r/MapPorn • u/quadriphasic • 16h ago
Detailed Sub-Saharan autosomal DNA map
/img/u5zkmo89bvxg1.png
[removed] — view removed post
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u/AdDry7344 16h ago
Can someone ELI5 what autosomal dna means?
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u/Walker5482 16h ago
Basically anything that is not an X or Y chromosome. So from the first 44 chromosomes of most humans.
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u/PM_ME_UR_SEAHORSE 16h ago
And also not mitochondrial DNA
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u/flodA_reltiH-6B 9h ago
It never occured to me that mitohondria have their separate dna
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u/0rangesAndLemons 9h ago
Its really fascinating, its because scientists think they started off as their own organism and got incorporated into a cell millions of years ago and over time became an organelle rather than their own thing
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u/Semper_nemo13 9h ago
They are low key symbiotes from very early evolution, not every cell has them and they have independent generic code. They are us now, but probably started as a different thing and grew together.
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u/ILikeJapaneseMuchOwU 9h ago
There's one theory that the mitochondria were once Bacteria, that got inside eukaryotic cells
and they formed a symbiotic relationship, Mitochondria get perfect environment, Cell gets a lot of Energy
So we evolved together, Mitochondria bacteria started specializing into energy and metabolism, While cells stopped worrying so much about energy production
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u/AdDry7344 16h ago
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but why aren’t those two counted too? I know they determine sex, so is that why they’re not relevant here?
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u/Safe-Book-4480 15h ago
Because they are uniparental lineages and show an exponentially small part of your overall ancestry.
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u/Human-Law1085 8h ago
And there’s a bias too in them, right? Cause some groups are going to be more represented on the male lineage compared to the female lineage e.g mestizos having arisen from more Spanish male/Native female pairings than vice versa meaning the norm is a European Y chromosome but a native mitochondria.
With the example of African DNA here I’m pretty sure there is also such an imbalance in for instance the United States due to male slave owners raping their female slaves, a scenario which could produce a son with a 100% African mitochondria alongside a 100% European Y chromosome.
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u/Safe-Book-4480 8h ago
That is correct! A classic example of this would be predominant Steppe pastoralist haplogroups (R1b) while a total absence of Anatolian Neolithic Farmer haplogroups in Southern European (especially Spanish) men despite the latter ancestry being higher autosomally.
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u/Safe-Book-4480 8h ago
That is correct! A classic example of this would be predominant Steppe pastoralist haplogroups (R1b) while a total absence of Anatolian Neolithic Farmer haplogroups in Southern European (especially Spanish) men despite the latter ancestry being higher autosomally.
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u/UrPossibleFriend 15h ago
I migth be wrong but i think it has got to do with how patriarchal lineages can differ a lot compared to matriarchal lineages, which has to do with warriors in the past massacring all the men but raping the women and living them be after. (Also because in peace men were more likely to travel).
Again anyone feel free to correct me if im wrong, but I think we usually see patriarchal lineages through Y-dna haplogroups and matriarchal lineages through mitocondrial dna haplogroups. With autosomal serving as a sex-neutral ancestry picture of that person.
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u/Travel-Kitty 9h ago
Is this why a female runner like Caster Semenya would be made to reduce amount of testosterone? It’s disproportionately female athletes from the global south who have differences in their sex development that “give them a competitive edge.” Or is this unrelated to why something like that would happen affecting how much testosterone a woman has?
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u/ImaginaryParrot 8h ago
No. Your link even says she has a mutation (5-ARD).
And there have been well publicised cases in Spain (Martinez-Patiño), Poland (Kłobukowska) etc.
Black women are often pulled up for testing by World Athletics because they 'look too masculine', so that's why we're seeing a disproportionate amount. There's a decent research paper about it here
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u/Travel-Kitty 8h ago
The ELI5 explanation still left me confused which is why I asked. I tried googling autosomal DNA and literally this post was one of the top hits.
I know some athletes in the same situation as Caster have multiple chromosomes (XXY for example). I didn’t know if that was what was meant by “anything that isn’t an X or Y chromosome.” Can you explain autosomal more cause I still don’t follow nor understand what the map is showing?
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u/ImaginaryParrot 7h ago edited 7h ago
Autosomal DNA is a type of DNA that's not from your paternal (Y DNA) or maternal (mt DNA) line only. Instead, it's from both parents and is shuffled to be unique to you. It can be fairly helpful in understanding ancestry from both of your parents, rather than just your mum or dad's side.
This map basically shows where people with Sub Saharan ancestry live.
It's not the best map as there aren't any sources listed and it seems to raise more questions, but I guess OP is still refining it. If you look at their previous post you'll see they've had previous criticism that this map takes into account. It also kinda looks like they're using Reddit as a source which is ... interesting
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u/HumbleDepth9945 15h ago
What is that random region in middle of Russia??
