scholarly journals Genetic legacy of state centralization in the Kuba Kingdom of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

2018 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 593-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy van Dorp ◽  
Sara Lowes ◽  
Jonathan L. Weigel ◽  
Naser Ansari-Pour ◽  
Saioa López ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Central Province ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Genetic Patterns ◽  
Genetic Impact ◽  
Genome Wide Data ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Centralization

Few phenomena have had as profound or long-lasting consequences in human history as the emergence of large-scale centralized states in the place of smaller scale and more local societies. This study examines a fundamental, and yet unexplored, consequence of state formation: its genetic legacy. We studied the genetic impact of state centralization during the formation of the eminent precolonial Kuba Kingdom of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the 17th century. We analyzed genome-wide data from over 690 individuals sampled from 27 different ethnic groups from the Kasai Central Province of the DRC. By comparing genetic patterns in the present-day Kuba, whose ancestors were part of the Kuba Kingdom, with those in neighboring non-Kuba groups, we show that the Kuba today are more genetically diverse and more similar to other groups in the region than expected, consistent with the historical unification of distinct subgroups during state centralization. We also found evidence of genetic mixing dating to the time of the Kingdom at its most prominent. Using this unique dataset, we characterize the genetic history of the Kasai Central Province and describe the historic late wave of migrations into the region that contributed to a Bantu-like ancestry component found across large parts of Africa today. Taken together, we show the power of genetics to evidence events of sociopolitical importance and highlight how DNA can be used to better understand the behaviors of both people and institutions in the past.

Studying National Commemoration and Political Celebrations in Africa: The Online Archive African Independence Days

2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. vii-xxviii
Author(s):  
Marie-Christin Gabriel ◽  
Carola Lentz
Keyword(s):  
Burkina Faso ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Online Archive ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

AbstractThe Department of Anthropology and African Studies (ifeas) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz hosts a comprehensive archive on African Independence Day celebrations. Created in 2010, the archive is one of the outcomes of a large comparative research project on African national days directed by Carola Lentz. It offers unique insights into practices of as well as debates on national commemoration and political celebrations in Africa. The archive holds more than 28,000 images, including photographs, newspaper articles, documents, and objects from twelve African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, and Tanzania. It primarily consists of an online photo and newspaper archive (https://bildarchiv.uni-mainz.de/AUJ/; https://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb07-ifeas-eng/departmental-archives/online-archive-african-independence-days/); some of the material is also stored in the physical archive on African Independence Days at ifeas as well as in the department's ethnographic collection (https://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb07-ifeas-eng/ethnographic-collection/). Most of the material concerns recent celebrations, but the collection has been complemented by some documentation of earlier festivities. Archives hold many stories while they also have a story to tell in their own right. This article discusses both aspects. It first traces the history of the Online Archive African Independence Days at ifeas. It then provides an overview of the different categories of material stored in the archive and tells a few of the many stories that the photos, texts and objects contain. We hope to demonstrate that the archive holds a wealth of sources that can be mined for studies on national commemoration and political celebrations in Africa, and, more generally, on practices and processes of nation-building and state-making.

scholarly journals Ancient genomic time transect from the Central Asian Steppe unravels the history of the Scythians

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
pp. eabe4414
Author(s):  
Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone ◽  
Elmira Khussainova ◽  
Nurzhibek Kahbatkyzy ◽  
Lyazzat Musralina ◽  
Maria A. Spyrou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Gene Pools ◽  
Social Rules ◽  
Eurasian Steppe ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Genome Wide Data ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium

The Scythians were a multitude of horse-warrior nomad cultures dwelling in the Eurasian steppe during the first millennium BCE. Because of the lack of first-hand written records, little is known about the origins and relations among the different cultures. To address these questions, we produced genome-wide data for 111 ancient individuals retrieved from 39 archaeological sites from the first millennia BCE and CE across the Central Asian Steppe. We uncovered major admixture events in the Late Bronze Age forming the genetic substratum for two main Iron Age gene-pools emerging around the Altai and the Urals respectively. Their demise was mirrored by new genetic turnovers, linked to the spread of the eastern nomad empires in the first centuries CE. Compared to the high genetic heterogeneity of the past, the homogenization of the present-day Kazakhs gene pool is notable, likely a result of 400 years of strict exogamous social rules.

scholarly journals The Kilwa Massacre: Critical Analysis for a Southern Criminology

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 135-147
Author(s):  
Kim Lah ◽  
Anthony Collins
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Criminal Violence ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Systems

This paper explores the 2004 Kilwa massacre in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) through a decolonial perspective, explaining how the massacre is situated within the history of colonial power and global capitalist relations. As such, the convergence of mining and political interests that created the context in which this violence was possible is examined, rather than the specific human rights abuses committed during the massacre. This approach highlights how such acts of violence are an ongoing factor of colonial and postcolonial exploitation, as well as the difficulties in holding the responsible parties accountable. This investigation shows the importance of developing a decolonial Southern criminology that contextualizes human rights abuses within local and international systems of power and locates acts of criminal violence within the broader networks of structural violence.

