winter_rose
07-20-2021, 09:44 PM
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2015/04/disgracefullondontimes.jpg
while this actual genetic study, closest population to her would be luo or luhya
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ggn2.10051
3.3 Genetic Affinities
To further assess the genetic relationship between Zana, Khwit and various worldwide populations using nuclear genome variation, we ran a PCA based on the Human Origins (HO) panel. To aid visualisation, we reduced the total number of reference populations in the panel to represent the major genetic lineages of the world. However, given its geographic relevance, we included relatively more populations from the Caucasus, and given previous hypotheses that Zana may have had some archaic hominid ancestry, we also included genome-wide data from three archaic humans, and used the chimpanzee as an outgroup. Additionally, we included the two Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (SATP and KK1) from the South Caucasus for comparison.
The results clearly show that Zana is neither genetically close to archaic humans nor the chimpanzee, but clusters closely with modern human populations (Figure 2A). As expected from kinship (parent-offspring) and Y-chromosome (European R1b1a1b lineage) analyses, Khwit has an intermediate location on the PCA plot between European or Caucasian and African populations.
Unsupervised clustering analysis using ADMIXTURE also clearly rejects any hypothesis that Zana was of “nonhuman” origin, for example as suggested by various sources.1, 2 Rather, it is clear that she shared genetic ancestry with present-day western and eastern African populations (Figure 2B). To explore this African origin further, we conducted additional PCA and admixture analyses based solely on African groups from the HO panel (Figure 3A and Figure S4). Here again, Zana shows ancestry components from the eastern (eg, Dinka) and western (eg, Yoruba) African groups, with no significant genetic contribution from southern, northern, and central African populations. We were unable, however, to resolve whether she was (a) an individual derived from admixture between a Dinka-like and Yoruba-like population (purple and plink components in Figure 3A) or (b) originated solely from eastern African groups such as Luhya and Luo.
To estimate Zana's ancestry proportion more accurately, we conducted the admixture analysis in “supervised” mode based on 13 African populations (Figure 3B) representing most of the diversity of human populations in Africa. Even though the results confirm Zana's largely eastern (~66%) African origin, she also displayed significant levels of western African (~34%) genetic component. To further visualise Zana's genetic relationship with the African populations, we applied additional dimensionality reduction using UMAP with only eastern, central, and western African groups, which reveals Zana's genetic proximity with eastern African populations such as Luo and Luhya (Figure 3C). This is also supported by the maximum likelihood analysis based on TreeMix (Figure 4A).
To formally test the possible Neanderthal introgression into Zana's genome we conducted 𝐷-statistics in the form of (Test_population, Zana; AltaiNea, Chimpanzee) (Figure 4B). The results indicate Neanderthal admixture only for populations of northern African and non-African populations (well-known from previous studies19, 38) which is in line with Zana's genetic proximity with sub-Saharan groups identified based on the clustering analyses.
In summary, our results based on genome-wide analysis reveal that Zana's genome had a sub-Saharan African genetic origin, consistent with the results of previous (unpublished) craniometric and mtDNA analyses. This suggests that her presence in the region may have been linked to the Ottoman Empire slave trade to Istanbul, that was one of the main hubs for the slave trade in the region in the 19th century. Moreover, Zana's largely eastern African ancestry is consistent with the historical records indicating that most of the African slaves in the Ottoman Empire originated around areas of the African Great Lakes and present-day Sudan.
The contemporary reports and subsequent tales of Zana's wildness were at least partially based on some of her unusual physical characteristics such as the lack of speech, intellectual disability and long hair covering her whole body to name a few. With the genomic data clearly rejecting all nonhuman hypotheses, we speculate that if these descriptions of her physical characteristics are accurate, she may have had a rare human genetic disorder such as congenital generalised hypertrichosis: a syndrome with dismorphic facial features, intellectual disability, and hypertrichosis.39
4 CONCLUSIONS
Our results prove that the unknown female buried in the Genaba family cemetery was Zana herself. In contrast to the speculations that she might have been a female Almasty, we provide definitive genome-wide data to put an end to the accounts of her as anything but a human woman.
