Ethiopians

Ethiopia

Approximately 10 miles separate the Horn of Africa from the Arabian Peninsula at Bab-el-Mandeb (the Gate of Tears). Both historic and archaeological evidence indicate tight cultural connections, over millennia, between these two regions. An important gene flow occured across the Red and Arabian Seas.

Nine distinct subclades, including three newly defined ones, were found to characterize entirely the variation of Ethiopian and Yemeni subhaplogroup L3 lineages.

Both Ethiopians and Yemenis contain an almost-equal proportion of Eurasian-specific haplogroup M and haplogroup N and African-specific lineages and therefore cluster together in a multidimensional scaling plot between Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African populations.

Phylogeographic identification of potential founder haplotypes revealed that approximately one-half of haplogroup L0-L5 lineages in Yemenis have close or matching counterparts in southeastern Africans, compared with a minor share in Ethiopians.

Newly defined subhaplogroup L6, the most frequent haplogroup in Yemenis, showed no close matches among 3,000 African samples, highlighting the complexity of Ethiopian and Yemeni genetic heritage.

The introduction of maternal lineages into the South Arabian gene pool from different source populations of East Africa is consistent.

A high proportion of Ethiopian lineages, significantly more abundant in the northeast of that country, trace their western Eurasian origin in haplogroup N through assorted gene flow at different times and involving different source populations.

Ethiopian population could have experienced Caucasoid gene flow mainly through males. (9463310)

Ethiopian population could contain African components ascribable to Bantu migrations and to an in situ differentiation process from an ancestral African gene pool. (9463310)

Ethiopian population could exhibit some Y-chromosome affinities with the Tsumkwe San (a very ancient African group). (9463310)

High (20%) frequency of the "Asian" DdeI10394AluI10397 (++) mtDNA haplotype in Ethiopia. (9463310)

Only the Ethiopians share with the Khoisan the deepest human Y-chromosome clades (the African-specific Groups I and II) but with a repertoire of very different haplotypes. (11719903)

Most of the Ethiopians and virtually all the Senegalese belong to Group III, whose precursor is believed to be involved in the first migration out of Africa. (11719903)

The Ethiopian Y chromosomes that fall into Groups VI, VIII, and IX may be explained by back migrations from Asia. (11719903)
The first observation confirms the ancestral affinity between the Ethiopians and the Khoisan, which has previously been suggested by both archaeological and genetic findings. (11719903)

Human pathology

Ethiopians

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