National Geographic Society

Photograph by Spencer Wells
A San Bushman woman in southern Africa; the San retain links to the deepest branch in the human family tree.

As the first Genographica blog post, it's appropriate that I'm posting from Africa - or 'the homeland', as those of us in the population genetics biz call call her.  For the past few days, some of our DC-based science team and myself have been visiting our sub-Saharan Africa regional center at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, headed by Professor Himla Soodyall. So far, we've had a fascinating discussion of the data that's already been generated, planning for several exciting projects to come, as well as a review of our laboratory procedures and other protocols.
One of the most striking things to come out of our time with Himla and her team is a glimpse she gave us of a seemingly straightforward genetic analysis she has just done on a cross-section of South Africans living in Simons Town, near Cape Town, on the southwest coast of the country.  She gave a lecture on the project there last year, and invited everyone present to participate.  Nearly one hundred people did so, scraping the insides of their cheeks just like you have done if you've sent in your own sample.  She asked them a few genealogical questions, the same sorts that we ask you when you submit your results to the database - place of birth, native language, and so on.  She also, though, asked them a question that has particular significance in South Africa - their ethnicity.  During South Africa's Apartheid era, all South Africans were officially classified by race.  'Bantu' (or 'black' African), 'Coloured' and 'White' all had specific meanings, based on perceived levels of racial purity.  As anyone who has visited Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for nearly 20 years) or the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg can attest, these somewhat vague classifications underpinned Apartheid governments policies for nearly a century, upholding a social order in which 'racial purity' was sacrosanct.

Photograph by Damian Shumann
Dr. Himla Soodyall, professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Himla heads our sub-Saharan Africa regional center.

Himla's results show just how far wrong they were.  Her analysis reveals that many 'black' South Africans carry European genetic lineages, particularly on their paternal side.  The 'Coloured' population is revealed to be a mix of African, Asian and European lineages, impossible to classify unambiguously according to anyone's taxonomy.  And perhaps most surprisingly, around 20% of the people who described themselves as 'white' were carrying indigenous South African lineages - many belonging to the L0d and L0k lineages we described as being typically 'San' (Bushman) in a recent paper.  Clearly, these people would have had 'black' ancestors - San or Khoe typically on their maternal side - at some point in the past few hundred years.

This result illustrates two points very clearly.  First, that white racial purity was always a myth, even ignoring the ancient migrations that tie us all together as a species.  We all share genes to some extent.  And second, that Khoe-San genetic lineages are alive and well in the DNA of today's South Africans.  The San - called 'the harmless people' by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas - may be marginalized, their traditional culture endangered, and their children abandoning the ways of their ancestors, but their genetic legacy lives on in today's South Africans.  It is perhaps fitting that the earliest inhabitants of the Cape region are, in a sense, still living there today - in the blood of everyone, whether black, white or 'Coloured', who calls this beautiful place home.