Ancestry populations · Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer
West African
The foragers, fishers and early farmers of West Africa before the Iron Age, from the green Sahara to the Sahel, represented by present-day West African genomes. One of the 18 curated source populations in the Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era of Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis.
Who they were
- Period
- 10000 to 1500 BC
- Era in the analysis
- Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer
- Region
- West Africa
- Role in the model
- Source (left) population, a reference qpAdm tests against
West Africa before the Iron Age was a land of lakes, grasslands and rivers. When the Sahara was green, between about 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, foragers and fishers lived beside its lakes, made some of the oldest pottery in Africa and herded cattle, and as the desert dried they moved south into the Sahel and the forest edge. By about 2000 BC the people of the Sahel were growing pearl millet, and villages of round huts spread across the savanna. Very few ancient genomes survive from this time. The first ancient DNA from West Africa, from four children buried at Shum Laka in Cameroon about 8,000 and 3,000 years ago, is most similar to that of present-day hunter-gatherers of western Central Africa, and Bantu-speaking peoples are not descended substantially from them (Lipson et al. 2020).
The deep ancestry of today's West Africans therefore has to be read from living people. The Yoruba and the Mende are sister groups within a West African clade distinguished by admixture from a deep source (Lipson et al. 2020), and it is that lineage this source stands for, built from present-day Yoruba, Esan, Igbo, Gambian, Mandinka and Mende people. It is the foundation of the later peoples of the Gulf of Guinea and Senegambia, and the expansion of the Bantu-speaking peoples began in western Africa some 6,000 to 4,000 years ago (Fortes-Lima et al. 2024).
In Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis, West African is a source in the "Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer" 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 West Africa and the African diaspora it is the source that captures the West African component, beside the Sub Saharan African source of this era, and its Z-score usually shows a genuine weight well separated from zero.
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 reportArtwork is an AI-generated artistic interpretation informed by the archaeological record, not documentary evidence.West Africa before the Iron Age was a land of lakes, grasslands and rivers. When the Sahara was green, between about 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, foragers and fishers lived beside its lakes, made some of the oldest pottery in Africa and herded cattle, and as the desert dried they moved south into the Sahel and the forest edge. By about 2000 BC the people of the Sahel were growing pearl millet and, later, African rice along the rivers, and villages of round huts spread across the savanna. Very few ancient genomes survive from this time, so the reference genomes here come from present-day Yoruba, Esan, Igbo, Gambian, Mandinka and Mende people, who stand in for the deep West African ancestry of the region. This ancestry is the foundation of the later peoples of the Gulf of Guinea and Senegambia and, through them, of much of the ancestry of people across West Africa and the African diaspora today.
Where this population sits in the model
Ancient Ancestry, our qpAdm analysis, models your genome once per era. The Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era has 18 curated source populations, and West African 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 Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer 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 West African (10000 to 1500 BC)?
West African is one of the 18 curated source populations in the Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer 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 West African 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 West African 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 West African?
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 Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era draws on West African where it improves the fit.
Can I model West African 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 Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer 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 Hunter Gatherer and Neolithic Farmer era
Browse the full directory of source populations, or continue with another population from the same era:
Anatolian Neolithic Farmer8500 to 6000 BC
Ancestral South Indian10000 to 2000 BC
Caucasian Hunter Gatherer13000 to 7000 BC
Early European Farmer5500 to 4900 BC
East Asian Neolithic Farmer5000 to 2000 BC
Eastern Hunter Gatherer12000 to 5000 BC
Iberomaurusian15000 to 8000 BC
Iranian Neolithic Farmer8000 to 5000 BC
Levantine Neolithic Farmer8800 to 6500 BC
Native American15000 to 1500 BC
Natufian12000 to 8000 BC
North African Farmer5200 to 4000 BC
Northeast Asian6000 to 2000 BC
Sarazm Copper Age3700 to 3300 BC
Sub Saharan African
Western Hunter Gatherer12000 to 6000 BC
Western Steppe Herder5000 to 2800 BC