Reply To Winters: The origins of the Fulani remain

[Charlie Bass]

Unknown


Come on Clyde, its clear from the language in Tishkoff and Schienfeldt et al's study that they never suggested an extra-African origin for the Fulani.

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[clydewin98]

Nov 3, 2010 11:51:06 GMT -5 Charlie Bass said:

Unknown


Come on Clyde, its clear from the language in Tishkoff and Schienfeldt et al's study that they never suggested an extra-African origin for the Fulani.

Its not that clear to me. The authors admit that the Fulani speak a Niger-Congo language and claim that they share ancestry with Chadic speakers. But they also say:

For example, the Fulani who are nomadic pastoralists that speak a Niger-Kordofanian language and reside across central and western Africa do not cluster with other Niger-Kordofanian-speaking populations. Moreover, the Fulani are distinguished from other African samples at K = 14 in Tishkoff et al.’s (1) STRUCTURE analysis. Morphological analyses of the Fulani have been interpreted to suggest a Middle Eastern origin for the Fulani (91), and there has been some speculation based on linguistic data that the Fulani migrated to central Africa from northern Africa or the Middle East (91). In addition, there is evidence of shared recent ancestry among the Fulani and European/Middle Eastern samples from studies of mtDNA (92), NRY (40), and autosomal microsatellites (1) and from the presence in this population of the mutation associated with lactose tolerance in Europeans (T-13910) (62).

The most important goal of my letter was to illustrate that the Fulani are of African origin.

This goal I accomplished.

[Charlie Bass]

Nov 3, 2010 20:45:22 GMT -5 clydewin98 said:

Nov 3, 2010 11:51:06 GMT -5 Charlie Bass said:

Unknown


Come on Clyde, its clear from the language in Tishkoff and Schienfeldt et al's study that they never suggested an extra-African origin for the Fulani.

Its not that clear to me. The authors admit that the Fulani speak a Niger-Congo language and claim that they share ancestry with Chadic speakers. But they also say:

For example, the Fulani who are nomadic pastoralists that speak a Niger-Kordofanian language and reside across central and western Africa do not cluster with other Niger-Kordofanian-speaking populations. Moreover, the Fulani are distinguished from other African samples at K = 14 in Tishkoff et al.’s (1) STRUCTURE analysis. Morphological analyses of the Fulani have been interpreted to suggest a Middle Eastern origin for the Fulani (91), and there has been some speculation based on linguistic data that the Fulani migrated to central Africa from northern Africa or the Middle East (91). In addition, there is evidence of shared recent ancestry among the Fulani and European/Middle Eastern samples from studies of mtDNA (92), NRY (40), and autosomal microsatellites (1) and from the presence in this population of the mutation associated with lactose tolerance in Europeans (T-13910) (62).

The most important goal of my letter was to illustrate that the Fulani are of African origin.

This goal I accomplished.

They never made that claim, they simply cited other papers that have made that claim.

[clydewin98]

Nov 4, 2010 3:25:10 GMT -5 Charlie Bass said:

Nov 3, 2010 20:45:22 GMT -5 clydewin98 said:

Its not that clear to me. The authors admit that the Fulani speak a Niger-Congo language and claim that they share ancestry with Chadic speakers. But they also say:




The most important goal of my letter was to illustrate that the Fulani are of African origin.

This goal I accomplished.

They never made that claim, they simply cited other papers that have made that claim.

Please answer three (3) questions

1. From your reading of both papers are the authors claiming an African or mixed origin for the Fulani?

2.What population do the authors claim the Fulani share a common ancestor?

3. What NRY data links the Fulani to this population instead of the Niger-Congo group?


Please respond.

[zarahan]

Explorer had a blogpost that goes into t he Fulani in detail re Tishkoff's recent 2009 paper:
The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans.

In that paper, Tishkoff et al note as to the Fulani:
"Mitochondrial DNA analysis indicates that Fulani have lineages of predominantly West African origin and that they cluster together and close to the Mandenka population from Senegal [S93]."

Thus the Fulani are firmly an African population.

There may have been some gene flow with outside populations but it is still an open question whether
this flow is not with other Africans who have upstream variants of various DNA markers. In other words,
if a low percentage of DNA links them with Afro-Asiatic speakers is it "Middle easterners" that are
in the mix, or simply other AFRICANS such as those in Ethiopia who speak an Afro-Asiatic language?
See:
exploring-africa.blogspot.com/2009/06/reviewing-genetic-structure-and-history.html


Also see what Cherny 2006 says on this score about the FUlani:

'"HVS-I analysis of four Fulani populations revealed the different proportions of the mtDNA gene pool. A major role is played by West African mtDNA haplogroups, such as L1b, L3d, L3b, L2b, L2c, and L2d, which together make up 79.6% of the whole. The far from negligible presence of some haplogroups from western Eurasia (8.1%), such as U5, U6, and J1, is not particularly surprising in a sub-Saharan context because these haplogroups currently appear in North Africa. This may suggest an ancient origin of the nomads in the more northerly mountain massifs of the Central Sahara (Dupuy 1999). According to our own anthropological examination (data not shown), the non-sub-Saharan haplogroups are not carried by "West Eurasian-like" individuals, as might be anticipated, but were rather detected in common "Fulani type" peoples."
- Cerny et al. (2006), mtDNA of Fulani Nomads and Their Genetic Relationships to Neighboring Sedentary Populations

Hence the Eurocentric ideologues pushing some sort of "wandering Caucasoid" fantasy on the Fulani come
up short.
See:
exploring-africa.blogspot.com/2009/06/creation-of-fake-controversy-fula.html

[clydewin98]

They can push this agenda because they usually fail to support their research with craniometric ,archaeological, and linguistic evidence. The main eurocentrist is Cruciani. It is Cruciani who likes to join African haplogroup with the (*) to indicate that it is unanalyzed so he can change its name to separate Europeans from Africans thus we have V88.

As a result, we need to send letters to the editors of journals to point out excesses in discussion of African population genetics.

I will admit that publishing articles in many of these journals is costly since they expect you to pay anywhere from $1800-$2500 in publication cost if your paper is accepted for publication.