Hamitic origin of Haplogroup E

[egypt1101]

Also of interest:

]"We propose that African chromosomes descend from at least two lineages that have been evolving separately for a period of time. One of them underwent range expansion colonizing different continents, including Africa, where it mixed with another, local lineage represented today by a large fraction of African-specific haplotypes." [/font](Labuda et al. 2000)

"Northeast African populations differentiated from other sub-Saharan African populations early in African history. A small subset of this population migrated out of Africa in the past 100,000 years and rapidly expanded throughout a broad geographical region."

The carriers of haplogroups C, F, D and E all belonged to that small subset of Northeast Africans. Tishkoff et al 2002

And for those of you that encounter Afrocentric claims that all people descend from blacks:

"humanity's modern African origin does not imply derivation from people like current Africans, because these populations much have also changed through the impact of evolution over the past 100,000 years" Stringer, Mckie; 1998


I would also bring to attention the Hofmeyr skull of South Africa and will create a thread for that.

[Noah]

Good material. The "two lineages that have been evolving separately for a period of time" in the Labuda paper seems to be an allusion to the mtDNA haplogroups L3 and L(xL3). It's still useful though since it suggests that these maternal lineages were already divergent from one another prior to the spread of L3 within Africa and the later Out-of-Africa exodus. This genetic differentiation is indeed well-established.

"L3 is more related to Eurasian haplogroups than to the most divergent African clusters L1 and L2."

www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=55343

The Tishkoff quote pertains to a timeframe of around 100,000 years ago. This is about 75,000 years before the period when the mutation that defines haplogroup E first arose. Nevertheless, it too is still valuable since it indicates that the Out-of-Africa population in Northeast Africa was already genetically differentiated from other African populations. In another paper of hers, Tishkoff also specifies that of all modern populations in Africa, only Northeast Africans share a similar pattern of haplotype variation with non-African populations:

"The much greater variaiton in both number and frequency of CD4 STRP-Alu haplotypes in sub-Saharan Africans is consisten with the out of Africa hypothesis. The clinal pattern of decreasing heterozygosities west to eas outside of Africa is consistent with a migration event of modern humans out of Northeast Africa into the Middle East and Europe, and east into Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the New World. In addition, all non-African populations share a similar pattern of haplotype variation and linkage disequilibrium, which implies that they all derive from a single ancestral gene pool. This pattern is similar to that seen in Northeast African populations but is distinct from that in all sub-Saharan African populations. Patterns of genetic variation distinguishing between African and non-African populations have been documented in data of both mtDNA (6,31) and nuclear DNA (27, 32, 33)."

The Hofmeyr skull of southern Africa is also indeed important for understanding the phenotypic affinities of the Out-of-Africa population. It has retained some archaic traits, which is not unusual for specimens of its age. However, as is discussed in detail here, the skull's general affinities lie with Upper Paleolithic Europe, not with modern Sub-Saharan Africans.

"the Hofmeyr skull is quite distinct from recent sub-Saharan Africans, including the Khoe-San, and has a very close affinity with the European Upper Paleolithic specimens".

This suggests that either:

a) Eurasians evolved within Africa, but in a different biological direction from the Paleoafrican ancestors of modern Sub-Saharan Africans (something which W.W. Howells and others argued).

or

b) Eurasians back-migrated into Africa very early on after the initial Out-of-Africa expansion of generalized modern humans. This I argue is when haplogroup E was first introduced into the continent. Dienekes refers to this early migration into Africa as Out-of-Arabia based on mounting evidence pointing to the early presence of anatomically and behaviorally modern humans in the Arabian Peninsula as well as Arabian/Near-Eastern-derived lithic industries in the Horn, such as the Hargeisan culture:

"One potentially additional piece of evidence for this hypothesized Near Eastern/Arabian-derived human expansion is the anomalous Hargeisan Industry found in the Horn of Africa. Known from a small number of findspots around Hargeisa (Clark, 1954), Boosasso (Graziosi, 1954) and Midhishi Cave in the Golis Mountains of northern Somalia (Gresham, 1984; Brandt, 1986), the Hargeisan has been found overlying MSA material and beneath LSA occupation layers."

I don't believe Dienekes mentions this on his blog, but 200 Paleolithic tombs were also just discovered in Yemen, including possibly the earliest evidence of mummification.

