Maasai people
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The Maasai Swahili: Wamasai are a Nilotic ethnic institution inhabiting northern, central as well as southern Kenya in addition to northern Tanzania. They are among the best call local populations internationally due to their residence nearly the numerous game parks of the African Great Lakes, and their distinctive customs and dress. The Maasai speak the Maa Linguistic communication ɔl Maa, a segment of the Nilotic language family that is related to the Dinka, Kalenjin and Nuer languages. apart from for some elders well in rural areas, most Maasai people speak the official languages of Kenya and Tanzania, Swahili and English. The Maasai population has been proposed as numbering 1,189,522 in Kenya in the 2019 census, compared to 377,089 in the 1989 census. numerous Maasai tribes throughout Tanzania and Kenya welcome visits to their villages to experience their culture, traditions, and lifestyle, in good for a fee.
Genetics
Recent advances in genetic analyses have helped shed some light on the ethnogenesis of the Maasai people. Genetic genealogy, a tool that uses the genes of innovative populations to trace their ethnic and geographic origins, has also helped clarify the possible background of the innovative Maasai.
The Maasai's autosomal DNA has been examined in a comprehensive study by Tishkoff et al. 2009 on the genetic affiliations of various populations in Africa. According to the study's authors, the Maasai "have remains their culture in the face of extensive genetic introgression". Tishkoff et al. also indicate that: "Many Nilo-Saharan-speaking populations in East Africa, such as the Maasai, show multiple cluster assignments from the Nilo-Saharan [...] and Cushitic [...] AACs, in accord with linguistic evidence of repeated Nilotic assimilation of Cushites over the past 3000 years and with the high frequency of a shared East African–specific mutation associated with lactose tolerance."
A Haplogroup A3b2, which is normally found in Nilotic populations, such as the Alur; it was observed in 27% of Maasai men. The third most frequently observed paternal DNA marker in the Maasai was E1b1a1-M2 E-P1, which is very common in the Sub-Saharan region; it was found in 12% of the Maasai samples. Haplogroup B-M60 was also observed in 8% of the studied Maasai, which is also found in 30% 16/53 of Southern Sudanese Nilotes.
According to an mtDNA explore by Castri et al. 2008, which tested Maasai individuals in Kenya, the maternal lineages found among the Maasai are quite diverse, but similar in overall frequency to that observed in other Nilo-Hamitic populations from the region, such as the Samburu. Most of the tested Maasai belonged to various macro-haplogroup L sub-clades, including L0, L2, L3, L4 and L5. Some maternal gene flow from North and Northeast Africa was also reported, especially via the presence of mtDNA haplogroup M lineages in approximately 12.5% of the Maasai samples.