Indian Antiquities in Saint Domingue

  

Whilst taking a second look at Nicolson's Essai sur l'histoire naturelle de Saint-Domingue. Avec figures en taille-douce, we realized that we did not note the origins of some of the indigenous artifacts illustrated in his book. Figure 1 was found in the Cul de Sac plain region, a likely contender for the political center of Xaragua. Stylistically, it is similar to some of the works of sculpture or statuary found in the "Taino" period. What we have not heard of before, however, is the inclusion of human faces on the arms or shoulders of such a figure. It is kneeling as Nicolson wrote, and the inclusion of the human faces bring to mind some of the trigonolito cemis featuring two faces on opposite sides. Unlike one of the most famous surviving examples of indigenous art from Hispaniola, the figure does not appear emaciated (though the sketch may not be entirely reliable). Figure 2 was found at a Leogane plantation (La Yaguana) and Figure 4 sketches were of artifacts found in Grand-Goave.

Indigenous Americas: Borikén

  

Although each update of Ancestry DNA tends to raise new problems or recreate new ones, their algorithm seems to be on the right track with indigenous ancestry in Puerto Ricans. From our own results and those of close matches, it looks like the inflated estimates are a thing of the past. Our results are quite close to 23andMe now. The next move is for Ancestry to correct their description of the region and perhaps, like 23andMe, add historical samples from pre-Columbian Caribbean populations.

Wild Rice and Lake Chad

Whilst taking another look at Koelle's English-Kanuri dictionary, we noticed a reference to wild rice growing near Lake Chad. According to Koelle, who likely derived this information from Ali Eisami, the region around Dikwa (Digoa) was especially known for the wild rice growing there. This brought to mind al-Umari's description of Kanem from the 14th century (included in Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History). According to an informant who knew an ascetic shaykh named Uthman al-Kanimi, related to the Sayfawa, rice grew without seed in Kanem. Perhaps this early 14th century reference is to the region specifically near Lake Chad, or what Eisami referred to as Pérgi, the region in Borno to the south/southwest of the Lake. 

Agisymba and the Ngizim?

 Whilst continuing our early forays into the Teda, Daza and Kanuri languages, we randomly wondered if Agisymba was perhaps a reference to the Ngizim. Lange and others have mentioned this, although Murray Last made the point more explicit through reference to the Teda and Daza languages. If the Garamantes referred to the distant land of Agisymba by a name heard from people speaking an early form of the Teda language (possible due to the Tibetsi region likely being in contact with the Garamantes in some form), it is plausible for the Ngizim to have been the ethnonym in question. Basically, the addition of -ba at the end of word would have meant "people of" (as in the -bu in Kanembu, although modern Kanuri seems to use -wu). So Agisymba would have meant A (perhaps the -ng initial sound was difficult to render in the Berber and Greek languages) + ngisym + -ba. 

This theory, of course, assumes the continuity of the "Ngizim" name for 2000 years, so it is highly speculative. To our knowledge, the earliest written source referring to the Ngizim dates to the 16th century. When a French source mentions them at the end of the 17th, they were referred to as "Enghzeum." If oral traditions east of Lake Chad and clan affiliations are anything to go by, the Nguedjem (or Ngizim) were also once living in what is today Chad, in Kanem (and as part of the Bulala sultanate in Fitri, perhaps contributing to Carbou's confusion about their origins). While some ethnonyms in the Lake Chad region have persisted for several centuries (Kuri, for instance, or Bade), Ngizim would have to had survived as a name for over a thousand years before its attestation in the 1500s and 1600s. 

Naturally, one would also have to account for Ptolemy's description of Agisymba seeming to imply it was near mountains. Was this meant to refer to an area closer to Air? Tibetsi? Assuming the Garamantes would have traveled south through Kawar and reached the Lake Chad area, the land of Agisymba with rhinoceroses and mountains (nearby?) had to have been to the east or west without necessarily traveling too far. The Air massif to the west is an intriguing idea, but presumably the ancestors of the Teda and Daza may have known the region in or near Kanem more intimately if they approached it from the Tibetsi and Borku regions. Again, if one assumes the Garamantes were in contact with peoples who spoke a language like that of the Teda and Daza since the days of Herodotus, and the latter groups likely knew of Kanem or Lake Chad, it is possible the presumably Berber-speaking Garamantes adopted words for southern peoples acquired through them. 

