Luxmanda is an archaeological site located in the north-central

Babati District Babati Rural District is a district of Manyara Region of Tanzania, East Africa. The administrative capital of the district is Babati town, south of Arusha. The district covers an area of , a large proportion (640 km2) of which is covered ...

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

. It was discovered in 2012. Excavations in the area have identified it as the largest and southernmost settlement site of the

Savanna Pastoral Neolithic The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (SPN; formerly known as the Stone Bowl Culture) is a collection of ancient societies that appeared in the Rift Valley of East Africa and surrounding areas during a time period known as the Pastoral Neolithic. The ...

(SPN), an archaeologically recognized pastoralist culture centered in eastern Africa during a time period known as the

Pastoral Neolithic The Pastoral Neolithic (5000 BP - 1200 BP) refers to a period in Africa's prehistory, specifically Tanzania and Kenya, marking the beginning of food production, livestock domestication, and pottery use in the region following the Later Stone Age. ...

(ca. 5000–1200 BP).

Radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for Chronological dating, determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of carbon-14, radiocarbon, a radioactive Isotop ...

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ca ...

, human collagen, and organic matter in ceramic artifacts indicate that Luxmanda was occupied between 3,200 and 2,900 years ago.

Ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

(of the Narosura type), lithics, worked bone, ivory, and

ostrich Ostriches are large flightless birds. Two living species are recognised, the common ostrich, native to large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and the Somali ostrich, native to the Horn of Africa. They are the heaviest and largest living birds, w ...

eggshell assemblages in addition to livestock and human bones have been recovered from the Luxmanda site. Large grinding stones have also been found, though their function remains uncertain. The people of Luxmanda were highly specialized pastoralists, relying on cattle, sheep, goats, and donkeys for subsistence. Their linguistic affiliation is unknown, but some historical linguists have speculated that the peoples of the SPN spoke

Cushitic languages The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As of ...

similar to

Iraqw language Iraqw () is a Cushitic language spoken in Tanzania in the Arusha Region, Arusha and Manyara Region, Manyara Regions. It is expanding in numbers as the Iraqw people absorb neighbouring ethnic groups. The language has many Datooga language, Datoog ...

still spoken in the area. The Pastoral Neolithic was followed by the Pastoral Iron Age and the

Bantu Expansion Bantu may refer to: * Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages * Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle * Black Association for Natio ...

Ancient DNA analysis

Admixture clustering analysis of a 3,100-year-old female infant skeleton exhumed at Luxmanda found that the individual carried approximately 38±1% of her ancestry related to the

Pre-Pottery Neolithic The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) represents the early Neolithic in the Near East, dating to years ago, (10000 – 6500 BCE).Richard, Suzanne ''Near Eastern archaeology'' Eisenbrauns; illustrated edition (1 Aug 2004) p.24/ref> It succeeds the ...

culture of the

Levant The Levant ( ) is the subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west, and forms the core of West Asia and the political term, Middle East, ''Middle East''. In its narrowest sense, which is in use toda ...

. New genetic data from Luxmanda suggest that this affinity is likely due to either migration into Africa of descendants of

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) is part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, a Neolithic culture centered in upper Mesopotamia and the Levant, dating to years ago, that is, 8800–6500 BC. It was Type site, typed by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon ...

farmers from the Levant, or common descent from an ancestral population that inhabited Africa or the

Near East The Near East () is a transcontinental region around the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the historical Fertile Crescent, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula. The term was invented in the 20th ...

several millennia before. All the males tested for Y chromosomal DNA clustered with E1b1b subclades, with two yielding ambivalent A1b subclades due to insufficient collagen. The African ancestry of Luxmanda was fitted as being most closely related to a hunter-gatherer population that inhabited

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

ca. 4,500 BP (under a two-population admixture scenario, with inferred ancestry proportions of 62.2–62.8% for the hunter-gather component and 37.2–37.8% for the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B component). When using a three-population admixture scenario, the African part also showed contributions from a population related to the

Dinka The Dinka people () are a Nilotic ethnic group native to South Sudan. The Dinka mostly live along the Nile, from Mangalla-Bor to Renk, in the region of Bahr el Ghazal, Upper Nile (two out of three provinces that were formerly part of southern ...

(with then an inferred ancestry proportion of 39% ± 1% for Levantine-related ancestry).
Table S5. Details of Ancestry Proportions Inferred Using qpAdm, Related to Figure 2
/ref> Furthermore, haplogroup analysis indicated that the Luxmanda specimen bore the haplogroup L2a1 (mtDNA). Scientists had previously dated the arrival of Western Eurasian-related ancestry in eastern Africa, which is now pervasive in the region, to around 3000 BP on average. The new genetic data suggest that the makers of the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic were responsible for spreading ancient Levant-related ancestry in the lacustrine region, where they had established new settlements. The Luxmanda individual's population also likely introduced herding to southern Africa, since a 1,200 year old pastoralist individual from the

Western Cape The Western Cape ( ; , ) is a provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the List of South African provinces by area, fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , an ...

was found to bear affinities with the Luxmanda sample.

References

{{National Historic Sites of Tanzania 2012 archaeological discoveries Archaeological sites in Tanzania Archaeological sites of Eastern Africa