Abstract
There is little knowledge on the demographic impact of the western wave of the Bantu expansion. Only some predictions could be made based mainly on indirect archaeological, linguistic, and genetic evidences. Apart from the very limited available data on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) side, there are not, however, Y-chromosome studies revealing–if any–the male contribution of western Bantu-farmers. To elucidate the still poorly characterized western Bantu expansion, we analyzed Y-chromosome (25 biallelic polymorphisms and 15 microsatellite markers) and mtDNA (hypervariable control regions I and II and selected coding region RFLPs) variation in a population of 110 individuals from southwest Africa, and compared it with a database of 2,708 Y-chromosome profiles and of 2,565 mtDNAs from all other regions of Africa. This study reveals (1) a dramatic displacement of male and female Khoisan-speaking groups in the southwest, since both the maternal and the paternal genetic pools were composed exclusively by types carried by Bantu-speakers; (2) a clear bias in the admixture process towards the mating of male Europeans with female Sub-Saharan Africans; (3) the assimilation of east African lineages by the southwest (mainly mtDNA-L3f and Y-chromosome-B2a lineages); and (4) signatures of recent male and female gene flow from the southeast into the southwest. The data also indicate that the western stream of the Bantu expansion was a more gradual process than the eastern counterpart, which likely involved multiple short dispersals.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alves-Silva J, da Silva Santos M, Guimaraes PE, Ferreira AC, Bandelt H-J, Pena SD, Prado VF (2000) The ancestry of Brazilian mtDNA lineages. Am J Hum Genet 67:444–461
Andrews RM, Kubacka I, Chinnery PF, Lightowlers RN, Turnbull DM, Howell N (1999) Reanalysis and revision of the Cambridge reference sequence for human mitochondrial DNA. Nat Genet 23:147
Bakel MA (1981) The “Bantu” expansion: demographic models. Curr Anth 22:688–691
Bandelt HJ, Forster P, Sykes BC, Richards MB (1995) Mitochondrial portraits of human populations using median networks. Genetics 141:743–53
Bandelt HJ, Forster P, Röhl A (1999) Median-joining networks for inferring intraspecific phylogenies. Mol Biol Evol 16:37–48
Bandelt HJ, Alves-Silva J, Guimarães PE, Santos MS, Brehm A, Pereira L, Coppa A, Larruga JM, Rengo C, Scozzari R, Torroni A, Prata MJ, Amorim A, Prado VF, Pena SD (2001) Phylogeography of the human mitochondrial haplogroup L3e: a snapshot of African prehistory and Atlantic slave trade. Ann Hum Genet 65:549–563
Beleza S, Alves C, González-Neira A, Lareu M, Amorim A, Carracedo A, Gusmão L (2003) Extending STR markers in Y-chromosome haplotypes. Int J Legal Med 117:27–33
Carvalho-Silva DR, Santos FR, Rocha J, Pena SD (2001) The phylogeography of Brazilian Y-chromosome lineages. Am J Hum Genet 68:281–286
Cavalli-Sforza LL, Menozzi P, Piazza A (1994) History and geography of human genes. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Chen YS, Olckers A, Schurr TG, Kogelnik AM, Huoponen K, Wallace DC (2000) MtDNA variation in the South African Kung and Khwe and their genetic relationships to other African populations. Am J Hum Genet 66:1362–1383
Coia V, Caglia A, Arredi B, Donati F, Santos FR, Pandya A, Taglioli L, Paoli G, Pascali V, Destro-Bisol G, Tyler-Smith C (2004) Binary and microsatellite polymorphisms of the Y-chromosome in the Mbenzele pygmies from the Central African Republic. Am J Human Biol 16:57–67