This Out-of-Arabia migration(s) would have taken place before 36,000 years ago (when the Hofmeyr skull is dated to). In either scenario, this is all well before the later, well-attested Neolithic waves of migration from the Middle East that brought the Egyptian/Hamitic long-horned cattle, many foreign crops, downstream West Eurasian mtDNA lineages (such as the common haplogroups H and I, which are younger than the Hofmeyr skull), the rs1426654 allele implicated in light skin coloring in West Eurasians (which evolved quite recently), and likely also the Afro-Asiatic languages.

Note that Upper Paleolithic Europeans are likewise cranially very distant from Negroid populations. On the other hand, they do show strong ties with the Paleo-Hamitic makers of the Capsian industry in East Africa (obviously prior to the expansion of Bantus into the area) and the Iberomaurusians of North Africa. The Paleo-Hamites have, in turn, long been noted for their West Eurasian physical and cultural affinities. These affinities between Upper Paleolithic Europe and North & Northeast Africa are discussed in further detail elsewhere in this thread as well as here.

In the plot below taken from a study by the anthropologist Loring Brace, we can see quite clearly the very distant position of the Upper Paleolithic Europeans vis-a-vis modern Negroid populations. The only modern populations in Africa outside of Egypt and the Maghreb that show relatively close ties with Upper Paleolithic Europeans are, unsurprisingly, Hamitic peoples in the Horn (Somalis). Modern Nubians also group closely because of the Hamitic origins of the peoples of Kush prior to the penetration of Nilotes into the Nubian region as well as more recent Semitic admixture from Arab migrants.

Despite the above, you may perhaps run into Afrocentrists that will argue that Upper Paleolithic Europeans were themselves somehow "biologically Sub-Saharan". This is mainly based on a misunderstanding of certain studies and, in particular, analysis of incomplete or reconstructed crania. When more cranial variables are taken into account, however, Upper Paleolithic Europeans as expected group very distantly from Sub-Saharan populations and relatively close to modern Europeans. Per Jantz and Owsley (2003):

"Some of the discordance Van Vark et al. see between genetic and morphometric results may be attributable to their methodological choices. It is clear that the affiliation expressed by a given skull is not independent of the number of measurements taken from it. From their Table 3, it is evident that those skulls expressing Norse affinity are the most complete and have the highest number of measurements (x̄ = 50.8), while those expressing affinity to African populations (Bushman or Zulu) are the most incomplete, averaging just 16.8 measurements per skull. Use of highly incomplete or reconstructed crania may not yield a good estimate of their morphometric affinities. When one considers only those crania with 40 or more measurements, a majority express European affinity.

To examine this idea further, we use the eight Upper Paleolithic crania available from the test series of Howells (1995), all of which are complete. Our analysis of these eight, based on 55 measurements, is presented in Table 1. Using raw measurements, 6 of 8 express an affinity to Norse, and with the shape variables of Darroch and Mosimann (1985), 5 of 8 express a similarity to Norse. Using shape variables reduces the Mahalanobis distance, substantially in some cases. Typicality probabilities, particularly for the shape variables, show the crania to be fairly typical of recent populations. The results presented in Table 1 are consistent with the idea that Upper Paleolithic crania are, for the most part, larger and more generalized versions of recent Europeans. Howells (1995) reached a similar conclusion with respect to European Mesolithic crania."

A detailed presentation of the facts can be found here.

[Noah]

Recall how earlier in the thread, it was pointed out that Lacan et al. (2011) had found one E1b1b carrier (individual Ave07) in their analysis of six male specimens from Neolithic Spain (~7,000 years ago), and how that same Ave07 specimen also wound up belonging to a West Eurasian maternal/mtDNA clade, haplogroup U5. This discovery was cited here on HU as "concrete evidence of the early presence of the Hamitic haplogroup E1b1b in Europe, and of a Eurasian maternal clade (U5 in this case) serving as its companion lineage", which in turn is "consistent with haplogroup E or its parent clade DE originating with males belonging to a population of general West Eurasian affinities."

These words have proven to be rather prescient, as Sofeso et al. (2012), a new Y-DNA and mtDNA study analysing skeletal remains from a cemetery in Roman period Bavaria, found two more E1b1b samples... both again with West Eurasian companion mtDNAs (namely, Ave07's U5 sub-clade and haplogroup H).

