Bantu-Khoisan interactions at the edge of the Bantu expansions: insights from southern Angola.
For a human population geneticist, an interest in Africa hardly requires an explanation. With the highest time depth of human history and over 2000 linguistic groups spreading across highly diverse geographical settings, Africa harbors a tremendous variety of genetic patterns that remain to be explained. My own interest in African populations started with São Tomé, a tiny plantation island located at the heart of the Gulf of Guinea that was peopled by slaves imported from the adjacent areas of the mainland. Presently, I am still interested in insular populations related to the slave trade, like the Cape Verde Archipelago, facing Senegal. Moreover, I became involved in the study of genetic diversity of continental areas like Angola and Mozambique, lying at the southwestern and southeastern edges of the Bantu expansions, respectively. The area of Angola, in particular, is especially interesting for understanding the push of Bantu-speaking peoples out of the rain forest into the arid steppes of southwestern Africa. In southern Angola, the cultural and geographical proximity between Bantu and Khoisan cattle herders poses intriguing questions about the development of the relatively isolated Southwest African pastoral scene and the nature of the interactions between the vanguard of the Bantu expansions and the non-Bantu peoples from the desert.
Rocha
Jorge
J
IPATIMUP, Institute of Pathology and Molecular Immunology of the University of Porto. jrocha@ipatimup.pt
D000810:Angola; D044383:Black People / Q000235:genetics*; D041322:Chromosomes, Human, Y / Q000235:genetics; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics; D003710:Demography; D017753:Ecosystem; D005006:Ethnicity; D005819:Genetic Markers; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male
D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial; D005819:Genetic Markers