And the loop closed.
Haplogroup E is the haplogroup that
Left Africa, crossed the Bab al-Mandab with Noah, wandered
Eurasia for some thousands of years, and then—remarkably, almost
Uniquely among the out-of-Africa haplogroups—turned around and
Went back. E is the loop-closer. E is the one that walked
Out of Africa and then walked back in. Every other haplogroup
That left Africa stayed out. D went to Japan and Tibet. C
Went to Australia and the steppe. F went to the Near East
And branched into every other haplogroup. They all went east,
North, west—they never came back. Except E.
E is the
Haplogroup that, having wandered north from Yemen into the
Levant, turned south again. Down through the Sinai Peninsula.
Across the Isthmus of Suez. Into Egypt. Into the Nile Valley.
And from Egypt, across the Sahara (which, at the time of the
E migration, was a wetter and more hospitable place than it
Is today—the "Green Sahara" of the African Humid Period, with
Lakes and rivers and grasslands where there is now sand). E spread
Across North Africa, down into West Africa, across into
East Africa. E became, eventually, the dominant haplogroup
Of most of sub-Saharan Africa.
And this is where the Gaiad's
Story of circular migration finds its completion. Humanity left
Africa, some of it. Wandered. Branched. Populated every continent.
And one branch of the CT lineage—the E branch—came back. The
Circle closed.
And when E came back to Africa, E did
Not find an empty continent. The haplogroups that had never left—
A and B—were still there. A was in the deep African
Interior, carried by the San and Khoisan peoples of the
Kalahari, by the Mbuti of the Congo rainforest, by the most
Ancient lineages of the continent's human population. B was
Also in the deep interior, carried by other forest-dwelling and
Arid-land peoples. And now E—returning from the Eurasian
Branch of the tree, having branched off the DE stem in the
Levant somewhere around sixty thousand years ago, having
Wandered for tens of thousands of years—returned and began to
Spread. And E was more numerous, more aggressive, more tied
To agriculture and to later population expansions, than A or B.
E pushed A and B into smaller and smaller territories.
The San today live in the Kalahari Desert because that is where
E did not reach. The Pygmies today live in the deep forest
Because that is where E did not reach. E took the grasslands,
The river valleys, the rich agricultural land. A and B took
The remnant wild zones. The pattern is familiar: the later, more
Numerous, more aggressive lineage displaces the earlier one. And
The displacement is the story of most of Africa's pre-colonial
Population history.
But the displacement is also the restoration.
Because E, in genetic terms, is African. E's ancestor—the
DE node, the split from the CF branch—was out of Africa, yes,
But E itself, as a distinct haplogroup, developed its identity
In Africa or on its border. The return to Africa is the return
To the continent where the human story began. The loop-closer
Is the haplogroup that says: we are African.
Ninety percent or
More of all sub-Saharan African men today carry E. E is the
Overwhelming majority haplogroup of modern Africa. The Bantu
Peoples—who themselves underwent a great expansion starting around
Three thousand years ago from their homeland in what is now
Cameroon/Nigeria, spreading Bantu-speaking populations across
Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa—are E. Specifically, a
Sub-clade called E-V38 or E1b1a is the Bantu expansion
Signature. The Bantu migration reshaped sub-Saharan Africa the
Way the Yamnaya expansion reshaped Europe—a demographically
Massive, linguistically unifying event that made most of the
Continent speak related languages. The Bantu languages, from
Swahili to Zulu to Kikuyu to Kinyarwanda, are all descended
From the same Proto-Bantu spoken by a relatively small population
In what is now the Cameroon/Nigeria border region around three
Thousand years ago. And the E-V38 haplogroup is the genetic
Signature of that expansion.
In the north, a different sub-clade
Of E dominates. E-M78 and E-M81 are the North African
And Horn of Africa signatures. The Berbers of Morocco, Algeria,
Tunisia, and Libya carry very high frequencies of E-M81. The
Egyptians, both ancient and modern, carry E-M78 and related
Sub-clades. The Ethiopians and Eritreans and Somalis carry their
Own E sub-clades. And these are the populations that would, in
Historical times, participate in the Afroasiatic language family—
Which includes Semitic (overlapping with J), Egyptian, Berber,
Cushitic, Chadic, and Omotic. E is the main African-side
Carrier of Afroasiatic, while J is the main Asian-side carrier.
