The Green Sahara and African Neolithics
Tides of History
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The Ancestry of the Taferalt People in North Africa
The ties between the regions and their shared roots went back deep into the paleolithic, at least 15 thousand years ago. The taferalt people derive a substantial chunk of their ancestry from groups related to foragers living in east africa like the hadza of anzenea. But that distinctive ancestry was once much more widespread in africa than it is to day. A variety of old and extremely old samples show us a genetic landscape that simply no longer exists. It's fascinating though, because it means that it didn't take the invention of farming in the fertile crescent for this near eastern type of ancestry to become common in north africa.
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