Modern and colonial-era conceptions of the mediaeval East African culture are complicated by new study.
This article first appeared on The Conversation and is reprinted here with permission via a Creative Commons licence.
THE MEDIAEVAL ERA’S LEGACY Being the official language of Kenya, Tanzania, and even inland nations like Uganda and Rwanda, which are far from the Indian Ocean beach where the culture formed about two millennia ago, speaks volumes about how highly regarded Swahili civilisation is throughout East Africa.
Its elaborate stone and coral villages bordered 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of the coast, and its traders were crucial to the prosperous commerce between Africa and places like Arabia, Persia, India, Southeast Asia, and China that were on the other side of the ocean.
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The Swahili people converted to Islam at the turn of the second century, and some of its opulent mosques can still be seen in the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Lamu in Kenya and Kilwa in Tanzania.
After the Portuguese began colonising in the 1500s, sovereignty was eventually transferred to the Omanis (1730–1964), the Germans in Tanganyika (1884–1918), and the British in Kenya and Uganda (1884–1963). Coastal populations were included into the contemporary nation-states of Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Madagascar after gaining independence.
Over the course of many centuries, the Swahili island hamlet of Kilwa in modern-day Tanzania expanded to become a significant coastal metropolis and commercial hub.
Over the course of many centuries, the Swahili island hamlet of Kilwa in modern-day Tanzania expanded to become a significant coastal metropolis and commercial hub. THE HISTORY/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA THE CONVERSATION/GETTY IMAGES
Therefore, who were the Swahili people and where did they originate? Ironically, non-Swahilis have had a major role in shaping the history of the Swahili language, a dilemma faced by many other marginalised and colonised peoples who are the contemporary offspring of civilizations with illustrious histories.
We’ve recently released the first ancient DNA sequences from Swahili civilisation members, working with a group of 42 partners, including 17 African researchers and several Swahili speakers. Our findings don’t only confirm the theories that have been put out in political, historical, or archaeological circles. Instead, they all clash and become more complicated.
Midway through the 20th century, Western archaeologists emphasised the ties between mediaeval Swahili and Persia and Arabia, at times implying that their spectacular accomplishments could not have been made by Africans.
Post-colonial academics disagreed with such viewpoint, including one of us (Kusimba). By concentrating on imported items at Swahili sites, earlier studies exaggerated the significance of non-African influences. They downplayed the bulk of products manufactured in the region as well as what they showed about the continent’s inventiveness and industry.
Kilwa Kisiwani’s ruins may be seen on the modern Tanzanian shore. The mediaeval port city served as one of the most significant commerce hubs for the Indian Ocean network for many years.
Kilwa Kisiwani’s ruins may be seen on the modern Tanzanian shore. The mediaeval port city served as one of the most significant commerce hubs for the Indian Ocean network for many years. A. S. M. PATEL
However, it is oversimplified to categorise Swahili ancestry as predominantly African or non-African. In actuality, imperialist prejudices are the cause of both opinions.
The reality is that even after the British left in the middle of the 20th century, colonisation of the East African coast persisted. Africans inherited and continued many colonial institutions. Swahili people continued to be politically and economically underdeveloped, sometimes to the same extent as they had been under foreign domination, while contemporary nation-states emerged with governments dominated by inland populations.
In order to alleviate the marginalisation of populations of Swahili ancestry, archaeological study has been conducted for decades in conjunction with the local population. Our team conducted focused digs at specific areas, including homes, businesses, and cemeteries, while also consulting oral histories, ethnoarchaeology, and systematic surveys. We uncovered goods like pottery, metal, and beads along with food, residential, and industrial remnants and imported items like porcelain, glass, glass beads, and more by working with local academics and elders. Together, they exhibited the Swahili people’s cosmopolitan Indian Ocean background and the intricacy of daily life.
Swahilis have preserved matrilineal family burial grounds for years, like this one in Faza Town, Lamu County, which was captured on camera in 2012.
