Abstract
The traditional history of the Maravi, the largest population group in Malawi, tells of an ancestral migration towards the end of which the migrants segmented into two exogamous clans, Banda and Phiri. Subsequent segmentations produced a further array of daughter clans. An alternative hypothesis favoured by many recent historians claims that only the Phiri were migrants, while the Banda represented earlier settlers from the same area of origin. This hypothesis is tested by comparing the anthropometric characters of men whose parents both belong to clans in the Banda moiety with those of men with both parents of the Phiri moiety and men with one parent from either moiety. The finding of significant physical differences between the products of the two classes of intramoiety mating, with the hybrids lying intermediate, furnishes good evidence that the Phiri and the Banda originally represented different stocks between which panmixis is not yet complete.
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