Khoisan hunter-gatherers have been the largest population throughout most of modern-human demographic history

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2014-12-01

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Kim, Hie Lim
Ratan, Aakrosh
Perry, George H.
Montenegro, Alvaro [UNESP]
Miller, Webb
Schuster, Stephan C.

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Nature Publishing Group

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The Khoisan people from Southern Africa maintained ancient lifestyles as hunter-gatherers or pastoralists up to modern times, though little else is known about their early history. Here we infer early demographic histories of modern humans using whole-genome sequences of five Khoisan individuals and one Bantu speaker. Comparison with a 420 K SNP data set from worldwide individuals demonstrates that two of the Khoisan genomes from the Ju/'hoansi population contain exclusive Khoisan ancestry. Coalescent analysis shows that the Khoisan and their ancestors have been the largest populations since their split with the non-Khoisan population similar to 100-150 kyr ago. In contrast, the ancestors of the non-Khoisan groups, including Bantu-speakers and non-Africans, experienced population declines after the split and lost more than half of their genetic diversity. Paleoclimate records indicate that the precipitation in southern Africa increased similar to 80-100 kyr ago while west-central Africa became drier. We hypothesize that these climate differences might be related to the divergent-ancient histories among human populations.

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Nature Communications. London: Nature Publishing Group, v. 5, p. 1-8, 2014.