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Ancestry populations · Classical Antiquity

Senegambian and Upper Guinea

The peoples of Senegambia and Upper Guinea, stone-circle builders and part of the Mali Empire, represented by present-day Gambian, Mandinka and Mende people. One of the 50 curated source populations in the Classical Antiquity era of Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis.

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Who they were

Artistic interpretation of the Senegambian and Upper Guinea (AI-generated artwork, not documentary evidence)
Period
1500 BC to 1500 AD
Era in the analysis
Classical Antiquity
Region
Senegambia and the Upper Guinea coast
Role in the model
Source (left) population, a reference qpAdm tests against

Senegambia and the Upper Guinea coast stretch from the Senegal and Gambia rivers south through Guinea and Sierra Leone to Liberia, where the dry Sahel meets the Atlantic. Farmers here grew millet, fished the estuaries and traded gold and salt with the Saharan caravans. Along the River Gambia, communities raised more than a thousand stone circles and burial mounds over the centuries from about the third century BC to the sixteenth century AD, and the region later became part of the Mali Empire, whose rulers grew rich on gold. The reference genomes here come from present-day people of the Gambia, Mandinka people of Senegal and Mende people of Sierra Leone, who stand in for the peoples of this region before European contact.

Present-day Mende and Yoruba fall as sister groups within the West African clade (Lipson et al. 2020), so this source and the Gulf of Guinea source are closely related. This ancestry is widespread today from Senegal to Sierra Leone and among people of the Americas whose ancestors were taken from this coast during the Atlantic slave trade, although in the United States Senegambian-related ancestry is somewhat under-represented relative to what shipping records predict (Micheletti et al. 2020).

In Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis, Senegambian and Upper Guinea is a source in the "Classical Antiquity" era. The report shows its weight with a standard error and a Z-score, so you can see not only how much of the model it carries but how confidently that share is separated from zero, and a model that cannot support it is rejected rather than published. For genomes from Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea and Sierra Leone it is usually the West African source to look at first, and its weight should be read together with the Gulf of Guinea source, to which it is closely related.

Y haplogroup E1b1a and the mtDNA L lineages are characteristic of populations rich in this ancestry. A haplogroup alone is never evidence of a share.

In your report

Senegambia and the Upper Guinea coast stretch from the Senegal and Gambia rivers south through Guinea and Sierra Leone to Liberia, where the dry Sahel meets the Atlantic. Farmers here grew millet and African rice, fished the estuaries and traded gold and salt with the Sahara caravans. Along the River Gambia, communities raised more than a thousand stone circles and burial mounds over the centuries from about 300 BC to AD 1500, and the region later became part of the Mali Empire, whose rulers grew rich on gold. The reference genomes here come from present-day people of the Gambia, Mandinka people of Senegal and Mende people of Sierra Leone, who stand in for the peoples of this region before European contact. This ancestry is widespread today from Senegal to Sierra Leone, and among people of the Americas whose ancestors were taken from this coast during the Atlantic slave trade.

Artwork is an AI-generated artistic interpretation informed by the archaeological record, not documentary evidence.

Where this population sits in the model

Ancient Ancestry, our qpAdm analysis, models your genome once per era. The Classical Antiquity era has 50 curated source populations, and Senegambian and Upper Guinea is one of them: every candidate model for that era is a combination of these sources, tested against a fixed set of outgroup populations, and only a model that passes the statistical fit check is published, with a p-value and a standard error on every proportion.

A reference, not a verdict: every population on this page is a source the model tests your genome against, a well-sampled point in ancient genetic space that a mixture of ancestries can be expressed in terms of. A weight on it means your genome is well described as partly resembling those people; it is never a statement that they, specifically, were your ancestors, and a population that fits well is not the only one that could.

Read how qpAdm works on the Ancient Ancestry page, or the definitions in the glossary.

Model it yourself for free

The Ancestrify Lab runs in your browser, with no account. Paste a Global25 row into an admixture calculator that covers the Classical Antiquity era, rank the closest ancient populations in the distance tool, or run f4, qpWave and qpAdm on the public panel in the AdmixTools 2 workbench. These are Global25 fits and exploratory statistics, not the formal qpAdm model of Ancient Ancestry.

Questions

  • Who were the Senegambian and Upper Guinea (1500 BC to 1500 AD)?

    Senegambian and Upper Guinea is one of the 50 curated source populations in the Classical Antiquity era of Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis: a group of published genomes pooled as a single reference the model can test your genome against. These are ancient individuals from one archaeological context wherever the record holds them, and present-day genomes standing in where it does not, which the description on this page says.

  • Does Senegambian and Upper Guinea in my result mean they were my ancestors?

    No. A source population is a reference the model tests against, never a statement about who your ancestors were. A coefficient on this source means the ancestry those burials represent helps explain your genome to within statistical noise: similar ancestry composition, not descent from those individuals. Ancestrify never claims a population is your ancestor.

  • What does a Senegambian and Upper Guinea percentage in a qpAdm model mean?

    qpAdm estimates the mixture proportions that best explain your genome as a combination of the chosen sources, given a fixed set of outgroup (right) populations, and reports a p-value for whether the model is statistically acceptable together with a standard error for every proportion. The percentage is that estimated share, with its uncertainty published beside it.

  • How do I get a qpAdm model that uses Senegambian and Upper Guinea?

    Order Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis (€29.99, one-time), and upload the raw file you already have from a consumer test. Your genome is merged into the AADR reference panel and modelled across both eras; each era's model is built from that era's source populations, so a model for the Classical Antiquity era draws on Senegambian and Upper Guinea where it improves the fit.

  • Can I model Senegambian and Upper Guinea ancestry for free first?

    Yes. The Ancestrify Lab runs Global25 admixture calculators, a nearest-populations distance tool and an AdmixTools 2 workbench in your browser with no account, and several calculators cover the Classical Antiquity era. Those are G25 fits, not formal qpAdm models. Ancient Ancestry, the paid analysis, is the one with a p-value.

More populations from the Classical Antiquity era

Browse the full directory of source populations, or continue with another population from the same era:

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