Scientists say that the stories that your parents and your grandparents told you about your ancestors and Nigist Saba’s (Queen Sheba) travel across the sea from Ethiopia to Israel about 3000 years ago is probably true. GENETIC LEGACIES – SHEBA’S CHILDREN A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge have started to unveil the genetic heritage of Ethiopian populations, who are among the most diverse in the world. They found that the genomes of some Ethiopian populations bear striking similarities to those of populations in Israel and Syria, a potential genetic legacy of the Queen of Sheba and her people from the ancient kingdom of the Sabaean (in modern Yemen). A truth to ancient stories? The research team have already detected similarities between some Ethiopians and non-African populations dating to approximately 3,000 years ago. The origin and date of this genomic admixture, along with previous linguistic studies, is consistent with the legend of the Queen of Sheba, who according to the Ethiopian Kebra Negast book had a child with King Solomon from Israel and is mentioned in both the Bible and the Qur’an. “From their geographic location, it is logical to think that migration out of Africa 60,000 years ago began in either Ethiopia or Egypt. Little was previously known about the populations inhabiting the North-East African region from a genomic perspective. This is the first genome study on a representative panel of Ethiopian populations,” explains Luca Pagani, first author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge. We found that some Ethiopians have 40-50% of their genome closer to the genomes of populations outside of Africa, while the remaining half of their genome is closer to populations within the African continent,” says Dr Toomas Kivisild, co-author from the University of Cambridge. “We calculated genetic distances and found that these non-African regions of the genome are closest to populations in Egypt, Israel and Syria, rather than to the neighbouring Yemeni and Arabs”. Source: pasthorizonspr/index.php/archives/06/2012/genetic-legacies-shebas-children An Ethiopian boy and Nigist Saba (Queen Sheba)
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 16:45:58 +0000
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