Cruciani F, Santolamazza P, Shen P, Macaulay V, Moral P, Olckers A, Modiano D, Holmes S, Destro-Bisol G, Coia V, Wallace DC, Oefner PJ, Torroni A, Cavalli-Sforza LL, Scozzari R, Underhill PA (2002) A back migration from Asia to sub-Saharan Africa is supported by high-resolution analysis of human Y-chromosome haplotypes. Am J Hum Genet 70:1197–1214
Destro-Bisol G, Coia V, Boschi I, Verginelli F, Caglia A, Pascali V, Spedini G, Calafell F (2004) The analysis of variation of mtDNA hypervariable region 1 suggests that Eastern and Western Pygmies diverged before the Bantu expansion. Am Nat 163:212–226
Gonçalves R, Rosa A, Freitas A, Fernandes A, Kivisild T, Villems R, Brehm A (2003) Y-chromosome lineages in Cabo Verde Islands witness the diverse geographic origin of its first male settlers. Hum Genet 113:467–472
Gusmão L, González-Neira A, Alves C, Lareu M, Costa S, Amorim A, Carracedo A (2002) Chimpanzee homologous of human Y specific STRs. A comparative study and a proposal for nomenclature. Forensic Sci Int 126:129–136
Helgason A, Nicholson G, Stefansson K, Donnelly P (2003) A reassessment of genetic diversity in Icelanders: strong evidence from multiple loci for relative homogeneity caused by genetic drift. Ann Hum Genet 67:281–297
Herrnstadt C, Elson JL, Fahy E, Preston G, Turnbull DM, Anderson C, Ghosh SS, Olefsky JM, Beal MF, Davis RE, Howell N (2002) Reduced-median-network analysis of complete mitochondrial DNA coding-region sequences for the major African, Asian, and European haplogroups. Am J Hum Genet 70:1152–1171
Hiernaux J (1968) Bantu expansion: the evidence from physical anthropology confronted with linguistic and archaeological evidence. J Afr Hist 9:505–515
Hurles ME, Veitia R, Arroyo E, Armenteros M, Bertranpetit J, Pérez-Lezaun A, Bosch E, Shlumukova M, Cambon-Thomsen A, McElreavey K, Lopez De Munain A, Röhl A, Wilson IJ, Singh L, Pandya A, Santos FR, Tyler-Smith C, Jobling MA (1999) Recent male-mediated gene flow over a linguistic barrier in Iberia, suggested by analysis of a Y-chromosomal DNA polymorphism. Am J Hum Genet 65:1437–1448
Ingman M, Kaessmann H, Pääbo S, Gyllensten U (2000) Mitochondrial genome variation and the origin of modern humans. Nature 408:708–713
Jobling M, Tyler-Smith C (2003) The human Y-chromosome: an evolutionary marker comes of age. Nat Rev Genet 4:598–612
Knight A, Underhill PA, Mortensen HM, Zhivotovsky LA, Lin AA, Henn BM, Louis D, Ruhlen M, Mountain JL (2003) African Y-chromosome and mtDNA divergence provides insight into the history of click languages. Curr Biol 13:464–473
Lareu MV, Phillips CP, Carracedo A, Lincoln PJ, Syndercombe Court D, Thomson JA (1994) Investigation of the STR locus HUMTH01 using PCR and two electrophoresis formats: UK and Galician Caucasian population surveys and usefulness in paternity investigations. Forensic Sci Int 66:41–52
Maca-Meyer N, González AM, Larruga JM, Flores C, Cabrera VM (2001) Major genomic mitochondrial lineages delineate early human expansions. BMC Genet 2:13
Newman JL (1995) The peopling of Africa: a geographic interpretation. Yale University Press, New Haven
Pereira L, Macaulay V, Torroni A, Scozzari R, Prata MJ, Amorim A (2001) Prehistoric and historic traces in the mtDNA of Mozambique: insights into the Bantu expansions and the slave trade. Ann Hum Genet 65:439–458
Pereira L, Gusmão L, Alves C, Amorim A, Prata MJ (2002) Bantu and European Y-lineages in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ann Hum Genet 66:369–378
Phillipson DW (1993) African archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Plaza S, Salas A, Calafell F, Côrte-Real F, Bertranpetit J, Carracedo A, Comas D (2004) Insights into the western Bantu dispersal: mtDNA lineage analysis in Angola. Hum Genet 115:439–447