Zana was likely of eastern African descent, although we cannot rule out partial western African ancestry. We hypothesise that her lineage could have arrived in the territory of present-day Abkhazia (South Caucasus) as a result of the slave-trade practiced between the 16 to 19th centuries CE by the Ottoman Empire. Lastly, we speculate that it was simply her unfamiliar individual physical characteristics (such as unusual behavior, physical strength, tall stature, lack of recognisable speech and hypertrichosis) and the subsequent rumors over generations that fueled the myth of a non-human origin.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/8f847e23-a9d2-4311-bc28-7afcaacdb55b/ggn210051-fig-0002-m.png
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/e654c2a9-7278-4581-85cd-2cd35b41126a/ggn210051-fig-0003-m.png
while this actual genetic study, closest population to her would be luo or luhya
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ggn2.10051
3.3 Genetic Affinities
To further assess the genetic relationship between Zana, Khwit and various worldwide populations using nuclear genome variation, we ran a PCA based on the Human Origins (HO) panel. To aid visualisation, we reduced the total number of reference populations in the panel to represent the major genetic lineages of the world. However, given its geographic relevance, we included relatively more populations from the Caucasus, and given previous hypotheses that Zana may have had some archaic hominid ancestry, we also included genome-wide data from three archaic humans, and used the chimpanzee as an outgroup. Additionally, we included the two Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (SATP and KK1) from the South Caucasus for comparison.
The results clearly show that Zana is neither genetically close to archaic humans nor the chimpanzee, but clusters closely with modern human populations (Figure 2A). As expected from kinship (parent-offspring) and Y-chromosome (European R1b1a1b lineage) analyses, Khwit has an intermediate location on the PCA plot between European or Caucasian and African populations.
Unsupervised clustering analysis using ADMIXTURE also clearly rejects any hypothesis that Zana was of “nonhuman” origin, for example as suggested by various sources.1, 2 Rather, it is clear that she shared genetic ancestry with present-day western and eastern African populations (Figure 2B). To explore this African origin further, we conducted additional PCA and admixture analyses based solely on African groups from the HO panel (Figure 3A and Figure S4). Here again, Zana shows ancestry components from the eastern (eg, Dinka) and western (eg, Yoruba) African groups, with no significant genetic contribution from southern, northern, and central African populations. We were unable, however, to resolve whether she was (a) an individual derived from admixture between a Dinka-like and Yoruba-like population (purple and plink components in Figure 3A) or (b) originated solely from eastern African groups such as Luhya and Luo.
To estimate Zana's ancestry proportion more accurately, we conducted the admixture analysis in “supervised” mode based on 13 African populations (Figure 3B) representing most of the diversity of human populations in Africa. Even though the results confirm Zana's largely eastern (~66%) African origin, she also displayed significant levels of western African (~34%) genetic component. To further visualise Zana's genetic relationship with the African populations, we applied additional dimensionality reduction using UMAP with only eastern, central, and western African groups, which reveals Zana's genetic proximity with eastern African populations such as Luo and Luhya (Figure 3C). This is also supported by the maximum likelihood analysis based on TreeMix (Figure 4A).
To formally test the possible Neanderthal introgression into Zana's genome we conducted 𝐷-statistics in the form of (Test_population, Zana; AltaiNea, Chimpanzee) (Figure 4B). The results indicate Neanderthal admixture only for populations of northern African and non-African populations (well-known from previous studies19, 38) which is in line with Zana's genetic proximity with sub-Saharan groups identified based on the clustering analyses.
In summary, our results based on genome-wide analysis reveal that Zana's genome had a sub-Saharan African genetic origin, consistent with the results of previous (unpublished) craniometric and mtDNA analyses. This suggests that her presence in the region may have been linked to the Ottoman Empire slave trade to Istanbul, that was one of the main hubs for the slave trade in the region in the 19th century. Moreover, Zana's largely eastern African ancestry is consistent with the historical records indicating that most of the African slaves in the Ottoman Empire originated around areas of the African Great Lakes and present-day Sudan.
The contemporary reports and subsequent tales of Zana's wildness were at least partially based on some of her unusual physical characteristics such as the lack of speech, intellectual disability and long hair covering her whole body to name a few. With the genomic data clearly rejecting all nonhuman hypotheses, we speculate that if these descriptions of her physical characteristics are accurate, she may have had a rare human genetic disorder such as congenital generalised hypertrichosis: a syndrome with dismorphic facial features, intellectual disability, and hypertrichosis.39
4 CONCLUSIONS
Our results prove that the unknown female buried in the Genaba family cemetery was Zana herself. In contrast to the speculations that she might have been a female Almasty, we provide definitive genome-wide data to put an end to the accounts of her as anything but a human woman.
Zana was likely of eastern African descent, although we cannot rule out partial western African ancestry. We hypothesise that her lineage could have arrived in the territory of present-day Abkhazia (South Caucasus) as a result of the slave-trade practiced between the 16 to 19th centuries CE by the Ottoman Empire. Lastly, we speculate that it was simply her unfamiliar individual physical characteristics (such as unusual behavior, physical strength, tall stature, lack of recognisable speech and hypertrichosis) and the subsequent rumors over generations that fueled the myth of a non-human origin.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/8f847e23-a9d2-4311-bc28-7afcaacdb55b/ggn210051-fig-0002-m.png
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/e654c2a9-7278-4581-85cd-2cd35b41126a/ggn210051-fig-0003-m.png