1) Biocultural evolution of populations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. Genetic variation in populations located throughout the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula is analyzed in order to test hypotheses concerning migrations across the Red Sea and the evolution of language families and food production methods.  This region of the world is known to be important for the emergence of anatomically modern humans, but it is also important for more recent evolution.  Specifically, we are interested in determining the origin and directionality of migrations across the Red Sea and the evolution of the Semitic language family. Mitochondrial, X and Y, and autosomal genes and variants are assayed in order to address these questions.  Specific regions of interest include Ethiopia, Eritrea, Oman and Yemen.  Additional countries will be included as the project develops.  Postdoctoral fellow Ryan Raaum and graduate student Amy Non are beginning analyses of mitochondrial and nuclear markers of Semitic-speaking populations.  Graduate student Drew Kitchen is also conducting a phylogenetic analysis (maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood) of lexical characters from Semitic languages in order to directly compare genetic and linguistic data.  Collaboration with Steve Brandt (University of Florida), Peter Schmidt (University of Florida) and Juris Zarins (Southwest Missouri State University).  This work is supported by NSF grant BCS-0518530, entitled "Human dispersals out of Africa: Mitochondrial and Y chromosomal genetic analysis of Eritrean and Omani populations".