Medieval Swahilis and Persians paired up 1,000 years ago in East Africa, ancient DNA reveals

[Judi Lynn]

1. Largest Ever Analysis Of Ancient African DNA Reveals Origin Myth Was True All Along

We all like to think we're descended from noble exotic adventurers. If you're from the Swahili Coast, you might be right.

DR. KATIE SPALDING
Freelance Writer

Published
March 31, 2023



Remains of the medieval Great Mosque of Kilwa, in Tanzania on the Swahili coast. Image credit: UNESCO/CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

“Medieval history” often brings up images of knights in shining armor, rampaging crusaders, and dying horribly from common and preventable causes. Far away from all those peculiarly disgusting Europeans, though, on what we now know as the Swahili Coast of Eastern Africa, there was something pretty amazing going on – as a new study reveals.

“The findings were very eye-opening,” said Jeffrey Fleisher, professor of anthropology at Rice University and a senior author on the study, in a statement. “African traders were fostering different types of alliances with Persian merchants during the early second millennium, probably by marrying off daughters and building their family connections.”

For a century now, various scholars have debated the extent to which Swahili culture has been influenced by outside sources – with evidence pointing in multiple different directions. Adding to this confusion was the influence of more than 500 years of colonization in the area – a “profoundly difficult history” that is still a major problem today, pointed out David Reich, professor of genetics in the Blatavnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University.
“The story of Swahili origins has been molded almost entirely by non-Swahili people,” he added in a statement.

So, at first, the accepted wisdom – at least outside of the Swahili Coast itself – was that such an impressive civilization, with its coral-stoned mosques and multicultural towns, must have been imported by some foreign ruling class. In the past few decades, though, the predominant view has shifted to one in which the local culture was mainly homegrown, with only shallower impacts from foreign cultures being imported over the centuries.

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/largest-ever-analysis-of-ancient-african-dna-reveals-origin-myth-was-true-all-along-68246