Africa is the continent with the greatest genetic diversity among humans and the level of diversity is further enhanced by incorporating non-majority groups, which are often understudied. Many of today’s minority populations historically practiced foraging lifestyles, which were the only subsistence strategies prior to the rise of agriculture and pastoralism, but only a few groups practicing these strategies remain today. Genomic investigations of Holocene human remains excavated across the African continent show that the genetic landscape was vastly different compared to today’s genetic landscape and that many groups that today are population isolate inhabited larger regions in the past. It is becoming clear that there are periods of isolation among groups and geographic areas, but also genetic contact over large distances throughout human history in Africa. Genomic information from minority populations and from prehistoric remains provide an invaluable source of information on the human past, in particular deep human population history, as Holocene large-scale population movements obscure past patterns of population structure. Here we revisit questions on the nature and time of the radiation of early humans in Africa, the extent of gene-flow among human populations as well as introgression from archaic and extinct lineages on the continent.

中文翻译：

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非洲深厚的人口历史


非洲是人类遗传多样性最丰富的大陆，通过纳入非多数群体，多样性水平进一步提高，而这些群体往往未被充分研究。今天的许多少数民族人口在历史上都实行觅食生活方式，这是农业和畜牧业兴起之前唯一的生存策略，但今天只有少数群体仍然实行这些策略。对非洲大陆挖掘出的全新世人类遗骸的基因组研究表明，与今天的遗传景观相比，遗传景观有很大不同，并且今天人口隔离的许多群体过去居住在更大的地区。越来越明显的是，在非洲人类历史上，群体和地理区域之间存在着隔离时期，但也存在远距离的基因接触。来自少数民族人口和史前遗迹的基因组信息提供了关于人类过去的宝贵信息来源，特别是深层的人类人口历史，因为全新世大规模的人口流动掩盖了过去的人口结构模式。在这里，我们重新审视非洲早期人类辐射的性质和时间、人类群体中基因流动的范围以及非洲大陆古老和灭绝谱系的基因渗入等问题。