A genetic study of uniparental Y-DNA and mtDNA markers was published in Cell in 2005 (n=363 men) by Bryan Skykes and others. The abstract reports: ” we demonstrate approximately equal African and Indonesian contributions to both paternal and maternal Malagasy lineages. The most likely origin of the Asia-derived paternal lineages found in the Malagasy is Borneo. This agrees strikingly with the linguistic evidence that the languages spoken around the Barito River in southern Borneo are the closest extant relatives of Malagasy languages. ” But, the abstract doesn’t discuss the affinities within Africa on the African side of the equation. Perhaps more detail could be gleaned from the study itself or popular articles such as Science Daily summing up the results.

A 2008 study in the Journal of Human Genetics by M. Regueiro, et al, looked at autosomal affinities (n=15). It found that “while Madagascar derives 66.3% of its genetic makeup from Africa, a clear connection between the East African island and Southeast Asia can be discerned.” The underlying data are probably available online or not too hard to obtain for inclusion in DIY analysis.

An open access 2010 study on the population genetics of the nearby Comoros Islandsbased on uniparental markets (N=577) concludes in its abstract that it finds “the Comoros population to be a genetic mosaic, the result of tripartite gene flow from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. A distinctive profile of African haplogroups, shared with Madagascar, may be characteristic of coastal sub-Saharan East Africa. Finally, the absence of any maternal contribution from Western Eurasia strongly implicates male-dominated trade and religion as the drivers of gene flow from the North. The Comoros provides a first view of the genetic makeup of coastal East Africa.”

On the African component of the Y-DNA side it reported:

“The most common Comorian haplogroups, E1b1-M2 (41%) and E2-M90 (14%), are those that are frequent in sub-Saharan Africa. They are present, respectively, at 56 and 6.4%, in Madagascar. Two haplogroups were identified under E1b1-M2, derived for markers M191 (22%) and U209 (9%). The haplogroup E1b1a-M191 has been found in east and west sub-Saharan Africa, 19% in Tanzania and 57% in Benin. The marker U209 was identified in Afro-Americans,39 and has not, until now, been tested for in African populations.

The low incidence of E-M293 (0.8%) and A-M91 (0%) on the Comoros contrasts strongly with the frequency of these haplogroups in East African populations. E-M293 is found mainly in East Africa, Kenya and Tanzania (18%). Furthermore, on the African mainland, M293 chromosomes carry either 10, or 13 and more repeats at the DYS389I STR locus, whereas on the Comoros, they have 12 repeats. Haplogroup A has a frequency of 14% in Kenyan Bantu and 7% in Tanzania. Other haplogroups of likely sub-Saharan African origin on the Comoros are E-SRY4064(xM2,M35,M75) (1.3%) and B2a (1.6%). B2a has a low frequency in southern Iran and Qatar, but this is thought to be a consequence of the Arab slave trade. We therefore treat B2a as an African chromosome in this study.”

On the mtDNA side they conclude in the body text: “As for the Y chromosome, the majority of mitochondrial haplogroups on the Comoros are of African origin. The haplogroups L0, L1, L2 and L3′4(xMN) compose 84.7% of the mitochondria in the Comoros sample, and their relative proportions are most similar to profiles found in East and South East Africa. The higher affinity with sub-Saharan East African populations is also evident in the MDS analysis. ”

In the 2010 study’s comparisons to other work it notes:

“Interestingly, there are a number of similarities between the genetic profile of the Comoros islanders and the Lemba of South Africa, a Bantu speaking people whose Semitic origins are evident at both the cultural and genetic level. The Lemba have high frequencies of the Middle Eastern Y-chromosome HgJ-12f2a (25%), a potentially SEA Y, Hg-K(xPQR) (32%) and a Bantu Y, E-PN1 (30%) (similar to E-M2), raising the possibility that the Lemba and Comorian populations are consequences of similar demographic processes. . . .

The Comoros and Madagascar show similarities in the paternal and maternal contribution from SEA and Africa. The absence of a strong Middle Eastern signal on Madagascar could be due to sampling bias, as Arab or Persian traders are known to have established posts on the Northwest coast of Madagascar, whereas only populations from the centre and South of Madagascar have been studied to date. The low frequencies of E-M293 and A-M91, on both the Comoros and Madagascar, contrasts with the high frequency found in inland populations from Tanzania and Kenya,and could be characteristics of a genetic profile specific to sub-Saharan coastal East Africa.”

Have I described my confusion enough that a helpful person might help me understand this better?
Cheers,
–Bob

The two areas I’ve seen this discussed are S China and SE Asia, and the area W of the Black Sea, including the Balkans. For example, Romanian is a Romance language, Hungarian is Ugric, Bulgarian is Slavic, and all of them have traded back and forth. Further south Greek and Albanian enter in, and further east Turkish is a factor.

In SE Asia the language families are supposedly Chinese, Vietnamese etc., Mon-Khmer (Cambodian), Miao-Yao (Hmong-Mien), Tibeto-Burman, and Thai etc. Except for the Sino-Tibeto-Burman group, as I understand the ancient relationships between these languages is pretty much up in the air, in contrast to the Black Sea / Balkan area, and because of areal effects and a general lack of morphology these relationships are hard to determine. (Indo European morphology made the relationships *relatively* easy to figure out, another case of “low-hanging fruit”.

“Sprachbunde” is the key word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprachbund

I’m guessing this is not a novel idea. The Wikipedia article on“click consonants” answers my initial question about how diverse click sounds are. It would only take two losses of clicks (non-Africans and Bantu-speakers) to eliminate clicks from most human populations.