Geographic origin of baboon mummies as revealed by aDNA analysis
The aim of this study is to refine the map of genetic diversity of baboons in the north-eastern part of their distribution and to elucidate the geographic origin of baboons from ancient Egypt. We will compare the mitochondrial haplotypes of baboons from ancient Egypt with the current distribution of baboon mitochondrial haplotypes to pinpoint the geographic location of origin. Recent improvements of methodological approaches now allow the extraction and analysis of aDNA from mummified specimen (Schuenemann et al., 2017; Wasef et al. 2019) and hence a detailed investigation of the geographic origin of Egyptian baboons. This can give new insight into trading route(s) of ancient Egyptians. In addition, we obtained samples from museum specimen from Chad, Ethiopia, Somalia, South-Sudan, and Sudan to close sampling gaps and further specify the phylogeography of baboons with a focus on their north-eastern distribution. We hypothesize that mummy haplotypes will fall in the same phylogenetic clade as present-day baboons from Ethiopia and Eritrea. The exact phylogenetic location of mummy samples will provide evidence for their precise geographic location of origin.