African Ancestors Research Articles

Ethnicity and human biology.

Stanley Garn's book, Human Races (1965), captured the essence of the new genetic concept of ethnic groups as populations which share the same gene pool, shaped by natural selection. Since then new genetic traits, especially DNA polymorphisms, have been employed to build upon his vision. They have proven useful in the forensic sciences, medicine, and the human biology of adaptation, migration, evolution, and phylogeny. Some diseases like sickle cell anemia are controlled by single genes concentrated in a large ethnic group; their alleles are valuable for understanding human biology. Other conditions with a marked genetic component, such as diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis, predominate in certain ethnic groups. The new molecular biology tends to support the migration of farmers from west Asia into Europe in the Neolithic, the isolation of the Basques, and the early entrance of people into the New World. Some DNA data also favor the debatable hypothesis of the development of humanity in Africa and its subsequent dispersal. In many cases linguistic distance parallels genetic distance as language tends to influence gene flow. Apolipoproteins, with alleles unique to one major population group, are useful markers of admixture as well as significant for cardiovascular health. The Gullah-speaking Black people of coastal Carolina are distinctive and close to African ancestors in language, culture, and biology, including genetic markers. Modern research confirms that race (by any name) is quantitative rather than qualitative, relative rather than absolute, and dynamic rather than static. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

The Relationship of the Gullah-Speaking People of Coastal South Carolina and Georgia to Their African Ancestors

The Relationship of the Gullah-Speaking People of Coastal South Carolina and Georgia to Their African Ancestors

Moorings and Metaphors: Figures of Culture and Gender in Black Women's Literature.

Moorings Metaphors is one of the first studies to examine the ways that cultural tradition is reflected in the language figures of black women's writing. In a discussion that includes the works of Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ntozake Shange, Buchi Emecheta, Octavia Butler, Efua Sutherland, Gayl Jones, with a particular focus on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Flora Nwapa's Efuru, Holloway follows the narrative structures, language, figurative metaphors of West African goddesses African-American ancestors as they weave through the pages of these writers' fiction. She explores what she would call the cultural gendered essence of contemporary literature that has grown out of the African diaspora. Proceeding from a consideration of the imaginative textual languages of contemporary African-American West African writers, Holloway asserts the intertextuality of black women's literature across two continents. She argues the subtext of culture as the source of metaphor language, analyzes narrative structures linguistic processes, develops a combined theoretical/critical apparatus vocabulary for interpreting these writers' works. The cultural sources spiritual considerations that inhere in these textual languages are discussed within the framework Holloway employs of patterns of revision, (re)membrance, recursion--all of which are vehicles for expressive modes inscribed at the narrative level. Her critical reading of contemporary black women's writing in the United States West Africa is unique, radical, sure to be controversial.

