| Descript |
140 p |
| Note |
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-03, Section: B, page: 1456 |
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Adviser: Richard Klein |
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2009 |
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The aim of this thesis is to characterize African population genetic structure, with a focus on eastern and southern Africa, and relate the inferred population history to linguistic patterns and the archaeological record. The substructure of African populations has major implications for hypotheses regarding behaviorally modern human origins. If behavioral modernity was caused by a relatively small number of genetic mutations as has been proposed, then knowledge of African population substructure constrains the timing and process of a selective sweep. Using a diverse set of populations from eastern Africa, I show that mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal data support a model of ancient divergence between African click-speaking populations with little recent gene flow. Evidence of recent gene flow between eastern and southern Africa is constrained to a migration of pastoralists about 2,000 years ago through Tanzania to the northern fringe of southern Africa |
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For genetic evidence to be usefully compared to archaeological information, the genetic analysis must include a calibration of units of genetic diversity to calendar years. However, estimates of mutation rates for the mitochondria and Y-chromosome can differ by twofold to tenfold, depending on the method of estimation. In this thesis I demonstrate that within-human mitochondrial mutation rate estimates (calibrated using the archaeological record) appear to exponentially decline from the present-day over the past 50,000 years. The apparent elevation of recent (less than 10,000 years) mutation rate estimates as compared to older estimates is compatible with our genetic evidence for a model of ancient serial bottlenecks followed by rapid population growth after the origins of agriculture during the Holocene |
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School code: 0212 |
| Host Item |
Dissertation Abstracts International 70-03B
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| Subject |
Anthropology, Physical
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Biology, Genetics
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0327
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0369
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| Alt Author |
Stanford University
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