Language, Culture and Genes in Bantu: a Multidisciplinary Approach of the Bantu-speaking Populations of Africa (OMLL – 01-JA27: 01-B07/01-S08/01-V01) The Case of Gabon Lolke J. Van der Veen (Project Leader), Jaume Bertranpetit (Principal Investigator), David Comas, Lluis Quintana-Murci, Mark Stoneking (Principal Investigator) Introduction This interdisciplinary EUROCORES OMLL project started at the beginning of 2002 as an extended version of a similar project on Bantu languages and genes. This latter officially commenced, under Lolke Van der Veen’s supervision, in July 2000 as part of the “Origine de l’Homme, du Langage et des Langues” programme launched and funded by the French CNRS1. The present Collaborative Research Project (CRP) consists of one main project submitted by the research laboratory “Dynamique du Langage” (UMR 5596, Lyon, France) and two joint projects submitted respectively by research teams from Germany and Spain (see below). This detailed outline of the project wants to highlight the project’s goals and specific features, and summarises the state of the art. The LCGB project: objectives and approach The ultimate goal of the “LCGB” project is to elaborate a solidly based multidisciplinary theory of the origin and expansion of Bantu and the Bantu-speaking populations, on the basis of correlations between linguistic, biological and anthropological markers. Do historical linguistics, population genetics, cultural anthropology and archaeology all tell the same story? Combining linguistics and population genetics still is a rather controversial issue, but applying this enlarged multidisciplinary approach to the study of Bantu expansion may positively contribute to the debate and offers promising perspectives for a new synthesis in this field of investigation. In the first time, existing solid linguistically based phylogenetic classifications are to be compared with biologically based classifications, which are in the process of being constructed. Therefore, at the start of the project, very well-defined linguistically based diachronic inferences were submitted to geneticists having accepted to collaborate with our team of linguists, for close examination. The OMLL programme has allowed the development of collaborations with geneticists from France (i.e. a team directed by Dr. Lluis Quintana- Murci, Institut Pasteur, Paris, CNRS URA 1961), from Spain (a team directed by Prof. Dr. Jaume Bertranpetit and Dr. David Comas, Unitat de Biologia Evoltiva, Facultat de Ciències de la Salut i de la Vida, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona) and from Germany (a team directed by Prof. Dr. Mark Stoneking, Max Planck Institute, Leipzig), but also from Gabon (Dr. Lucas Sica, Centre International de Recherches Médicales Franceville) and the USA (Dr. Sarah Tishkoff, University of Maryland). The French team —directed by Prof. Dr. Lolke Van der Veen—, as well as the Spanish and German teams have been granted funding by their respective national funding agencies. Without this innovative interdisciplinary research 1 The main lines of this OHLL project were presented at the 32nd Annual Conference on African Languages held in Berkeley, March 2001. Van der Veen & Hombert (forthcoming). 1 OMLL (Eurocores, ESF) — Language, Culture and Genes in Bantu: a Multidisciplinary Approach of the Bantu-speaking populations of Africa programme, it would have been impossible to develop such a variety of extensive collaborations and to create networking activities between thematically related projects. The combination of these different sources of information we are working with, will most certainly reveal both similarities and discrepancies between the disciplinary approaches. Both cases (presence or absence of correlations) will of course be equally interesting. The results of this study will subsequently be compared with the results obtained so far (or still to be obtained) in other fields of research such as Cultural Anthropology, Archaeology and History. In a wider perspective, the outcome of the “LCGB” project will allow a comparison with the results of similar OMLL projects on Berber (project leader: Prof. J.