TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of agricultural emergence on the genetic history of African rainforest hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists
AU - Patin, Etienne
AU - Siddle, Katherine J.
AU - Laval, Guillaume
AU - Quach, Hélène
AU - Harmant, Christine
AU - Becker, Noémie
AU - Froment, Alain
AU - Régnault, Béatrice
AU - Lemée, Laure
AU - Gravel, Simon
AU - Hombert, Jean Marie
AU - Van Der Veen, Lolke
AU - Dominy, Nathaniel J.
AU - Perry, George H.
AU - Barreiro, Luis B.
AU - Verdu, Paul
AU - Heyer, Evelyne
AU - Quintana-Murci, Lluís
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Serge Bahuchet, Gary Chen, Steve Gazal, Garrett Hellenthal, Simon Myers, Nick Patterson, Arti Tandon and Peter Underhill for critical feedback and advice on different aspects of data analyses and interpretation. We also thank Katarzyna Bryc for sharing genotyping data of sub-Saharan Africans. We are particularly grateful to all the study participants for their generous contributions of DNA, and to the Batwa Development Program and the Batwa Executive Council. This work was supported by the Institut Pasteur, the CNRS, a CNRS ‘MIE’ (Maladies Infectieuses et Environnement) Grant, a Foundation Simone & Cino del Duca Research Grant, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (Fellowship in Science and Engineering no. 2007-31754).
PY - 2014/2/4
Y1 - 2014/2/4
N2 - The emergence of agriculture in West-Central Africa approximately 5,000 years ago, profoundly modified the cultural landscape and mode of subsistence of most sub-Saharan populations. How this major innovation has had an impact on the genetic history of rainforest hunter-gatherers-historically referred to as 'pygmies'-and agriculturalists, however, remains poorly understood. Here we report genome-wide SNP data from these populations located west-to-east of the equatorial rainforest. We find that hunter-gathering populations present up to 50% of farmer genomic ancestry, and that substantial admixture began only within the last 1,000 years. Furthermore, we show that the historical population sizes characterizing these communities already differed before the introduction of agriculture. Our results suggest that the first socio-economic interactions between rainforest hunter-gatherers and farmers introduced by the spread of farming were not accompanied by immediate, extensive genetic exchanges and occurred on a backdrop of two groups already differentiated by their specialization in two ecotopes with differing carrying capacities.
AB - The emergence of agriculture in West-Central Africa approximately 5,000 years ago, profoundly modified the cultural landscape and mode of subsistence of most sub-Saharan populations. How this major innovation has had an impact on the genetic history of rainforest hunter-gatherers-historically referred to as 'pygmies'-and agriculturalists, however, remains poorly understood. Here we report genome-wide SNP data from these populations located west-to-east of the equatorial rainforest. We find that hunter-gathering populations present up to 50% of farmer genomic ancestry, and that substantial admixture began only within the last 1,000 years. Furthermore, we show that the historical population sizes characterizing these communities already differed before the introduction of agriculture. Our results suggest that the first socio-economic interactions between rainforest hunter-gatherers and farmers introduced by the spread of farming were not accompanied by immediate, extensive genetic exchanges and occurred on a backdrop of two groups already differentiated by their specialization in two ecotopes with differing carrying capacities.
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U2 - 10.1038/ncomms4163
DO - 10.1038/ncomms4163
M3 - Article
C2 - 24495941
AN - SCOPUS:84893819461
VL - 5
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
M1 - 3163
ER -