The two haplogroups between them span the entire Afroasiatic zone,
And the language family's unity across Africa and the Near East
Is held together by the historical contact between these two
Populations. The Egyptian language, specifically, is E-carried.
The Old Kingdom pharaohs were E. The builders of the pyramids
Were E. Every dynasty of ancient Egypt, from the First Dynasty
Through the Ptolemaic period, was populated by men whose Y-chromosomes
Carried some sub-clade of E. And the Egyptian civilization
Is, in the Gaiad's reading, fundamentally an E-civilization. The
First great African civilization of the historical record. The
Civilization that the biblical Israelites will be enslaved in.
The civilization that Akhenaten will briefly monotheize and then
Fall back from. The civilization whose religious imagery—animal-
Headed gods, solar disks, underworld journeys of the soul—will
Influence the religious imagination of every subsequent Mediterranean
Culture. Egypt's E signature is the proof that the loop closed.
The loop closes here. The CT lineage left Africa some sixty or
Seventy thousand years ago. A portion of the lineage, under the
Name E, came back. And the E descendants built Egypt, built
The Bantu expansion, built most of what would become sub-Saharan
African civilization, built the Horn of Africa kingdoms of Aksum
And Ethiopia (the Solomonic dynasty is E-carried), built the
Berber kingdoms of North Africa that would later become part
Of the Islamic caliphate. E is the African haplogroup in the
Historical sense—not A or B, which are older but more
Marginalized, but E, which built the continent's civilizations.
And the circle closes on the genealogical tree.
E re-entered
Africa. E made Egypt. E made the Bantu expansion.
E became the dominant lineage of a continent whose earliest
Haplogroups—A and B—remained in the margins. And somewhere,
At the back of the Gaiad's mind, is the awareness that E is also
Going to appear, in the modern world, in the African-American
Population of the United States. The descendants of the enslaved
Africans who were brought across the Atlantic in the transatlantic
Slave trade are, in substantial majority, carriers of E-sub-clades.
Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass—if we
Could sequence their Y-chromosomes, we would almost certainly
Find E. The modern African-American diaspora is the E
Haplogroup reaching into the Western Hemisphere not via the
Q-carried original migration across Beringia, but via the
Forced middle-passage migration that began in the fifteenth century.
The loop of E closed when E returned to Africa. And then,
Millennia later, a cruel second loop would reopen it: E men taken
From Africa and sold into slavery in the Americas, where their
Descendants would build, under conditions of unimaginable cruelty,
The labor base on which much of the modern Western economy was
Constructed. That is a later chapter. Much later. But the E
Haplogroup is the connective tissue between the deep past of Africa
And the modern history of the African diaspora.
For now, E is the loop-closer. E is the return to the
Continent of origin. E is the haplogroup whose signature is
Present in every African civilization of the historical record.
E is Egypt. E is the Bantu. E is the Berber.
E is the Ethiopian emperor. E is the shamba-farmer and the
Swahili trader and the Hausa merchant and the Zulu warrior.
And E is, above all, the proof that the great branching tree
Of human migration was not one-way. The door swung both ways.
The haplogroup went out, and the haplogroup came back. The
Continent that sent humanity out into the world also received
A portion of humanity home. The loop closed. The circle was
Complete. And the human species, as a Y-chromosomal story, came
To be distributed across every continent and every climate, with
Every major haplogroup represented in multiple places, and with
E closing the loop by carrying a branch of the out-of-Africa
Lineage back to the continent it had left.
E. Africa. The return. The loop. Stand.
And with this chapter, the haplogroup sequence is complete.
Fourteen chapters. Fourteen haplogroups. One great branching tree.
The human story as a genetic genealogy is, for now, told. The
Chapters that follow will return to Register B—named people, named
Places, named civilizations. Abraham and Moses and David and
Homer and Confucius and Buddha. The historical age begins.
But beneath it, always, is the haplogroup substrate. Every named
Person of the following chapters carries, in his or her body, one
Of the haplogroups of these opening chapters. The body remembers
Where it came from. The Y-chromosome is the memory. And every
Subsequent chapter, however far from the genetic register it seems
To stray, is another chapter of the haplogroup story, told in a
Different register.
Haplogroup E. Africa. The circle closes.
The branches have branched. The tree is complete. The human family
Has filled the earth. And now—named figures. Named civilizations.
The historical age of the Gaiad begins.