Through a process of elimination, the researchers concluded that "the buried individuals were the members of a military unit interred with their families." So basically, we now have palpable evidence of West Eurasian affiliation for the maternal lineages of pretty much all, if not close to all, the analysed E1b1b carriers that have been found so far in Neolithic through to Roman-period Europe. Modern Europe can, of course, be added to the list.

This begs the question: when, if ever, was E1b1b and haplogroup E as a whole associated in the past with Sub-Saharan maternal lineages? The answer appears to be "only recently", following the admixture events within Africa that are described in the OP. The aforementioned discovery that 93% of the tested Guanche specimens from the Canary Islands -- extinct Afro-Asiatic speakers who are the oldest predominantly E1b1b-carrying population with an African origin on record -- belonged to West Eurasian maternal/mtDNA haplogroups only further confirms this observation.

[hamiticsister101]

I've been researching a bit more and more now and I am certain that modern day Negroids are descendants of Homo Erectus the skull shape, the physical morphology, and the overall features of Homo Erectus are completely Negroid. Today's Negroids are a more evolved Homo Erectus but they're still Homo Erectus. They have large brows, prognathous jaws, and a small eloped brain like Homo Erectus. East Asians possibly evolved especially southeast Asians evolved from Homo Florenthesis (typo) which looks Australoid/Negroid and has extreme prognathous features but straight hair. Is this possible? Noah you need to search on this I truly believe Negroids are modern day Homo Erectus (also read "Homo Erectus walks amongst us").

[Noah]

It has indeed consistently been observed that out of all modern human groups, the populations that have retained the highest frequencies of archaic morphological characteristics are Australoids and Negroids. Mainly for this reason, the two groups often cluster together in various analyses. This applies to general cranial and dental morphology, as well as to specific physical traits such as prognathism.

Craniometrics:

Tooth size:

Prognathism (M40/M5):

Little known fact: many Australoids can actually grow extra teeth i.e. one or more fourth molars. This is because their jaws are typically quite large and can thus accommodate bigger and more teeth than other races, with Negroid groups next in line. This is also why dental crowding is rather infrequent in these populations. It is, however, more common amongst Caucasoids due to their contrastingly smaller jaws. In fact, Caucasoids have a moderate incidence of missing teeth, with one or more third molars not seldom absent.

The views you mention sound a lot like a variation of the multiregional hypothesis for modern human origins, which is one of the main rival theories to the Out-of-Africa hypothesis. It basically posits that various human species spread around the world millions of years ago and eventually evolved into modern races.

Article of interest:

blogs.sundaymercury.net/weirdscience/2011/06/out-of-africa-theory-thrown-in.html

[hamiticsister101]

Yes that is my theory that the Australoids, Negritos, Andamans, and Negroids are not in fact Homo Sapien Sapiens but are more like Homo Erectus Sapien which are supposed to go extinct but somehow survived. The prothagnus (don't mind my spelling) jaws of Australoids and Negroids indicate their primitive origin and stage that they're still in. Humanity has a 1% percent difference between apes and 99% is the same, that's Homo Sapien Sapiens this can be something different amongst primitive peoples who may have not evolved fully at alll.

[Noah]

Though it's still quite popular, that old 99% figure for the genetic similarity between any two human beings is actually wrong. More recent work has shown that the number is, in fact, nearer to 98.4%. This is close to previous estimates on the genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees. So basically, there's a lot of variation in the genomes of human beings in general; more than enough room to account for the evident physical variation among people.

Australoids, Negroids, Negritos, etc. are all indeed human beings. The fact that they have human uniparental DNA lineages (Y-DNA & mtDNA) alone shows that. However, there are more and more studies being released now that suggest that there may have been quite a bit of interbreeding in various places around the world between humans and extinct hominids, though not necessarily with the same ones. So that's another factor that could at least in part explain the genetic and physical differences between modern human populations.

[Atlantid]

I would argue E originated in the near east. Jobling et al. 2004 discusses the near eastern origin in a footnote (p. 293). It has academic support.

[Noah]

Hi there!

The Jobling et al. (2004) material sounds interesting. Do you have any quotes from it that we could perhaps add to the thread?

A circum-Middle Eastern origin for haplogroup E or its parent clade DE does seem quite possible. This is what the cumulative data generally points toward.

