Fulani from Cameroon show ancestry similar to Afroasiatic speakers from East Africa

Open access African evolutionary history inferred from whole genome sequence data of 44 indigenous African populations, by Fan et al. Genome Biology (2019) 20:82.

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

Introduction

To extend our knowledge of patterns of genomic diversity in Africa, we generated high coverage (30×) genome sequencing data from 43 geographically diverse Africans originating from 22 ethnic groups, representing a broad array of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and geographic diversity (Additional file 1: Table S1). These include a number of populations of anthropological interest that have never previously been characterized for high-coverage genome sequence diversity such as Afroasiatic-speaking El

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Bantu distinguished from Khoe by uniparental markers, not genome-wide autosomal admixture

The role of matrilineality in shaping patterns of Y chromosome and mtDNA sequence variation in southwestern Angola, by Oliveira et al. bioRxiv (2018).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

The origins of NRY diversity in SW Angola

In accordance with our previous mtDNA study⁹, the present NRY analysis reveals a major division between the Kx’a-speaking !Xun and the Bantu-speaking groups, whose paternal genetic ancestry does not display any old remnant lineages, or a clear link to pre-Bantu eastern African migrants introducing Khoe-Kwadi languages and pastoralism into southern Africa (cf. 15). This is especially evident in the distribution of the

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A history of male migration in and out of the Green Sahara

Open access research highlight A history of male migration in and out of the Green Sahara, by Yali Xue, Genome Biology (2018) 19:30, on the recent paper by D’Atanasio et al.

Insights from the Green Saharan Y-chromosomal findings (emphasis mine):

It is widely accepted that sub-Saharan Y chromosomes are dominated by E-M2 lineages carried by Bantu-speaking farmers as they expanded from West Africa starting < 5 kya, reaching South Africa within recent centuries [4]. The E-M2-Bantu lineages lie phylogenetically within the E-M2-Green Sahara lineage and show at least three explosive lineage expansions beginning 4.9–5.3 kya [5] (Fig. 1a). These events of

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The demographic history and mutational load of African hunter-gatherers and farmers

Interesting new article (behind paywall), The demographic history and mutational load of African hunter-gatherers and farmers, Nat Ecol Evol (2018)

Abstract (emphasis mine):

Understanding how deleterious genetic variation is distributed across human populations is of key importance in evolutionary biology and medical genetics. However, the impact of population size changes and gene flow on the corresponding mutational load remains a controversial topic. Here, we report high-coverage exomes from 300 rainforest hunter-gatherers and farmers of central Africa, whose distinct subsistence strategies are expected to have impacted their demographic pasts. Detailed demographic inference indicates that hunter-gatherers and farmers recently experienced population

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