don’t you know, all black people look the same?

can you recommend readings on the subject?

i don’t remember anymore where i read this. the falling out between the shona and matabele factions is well known so i’m sure you could find stuff on google books.

I’m assuming you’re not from the region and would disagree with this. And to say that the groups were “homogenous” prior to colonialization is pretty naive. What about socially homogenous? The RPF is pushing this version of history on everyone because they know that minority rule never lasts long. One can make a philosophical argument for why it’s better for Rwandans to believe that ethnicity was a colonial invention (I’m open to that), but it’s probably not reality.

I’m not sure about this. The physical resemblance between Kikuyus and Tutsis seems very small to me. I have lived in both countries for years, but more so in Kenya than Rwanda. First of all, Kikuyus, on average, are not slim and tall (I understand that not all Tutsi are like Kagame). They are probably at or below the average Kenyan height. It’s true that they (not all them but on average – and especially their women) do have prominent foreheads, similar to the one on Kagame. They also have a fairer complexion than Luos, Luhyas, Kalenjins, Masais and others. However, there are other ethnic groups in Kenya with closer physical resemblance to Tutsis than Kikuyus, especially morphologie-wise: Kalenjin and Masai

would you be a farmer, clearing out the land, making its fruit increase, your calloused hand raising up the sweet corn out of the black earth, living with woman and children in an orderly household…or would you be a pastoralist, in your youth you would don the wolfskin and haunt the mountain crags and with your companions raid the lush valleys, stealing many fine cattle and women and barrels of grain and oil, with the smell of blood always in your nose, like a pack after a hunt gathers around a black lake and their red tongues lap at the waters

Not entirely. Pastoralists overcome peasants politically, sometimes culturally, but rarely demographically. Demographically, I think the peasants almost always win.

Good research and true conclusion. Mythology and history rewriting is the first signal of political identity change, since past facts must be consistent with present identities. This rewriting is not arbitrary but natural: political identity change follows underlying society change.

An example, besides hutus and tutsis, is the Duchy of Brabant. During all the Ancient Régime agricultural society, language diferences existed but did not generate political identities. Flemings and waloons from the duchy would fight together against flemings from the County of Flanders, or waloons from Hainaut. In today industrial / post industrial Belgium, the political identity divide is linguistic. And (I suppose) the rewriting is at place.

Regarding nobility pls let me clarify one point. French and european nobilities had a scale of values that measured four parameters: origin and antiquity (la “race”, “l´ancieneté”, “uradel” in german), hereditary property (le “patrimoine”) , pedigree / marriage (les “alliances”) and finally the meritocratic parameter, actions made during life (les “illustrations”, if possible military). The four had to be balanced in a lineage. The first was the more important because it was time asymmetric and caused an important divide in noble lineages. Balanced “uradels”, considered themselves an elite within nobility and were very conscient of the value of this: they still intermarried until recently (first half of XX century). Also unbalanced unpoverished “uradels” exchanging it for patrimoine with unbalanced new rich lineages.
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The Maasai are a Nilotic speaking population, but they’re not necessarily biologically “Nilotic” as is the case with the Dinka and other populations from Southern Sudan. The Maasai are a mixed group, as are Rwandans/Burudians, and therefore explaining why the two populations cluster together… in between West Africans and Semitic/Cushitic speaking populations from the Horn of Africa. It would have had been naive for us to assume that the Tutsi would cluster in the vicinity of the Oromo or Somali, nevertheless the Amhara and Tigray, given the fact that the Tutsi’s Afrasan speaking ancestors would have logically exchanged gene-flow with populations in SE Africa… even before actually reaching the Great Lakes region.

In my opinion, the significant Cushitic component found among Rwandans expanded into the region by way of Tanzania, from a population similar to that of the Iraqw. This ancestral SE African Cushitic population then likely originated and migrated from the vicinity of southern Ethiopia; this ancestral Horn of African population was likely ancestral to populations similar to the Borana, Gabre, and other Oromo peoples, more so than the eastern Somali and the northern Agaw (and their pseudo-Semitic cousins, the Amhara and Tigray). Further research on SE African genetics will likely confirm the predominant “Oromo-like” affiliation of the Cushitic admixture found among Bantu, Nilo-Saharan, Afrasan, and Sandawe SE Africans. The other Cushitic affiliation in SE Africa is probably the more “eastern orientated” component found among the Somali; but such ancestry is probably limited to the likes of the Rendille, El Molo, and the Somali themselves.