Preface

Preface Assia Djebar in L ’Amour, lafantasia, reflects on the ambivalence of writing and, particularly, writing in French. Evelyne Accad in her “ témoignage,” included in this issue, refers to the question of nonFrench authors having to write in French. The question has been debated among Africans and Caribbean writers as well: to mention only Abdelkebir Khatibi, Léon Laleau, Edouard Glissant, Raphaël Confiant, Franketienne, Léopold Senghor, and Aimé Césaire. But at the same time, this “langage de 1’Autre,” or this “ langage adverse,” as Djebar calls it, becomes the location from which her discourse emerges and the vehicle for the voices of women she wants to bring out of the palimpsest of Algerian history, in which their presence had been erased. The authors presented in this issue have appropriated the language of the Metropole that is the basis for their literary and artistic expression. They come from diverse geographical locations, cultural and racial origins: Africa and the Indian Ocean, Asia and Europe, North and Cen­ tral America. They are, all of them, bi- or multilingual, cultural “ métis,” and some of them are racially “ métissées.” What brings them together is what Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd define as “the task of minority discourse,” that is, “to describe and define the common denominators that link various minority cultures.” 1From this perspec­ tive, and without constructing a utopian sameness, writing in French has created for postcolonial women a common ground on which they can engage in dialogical encounter and intellectual intercourse. Through the use of the same language, they have brought about the “ éclatement des frontières” (Accad) and made possible a meeting of multiple subjec­ tivities and histories, different and yet similar. Calhixte Beyala and Werewere Liking are from the Cameroun, Ananda Devi is Mauritian of Indian descent, Farida Belgoul is a “ Beur,” Kim Lefèvre was born from a Vietnamese mother and a French father, Maryse Condé is from Guade­ loupe as is Simone Schwarz-Bart, France Théoret comes from Quebec, Evelyne Accad comes from Lebanon, born from a Lebanese father and a Swiss mother, and Assia Djebar is from Algeria. Their coming to writing and to French is marked by the legacy of a colonial experience and/or the policy of cultural assimilation. Their use of the French language is simul­ taneously empowerment and subversion: rather than telling the “master’s narrative,” they have inscribed in his language their own voices, lives, cultural experience and collective History through fiction and autoVOL . XXXIII, No. 2 5 L ’E s pr it C r éa te u r fiction. If a distinct focus emerges from each work, there are also inter­ twined motives and an intertextual play between their writings. The haunting questions of a woman’s voice, of memory and history, of exile and territorialization overlap. Françoise Lionnet’s article on “ Narration and the City,” which opens the issue, emphasizes the significance of the textual space as a place of territorialization and rootedness, contrasted with urban space, which is “often identified with a narrative of loss, despair, and marginality , especially for the female subject. . . .” Alec G. Hargreaves’ and Mireille Rosello’s articles, the former in general terms, the latter more specifically, present the “ Beur” generation predicament. “ Bi-cultural, bilingual, bi-national,” the “ Beurs” constantly move between different territories that include the public space of the school and French society, on the one hand, and the private space of the family, on the other. As for Kim Lefèvre, exiled since her childhood from the native space of her Vietnamese culture and, later, from her native country, writing engages her in a cathartic process of remembering and forgetting that, as Jack Yeager puts it, she textualizes in a space which becomes the place for a reconciliation with herself and her place of birth. Clarisse Zimra’s study of Simone Schwarz-Bart’s novels stresses also the heros’ cathartic quest for ancestry and genealogy which, like Lefèvre, leads the author to a return to the land of her African ancestors. Priska Degras’ analysis of Maryse Condé’s last two novels recasts the search for history so central among Caribbean writers. In digging deeply...

Neohilgertia venusti Gen. N. SP. N. (Nematoda: Oxyuridae)from Thylamys venustus cinderellus (Thomas) Reig, Kirsch & Marshall, 1985 (Marsupialia: Didelphidae) in Burruyacu, Tucuman, Argentina - Systematic position and possible evolution

Neohilgertia gen. n. proposed for Oxyuridae nematodes from Thylamys venustus cinderellus (Marsupialia: Didelphidae) is described. The hypothesis about the possibility of a secondary parasitism for marsupials and the origin of the genus in the African Sciuridae parasite ancestors is discussed.

Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life? The People of Johns Island, South Carolina: Their Faces, Their Words, and Their Songs

Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life? presents an oral, musical, and photographic record of the venerable Gullah culture in modern times. With roots stretching back to their slave forebears, the Johns Islanders and their folk traditions are a vital link between black Americans and their African and Caribbean ancestors. When first published in 1966, this book conveyed islanders' trepidation and jubilation upon the arrival of the civil rights movement to their isolated home. In this edition, which is updated through the late 1980s, the stories and songs of an older day blend with the voices of an empowered younger generation determined to fight the overdevelopment of their land by resort builders.

The Scars of the Ghetto: A Reprint

The most exciting and purposeful events which are presently and regularly occurring in our country are those which involve the efforts of the Negro people of the United States to wrest their birthright of full citizenship from a laggard and oppressive nation. It is, contrary to the myth, an old, old struggle. There isn't such a thing as the new Negro, if by that term we are made to understand that the present militant surge of the Negro people is without historical precedent. I make a point of saying this everywhere because it seems to me to need a great deal of emphasis. After all, even though it's not as well known as it should be, the Negro people have sustained one of the most heroic resistances to tyranny in the history of man. Our African ancestors came to the New World fighting slavery by mutiny on the high seas and by suicide.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

L'évolution de la pentalophodontie chez les rongeurs caviomorphes (Mammalia, Rodentia)

