Luxmanda
Ancient DNA analysis
Admixture clustering analysis of a 3,100 year old female infant skeleton exhumed at Luxmanda found that the individual carried approximately 38±1% of her ancestry related to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture of the Levant. New genetic data from Luxmanda suggest that this affinity is likely due to either migration into Africa of descendants of pre-pottery farmers from the Levant, or common descent from a non-African ancestral population that inhabited Africa or the Near East several millennia before. All the males tested for Y chromosomal DNA clustered with E1b1b subclades, with two yielding ambivalent A1b subclades due to insufficient collagen.[2]
The African part of Luxmanda individual's ancestry was fitted as being most closely related to a hunter-gatherer population that inhabited Ethiopia ca. 4,500 BP (under a two-population admixture scenario, with inferred ancestry proportions of 62.2–62.8% for the hunter-gather component and 37.2-37.8% for the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B component) or also from a population related to the Dinka (under a three-population admixture scenario, with an inferred ancestry proportion of 39% ± 1% Levantine-related ancestry). Furthermore, haplogroup analysis indicated that the Luxmanda specimen bore the haplogroup L2a1 (mtDNA). Scientists had previously dated the arrival of Western Eurasian-related ancestry in eastern Africa, which is now pervasive in the region, to around 3000 BP on average. The new genetic data suggest that the makers of the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic were responsible for spreading ancient Levant-related ancestry in the lacustrine region, where they had established new settlements. The Luxmanda individual's population also likely introduced herding to southern Africa, since a 1,200 year old pastoralist individual from the Western Cape was found to bear affinities with the Luxmanda sample.