Publications
Publication details [#50645]
Veen, Lolke Van der, Lluis Quintana-Murci and David Comas. 2009. Linguistic, cultural and genetic perspectives on human diversity in west-central Africa. In d'Errico, Francesco and Jean-Marie Hombert, eds. Becoming Eloquent. Advances in the emergence of language, human cognition, and modern cultures. John Benjamins. pp. 93–112.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Annotation
This paper presents the major results of a recent multidisciplinary study of the human diversity of west-central Africa. This diversity is examined from linguistic, cultural and population genetic (mtDNA and Y chromosome) perspectives. The study offers new insights into (i) the peopling of the Cameroon-Gabon area (the so-called “Bantu expansion”), (ii) the linguistic, cultural and genetic exchanges between the various groups of Bantu-speaking farmers over the last three millennia, and (iii) the recent and ancient relationships between these populations and Pygmy hunter-gathering groups. Evidence from mtDNA diversity suggests an initial divergence of the ancestors of contemporary Pygmies from an ancestral central African population starting not earlier than ~70,000 years ago. Evidence from both mtDNA and Y-chromosome variation suggests long-standing and asymmetrical gene flow between the two types of populations.