Early Islamic burial in Near East.

Angela

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See:

Bioarchaeological evidence of one of the earliest Islamic burials in the Levant | Communications Biology (nature.com)

I would change interestingly, to as expected. :)

"The Middle East plays a central role in human history harbouring a vast diversity of ethnic, cultural and religious groups. However, much remains to be understood about past and present genomic diversity in this region. Here we present a multidisciplinary bioarchaeological analysis of two individuals dated to the late 7th and early 8th centuries, the Umayyad Era, from Tell Qarassa, an open-air site in modern-day Syria. Radiocarbon dates and burial type are consistent with one of the earliest Islamic Arab burials in the Levant. Interestingly, we found genomic similarity to a genotyped group of modern-day Bedouins and Saudi rather than to most neighbouring Levantine groups. This study represents the genomic analysis of a secondary use site with characteristics consistent with an early Islamic burial in the Levant. We discuss our findings and possible historic scenarios in the light of forces such as genetic drift and their possible interaction with religious and cultural processes (including diet and subsistence practices)."

"
Together with the radiocarbon dates, the wrapping, the position and orientation of the bodies facing Mecca are concordant with Muslim funerary rituals following Early Islamic burials24. However, these individuals were not buried in a traditional Muslim cemetery. This may be explained due to special circumstances of death or cultural identity: nomadic populations, pilgrims, deviant burials or plague victims. The requirement of a Muslim burial to take place within 24 h after death might have made some compromises necessary. It is known that one of the defining features of Muslim burials is that of only one person per grave, which implies that husbands and wives are not buried together, and collective family tombs are forbidden. Nonetheless, occasionally and in extreme circumstances this can be relaxed for victims of plague or warfare (Supplementary Note S1 – Muslim Burials). Also, the close proximity of radiocarbon dates for syr005 (1294 ± 18 Cal BP) and syr013 (1302 ± 15 Cal BP) suggest that both individuals died at a similar time."

The bodies could be checked for yestina pestis. My literary and romantic brain immediately thought: Romeo and Juliet? :)

Couldn't they refine the y more than this?

"
Individuals syr005 and syr013 were determined to carry mitochondrial haplogroups J2a2a1a1 and R0a2, respectively. Both haplogroups are common in the Arabian Peninsula, Near East and parts of Africa31,32 in concordance with the broad geographical location of the samples. In addition, the Y chromosome of syr005 was determined as haplogroup J, which is the most common haplogroup across the Middle East33 (Table S3)."

The admixture runs are quite interesting too. Easy to see that Bedouin A is admixed and Bedouin B is not. You can clearly see the SSA intrusion into North Africa, and the large amount of Levant Neo in Anatolia Neo is quite clear.

"
We used Beagle 4.137 to analyze sharing of tracts of identity by descent (IBD) between syr013 and present-day populations. Consistent with other results, the highest number and total length of IBD tracts was shared with multiple Bedouin B individuals and a single Saudi individual in the Human Origins 2.0 dataset (Fig. 5a). This confirms the connection between the UEB individuals and nomadic Levantines as well as to the Arabian peninsula."


 
It's called the Arab slave trade, which predominantly involved East African women.

"Thus, despite indications from other analyses that Bedouin B and Saudi seem to be the closest modern populations to the UEB individuals, we obtained slightly different results from qpAdm analyses since these modern groups required East African ancestry for a fitting model. This lack of African-related ancestry in the UEB individuals in contrast to their closest modern populations might be the cause of the D statistics results (which placed the UEB individuals as an outgroup to Saudi and Bedouin B) and could be explained by different scenarios. For instance, the Neolithic Levantine ancestral background could have been diluted by the introduction of African-related ancestry later, i.e. after the UEB individuals. This might also account for the observation that none of the other historical Levantine individuals from earlier time periods seem to produce a fitting model with Mota as an ancestral source. In fact, the only ancient individuals that could be successfully modelled with African-related ancestry are Neolithic Moroccans40. Consistent with this explanation, when we also tried to model the UEB individuals as a two-way mixture of already published Levantine individuals more proximate in time and Mota, we obtained high standard errors for Mota-related ancestry in all models and found only a few successful single-source models from published Levantine individuals (Table S9)."

"
It is worth noting that the historical UEB individuals are the population with the lowest amount of genomic data, restricting a precise estimation or even a full rejection of the presence of European or African ancestry in these individuals, thus affecting ancestry estimates. However, even if we cannot fully reject the presence of any African ancestry, all analyses consistently suggest a lower level of African ancestry in the UEB individuals. While the reduced resolution for the historical UEB individuals prevents us from making more reliable inferences at this stage, the genetic differences observed here could potentially suggest a slightly different trajectory and contacts with other groups in the long term compared to Saudi and Bedouins as well as the effect of recent history on population structure."

One had the Arabian lactase persistence gene. (The other had no coverage at that site.)

No,
familial hypercholesterolaemia, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, sickle-cell anemia, Bardet-Biedl syndrome, etc.), which appear not infrequently in Arabic populations today.

Less than optimum coverage prevented them from saying whether they were plague victims.
 
As per Thomas Sowell many years of investigations about African slavery........the Arab slave trade went from circa 650AD to the twentieth Century and took over 2 million people as slaves from East Africa.
The bulk of slaves where held by African nations who sold these slaves to European nations ......The Kings of Nigeria and Congo where the major players in selling slaves.
East Africa was a different system, where Arab owned Zanzibar sent many slaves to Arabia ............these Arabs had contracts to the Masi of Kenya to gather these slaves.
a reaction below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsUkmQSnenw
 
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rzDE3LpV1bxhNPW5t-P7wW1oqMMA2aLmxnTyEdRCYewAGsEa1lzbXnRQWCdvMpsrgjF5zfM3YZ023xdG0WE0aVWj.jpg


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Not surprising. Yemeni Jews appear to be Yemenis with less SSA and/or East African.
 

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