The Nilotic admixture in Rwanda/Burundi is either “indigenous” to the Great Lakes region and/or came by way of Southern Sudan via Uganda, in a separate wave of gene-flow into the region… I highly doubt that the population that introduced Cushitic admixture in the region also introduced the aforementioned Nilotic affiliation. Uganada, geographically, is roughly split between Niger-Kordofanian and Nilotic speaking populations. And many of the Great Lakes communities in Kenya are also Nilotic speaking, including for example the Kalenjin. These populations are not recent migrants, as are the Maa and Turkana speaking communities. I currently favor the former scenerio, in which Nilotic speakers in the Great Lakes region where eventually absorbed by incoming Bantu and Cushitic speaking populations. Both the Luhya and “Bantu Kenyans” from Tishkoff et al 2009 posses “Nilo-Saharan” admixture at ~15-20%.

^ Tanzanian Bantu groups lack the Nilotic component, while Great Lakes and further eastward Kenyan samples do… probably due to different reasons, indigenous and intrusive.

***Unsurprisingly this individual is shifted somewhat toward the Luhya in the PCA, further confirmation of their Hutu ancestry.***

I don’t think that’s the most logical explanation. The Tutsi are a Bantu speaking population, while the Maasai are a Nilo-Saharan speaking population… while both possess significant Cushitic ancestry, they possess varying levels of Bantu and Nilo-Saharan admixture. Tutsi’s being Bantu are going to possess more Niger-Kordofanian ancestry, while the opposite is true with the Maasai. The fact that his grandfather is Hutu is likely insignificant in this context, given that even the most Cushitic admixed Tutsi likely has a stronger pull to the Luhya or Central African than they do with Southern Sudan. And I’m willing to bet that a significant portion of the Hutu population cluster closer to this Tutsi sample than the Luhya do… given the fact that many Hutus have Tutsi ancestry, in contrast to vise-versa; Hutu men-Tutsi women unions were common in Rwanda-Burundi up until recently, and in these cases the “mixed” children of these unions would be classified as “Hutu” no matter their Tutsi ancestry. Class identity is transmitted via the father.

The aforementioned many explain why the Maasai are slightly closer to the Horn of Africa in comparison to the Tutsi, given that the Nilo-Saharan component is naturally closer to the Cushitic component in contrast to the Niger-Kordofanian component.

side note: this particular Hutu grandparent while being “Hutu” looks remarkably “Nilotic” and could easily pass in the Sudan.

As for the science of this, I’d be interested to hear where you got your data from. It seems to me that despite your valiant attempts to retain a scientific standard, I think you deviate some with assumption and expectations that affect your simulations.

That being said, this is certainly an interesting topic of both discussion and research. I’d be interested in hearing more about it if you do further work.

That’s an interesting possibility, but this admixture run didn’t split the non-hunter-gatherer Africans that well. In one of your previous analyses on East Africa you managed to get a pretty accurate ‘Afro-Asiatic/Cushitic’ and ‘Nilotic’ cluster. Is it possible that you could run this Tutsi sample using the same admixture settings as in the ‘Flavors of Afro-Asiatic’ blog post to see if he carries a significant Nilotic component or is mainly Bantu & Cushitic derived?

@Moreno: Basically that’s what he;s saying. Only that all the three groups somehow overlapped and over time came to be more of social castes than biologically meaningful groups.

The Maasai were collectively around…

~50% Cushitic
~25% Nilo-Saharan
~25% Niger-Kordofanian

The Luhya were…

~78% Niger-Kordofanian
~15% Nilo-Saharan
~7% Cushitic

The Kikuya from Tishoff et al. and the Hema samples from elsewhere were around…

~40% Cushitic
~45% Niger-Kordofanian
~15% Nilo-Saharan

The Tutsi I would imagine would most resemble the Kikuya and Hema, other SE African Bantu speaking populations with Cushitic/Nilotic admixture.