I have been staring and this figure and rereading Ancient West African foragers in the context of African population history. The Shum Laka sample from this paper, dating to four to eight thousand years ago, have drawn my attention, and I’m just looking at them a lot.

It seems ridiculous I’ve been using Nigerians as my “African reference” for decades. Most African populations, including Pygmies and Khoisan, have Eurasian admixture from the last 10,000 years. And what about deeper back-to-Africa ancestry? That seems likely and is hinted at in the above paper.

Modern human lineages have a deep history in Africa and the Near East. I think we’re going to have a transformation of our understanding of what happened in these regions in the near future.