The origin of Caviomorph rodents whose oldestrepresentatives are first recorded from the Late Oligocene of South America is still a matter of debate. This debate rests in a large part on the homology of the molar cusps and on the polarity of some molar structures. A detailed analysis of these structures and the reevaluation of former data, as compared with those relative to other fossil Hystricomorph rodents, indicate that the three genera Branisamys0Incamys-Sallamys from the Bolivian Deseadan (late Oligocene?) illustrate three successive stades of a morphocline which leads from a pentalophodont condition to a tetralophodont one, considered here to be derived for these taxa. The third crest of the tetralophodont forms is neither the metaloph, as suggested by Wood, nor the mesoloph, as suggested by Hoffstetter and Lavocat, but corresponds to a distinct crest resulting from the fusion of these two structures. In our opinion, this structural rearrangement of the occlusal structures is the consequence of the development, in these forms, of an asymmetric hypsodonty of the upper molars, similar to the one which occurs also in some other groups of Hystricomorphs, like the Ctenodactylidae and the Theridomyidae. The mode of origination of the mesoloph among these Caviomorphs seems to have been distinct from the one illustrated by their african vicariant, the Phiomyidae, and by the Theridomyidae. Phylogenetic implications of this new interpretation indicate that in the case of an african origin of the Caviomorphs, the origination must date from a period of time during which the african ancestors still retained a primitive tetralophodont structure, which must have been earlier than late Eocene. In such a case, one would have to admit an unknown land area where these earliest Caviomorphs have evolved, because they do not appear in South America before the Deseadean (Late Oligocene?). These problems of homology and polarity of dental structures can also be investigated from the examination of the dental development in the extant Caviomorphs. Morphogenetic studies would confirm or invalidate these interpretations, based only on fossils.

African ancestors

African ancestors

I Sought My Brother: An Afro-American Reunion

This book chronicles the last days of the purity of what has been for three centuries one of the world's most unusual cultural enclaves.--Alex HaleyThe two scientists made a personal discovery in Suriname.... As a social anthropologist, was fascinated by their story.--Colin M. TurnbullI Sought My Brother is a unique history of a black people living deep within the jungles of South America who not only survived attempts to enslave them but who have triumphed with their original African culture intact. It also provides the only permanent record of a way of life that may soon vanish as new technologies are brought to this remote area.The story of a meeting between Allen Counter, a neurobiologist, David Evans, an electrical engineer, and the African-descended people of the Suriname rain forest was first told in the film, I Sought My Brother, which appeared on National Public Television and in countries throughout the world. Now, in this pictorial essay Counter and Evans condense their experiences over and eight-year period into one long reunion with the bush tribes whose African ancestors escaped into the jungle after being transported to Suriname by 17th-century Dutch slave ships. They were victorious over the colonialists during a century of guerrilla warfare, winning their independence by formal treaties before North Americans won theirs from the British. Since then, they have carried on their traditional way of life with freedom and dignity.The book traces Counter and Evans's discovery of this well-preserved African presence in the New World and their dangerous journey over river waters filled with rapids, rocks, and piranha that took them several hundred miles into the interior and centuries backward in time to thatched-roof villages and an exciting and highly emotional meeting with the Bush Afro-Americans. They are greeted by the headman who asks them if they are still bakra schlaffra, or white man's slaves, and who wants to know if they have won their fight. The battle is still being fought, the authors reply.The text and hundreds of illustrations document their participation in village life--hunting and fishing, childbirth, medical practices, religious rituals, dance, building a house and a canoe--and in unfamiliar, primitive, and holistic customs. In turn, the authors delight their hosts with cassette recordings of Otis Redding, Lightnin' Hopkins, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder, and eventually with their own film of the reunion.

Gm allotypes and racial admixture in two Brazilian populations

The Gm types of 515 inhabitants of Belém and 395 inhabitants of Porto Alegre, Brazil were studied in an attempt to quantitatively estimate ethnic parental contributions. The people from Belém can be characterized as 24% black, 22% Indian, and 54% Caucasian. The Porto Alegre blacks seem to have inherited as much as 53% of their genes from Caucasian ancestors, while the whites living there have inherited 8% of their genes from African ancestors. The admixture values obtained for Belém are very similar if just the Gm system is considered or it plus seven other loci are considered, emphasizing the high efficiency of the Gm markers in such analyses.

Five Writers and Their African Ancestors Part I

Five Writers and Their African Ancestors Part I

Five Writers and Their African Ancestors Part II

Five Writers and Their African Ancestors Part II