Swahilis have preserved matrilineal family burial grounds for years, like this one in Faza Town, Lamu County, which was captured on camera in 2012. BY-ND/VIA, CHAPURUKHA KUSIMBA THE DISCUSSION
One of the most intriguing possibilities has always been ancient DNA analysis. It provided a counterbalance to narratives imposed from outside by offering the promise of utilising scientific techniques to learn how mediaeval people are linked to previous groups and to people today. This type of analysis was before just a pipe dream. But after a technical breakthrough in 2010, there have been more than 10,000 ancient people whose genome-scale data has been revealed.
We worked with local communities to determine the best practices for treating human remains in line with traditional Muslim religious sensitivities. Cemetery excavations, sampling, and reburial of human remains were carried out in one season, rather than dragging on indefinitely.
Our team generated data from more than 80 people, mostly elite individuals buried in the rich centers of the stone towns. We will need to wait for future work to understand whether their genetic inheritance differed from people without their high status.
Contradicting what we had expected, the ancestry of the people we analyzed was not largely African or Asian. Instead, these backgrounds were intertwined, each contributing about half of the DNA of the people we analyzed.
A detailed line drawing captures the way one person’s remains were discovered during cemetery excavation at Mtwapa in 1996.
A detailed line drawing captures the way one person’s remains were discovered during cemetery excavation at Mtwapa in 1996. ERIC WERT, CC BY-ND/VIA THE CONVERSATION
We found that Asian ancestry in the medieval individuals came largely from Persia (modern-day Iran), and that Asians and African ancestors began mixing at least 1,000 years ago. This picture is almost a perfect match to the Kilwa Chronicle, the oldest narrative told by the Swahili people themselves, and one almost all earlier scholars had dismissed as a kind of fairy tale.
Another surprise was that, mixed in with the Persians, Indians were a significant proportion of the earliest migrants. Patterns in the DNA also suggest that, after the transition to Omani control in the 18th century, Asian immigrants became increasingly Arabian. Later, there was intermarriage with people whose DNA was similar to others in Africa. As a result, some modern people who identify as Swahili have inherited relatively little DNA from medieval peoples like those we analyzed, while others have more.
One of the most revealing patterns our genetic analysis identified was that the overwhelming majority of male-line ancestors came from Asia, while female-line ancestors came from Africa. This finding must reflect a history of Persian males traveling to the coast and having children with local women.
One of us (Reich) initially hypothesized that these patterns might reflect Asian men forcibly marrying African women, because similar genetic signatures in other populations are known to reflect such violent histories. But this theory does not account for what is known about the culture, and there is a more likely explanation.
Traditional Swahili society places much economic and social power in the hands of women.
Traditional Swahili society is similar to many other East African Bantu cultures in being substantially matriarchal: It places much economic and social power in the hands of women. In traditional Swahili societies even today, ownership of stone houses often passes down the female line. And there is a long recorded history of female rulers, beginning with Mwana Mkisi, ruler of Mombasa, as recorded by the Portuguese as early as the 1500s, down to Sabani binti Ngumi, ruler of Mikindani in Tanzania as late as 1886.
Our best guess is that Persian men allied with and married into elite families and adopted local customs to enable them to be more successful traders. The fact that their children passed down the language of their mothers, and that encounters with traditionally patriarchal Persians and Arabians and conversion to Islam did not change the coast’s African matriarchal traditions, confirms that this was not a simple history of African women being exploited. African women retained critical aspects of their culture and passed it down for many generations.
How do these results gleaned from ancient DNA restore heritage for the Swahili? Objective knowledge about the past has great potential to help marginalized peoples. By making it possible to challenge and overturn narratives imposed from the outside for political or economic ends, scientific research provides a meaningful and underappreciated tool for righting colonial wrongs.
Chapurukha Kusimba is a professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida and David Reichis a professor of genetics and of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University.
