The Gabra ( Oromo:Gabbra) are a native Oromo clan who mainly inhabit the

Moyale Moyale is a market town on the border between Ethiopia and Kenya, and is the administrative centre for two Ethiopian woredas, Moyale of Oromia Region and Moyale of Somali Region. Moyale is the main border post on the Nairobi-Addis Ababa road, ...

and

Marsabit Marsabit is a town in the northern Marsabit County in Kenya. It is situated in the former Eastern Province and is almost surrounded by the Marsabit National Park. The town is located east of the centre of the East African Rift at an elevation o ...

regions of northern

Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

and the highlands of southern Ethiopia they mostly practice Islam and as their main religion but maintain mandatory cultural practice.

Genetics

According to Y-DNA analysis by Hirbo (2011), around 82.6% of Gabra in Kenya carry the paternal

E1b1b E-M215, also known as E1b1b and formerly E3b, is a major human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. It is a division of the macro-haplogroup E-M96, which is defined by the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutation M215. In other words, it is one of ...

haplogroup, with most belonging to the V12 or E3b1a subclade (58.6%). This lineage is most common among local

Afroasiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...

-speaking populations. The remaining Gabra individuals bear the T/K2 (3.4%) and J haplogroups (3.4%), which are both also associated with Afroasiatic speakers, as well as the E3*/E-P2 clade (3.4%) and E2a lineage (3.4%). Maternally, Hirbo (2011) observed that approximately 58% of the Gabra samples carried derivatives of the Eurasian macrohaplogroups M and N. Of these mtDNA lineages, the M1 subclade was most common, with around 22.58% of the Gabra individuals belonging to it. The remaining ~42% of the analysed Gabra bore various subclades of the Africa-centered macrohaplogroup L. Of these mtDNA lineages, the most frequently borne clade was L3 (19.36%), followed by the L0a (9.68%), L4 (9.68%), and L2 (6.45%) haplogroups. The Gabra's

autosomal An autosome is any chromosome that is not a sex chromosome. The members of an autosome pair in a diploid cell have the same morphology, unlike those in allosome, allosomal (sex chromosome) pairs, which may have different structures. The DNA in au ...

DNA has been examined in a comprehensive study by Tishkoff et al. (2009) on the genetic affiliations of various populations in Africa. According to Bayesian clustering analysis, the Gabra generally grouped with other Afroasiatic-speaking populations inhabiting Northern Kenya.

References

*Tablino, Paul (1999): ''The Gabra: Camel Nomads of Northern Kenya.'' *Kassam, Aneesa (2006):
The People of the Five "Drums": Gabra Ethnohistorical Origins
" in ''Ethnohistory.'' 53(1):173-193; (PDF) *Wood, John (1999): ''When Men Are Women: Manhood Among Gabra Nomads of East Africa.'' University of Wisconsin Press.

Genetics

References

Further reading