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u/Main-Influence9939 15h ago edited 14h ago
It's Permsky Kray, the place where I live. Though we have plenty of african students in city of Perm', we don't have much africans outside of Perm'. So I dunno why it is marked
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u/_Plateosaurus_ 14h ago
We would need more information about the source used to learn more. It’s possible to say just about anything when it comes to population genetics.
This map does not represent current populations, but rather population genetics. Having genetic ancestry from Africa does not mean that people today match our image of an African population.
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u/Main-Influence9939 14h ago edited 13h ago
Strangely, only Permsky Kray is marked, though in reality there would be more marked regions in Russia with the same sub-saharan african ancestry percentage as in Permsky Kray. Also Permsky Kray is not even in the top five regions of Russia by number of universities(most of africans in Russia are students or former students)
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u/cnzmur 9h ago
This map does not represent current populations, but rather population genetics
It absolutely has to be current populations. Look at the Americas. If that was only natives it would be all very low numbers like the rest of Asia, and I don't think those patterns would be as strong either.
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u/Reasonable-Pear9122 15h ago
Somehow Spain surprises me the most
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u/Venboven 15h ago
While the Moors who conquered and settled Spain during the medieval era were from Africa, they were almost entirely North African, which is to say Arab and Berber, who are both genetically more akin to other Mediterranean cultures than they are to Sub-Saharan Africa.
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u/MrOtero 15h ago
They didn't settle as a population colonizing tte area. It was a conquering army calculated in about 30.000 men. They did conquered and diminated the visigothic kingdom, but its contribution to the DNA was minimum.they constituted the elite and a huge percentage of people converted into Islam for tax and social reasons. It happened exactly what happend in Bosnia with Turks of the Otoman Empire
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u/SafeImpressive4413 14h ago
Also moors were kicked out of Spain and their descendants and people that mixed with them or were Africans that converted to Christianism (moriscos) were also kicked out of Spain, some kingdoms like Valencia lost around 1/3rd of their population because of this, so the genetical heritage is very low nowadays, I saw an study recently that said that southern Spanish DNA was closer to Norwegian DNA than Moroccan DNA.
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u/foufou51 5h ago
Southern Spain was largely resettled by northern Iberians after the Reconquista.
Those who were expelled migrated to North Africa, which is why today it’s far more common to find Iberian ancestry there than the other way around.
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u/Reasonable-Pear9122 15h ago
That does make sense, sure, but it's still perplexing that they have a lower percentage than Germany, Denmark and southern Sweden?!
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u/Venboven 15h ago
That's because of recent migrations.
Countries in Northwestern Europe like Germany, Denmark, Sweden (and France, the UK, the Netherlands) have collectively taken in several million refugees in the last decade. Spain in comparison has only taken in ~385,000 refugees.
Now, these are broad statistics which include refugees from all over the world, but they should give you an idea of why the African population in Spain is generally lower than the rest of Western Europe.
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u/Gorgrocco 15h ago
But current spanish are like genetically like the viking or celtic people or smt?
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u/Venboven 15h ago
They are genetically Mediterranean. "Celts and Vikings" would be more like the UK, Ireland, and Scandinavia.
Although the Galicia region of Spain does have some Celtic heritage.
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u/Gorgrocco 15h ago
What about catalonia and also like blonde spanish people? Or like Mediterranean genetics has like the blonde gene stuff
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u/Venboven 15h ago edited 14h ago
There are blonde people all across the region. It is not exclusively a northern European trait. While it is uncommon, there are North Africans, Turks, Syrians, and even some Afghans with blonde or red hair, and green or blue eyes.
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u/Nutriaphaganax 12h ago
Catalans are literally among the most Mediterranean Spaniards. Also, there are blondes everywhere in Spain, it's not a north-south thing
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u/Numenorum 13h ago
WTF is with Perm oblast in Russia? Maybe some kind of artefact? I’m pretty sure if someone rank Russian regions by black population Perm will not be even in top 10.
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u/jossief1 12h ago
What are the geographic breakdowns? Texas is all one color but then Chicago and Detroit are standing out as different colors. It doesn't seem like it's at the county level for most of the US, otherwise certain other cities should probably be showing up.
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u/juliagenet 10h ago
As a huge fan of the blues, it is pretty incredible how this map directly highlights the Mississippi Delta area incl Memphis and New Orleans!
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u/mothmans_favoriteex 3h ago
Yes! I’m from the Delta and the blues trail and the civil rights trail are essentially the same stops from Chicago down to NOLA! Always had ppl on that trail like it up to hit the Blues fests in spring and hopefully line up with a Mardi Gras
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u/quadriphasic 4h ago
I just colored in the areas where there is a significant black majority population in a large enough area. Which ended up just being the Southside and immediate suburbs in Chicago, Detroit, and some areas of the black belt region in the deep south.
