article · Nature
The historical expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples profoundly altered the linguistic, cultural, and biological profile of Africa. Using a major genomic dataset that incorporates newly generated modern and ancient DNA from previously unsampled parts of the continent, this research maps that movement. The dataset comprises genotype data from 1,763 individuals across 14 African nations alongside whole-genome sequences from 12 Late Iron Age individuals. Analysis demonstrates that genetic diversity among Bantu speakers decreases with distance from western Africa, identifying present-day Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo as key interaction crossroads. Furthermore, combining genetic, geographical, and linguistic information confirms a serial-founder migration model, revealing that migrating Bantu speakers integrated significant gene flow from local populations they encountered. The resulting genetic catalogue establishes an exhaustive comparative reference for future ancient DNA and human diversity investigations.
Understanding human genetic diversity across Africa clarifies historical migrations that shaped modern populations. By offering a comprehensive modern comparative genomic dataset from previously underrepresented regions, this work fills vital gaps in global reference data. It provides scientists, historians, and medical researchers with foundational evidence required to explore human ancestry, population structure, and biological variation accurately across the African continent.
This is early-stage, foundational research that creates an exhaustive genomic reference resource. It holds potential downstream utility for the medical sector, clinical researchers, and healthcare developers investigating human genetic variation and disease susceptibility in African and African-descendant populations. While the data may eventually inform targeted diagnostics or population-specific medical studies, direct commercial products remain at a very early discovery stage.
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The expansion of people speaking Bantu languages is the most dramatic demographic event in Late Holocene Africa and fundamentally reshaped the linguistic, cultural and biological landscape of the continent<sup>1-7</sup>. With a comprehensive genomic dataset, including newly generated data of modern-day and ancient DNA from previously unsampled regions in Africa, we contribute insights into this expansion that started 6,000-4,000 years ago in western Africa. We genotyped 1,763 participants, including 1,526 Bantu speakers from 147 populations across 14 African countries, and generated whole-genome sequences from 12 Late Iron Age individuals<sup>8</sup>. We show that genetic diversity amongst Bantu-speaking populations declines with distance from western Africa, with current-day Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo as possible crossroads of interaction. Using spatially explicit methods<sup>9</sup> and correlating genetic, linguistic and geographical data, we provide cross-disciplinary support for a serial-founder migration model. We further show that Bantu speakers received significant gene flow from local groups in regions they expanded into. Our genetic dataset provides an exhaustive modern-day African comparative dataset for ancient DNA studies<sup>10</sup> and will be important to a wide range of disciplines from science and humanities, as well as to the medical sector studying human genetic variation and health in African and African-descendant populations.
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06770-6
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