r/HornAfricanAncestry

1. Maternal & Paternal Haplogroups E-M123 & L2a1
2. Tribe: Kawahla Kamalab - more specifically Shanabla Al Gezira (not to be confused with Shanabla Kordofan)
3. Located in: Nayel, Al-Kabur, Al-Musallamiyah, Arbagi, Fiteis, Abderahman, Algoz, Al Nedeyana, Madani, Wad Biliya, Al Marabi3a, Tanoub, Wad Hussein, Al Mahas, Al-Sa3dab etc.
4. Common family names: Al-Nuwayri, Shamboul, Masaad.

A little background: My family is from the Kamalab branch of the Kawahla Tribe in central Sudan, mainly around Wad Madani, Nayel, Musallamiyah, and Arbagi. According to tribal genealogy, the Kawahla trace their lineage back to Kahil bin Amer and ultimately to Al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, one of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions and a member of Quraysh. The tribe migrated from Arabia into Egypt and later Sudan during the early Islamic period, where they mixed with local Nubian and Arab populations and became one of the major Arab confederations in Sudan. The Kamalab (“sons of Kamal”) emerged as a respected Kawahla sub-clan known for leadership, scholarship, and governance in Gezira and the White Nile regions. Oral histories also mention a massacre of the Kamalab by a Ja’aliyyin leader in the 1700s, after which the lineage was rebuilt through a surviving child named ʿUrwa. Later, Sheikh Shamboul, a Kamalab figure, established the Shanabla of Gezira (not to be confused with the Shanabla of Kordofan), whose descendants settled around Nayel and Wad Madani. During the Mahdist wars, Madani wad Shamboul fought with Hicks Pasha’s forces and died at the Battle of Shaykan in 1883. Under British rule, Nazir Masaad from the Kamalab became a prominent tribal leader in Musallamiyah. Today, many Kamalab and Shanabla families still maintain strong roots in Gezira, while also preserving a mixed Sudanese Arab and Nubian identity shaped by centuries of migration, intermarriage, and Sudanese history.

Results from Illustrative DNA. Don't know how accurate or conclusive it is but I was recommended it by someone.

I have my own coordinates but nothing to compare them to. I’m sudanese from al gezira. From the kawahla kamalab tribe. These are my results on 23andme & IllustrativeDNA. Wondering if anyone has comprehensive sudanese coordinates. Thank you

Made sum calcs for these groups from taking samples of different forums.

Take it with a grain of salt if you want (:

The model is highly robust with a near-perfect p-value and low standard errors (under 5%) regardless of Kenya_PastoralN_Nderit’s low SNP coverage.This ~11% Turkey_C signature perfectly captures the deep West Eurasian-related gene flow that traveled down into Northeast/East Africa via the Levant and Horn of Africa, mixing with local herding cultures like the Nderit. It mirrors the exact genetic transition seen moving from the Pastoral Neolithic into the Pastoral Iron Age.
Has anyone else played around with the Kenya_PastoralN_Nderit source or gotten better fits swapping out Turkey_C for Levant_Neolithic? Let me know what you think!

I recently ran a qpAdm batch focused on Horn/Ethiopian-related models and wanted to share the feasible passing results for feedback from people who know Horn African ancestry modeling better than I do.

The batch tested multiple left-source combinations and right-set variants. The output I am discussing here is from the visible top feasible passing models in top_feasible_passing.csv.

Best overall visible passing model

The highest p-value model was:

old_3way__Tanzania_Swahili-oNearEast__Egypt_AbusirelMeleq_ThirdIntermediatePeriod__Satsurblia

With:

• p-value: 0.764
• Tanzania_Swahili-oNearEast: 38.5% ± 2.3%
• Egypt_AbusirelMeleq_ThirdIntermediatePeriod: 55.4% ± 5.0%
• Georgia_Satsurblia_LateUP / Satsurblia: 6.2% ± 4.1%

The next two visible passing models were also 3-way models:

1. Tanzania_Swahili-oNearEast + Egypt Abusir el-Meleq Third Intermediate Period + Satsurblia p = 0.764
2. Tanzania_Swahili-oNearEast + Egypt Nuwayrat Early Dynastic + Satsurblia p = 0.641
3. Tanzania_Swahili-oNearEast + Morocco_LN + Satsurblia p = 0.629

So, in the visible top results, the best-fitting models generally seem to combine:

• an East African / Swahili-related proxy,
• a North African / Egyptian / Northeast African or West Eurasian-shifted ancient source,
• and a small Satsurblia-like component.

I am not reading this literally as “I am 55% ancient Egyptian” or “6% Satsurblia.” I am interpreting these as qpAdm proxy components that may be capturing deeper West Eurasian / Northeast African structure in a Horn African-related genome.