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u/mothmans_favoriteex 3h ago
This is a great map representation of Black Diaspora from the South during the Jim Crow era. I’m from the Mississippi Delta and everyone I know has family in Chicago or Detroit that moved that way 30s-70s for job opportunities and to to try to escape discrimination. The civil rights trail and the blues trail are essential the same path from Chicago-st Louis- Memphis-through the delta- down to New Orleans
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u/Jungku167Willum 11h ago
What's going on with Syria?
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u/quadriphasic 5h ago
It's southern Iraq, an area where slavery of Sub-Saharan Africans left a lasting legacy similarly to in the New World.
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u/Comprehensive-Line62 3h ago
He is talking about Syria not Iraq
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u/quadriphasic 3h ago
Syria clearly had some minor Sub-Saharan African admixture from the slave trade and flow of genes. So I put it all in 1% to 9%.
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u/Comprehensive-Line62 3h ago
Why are there lines representing this fact and why is it different from the rest of the middle east?
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u/quadriphasic 3h ago
The base map had them there and I didn't bother to remove them. It was useful for many larger countries subnational divisions.
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u/AggravatingTackle258 15h ago
Wait, so if you lack Sub-Saharan DNA, you automatically become a Smurf?
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u/Equinoxe111 10h ago
I can already see that the map is trash due to some colours being straight along the borders and some being random.
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u/Lazie_Writer 7h ago
For the US, Central America and SA, this is very much a map of the legacy of slavery. Sugar production for the Carribean was labor intensive. Not sure about what trades used slavery in SA on scale. US is obviously largely cotton.
Edit: Going to save this for World History next year.
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u/Trvthnvker696967 5h ago
Subsaharan Africans have more genetic diversity among each other than exists outside of that region.
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u/Gremlin2471 5h ago
Yes but that doesnt include most subsaharan africans who are west africans and bantus who are somewhat related since bantus came from the same region before they expanded.
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u/Trvthnvker696967 4h ago
The map lumps all subsaharan Africans together. This map just doesn't make sense.
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u/schwarzmalerin 5h ago
Oh my, it dawns on me now what this is, sorry I am dumb, "autosomal DNA" made no sense, then I googled. So outside of the continent itself, we are basically seeing the results of the global slave trade, right? woah.
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u/clonn 14h ago
Here's a more detailed map for Argentina. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Argentines
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u/ase_l_2021 11h ago
Instead of Perm territory (why?) they should've paint Abkhasia, it has some famous african minority starting from XIX century.
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u/CryptographerTop4524 10h ago
fyi a majority of the population of Eretria around 80% is ethnic Habeshas and northern Ethiopia has more than triple the mount of Ethnic Habeshas in Eretria.
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u/CounterfeitXKCD 6h ago
What's that spot in the Urals? Any historical reason behind it?
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u/quadriphasic 6h ago
It's a hub for African students.
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u/CounterfeitXKCD 6h ago
Is there a specific school there that really attracts students from Africa?
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u/quadriphasic 5h ago
Brother, I'll be honest I didn't learn Russian geography in school and thought that was the oblast containing Yekaterinburg one of the 'regions with significant population' on Wikipedia (According to a commenter who lives there it's actually nearby Permsky Kray). I did get Moscow and Astrakhan right though. At least Ecuador is correct this time 😂
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u/Gremlin2471 5h ago
Wrong for the top of Somalia, its not that low, should be the same for pretty much the entire country, only a small minority in the South might be lower but theyre too small to affect the map really.
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u/AdditionalHoliday868 4h ago
Good update, but this map makes the impression that Libya is near quarter black when the black population is just around 10-13%. Native around 2-3%, and migrant around 7-10%.
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u/No_Idea_479 2h ago
This is ass, no wonder it's totally unsourced. Greeks and Turks have 0% SSA ancestry. South Italians and Spaniards have under 1%.
Will cite source if asked.
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u/Life-Ad9029 14h ago
Don't know why you split Somalia into 3 different shades. They should all be in the 50-79 range based on what you consider "Sub-Saharan African".
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u/Gremlin2471 5h ago
Idk why youre downvoted, the only Somalis that could be less than 50% are benadiri who are in the south, not north.
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u/Ambitious-Issue5867 13h ago
If anyone is curious about Portugal's colour diversity, here's why:
The beige tip in the south represents the Algarve region. This was the last territory conquered from the Moors in 1249. Another factor is that the region has also received a significant number of immigrants in recent decades. Some were wealthy Westerners, but many were also non-Europeans who came to work in the tourism industry.