Besides the material already posted, the recent Oppenheimer (2012) proposes a West Eurasian origin for haplogroup DE, and thus similar affinities for E:

"There is yet a further twist to this story that could result in going full circle back to a model first proposed by Hammer et al. [55] in 1998, and previously supported by Oppenheimer [11], known as ‘Out of Africa and Back Again’, whereby the YAP+ mutation occurred outside Africa, forming the DE clade and this dispersed on to East Asia, becoming D, while a second DE branch returned to East Africa, there becoming E.

Fittingly, Underhill (who originally opposed this model) is the senior author on a recent paper offering new phylogeographic evidence that could support it, including a simplifying revision of the E phylogeny, and finding two examples of underived root-types of E in Saudi Arabia [56]. This model would specify, as for mtDNA, a single exit Y lineage and two non-African descendant branches arising outside Africa. To quote: ‘Regions near but external to northeast Africa, like the Levant or the southern Arabian Peninsula could have served as an incubator for the early diversification of non-African uniparental haplogroup varieties like Y chromosome DE-YAP*, CF-P143* and mtDNA M and N molecular ancestors’ ([56], p. 66). The model also predicts that E1b1 (the main trunk of E defined by P2) probably arose in East Africa after DE backflow there[...]

Haplogroup F backflow only accounts for 10–40% backflow and is confined to North and East Africa [61]. If, however, as suggested in §4a(iii), DE-YAP* originated just outside Africa, then technically non-African backflow in the Y locus includes E and could ultimately massively outnumber the original African Y throughout Africa"

[Atlantid]

Its not a peer-reviewed paper, but a key textbook on genetics (Human Evolutionary Genetics: Origins, Peoples & Disease; Jobling, M.A., Hurles, M.E. and Tyler-Smith, C, 2004). I haven't yet purchased it. I found its discussion on Haplogroup E in another paper referencing the book, the discussion is on page 293, but I have no quotes. Jobling is a Professor of genetics and gives credence to the near-eastern origin of Haplogroup E. Just looking at Wikipedia, also cites a more recent paper supporting the near-eastern origin, Chandrasekar et al. 2007.

Afrocentrics will of course object to the near-eastern origin, as they are using the African origin theory of E to claim Southern Europeans (who are up to 30% E Lineages) are "Black admixed". However as you probably know this is fallacious for two reasons:

(a) Haplogroups do not determine racial phenotype.
(b) If E originated in Africa it must have in the far north-east, nowhere near the Negroid (''Black'') geographical belt.

I agree with the statement "Hamitic origin of Haplogroup E", its original carriers I presume were Orientalid or Mediterranid Caucasoid types.

[Noah]

The Chandrasekar et al. (2007) paper is an important one, as it is among the works that helped turn the tide on the origins of haplogroup E. Prior to it, very few authors since Hammer in the late 1990s considered the possibility that the clade might not have originated in Sub-Saharan Africa. They were too blinded by the high frequencies found there today and mistakenly assumed that this was the case in the past as well. But now, even authorities that still support an African origin for E seem to understand that the haplogroup is primarily associated with Hamitic peoples. As ISOGG notes, in agreement with your point B above:

"Y-DNA haplogroup E would appear to have arisen in northern hemisphere of Africa based on the concentration and variety of E subclades in that area today[...] E1b1b probably evolved either in Northeast Africa or the Near East and then expanded to the west--both north and south of the Mediterranean Sea. E1b1b1 clusters are seen today in Western Europe, Southeast Europe, the Near East, Northeast Africa and Northwest Africa."

As far as the general trend in haplogroup E studies goes, both researchers of peer-reviewed papers and commercial testing companies appear to be wising up to the actual affinities of the original haplogroup E bearers. This is undoubtedly in no small part due to the aDNA tests discussed earlier in the thread, which were performed on ancient E1b1b-carrying specimens like the Guanche and the Spaniard Ave07. Every one of these old carriers tested so far was found to belong to a West Eurasian mtDNA/maternal clade, consistent with similar affinities for their counterpart paternal E1b1b lineages.

[Atlantid]

Keep up the good research.

Looking above, I see an interesting discussion about primitive retention in Negroids. There is a scientific explanation for this: diet, and the lack of evolutionary selection factors in the habitat they radiated from (West Africa). Richard Lynn (1991) has discussed this:

''The conclusion that people in tropical and subtropical latitudes were never greatly reliant for their food supply on the hunting of animals for meat is supported by observations on contemporary hunter gatherers.''

