθμός (porthmós)
*pōr-i-s
Proto-Germanic: *fōriz (“passable”) (see there for further descendants)
*pór-mo-s
Proto-Balto-Slavic: *parmas
Proto-Slavic: *pormъ (see there for further descendants)
Proto-Germanic: *farmaz (“load, fare”)
Also Spanish: perro. Dog
In Malay, dog is "anjing", which is the closest sounding word to 'dingo' I've found.
Of course dogs, drums, boats, bread go far back. My point was that they were familiar and part of the overall expansions. Australia had no dugout canoes until Austronesians came with dingos in them.
"Australia had no dugout canoes until Austronesians came with dingos in them."
The proto-Australians and Papuans needed to be able to cross the Wallace line and one or two other deep ocean passages by boat. They may have had dugout canoes early on and lost that technology.
No evidence for earlier dugout canoes found. The canoe tree provided them with bark canoes. My claim is that both bark canoes (early) and dugout logboats (later) developed from splitting & carving the rind of the sago palm into a trough used in processing the pith into flour, originally associated with seeking tasty grubs.
Just found this on ridgeback dog linking Mesopotamia hunting dog, Phu Quoc ridgeback and Rhodesian ridgeback/Khoi lion hound:
http://www.glenaholm.com/origins-of-the-breed/
The Mesopotamian Hunting Dog was brought down the east coast of Africa in the course of tribal migration over several centuries and part of the movement was deflected towards the west. We must assume that these dogs carried the ridge gene and that eventually they reached the Cape and acquired the name of Hottentot Hunting Dog, serving a very useful purpose with the Khoisan in a semi-domesticated environment.
Evidence (DD: non-genetic) of the first domesticated dogs on our planet goes back to 4500 BC in Egyptian tombs, and in 1729 AD we have a written record of ridged dogs at the Cape. Apart from Africa the only other place where ridged dogs are found is Phu Quoc in the gulf of Thailand.
Thanks for the heads up.
Unrelated, but Egyptian craftsmen 4.5ka bored out a solid granite core, a helical spiral fine threaded cylinder, perhaps using a windlass or bow drill with copper bit, hard grit and water coolant. How? Impossible? (I once worked making & grinding steel tool bits used in cutting thick steel pipe for nuclear plants; this core is remarkable.)
https://youtu.be/jr0WpSyppO4? si=Ai5cAlUcxjzT4IHR (10:30)
I think John Plant at Primitive Technology made a bowdrill that could have produced a helical spiral like it, but not through solid granite.
https://youtu.be/bS4_K5_tHbg?si=2Y6_VP50HEk5Jzgl (10:30)
Interesting.
New study on Japanese wolves related to dog domestication. Dingo, New Guinea singing dog, Vietnamese dogs closest to Japanese wolves & Japanese dogs. They did not include Himalayan gray wolves nor Phu Quoc ridgeback dogs, so uncertainty, but I'm sticking with my hypothesis. A plausible parallel is Asian islanded wolves isolated in Japan & Phu Quoc, both became amenable to social humans who hunted and used dogs to pull sleds/coracles.
https://twitter.com/ChrisStringer65/status/1762811617547305276?cxt=HBwW-IS23fH04fYwAAAA&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email
Mesopotamian "beer" was from pounded & fermented dates: https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2024/03/date-beer.html?m=1
The words for hound may have come from Proto-Austronesian? Compare "dingo" to *(u-)(ŋ)kuɣkuɣ (“dog”). Per Linguist Oscar Tay at Quora on loanwords: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-interesting-loanwords-or-cognates-between-any-language?ch=10&oid=11741741&share=71aa19e3&srid=RPhZF&target_type=question
Another wanderwort, probably even older than that, is PIE *ḱwṓn-, source of English “hound” and Latin canis (and thus English “canine”). I’ve covered this more in-depth here; here’s the relevant wanderwort passage from that answer:
A Chinese word for dog is 犬, quǎn in pinyin; another is 狗, gǒu. Just as English comes from Proto-Indo-European, the Chinese languages come from Proto-Sino-Tibetan (PST); just as hound is from Pre-PIE *ḱwóns, quǎn and gǒu are from PST *d-kʷəj-n. The roots *ḱwóns and *d-kʷəj-n are similar enough that, according to some theories, they may actually be related.
The origin of the root *d-kʷəj-n is uncertain, but it’s likely from the Proto-Hmong-Mien *qluwˣ (“dog”), which in turn may be borrowed from the Proto-Austronesian root *(u-)(ŋ)kuɣkuɣ (“dog”). Possibly related is the early Japonic *i-ŋku[kuɣ], which would’ve then shifted to *iŋku and finally to the modern いぬ (inu, “dog”).
Again, this is based on reconstructions, which become fuzzier the more you try to do with them. With that out of the way, please take a moment to appreciate that even though they’re completely unrelated languages, the English hound, Mandarin quǎn, and Japanese inu may stem from the same root word.
Per etymology online, 'shampoo' may derive from Sanskrit chapayati : pound, knead. Indian flatbread is chapati. Somewhat similar to "pita" & "pita-ru".
1762, "to massage, rub and percuss the surface of (the body) to restore tone and vigor," from Anglo-Indian shampoo, from Hindi champo, imperative of champna "to press, knead the muscles," perhaps from Sanskrit capayati "pounds, kneads." The thing is thoroughly described in "A Voyage to the East Indies" (1762
Bantu is the second largest language in South Sudan. Kisra is a flatbread of Sudan made from ground sorghum flour. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kisra#:~:text=%22Kisra:%20A%20Traditional%20Fermented%20Flatbread,and%20Nutritional%20and%20Therapeutic%20Aspects.
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