Unadmixed Bantu from South East Africa

[Brwn_trd]

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/697474v1

Could these people have the greatest similarity to the ancestors of the Bantu?

[NetNomad]

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/697474v1

Could these people have the greatest similarity to the ancestors of the Bantu?

They probably have low amounts of Malawi hunter-gatherer admixture.

I don't think any pure Bantu exists, maybe somewhere near Gabon but they might have low levels of pygmy admixture.

[Megalophias]

Hard to say, most of the Mozambican and Angolan Bantu populations seem to have relatively low non-Bantu admixture. The northwest of the Bantu speaking area, like Gabon, seems to have lots of Pygmy admixture and probably some Sahelian too (though not universally). In the northeast you get Dinka and Somali-like ancestry, and in the far south Khoisan-like. Too bad the DRC seems to be a giant blank spot.

Doesn't seem like anything would really say whether either was more representative of earliest Bantu populations. In the GLOBETROTTER models (Table S7) for this paper it seems like Angolan Bantu (Kimbundu and Ganguela) were good proxies for ancestors of East African Bantu, while Cameroonian Bantu were picked over East African Bantu as proxies for ancestors of Angolan Bantu. But honestly I doubt that means much. In ADMIXTURE it looks like the Angolans have more Pygmy affinity, while the Mozambicans have more Khoisan, but again I wouldn't take it too literally.

[pgbk87]

If Mozambiquan Bantus passed through Kenya and Tanzania first, I highly doubt they are "purely" Bantu. Especially with overlapping Khoisan-admixed Bantu tribes in northern South Africa and Zimbabwe. I just don't buy it. As stated earlier, if I had to guess, the "purest" Bantus are probably Gabonese due to Gabon being the westernmost region of Central Africa. DRC and the Republic of Congo are going to be the epicenter of pygmy-like admixture.