Richards M, Macaulay V, Hill Catherine H, Carracedo A, Salas A (2004) The archaeogenetics of the dispersals of the Bantu-speaking peoples. In: Jones M (ed) Traces of ancestry: studies in honour of Colin Renfrew. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Monographs, Cambridge
Rosser ZH, Zerjal T, Hurles ME, Adojaan M, Alavantic D, Amorim A, Amos W et al (2000) Y-chromosomal diversity in Europe is clinal and influenced primarily by geography, rather than by language. Am J Hum Genet 67:1526–1543
Russell-Wood AJ (1998) The Portuguese empire, 1415–1808: a world on the move. The John Hopkins University Press, London
Salas A, Richards M, De la Fé T, Lareu MV, Sobrino B, Sánchez-Diz P, Macaulay V, Carracedo A (2002) The making of the African mtDNA landscape. Am J Hum Genet 71:1082–1111
Salas A, Richards M, Lareu MV, Scozzari R, Coppa A, Torroni A, Macaulay V, Carracedo A (2004a) The African diaspora: mitochondrial DNA and the Atlantic slave trade. Am J Hum Genet 74:454–465
Salas A, Torroni A, Richards M, Quintana-Murci L, Hill C, Macaulay V, Carracedo A (2004b) Reply to Bortolini MC, Da Silva WA, Zago MA, Elion J, Krishnamoorthy R, Gonçalves VF, Pena SDJ (2004b) The phylogeography of mtDNA haplogroup L3g in Africa and the Atlantic slave trade. Am J Hum Genet 75:524–526
Schneider S, Roessli D, Excoffier L (2000) Arlequin: a software for population genetics data analysis, ver 2.000. Genetics and Biometry Lab, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Geneva
Semino O, Santachiara-Benerecetti AS, Falaschi F, Cavalli-Sforza LL, Underhill PA (2002) Ethiopians and Khoisan share the deepest clades of the human Y-chromosome phylogeny. Am J Hum Genet 70:265–268
Tishkoff S, Williams S (2002) Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nat Rev Genet 3:611–621
Torroni A, Rengo C, Guida V, Cruciani F, Sellitto D, Coppa A, Calderon FL, Simionati B, Valle G, Richards M, Macaulay V, Scozzari R (2001) Do the four clades of the mtDNA haplogroup L2 evolve at different rates? Am J Hum Genet 69:1348–1356
Trovoada MJ, Pereira L, Gusmão L, Abade A, Amorim A, Prata MJ (2004) Pattern of mtDNA variation in three populations from Sao Tome e Principe. Ann Hum Genet 68:40–54
Underhill PA, Shen P, Lin AA, Jin L, Passarino G, Yang WH, Kauffman E, Bonne-Tamir B, Bertranpetit J, Francalacci P, Ibrahim M, Jenkins T, Kidd JR, Mehdi SQ, Seielstad MT, Wells RS, Piazza A, Davis RW, Feldman MW, Cavalli-Sforza LL, Oefner PJ (2000) Y-chromosome sequence variation and the history of human populations. Nat Genet 26:358–361
Underhill PA, Passarino G, Lin AA, Shen P, Mirazon Lahr M, Foley RA, Oefner PJ, Cavalli-Sforza LL (2001) The phylogeography of Y-chromosome binary haplotypes and the origins of modern human populations. Ann Hum Genet 65:43–62
Vansina (1984) Western Bantu expansion. J Afr Hist 25:129–145
Watson E, Forster P, Richards M, Bandelt H-J (1997) Mitochondrial footprints of human expansions in Africa. Am J Hum Genet 61:691–704
Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (through grant SFRH/BD/860/2000 and POCTI, Programa Operacional Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação). We wish to thank Dr. Fátima Reis from Cabinda’s Hospital for kindly helping us to collect the blood samples, and Dr. Martin Richards for critically reading the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic Supplementary Material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Beleza, S., Gusmão, L., Amorim, A. et al. The genetic legacy of western Bantu migrations. Hum Genet 117, 366–375 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-005-1290-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-005-1290-3