So Negroids until recently never cooked their food, which in Eurasia decreased tooth size, which led to ortho-meso-gnathism. The Eurasian climatic conditions also demanded greater cognitive development (Caucasoids and Mongoloids for example discovered fire for warmth, as well as made clothes and also hunted with more sophisticated weapons):

''Through this process the Caucasoid and Mongoloid peoples of Eurasia would have evolved higher average intelligence levels than the Negroids exposed to a less cognitively demanding environment in sub-Saharan Africa.''

sq.4mg.com/LynnIQdiff.htm

[Noah]

Certain researchers since the 1980s or so have postulated an independent origin for agriculture amongst Negroid communities. They argue that although a lot of the crops that Bantu and Sudanic agriculturalists grow are of foreign origin, many others aren't, so the idea for farming must have evolved independently within these communities. This same argument is often used to assert an 'African' origin for the Egyptians via the Fellahin cultivators.

On its face, the argument sounds fairly reasonable. However, when one actually cross-references the theory with the anthropological data on tooth size, in particular, it doesn't hold up. This is because Negroid peoples in general tend to have quite large teeth, in the megadont class:

This in turn suggests that the immediate ancestors of Negroid peoples had more modest food processing technology, so they maintained the large teeth that all archaic humans possessed. By contrast, the opposite is true of populations that have been involved in agriculture for a long period, including the Fellahin: they tend to have evolved quite small teeth, in the microdont or mesodont range.

In other words, Bantu and Sudanic cultivators adopted farming practices relatively recently, and likely from their small-toothed Hamitic neighbors. Prior to that, they were hunter-gatherers, just like most of the similarly large-toothed haplogroup A and B carriers.

As Loring Brace (1993) explains:

"it has been shown that dental reduction since the end of the Middle Pleistocene is proportional to the antiquity of the technology associated with the preparation of food (Brace, 1979; Brace et al., 1987) and that the time depth of this is different in different parts of the world, which is why there is a spectrum of tooth-size difference among modern human populations (Brace, 1993c; Brace et al., 1991). Most of our sub-Saharan African samples fall into the “megadont” category used by Flower to indicate relative tooth size (Brace and Hunt, 1990; Brace et al., 1991; Flower, 1885), but the Somalis from the Horn of East Africa sit right on the dividing line between “mesodont” and “microdont.” Evidently the ancestors of the Somalis had long been associated with food preparation practices that reduced the selective force intensity maintaining tooth size. This is consistent with the possibility that the Ethiopian highlands were the locale of one of the ancient and semi-independent centers of plant domestication (Harlan, 1969, 1971; Harlan et al., 1976; Stemler, 1980; Vavilov, 1951)."

[Atlantid]

Excellent sources. Anthropologist Peter Frost has also written about this and I'll add some of my own observations also below:

''On the basis of genetic and archaeological data, black Africans seem to have radiated from a relatively small West African and possibly pygmy population within the last 20,000 years (Coon, 1962, pp. 651-656; Spurdle et al., 1994; Watson et al., 1996). The time and place of origin can be further narrowed down with linguistic data. Speakers of proto-Niger-Congo broke up c. 10,000 BP and the oldest derived group appear to be proto-Mande speakers, whose descendants inhabit the Niger's headwaters near the Mali-Guinea border (Blench, 1984, pp. 128-129; Ehret, 1984; Murdock, 1959, pp. 44, 64-68).''

Negroids appear to have radiated from a recent ancestral West African Pygmoid (Congoid) population, with Caucasoid (Hamitic) gene flow: ''The Negroid type is not homogeneous.'' (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994) within the last 20,000 years, more closer to 12,000 B. P. The Negroid is not actually a race, but rather a Congoid subrace of hybrid (Pygmoid-Caucasoid) derivation. Very few people however accept or know of this reality. Of course the Caucasoid component is far weaker than the Pygmoid (Negroids don't look remotely Caucasoid in most traits) but nonetheless some Hamitic (Caucasoid) markers do show up in Negroids (fingerprints, blood groups) which Carleton Coon discusses in his Living Races of Man (1967). It also should be pointed out that the palaeolothic ancestors of the Pygmoids, a branch of whom evolved into Negroids with Caucasoid input, were far lighter skinned. Excessive dark skin is a recent mutation. Professor Ruggles Gates is among the few authorities who wrote about this, calling the ancestors of African Pygmoids "mahogany skin and hairy body of Pygmies". Yet Negroids are neither hairy, or mahohany in colour. Despite a lot of primitive retention in their phylogenetic line (very bestial facial features, from their Pygmy ancestors), they have aquired or lost certain traits recently through adaptation.