Ultimately, the Agisymba as Ngizim remains just a theory. For it to be true requires one to make a number of unproven assumptions that the current data do not fully support. We assume that ancient peoples who spoke an early form of the Teda, Daza, and Kanuri languages in the central Sahara or Tibetsi were referring to a group as something like Ngizim nearly 2000 years ago. Then, through their contacts with the Garamantes, the latter referred to the Ngizim in a way that was later recorded in ancient sources as Agisymba. If the Ngizim and Bade (Bedde) were perhaps both living near Lake Chad in antiquity, then the name Agisymba could be a deformation of something like Ngizimba, referring to a region near Lake Chad, probably Kanem. One must also assume the Ngijem in Kanem are related to the Ngizim west of the lake, even though traditions in the late 1800s and early colonial period connected them to the Bulala.

A Novice Speculating on KAKRH and Early Kanem

 

al-Ya'qubi's description of Kanem translated in the Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (edited by Levtzion and Hopkins).

One thing we have been reconsidering is the claim by  Abdelkérim Souleyman Tério about the name of a Kanem ruler written down in the 9th century. In his Origine et évolution des Zaghawa: Du royaume du Kanem aux Etats modernes (VIIIe-XXIe siècle), the author suggests that the name of the Kanem ruler is actually a title. He then proposes the notion that it is etymologically linked to the modern Zaghawa word for king (kireh in Blench's Beria dictionary). If one reads the name recorded by al-Ya'qubi as a title and perhaps Kakira as the best fit, this does bear some resemblance with the Zaghawa word for king. Interestingly, Blench's dictionary suggests that the Zaghawa word for king is rooted in the word for elder, or old age. This is likely related to the Kanuri word for elder, kura. According to Cyffer's dictionary, this word can be used to mean "age" or "big" or related concepts with the use of Kanuri prefixes. Unlike the Beria or Zaghawa language, however, Kanuri does not use the word kura for a chief or king today. Indeed, decades ago Lavers expressed some skepticism about reading the name recorded by al-Ya'qubi as related to the word for elder or great. 

What is perhaps surprising about this is the Teda language using distinct words for the same concept. According to one Tudaga dictionary, the word for old is gibi. This seems to be related to the word for a chief or leader, bugidi (chief or old man). Carbou provided similar information in his work, too. According to Carbou, the word for grand/aged is bo, elder or chef is bougoudi. If Kanuri is more closely related to the Teda and Daza languages than it is to Zaghawa, it is intriguing that Kanuri uses words like kura instead of cognates of the Teda/Daza languages. Indeed, the word in Tudaga bears some resemblance to the Daju word for chief, a language from a distinct branch of the Nilo-Saharan family. Apparently, the Daju word for chief in more than one dialect is buge, so it would be interesting to note if it was based on a word for elder or seniority. In the Barma language of Bagirmi, from a different branch of the Nilo-Saharan family than the Saharan languages of Kanuri, the word for old is bon/o. An old man is gada and a chief is kadal (though the higher status bang or mbang for the ruler of Bagirmi is well-known). In addition, Barma and related Nilo-Saharan languages use ngare or similar words for chief or ruler. 

It nonetheless seems likely that Kanuri and the Beria language inherited words of deep antiquity in Nilo-Saharan languages related to age, seniority and great, if one accepts Blench's theories on Nilo-Saharan linguistics. If, however, an early form of kura was used to name early rulers of pre-Islamic Kanem, one still has to explain the k- added to it. Instead, we could be looking at the Kanuri prefix ker- or kə̀r(kura) as in the modern word kermai? But, that seems to be prohibited by the rules of Kanuri grammar which would use nemkura to make the word a noun. Alternatively, it may be following the ki- prefix in Beria identified by Blench as a pronoun. But this may be contradicted by the use of the prefix nem- to form words like bigness in modern Kanuri. It does not seem common to add the k- prefix to the word kura in the Kanuri language (although an archaic form of the language might have done so, perhaps like the Beria kî? or the addition of the initial k- to anem to specify the Kanem region).

Ultimately, the theory that the KAKRH is derived from the Zaghawa word for king (or, alternatively, the Kanuri word kura) remains highly problematic. Perhaps something like kurabe would match older, more senior, as that form may have meant something akin to "the great." Since al-Ya'qubi was writing down what was a word in a language he didn't speak over 1000 years ago, this is necessarily speculative. And as total novices in the study of the Kanuri language, our speculations on this should be seen as purely exploratory. 

Speculating on Haniguayaba's Name

Whilst randomly re-reading parts of Granberry and Vescelius's Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles, we noticed that the authors proposed defining ha or hai as the word for high in Taino. This makes sense given the name of Haiti itself, with the meaning of high or mountainous land. But what about Hanyguayaba, that poorly known chiefdom or cacicazgo in the Southwest of Haiti? Probably centered on the area of the Les Cayes plain, where the Spanish built a town after the conquest of that part of the island, the region was part of the "anus" of Hispaniola. Alternatively, we could read accept the hai in Haiti as tall or high and iti as upland or hills. 