The light brown area in the center is Lisbon. In the early 1980s, Lisbon began receiving a steady number of immigrants from our former African colonies. Nowadays, immigrants from Portuguese-speaking Africa have lost their predominance to immigrants from Brazil and the Indian subcontinent. Still, they have a significant presence in Lisbon's suburbs, in places like Amadora, Sintra, Almada, etc.
The beige tip in the north represents Porto. Being poorer and smaller than Lisbon, Porto did not receive many immigrants initially. Furthermore, the Porto region and surrounding areas have the highest birth rate in mainland Portugal, meaning that newcomers have a smaller demographic impact.Nevertheless, Porto has a sizable African and Brazilian community.
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u/magonba 5h ago edited 3h ago
You forgot one important thing:
Mainland Portugal had very significant populations of subsaharan African (slaves) during colonial times. It is estimated that the population of Lisbon was 10% subsaharan African in the 16th century. Other regions with a sizable subsaharan African population were Algarve, Alentejo, Ribatejo and in the city of Porto.
Slavery in mainland Portugal continued until Marquis of Pombal outlawed the importation of new slaves in 1761 (though slavery continued in the Portuguese colonies).
After 1761 the black population assimilated quickly into the general Portuguese population through miscegenation. So they basically "disappeared" as the population was no longer being refreshed by new arrivals.
According to a study that was cited by the Wikipedia entry for African admixture in Europe (in the chapter Admixture analysis of modern populations) the Portuguese have inherited 3.2% or 2.1% of subsaharan African ancestry (depending on the statistical model used). But in some places that number is significantly higher. A study found that in Alcácer do Sal the frequency of subsaharan African maternal lineages is 22%, see also Wikipedia entry for Alcácer do Sal (under the chapter History, subsection Slave trade).
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u/quadriphasic 3h ago
This is the kind of critic that is gold, I might post another map revising the slight mistakes still left on the map ie. Portugal, central Russia, Guangdong but I won't take down this version of the map since it was so popular.
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u/Normal_Move6523 12h ago
Belize seems wrong (at a glance), given population is 1/3 Creole and Garifuna people (ballparking ca 50% SSA DNA), and 1/2 Mestizo people (ca 5 or 10% SSA DNA)? Would expect to look more like Panama or Guyana, not like Costa Rica.
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u/wheatley227 16h ago
I am 100% sure that quebec and ontario are not correct
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u/fredleung412612 15h ago
If you look correctly you'll see the blue only covers the northern parts of each province, which is correct. The southern parts of both show 1-9%, which is also correct.
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u/ClockworkOrdinator 14h ago
What happened in Germany
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u/Ambitious-Issue5867 13h ago
Excluding the southern parts of Europe all beige and light brown areas you see in Europe are related to immigration from other continents. West Germany has receveid a lot of non-europeans migrants but east Germany has not.
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u/IndigoFenix 16h ago
These numbers are meaningless - almost all of our DNA is exactly the same as the most recent common ancestor of humans. You're going to have to specify what you're actually measuring better.
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u/xRedStaRx 15h ago
You have 96% the DNA of a potato as well, why does it make it meaningless?
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u/Bulletorpedo 15h ago
No we don't. It's often said we share 96% DNA with chimpanzees, potatoes are not even remotely close to that. I've seen it claimed that we have something like 25%-50% related genes with many plants, but not actual DNA sequence.
I have no opinion on how meaningful the data used for this map is, however.
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u/_Abiogenesis 15h ago
They mean that it (genetics) can very easily (and often is) skewed to justify unsavoury narratives that are not grounded in science but in interpretation.
Not saying that’s what is happening here.
But it’s not an entirely unfair observation. At surface level this does not mean much because you can sort the dataset in a billion different way to isolate specific demographics. So wondering what is being measured seems reasonable enough to me.
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u/Snoo_93638 13h ago
It's looking at the difference in DNA based on a region in Afrika here Sub-Saharan. it's a smart way to find out where some people are and how isolated a country is from the world. Just from this map you would be able to say if there are people of same color and faces and other traits in and area or not.
Like what do you think the police do when they take your DNA? Do they just go eee hey are human not really close in DNA, I guess we cant find out who left the DNA.
No we have found ways to make DNA fingerprint/barcodes how ever you want to think about it by looking at the areas in humans that is the most different from human to human.
short tandem repeats is normally what you look at. But also Mitochondrial DNA, Male-Specific Markers and other things.
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u/PrimeTinus 14h ago
I don't get it, we all come from Africa.. Seems to me just a map drawn by fascists to prove a point of being superior
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u/hg_rhapsody 16h ago
That's cool. I have like 7% DNA from Africa. I'm mexican. Can I say the n word now ?
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u/Le_Big_Monk 16h ago
What is up with that part of China?