
Khoisan have been the largest population throughout most of modern-human history - caio1982
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141204/ncomms6692/full/ncomms6692.html
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thaumasiotes
OK, this title is taken directly from the article, but it's wrong. As the
paper beneath the headline clearly states, it claims that Khoisan have been
the largest _effective population_ through history, a rather different idea.
You can be the largest effective population for thousands upon thousands of
years of being the smallest population in the conventional sense.

Compare the headline with a nonrandomly-chosen sentence from the paper:

Headline: Khoisan hunter-gatherers have been the largest population throughout
most of modern-human demographic history.

Paper: Our hypothesis may [...] suggest that the Khoisan hunter-gatherers and
their ancestors have been the largest population _in terms of genetic
diversity_ throughout modern-human history. (emphasis added)

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zingar
From what I remember of my major in linguistics at UCT (I was lazy and it was
almost 10 years ago):

The Khoisan languages have a greater density of phonemes (there are more
identifiably different sounds) than in any other on the planet. This language
[1] has 43 clicks, compared to the 3 of Xhosa and Zulu (actually it might be
that by the system of measurement used in that article Xhosa/Zulu actually
have more, but it still won't be as many).

Speculation: I always imagined that this was similar to the story of
Mitochondrial Eve, that these languages look like what language looked like
150 000 years ago while the rest of the planet's languages are fragments, kind
of like we only have fragments of Mitochondrial Eve's DNA. Of course I have no
idea what the current thinking is on ME, maybe that idea has been discredited.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taa_language](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taa_language)

------
pmontra
tl;dr the Khoisan lived in the part of Africa that kept good throught all
climate changes phases. The other populations suffered reduction in numbers
and eventually part of them spread to Asia and Europe. It took them a long
time to recover and finally outnumber the Khoisan.

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gopalv
Khoisan is the language with all the clicks in it (yeah, been watching Trevor
Noah today).

In comparison, between the spread of that sound structure (culture, so to
speak) vs genetic distribution, why would one spread wide and the other part
not?

Or am I wrong about clicks being a rarity in languages of the continent?

~~~
VintageCool
We can trace human lineages by following either the Y-chrosome DNA or the
mitochondrial mtDNA. For all of the other chromosomes the DNA of the mother
and the DNA of the father are shuffled together, but Y DNA comes only from the
father and mtDNA comes over from the mother, and these genes only change as a
result of random mutations.

If you find a group of men who all share a specific mutation on the Y
chromosome, then they all share some common ancestor where that mutation first
occurred.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Y-
chromosome_DNA_haplogro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Y-
chromosome_DNA_haplogroup)

That rate of mutation is constant per birth, so you'll find the greatest
genetic diversity in places where it has been accumulating for a long time.

Also, if that population shrinks precipitously, then that population
bottlenecks can be measured in the genetic diversity of the descendents
thousands of years later. (And genetic drift can become locked in).

The researchers determined that humanity suffered a population bottleneck some
~100,000 years ago, which may have been related to a changing, drier climate.
By looking at the genetic diversity preserved, they also determined that the
population bottleneck suffered by the ancestors suffered by non-Africans must
have been significantly more severe than the bottleneck seen in the ancestors
of the Ju/'hoansi. 100,000 years ago must have been a pretty good time to live
in southern Africa (compared to the rest of the continent).

Anyway, I believe that click languages were once widespread. The greatest
genetic distance between any two populations on Earth is between the
Ju/'Hoansi (in Southern Africa) and the Hadzabe (in East Africa). They both
speak click languages, and those languages are unrelated.

[http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2803...](http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2803%2900130-1?cc=y)

I believe that at some time (between 150,000 and 70,000 years ago), all of
humanity lived in a range from South Africa to East Africa and all spoke click
languages. At some point, possibly as a result of the climatic event discussed
in this paper, the genetic histories of the Hadzabe, the Ju/'hoansi, and
another group diverged. That last group stopped speaking in clicks and also
conquered the world: all the rest of humanity is ultimately descended from
this small group. About 1500 years ago, Bantu farmers swept through southeast
Africa and left the speakers of click languages persisting only in isolated
deserts that couldn't be farmed.

~~~
nroets
Is it fair to say Bantu farmers colonized most of southeast Africa
approximately 1500 years ago ?

~~~
thaumasiotes
To your exact question, I'm not sure. The Bantu expanded from a small region
of west Africa beginning around 3000 years ago; it's plausible that it took
them a while to overwhelm southeast Africa.

What I find really interesting is that we have actual historical records from
the great civilization of the time, Egypt, that predate the Bantu. We even
have records of their diplomacy with the non-Bantu kingdoms to their south.
The Africans they write about (and, in some cases, draw artwork of) bear
little relation to the Africans we know today. Sure, expanding human
populations have wiped out incumbents everywhere in the world, but it's
unusual for the eye of recorded history to be so nearby when it happens (North
America would be the best example, I guess, but I'm pretty sure the Bantu
expansion is #2).