-M. Dugoujon), Eurasian (project leader: Dr. A. Sajantila), Himalayan (project leader: Dr. P. de Knijff) and Island Melanesia (project leader: Prof. S. C. Levinson), also presented in the present volume. Main specific features of LCGB Over the last few decades, population genetic studies of the African continent have especially tried to establish parallels between genetic and linguistic classifications at a fairly general and thus (historically) deep level. These studies have mainly focussed on the four major linguistic phyla of this continent (i.e. NIGER-CONGO, NILO-SAHARAN, AFRO-ASIATIC and KHOI-SAN2). Several of these studies have made strong claims about the African prehistory on the basis of specific genetic markers. Both traditional and molecular markers reveal correlations between these major linguistic phyla and genetic data (cf. Cavalli-Sforza & al. 1994; Excoffier & al. 1987 and 1991; Hammer 1994; Soodyall & al. 1993 and 1996; Poloni & al. 1997; Watson & al. 1996 and 1997; Melton & al. 1997; Stoneking & al. 1997, Scozzari & al. 1994 and 1999; Spedini 1999; Salas & al. 2002, etc.). At the start of the “LCGB” project, Bantu had mainly been studied as a whole. NIGER- CONGO populations in general and Bantu populations in particular showed to have the lowest level of internal genetic diversity. This is of course compatible with the hypothesis of a “recent” (i.e. 5 000 BP) and rapid (although gradual) expansion of these populations (Excoffier & al. 1987, and 1991 (traditional markers); Poloni & al. 1997 (Y-chromosome haplotypes), Scozzari & al. 1999 (biallelic and microsatellite Y-chromosome poly- morphisms), Spedini & al. 1999 (suggesting an expansion through minor migration movements). However, virtually nothing was known about the internal relationships between Bantu-speaking populations. Criteria used for sampling individuals were most of the time imprecise. All available studies suffered from a lack of accuracy in linguistic labelling (undifferentiated lumping, errors related to narrow linguistic classification, etc.) as well as from a lack of representativity (e.g. central African Bantu is still very badly underrepresented nowadays, cf. Salas & al. 20023). Carefully checked ethnolinguistic data were rarely taken into account and geneticists usually clung on to linguistic classifications that were more or less outdated (e.g. Greenberg’s 1963 classification). There clearly was a desperate need for a more accurate and more rigorous approach, and for a close collaboration between geneticists and linguists. The “LCGB” project aims at developing such an approach in particular for the study of phenomena with a lesser time depth, by working out rigorous criteria for sampling and analysis, by submitting up-to-date linguistic classifications and hypotheses4, and by 2 For a detailed up-to-date presentation of these phyla and the languages they comprise, see Williamson & Blench (2000). 3 For this study, data from only three central African Bantu languages were available, and only two Pygmy languages. 4 Considerable progress has been made in the field of African linguistics over the last three decades. These advances cannot be ignored. 2 OMLL (Eurocores, ESF) — Language, Culture and Genes in Bantu: a Multidisciplinary Approach of the Bantu-speaking populations of Africa drawing benefit from a large-scale multidisciplinary approach including also archaeologists, cultural anthropologists and historians (see also below). It should be underlined here that the Bantu languages (a group of about 600 languages and language varieties, being part of the much larger NIGER-CONGO phylum, and covering about one third of the African continent), along with the SINO-TIBETAN languages, are among the best-studied languages of the world, just after the INDO-EUROPEAN languages. Important aspects of the proto-language (i.e. “Proto-Bantu”, a language variety or dialect continuum spoken most probably about 5 000 BP in the borderland between present-day Nigeria and Cameroon) have been reconstructed (Meeussen 1967 and 1969; Guthrie 1967-71) and solid historical inferences have been made concerning the origin and expansion of Bantu. Although some more or less competing theories exist as far as the role of the forest area concerns in the expansion process (gradual penetration into the forest —following waterways and/or mountain ridges— or northern “migration” bypassing the forest5 or both6), and also concerning some secondary convergence and/or expansion zones, a general consensus exists among scholars about the main lines of the expansion as well as several much more local and detailed phenomena. (See map 1 below, for an up-to-date overview.) The Bantu expansion probably coincided with the end of the Neolithic Age and was at least at some stage related to the diffusion of agriculture and iron metallurgy (Phillipson 1985, De Maret 1982, Nsuka- Nkutsi 1989, Clist 1995, Oslisly 1996, Holden 2002, Diamond & Bellwood 2003). Environmental, demographic, social and economic factors must have played an important role in this gradual and wave-like expansion. For the present project, three geographically strategic zones were chosen in order to test the linguistically based hypotheses: the Gabon area (i.e. the enlarged “Ogooué-Ivindo- Ngounié”7 area), the Kenya-Tanzania area and the Angola-Namibia area. These three areas are known to have played an important role in the Bantu