More Horn-specific non-old models

The best visible non-old_ Horn model was:

3way__ORO2__Egypt_AbusirelMeleq_Ptolemaic__Satsurblia

With:

• p-value: 0.239
• ORO2: 44.9% ± 2.6%
• Egypt_AbusirelMeleq_Ptolemaic: 46.2% ± 5.6%
• Georgia_Satsurblia_LateUP / Satsurblia: 9.0% ± 4.0%

The second visible non-old_ Horn model was:

3way__ORO1__Egypt_AbusirelMeleq_Ptolemaic__Satsurblia

With:

• p-value: 0.216
• ORO1: 48.0% ± 2.8%
• Egypt_AbusirelMeleq_Ptolemaic: 43.4% ± 5.7%
• Georgia_Satsurblia_LateUP / Satsurblia: 8.6% ± 4.0%

These two are interesting because both pass and both use the same general structure:

Oromo-like Horn source + Ptolemaic Egyptian / Northeast African-West Eurasian proxy + small Satsurblia-like component

The ORO2 model has the slightly better p-value, but the ORO1 model has a slightly higher Oromo-like proportion. The Satsurblia-like component is very similar in both, around 9%.

My tentative interpretation

My read is that the non-old Horn models are probably more directly interpretable than the old_ Swahili-style models, even though their p-values are lower. The old_ models fit better statistically in the visible top list, but they may be acting as broad composite proxies rather than clean population-historical sources.

The more relevant Horn-specific signal, at least from the visible results, seems to be something like:

• about 45–48% Oromo-like Horn African
• about 43–46% Egyptian/Northeast African-West Eurasian shifted
• about 9% Satsurblia-like / Caucasus-Upper Paleolithic-like proxy

Again, I am not interpreting the ancient references literally. I am treating them as proxy populations that help qpAdm explain allele-sharing patterns.

Questions for the subreddit

Does this kind of model structure make sense for a Horn African / Ethiopian-related result?

Would you trust the higher-p old_ Swahili-style models more, or would you focus more on the lower-p but more Horn-specific ORO1/ORO2 models?

Also, what would you suggest testing next?

Some ideas I had:

• more Ethiopian/Horn sources if available: Amhara, Tigray, Oromo, Somali, Afar, Beta Israel, etc.
• more Nile Valley sources: Kulubnarti, ancient Nubian, Mota-like, different Egyptian periods
• more Levant/Red Sea sources: Israel_MLBA, Jordan_LBA, Lebanon_IA, Natufian-related sources
• testing whether Satsurblia is just acting as a stand-in for broader Caucasus/Iran/Near Eastern ancestry
• using alternative right sets to see how stable the ORO + Egypt + Satsurblia structure is

I would appreciate any feedback on whether these models are meaningful, overfit, or missing better source populations.

Remember the study on highland adaptation of Oromos and Amharas which studied populations of Bale and Semien mountains. The G25 was recently released. The research has the raw dna data of the research subjects in plink format linked here. I managed to merge these samples with my dataset and calcute fst distance as attached.

You can find the article and the raw data here: The genetic architecture of adaptations to high altitude in Ethiopia

https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1003110

Plink: https://www.mediafire.com/file/6vkfxjz0g5gk4bw/ethiop260new.7z/file

Kikuyus usually score 30-45% Bantu and are closer to Dinka’s than to Bantus from the same country ( Luos are also Nilotic while being more Bantu than luhyas). Why are they still considered Bantu if most of their dna isn’t and their traditions are mostly Nilo-Hamitic in origin from mixing with other groups ?.

Checked them to see if they mean business. Used my G25 coordinates. Not bad.

I ran a qpAdm grid for my target, labeled Eurasiatic, using an AADR-based PLINK dataset plus my target sample.

The full initial grid ran 160/160 models, but none of the feasible models passed with the original right set. The best “least bad” direction was repeatedly around:

Tanzania_Swahili-oNearEast / Tanzania_Swahili / Kenya_Swahili + Egyptian / Northeast African / Levant-like sources

The strongest reduced-right result I found was:

Target: Eurasiatic
Left/source model:

• Tanzania_Swahili-oNearEast
• Egypt_AbusirelMeleq_Ptolemaic
• Georgia_Satsurblia_LateUP

Right set:

• Mbuti
• Russia_UstIshim_IUP
• Russia_Kostenki_UP
• Georgia_KotiasKlde_Mesolithic
• Iran_GanjDareh_N
• Israel_Natufian
• Papuan
• Karitiana
• Mixe

This model excludes Han and Morocco_Iberomaurusian from the earlier right set.

qpAdm result:

• p = 0.555
• chisq = 4.91
• dof = 6
• feasible = TRUE

Weights:

• Tanzania_Swahili-oNearEast = 47.1% ± 2.8%
• Egypt_AbusirelMeleq_Ptolemaic = 45.9% ± 6.5%
• Georgia_Satsurblia_LateUP = 7.0% ± 5.1%

My interpretation is that the target is being modeled best as a mix of an East African / Swahili-oNearEast-like proxy, an Egyptian/Northeast-African-like proxy, and a small Caucasus/Upper-Paleolithic West-Eurasian-like correction.

I would not take the labels literally as exact ancestry percentages. These are formal qpAdm proxies, not proof that the ancestry is literally “Swahili,” “Ptolemaic Egyptian,” or “Satsurblia.” The Satsurblia-like component is also small and imprecise, so I would interpret it cautiously.

The right-set diagnostics were interesting: the model improved a lot when Han was removed, and then passed strongly when Morocco_Iberomaurusian was also removed. That suggests the original rejection was not just because of the source model, but also because the right set was exposing tension around East Asian-related and Iberomaurusian/North-African-related contrasts.

Would be interested in feedback from people who work with Horn/East African qpAdm models: does this look like a reasonable reduced-right exploratory model, or would you recommend a stricter/better right set or better Horn/Northeast African proxies?