''All of these physical and hormonal characteristics seem to have arisen within a narrow timeframe. In sub-Saharan Africa, the beginnings of proto-agriculture cannot be pushed back much further than 12,000 BP. A tall, clearly black African skeleton has been dated to 6,500 BP (Camp, 1974, p. 241; Coon, 1962, pp. 649-650). This leaves a window of barely six thousand years for the changes that differentiate black Africans from their hunter-gatherer ancestors''

The Pygmoid-Negroid divergence was considerably recent. The oldest Negroids skeletons are not at all old, only dating to the Neolithic or late Mesolithic.

''By 6,000 to 7,000 years ago, the transition to agriculture had been completed in West Africa and these early agriculturalists were able to support much higher population densities than they had as hunter-gatherers. Inevitably, this nucleus of farming populations began to spread outward at the expense of more sparsely distributed Khoisan and pygmy peoples. By about 4,000 BP, the expansion had reached as far east as the middle Nile, when black Africans first appear in paintings from Pharaonic Egypt and in skeletal remains from Nubia (Junker, 1921). About 3,000 BP, another wave of advance began along the Nigerian-Cameroon border and spread rapidly throughout central, eastern, and southern Africa (Cavalli-Sforza, 1986c, pp. 361-362; Diamond, 1997; Oliver, 1966). By 300 AD, pioneering groups had advanced as far south as KwaZulu-Natal''

Negroids only moved into Egypt as late as c. 2000 BC, and Nubia millenia or so before. The article from Junker (1921) is excellent. Prehistoric Nubians were not Negroid. The fallacy popularised on the internet is that because the ancient Egyptian's depicted the Nubians as Negroid in their ancient artwork, that the prehistoric Nubians must have belonged to the same race. This however is not true, there was a large scale racial replacement. Neolithic hair samples from Nubian burials are cymotrichous (wavy) and clearly Caucasoid. There was simply no appearance of Negroids, in North (and East) Africa until very recently. All facts of course which shatter the Afrocentric worldview.

[Noah]

That is basically what the evidence shows i.e. an ultimately Pygmoid origin for Negroid peoples, with some Caucasoid input. Few folks are indeed aware of this; many are under the misimpression that Negroid peoples are themselves an end-type.

Although Negroids are in general darker than the yellowish-brown or mahogany-colored classic Pygmy, they still share with them the same exclusively Sub-Saharan allele for skin coloration. Hamitic peoples in North and East Africa, by contrast, largely have the West Eurasian-linked pigmentation allele; at rates of 65%-95%, with the highest frequencies found amongst the Berber mountain tribes. All of this suggests that very dark skin in humans evolved independently through selection several times around the world rather than from a single, common source population.

Contrary to popular belief, dark skin is not solely an adaptation to sunny climates. The fact that West Africans and Bantus -- who are some of the darkest people in the world -- tend to live in densely forested areas where intense solar radiation is less of an issue than, say, in the scorching deserts of Arabia, shows that some other selective pressures are at work. According to Mayr (1970), dark skin coloring is most often correlated with humid areas where vegetation is abundant and tends to produce dark shadows. This is not a coincidence because research by R.B. Cowles (1959, 1967) has shown that humans often follow the same rules of protective coloration as other mammals. So while the black panther of the jungle, by virtue of his ability to blend in with the dark shadows cast by the many trees and plants, is better able to stalk his prey, dark coloration likewise allowed ancestral hunter-gatherers of the forest to both hide from predators and hunt down their next meal.

By contrast, since the Khoisan hunter-gatherers did (and still do) not live or hunt in the jungle but rather in the desert, they evolved a different form of protective coloration/camouflage that was more suited to their arid environment. That is, skin color dark enough to both withstand the sun's rays and blend into the yellowish-brown desert landscape. Since Pygmies ultimately share common Paleoafrican ancestry with the Khoisan, they too would've originally hunted in a similar environment before later moving into more densely forested areas, where Negroids would go on to evolve from them through contact with Caucasoids.