But with the word Haniguayaba, Granberry and Vescelius's hä- (han) seems to fit (meaning uppermost). This is followed by a i could mean near or eastern. So uppermost of the near guayaba (guava). But another definition might be han+i+guaya (meaning furthest back)+ba (big, great, or large). Thus, Hanyguayaba or Haniguayaba could have meant something like the "the upper, big and nearest part of the farthest" section? If one views the island through the indigenous perspective with the "anus" being the Tiburon peninsula of today's Haiti, that "behind" was quite far from other parts of the island. Perhaps the Les Cayes plain was the base for the largest area or concentration of settlements and was considered the "upper" section for its proximity to the "anus" of the island? Alternatively, reading it simply as the uppermost guava is possible? The Spanish sources from the 1500s certainly suggest the rich areas of mamey trees. Perhaps the area closer to Haniguayaba had lots of guava trees in the hills above the plain? 

The guayaba reading seems more likely than our own tortured attempt at using Granberry and Vescelius, however. However, there's uncertainty about the toponym as Las Casas also presented it as Haniguayagua. Moreover, Martyr d'Anghiera did not include it among his cantons or districts in the "anus" of the island. Instead, he listed a place called Guabaqua (perhaps Guabagua?). This might have been the Haniguayagua of Las Casas? Or Zavana (or, savanna, where the Spanish settlement was built after the colonial conquest) could have been an alternative name for Haniguayaba?

African Ancestry and the 2026 Update

 

With the news of the October update on Ancestry, we naturally rushed to check the new estimates. While the update seems to represent progress in a few areas, it's still a bit of a mess with the additional regions that overlap and are sometimes prone to misleading or potentially inaccurate results. We compared our results with those of our Haitian parent to take a closer look at African ancestry in particular. 

The new Igboland region is vast and encompasses a large part of Nigeria. Indeed, parts of it on the map extend into the central regions of the country. Nonetheless, we have found Igbo or Igbo-related ancestry to be very likely in our case. The preponderance of "Ibo" captives in Bainet during the 18th century as well as some of the shared genetic matches between us and our Haitian parent with Igbo people in Nigeria seem to confirm it. Yet the Igboland region also includes Igbo, Esan, Idoma, Igala, and Ibibio peoples. If one accepts oral traditions of the Idoma, for instance, then some of these peoples are undoubtedly related to groups further north or had migrated from central Nigeria in centuries past. The Sierra Leone region reference panel is derived solely from Mende, a group we have found shared matches with as well as 23andMe genetic group matches. 

The partition of Benin and Togo and the Yorubaland regions are also difficult to interpret. We undoubtedly do have ancestry from parts of that vast region. Our shared genetic matches, however, were with Ga or seemingly Ga peoples. As for some of the new regions like Mali-Dogon Peoples or Mali: Mande Peoples, we cannot help but wonder if the trace scores are more likely de to the genetic overlap of some of these groups with others. Something similar appears to have occurred with the Hausa and Fulani category. Although in past updates the Hausa were part of a "North-Central Nigeria" region which encompassed the Afizere, Anaguta, Atyap, Berom, Ham, and Hausa, the 2026 Update has split that region into new regions. Instead, the Nigeria-Jos Plateau region now includes several of those groups: Berom, Jarawa, Hausa, and Anaguta (plus the Saya and Polci). But by matching the Hausa with Fula, particularly with samples drawn from further west in West Africa, the algorithm seems to be inflating the "Hausa and Fulani Peoples" estimate in many users. Presumably, Fula samples with admixture from Senegambian, Mali, Guinea, or other western countries are being used here and inflating the scores based on shared Senegambian ancestry with various other groups. Perhaps a more likely indication of northern Nigerian ancestry is the Jos Plateau region and Southern Kaduna & Central Plateau region. These regions include groups that were once part of the "North-central Nigeria" region that included the Hausa. As previously stated, the Hausa are also included as one of the groups in the Jos Plateau ethnic groups, too. 

Overall, the update was a bit of a confusing mess and some attempts at greater detail or granularity likely muddled things. There are some clear errors but maybe subsequent updates can attempt to improve it. When comparing this with the genetic groups on 23andMe, the latter appears to have the edge in terms of general accuracy or reliability (even if they did lower the matching threshold to increase the number of genetic groups to assign). Ancestry still hasn't taken the next step of indicating which groups in their reference panels users share DNA with, so that can be one area to improve results. it would also be nice if some improvement can be done in these confusing maps which, perhaps inevitably, overlap in confusing ways. And getting data from the Lake Chad region, northern Cameroon, Congo and DRC wouldn't hurt, too. The Luba peoples region is interesting, yet we are lacing other interior groups between them and the ooast.