Khaled K Abu-Amero; Ali Hellani; Ana M González; Jose M Larruga; Vicente M Cabrera; Peter A Underhill

“ Saudi Arabia differentiates from other Arabian Peninsula countries by a higher presence of J2-M172 lineages. It is significantly different from Yemen mainly due to a comparative reduction of sub-Saharan Africa E1-M123 and Levantine J1-M267 male lineages. Around 14% of the Saudi Arabia Y-chromosome pool is typical of African biogeographic ancestry, 17% arrived to the area from the East across Iran, while the remainder 69% could be considered of direct or indirect Levantine ascription. ”

“ Y-chromosome STR diversity was used to obtain age estimates in Saudi Arabia for the most frequent J1-M267 haplogroup. In order to compare these estimations with other Arabian peninsula regions, we re-calculated the J1-M267 ages in UAE, Qatar and Yemen using the STR data already published for these countries [11] . STR haplotypes found in Saudi Arabia are listed in Additional file 1. Divergence times obtained using mean variance and coalescence methods are presented in Table 3. Values obtained using coalescence resulted always larger than those based on variance. ”

“ More recent field work has sampled new Palaeolithic sites in Oman, under covering lithic assemblages with typological affinities to industries in the Levant, India and the Horn of Africa, suggesting there were a series of hunter-gathers range expansions into southern Arabia from all three refugia over the last quarter of a million years [6] . However, there are few reliable age estimates for these industries. ”

“ Statistical analysis
To make comparisons reliable, haplogroup frequencies were normalized to the same phylogenetic level as the sample in the published studies with the most unrefined haplogroup resolution. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) and haplogroup frequency pairwise FST genetic distances [20] were performed using the ARLEQUIN 2000 package [21] . Principal component (PC) analysis and two-dimensional graphics were carried out using the SPSS statistical package 11.5 (SPSS, Inc) . ”

“ Implications for modern human origins, behaviour and dispersals”, Antiquity 77: 671–684 ↑ Rose, J, “The Arabian Corridor Migration Model: archaeological evidence for hominin dispersals into Oman during the Middle and Upper Pleistocene”, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 37: 1–19 1 2 3 4 Abu-Amero, KK ”