Medieval Swahilis Had African and Asian Ancestry: DNA Study

The researchers say that up to half of the DNA of the people in the Swahili areas was from Persia (90 percent) and India (10 percent).

The first DNA recovered from members of the medieval Swahili civilization has revealed that Africans and Asians mixed along the east coast of Africa more than a thousand years ago, a study has revealed.

For the study, an international team of researchers sequenced the DNA of 80 people who lived in different Swahili areas from 1250 to 1800 CE.

They said that from about the year 1000 AD. C., up to half of the DNA came from overwhelmingly male immigrants from Southwest Asia, about 90 percent from Persia and 10 percent from India.

The other half were almost entirely African women, according to the study published in the journal Nature.

After about 1500 CE, most of the Asian genetic contribution moved to Arabic sources, the study showed.

The study’s authors said it confirms ancient oral histories about the shared ancestry of the Swahili people, as well as resolving a “long-standing controversy” from colonial times over how much africans contributed to civilization.

Beginning in the 7th century CE, the Swahili civilization included the coastal regions of present-day Kenya, Tanzania, southern Somalia, northern Mozambique, Madagascar, and the Comoro and Zanzibar archipelagos.

Medieval Swahili were of African and Asian descent; according to an ancient DNA study published in @Nature. The findings suggest that mixing has been ongoing on the east coast of Africa for more than a millennium. https://t.co/YkPL47FqxZ pic.twitter.com/qtmprvoYkx

— Nature Portfolio (@NaturePortfolio) March 29, 2023

Millions of people along these shores today identify as Swahili, and the language is one of the most widely spoken in the region.

This timeline is consistent with the Kilwa Chronicle, which was passed down in Swahili oral histories for centuries and tells of Persian immigrants arriving around 1000 CE.

It was also from this time that Islam became a dominant religion in the region.

The authors emphasized that the study also showed that features of Swahili civilization predate foreign arrivals.

‘Africanity of Swahili’

Chapurukha Kusimba, an anthropologist at the University of South Florida who has worked on the issue for 40 years, told AFP that the research was “the highlight of my career.”

Kusimba said colonial-era archaeologists seemed to believe Africans “didn’t have the mental capacity” to build medieval Swahili infrastructure, such as burial grounds, and instead credited only foreign influence.

But more recent research has shown that 95 percent of the material recovered from Swahili archaeological sites was “homegrown,” including the architecture itself, Kusimba said.

He added that the latest study showed the “Africanness of Swahili, without marginalizing the Persian and Indian connection.”

David Reich, co-author of the study and a geneticist at Harvard University, said in a statement that “ancient DNA allowed us to address a longstanding controversy that could not be proven without genetic data from these times and places.”

DNA evidence shows that the mix was mostly Persian men who had children with African women.

This does not necessarily indicate “sexual exploitation” due to the matriarchal nature of Swahili societies, Kusimba said.

Reich said that “Persian men were more likely to ally and intermarry with local merchant families and adopt local customs to enable them to be more successful merchants.”

From around 1500 CE, the ancestors increasingly came from Arabia, according to the study.