scholarly journals The genomic footprint of coastal earthquake uplift

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1930) ◽  
pp. 20200712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elahe Parvizi ◽  
Ceridwen I. Fraser ◽  
Ludovic Dutoit ◽  
Dave Craw ◽  
Jonathan M. Waters
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Habitat Choice ◽  
Natural Experiments ◽  
Ecological Constraints ◽  
Dispersal Capacity ◽  
Interspecific Differences ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Genetic Patterns

Theory suggests that catastrophic earth-history events can drive rapid biological evolution, but empirical evidence for such processes is scarce. Destructive geological events such as earthquakes can represent large-scale natural experiments for inferring such evolutionary processes. We capitalized on a major prehistoric (800 yr BP) geological uplift event affecting a southern New Zealand coastline to test for the lasting genomic impacts of disturbance. Genome-wide analyses of three co-distributed keystone kelp taxa revealed that post-earthquake recolonization drove the evolution of novel, large-scale intertidal spatial genetic ‘sectors’ which are tightly linked to geological fault boundaries. Demographic simulations confirmed that, following widespread extirpation, parallel expansions into newly vacant habitats rapidly restructured genome-wide diversity. Interspecific differences in recolonization mode and tempo reflect differing ecological constraints relating to habitat choice and dispersal capacity among taxa. This study highlights the rapid and enduring evolutionary effects of catastrophic ecosystem disturbance and reveals the key role of range expansion in reshaping spatial genetic patterns.

Belgian Rule and its Afterlives: Colonialism, Developmentalism, and Mobutism in the Tanganyika District, Southeastern DR-Congo, 1885–1985

2017 ◽  
Vol 92 ◽  
pp. 47-68
Author(s):  
Reuben Loffman
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Dr Congo ◽  
Unfree Labor ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractThe arrival of Belgian rule in the late nineteenth century initiated significant changes in the labor history of Tanganyika, a province in the southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as well the discursive regimes used to legitimize these transformations. After the colonial conquests, unfree labor was justified by paternalistic rather than mythical discourses. Although unfree labor was less common in the postcolonial period, the state forced farmers to sell crops at low prices and build roads for no remuneration. In the Cold War context, the language and practice of developmentalism mediated the coercive practices of the independent Congolese state (known as Zaïre, 1971–1997). The floundering Zaïrian government expanded its presence in Tanganyika due to its partnership with USAID. USAID's rhetoric and practice was influenced by a “bottom up” approach to agricultural production, but the cuts to its funding in the 1980s meant it struggled to soften Mobutu's coercive administration.

scholarly journals The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 363 (6432) ◽  
pp. 1230-1234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iñigo Olalde ◽  
Swapan Mallick ◽  
Nick Patterson ◽  
Nadin Rohland ◽  
Vanessa Villalba-Mouco ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Y Chromosomes ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Genome Wide Data ◽  
History Of ◽  
Genetic Substructure

We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula. We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming. We reveal sporadic contacts between Iberia and North Africa by ~2500 BCE and, by ~2000 BCE, the replacement of 40% of Iberia’s ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with Steppe ancestry. We show that, in the Iron Age, Steppe ancestry had spread not only into Indo-European–speaking regions but also into non-Indo-European–speaking ones, and we reveal that present-day Basques are best described as a typical Iron Age population without the admixture events that later affected the rest of Iberia. Additionally, we document how, beginning at least in the Roman period, the ancestry of the peninsula was transformed by gene flow from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.

Exit, Voice, and the Fate of the German Democratic Republic: An Essay in Conceptual History

1993 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert O. Hirschman
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Special Shape ◽  
Public Protest ◽  
History Of

The revolutionary events of 1989 in Eastern Europe took a special shape in the German Democratic Republic: large-scale flights of citizens to the Federal Republic of Germany combined with increasingly powerful mass demonstrations in the major cities to bring down the communist regime. This conjunction of private emigration and public protest contrasts with the way these distinct responses to discontent had been previously experienced, primarily as alternatives. The forty-year history of the German Democratic Republic thus represents a particularly rich theater of operation for the concepts of “exit” and “voice,” which the author had introduced in his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970). The events of 1989 are scrutinized in some detail as they trace a more complex pattern of interaction than had been found to prevail in most previous studies.

scholarly journals A dynamic 6,000-year genetic history of Eurasia’s Eastern Steppe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Choongwon Jeong ◽  
Ke Wang ◽  
Shevan Wilkin ◽  
William Timothy Treal Taylor ◽  
Bryan K. Miller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Population History ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Genetic History ◽  
Nomadic Pastoralists ◽  
Eurasian Steppe ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Genome Wide Data ◽  
History Of

SummaryThe Eastern Eurasian Steppe was home to historic empires of nomadic pastoralists, including the Xiongnu and the Mongols. However, little is known about the region’s population history. Here we reveal its dynamic genetic history by analyzing new genome-wide data for 214 ancient individuals spanning 6,000 years. We identify a pastoralist expansion into Mongolia ca. 3000 BCE, and by the Late Bronze Age, Mongolian populations were biogeographically structured into three distinct groups, all practicing dairy pastoralism regardless of ancestry. The Xiongnu emerged from the mixing of these populations and those from surrounding regions. By comparison, the Mongols exhibit much higher Eastern Eurasian ancestry, resembling present-day Mongolic-speaking populations. Our results illuminate the complex interplay between genetic, sociopolitical, and cultural changes on the Eastern Steppe.

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