A History of the Afar People

The Afar people are one of the nine officially recognised ethnic groups of Ethiopia, although there are numbers of Afar in the Ste of Eritrea and the Republic of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. There are an estimated 1.5 million Afar in these regions, and have played an important part in the territorial politics of the Horn of Africa.

'Afar' is the name the peoples in this article give themselves, rather than 'Danakil' or 'Adal' by which their traditional adversaries know them. Danakil is used specifically for the northern Afar while Adal (or Adel) is used for the southern Afar. Although a number of this ethnic group have migrated to the cities, the majority have remained true to their nomadic pastoralist roots.

One of the Afar’s claims to fame is due to an anthropological find in the Afar Depression. In 1974, anthropologists discovered a ‘new species’ of man at Hadar in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia. This new species was termed Australopithecus afarensis ("afar ape-man"), and is believed to have walked around Eastern Africa between 2.9 to 3.8 million years ago. The body was found to be female and named Lucy. Lucy was able to walk upright on a human-like body but still retained a small ape-like head and primitive teeth.

Despite their decentralized political structure, the Afar have remained cohesive in their culture. One important aspect of such unity has been the custom of cross-cousin marriage, with a son being required to marry a maternal uncle's daughter as his first wife (Harbeson, p.483). Both boys and girls are required to undergo circumcision.

The first non-African presence with the Afars was with the Islamic world, as early as the 10th century CE. Today, the religion of the Afars is Sunni Islam.

Today, the Afar have not forgotten the loss of grazing lands or the invasion of highland agriculturalists. At least partly for that reason they have responded with ambivalence to Ethiopian government pressures to participate in rural modernization programmes (Harbeson, p.479).

Bibliography:

Flood, Glynn (1975) Nomadism and Its Future: The ‘Afar, RAIN, Royal Anthropological Institute for Great Britain and Ireland.

Harbeson, John. W. (1978) Territorial and Development Politics in the Horn of Africa: The Afar of the Awash Valley, African affairs, Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal African Society.

Science News (1974) New Species of Man: Ancestors from ‘Afar’, Society for Science and the Public.

A Brief History of the Thakali of Nepal

The Thakali are an ethnic group found in Nepal who have been of great interest to historians and anthropologists as they are a people who have readily adapted to changes in their social, religious, economic and political environment.

There are several different ethnic groups in Nepal and the Thakali are one of the best documented of these. They are an agro-pastoral and trading people of the upper Kali Gandaki River region of west central Nepal, also known as THak Khola. According to government censes, there are around 12,000 Thakali spread out throughout the country due to their trading culture. The southernmost boundary of Thak Khola is the village of Ghasa.

“Thak Khola is divided into three sociologically distinct sub-regions which are known as Thak-Sat-Sae, Panchgaun, and Baragaun. The most southerly is Thak-Sat-Sae ("Seven Hundred Thak" households). It is home to a people whom outsiders call Thakali but who call themselves Tamhaang. Thak-Sat-Sae is bounded at the south by Ghasa village, and on the north by the trading town of Tukche”. There are three different cultural groups here. Although they do not intermarry, they do share similar characteristics.

It is believed that the Thakali migrated to this area centuries ago, most probably from Humla in North West Nepal. Their own dialect language is from the Tibeto-Burman language family and is distantly related to Tibetan and Gerung, a language spoken by inhabitants of southern Nepal.

There are many different origin theories, but the one generally accepted is that the “Thakali were settled in Panchgaun and Thak-Sat-Sae at least by the late 13th century A.D., and con-ceivably much earlier. Some early Tibetan writers describe a Mon-pa people (non-Tibetan and presumably non-Buddhist) who seem to have been the Thakali and whom they called the Tamhaang-Se Mon of Se-rib. Se-rib was an ancient kingdom in upper Thak Khola”.

Thakali history only really begins in 1869 CE, at the beginning of the so-called Subba period, in 1869 A.D., with the rise of a powerful Tamhaang Thakali lineage which came to be known by the name Subba. They were the leaders of the Sherchan clan who initially gained prominence in Nepalese-Tibetan military affairs, who were able to establish themselves as powerful economic middlemen in the trans-Himalayan trade. This is what has led sociologists and anthropologists to become so interested in them.

Throughout the 19th century, the Takali rose to great heights in their role of trade and long distance commerce to Tibet. In addition to this, the leaders were given political positions and they played important roles in the plans for an autonomous state independent of Kathmandu in the 1920s.

“For the Thakali, the closing of the Nepal/China border in the early 1960s, curtailment of trans-Himalayan trade through their homeland, and a social and religious orientation away from Tibetan Buddhism at their north towards Nepalese Hinduism at their south, have all created new and challenging circumstances for the maintenance of ethnic cultural identity”.

The Thakali are a people who are not as well known as some of the other ethnic groups in Asia (as the Chinese Han, Zhuang, Manchus, the Vietnamese Karen etc), but they are as fascinating as the country they live in.

Bibliography:

Messerschmidt, Donald A. (1982) The Thakali of Nepal: Historical Continuity and Socio-Cultural Change, Ethnohistory, Duke University Press.

A look at the Salar’s Samarkand Origins

China is a country made up of 56 officially recognised ethnic groups, the Salar being one of them. They are a Turkic-speaking Islamic people who live mainly in Xunhua County in eastern part of Qinghai Province. Along with the other ethnic groups, they have their own distinct dialects, culture, history and origins.

The Salar themselves claim that their ancestry lies in Samarkand, in modern day Uzbekistan. In the 13th century, they moved eastwards until they reached modern day Qinghai Province. Scholars have agreed with the Salar and their migration from Central Asia to China has been met with much interest.

According to one scholar, Mi Yizhi, claims that there are three possible explanations of the Salar’s migration from Samarkand. In the first, he says that the Salar were once an Oghaz tribe known as the Qaluer. The Oghaz were the descendants of the eldest son of Dagh Khan, one of the six sons of Oghaz Khan who gave his name to the people.

Sometime between the 9th and 12th centuries the Qaluer changed their name to the Saluer and followed other Oghaz tribes from the Saihun River basin, Yili, and Rehai (Isighgol) to Hezhong (Transoxania), Hualazimo (Khorarim), Huluoshan (Khorasam in Northern Iran), and eastern Anatolia.

However, during the Selzuk Empire (c. 1055 – 1258) the Saluer were forced into moving once more to the west. There were some who stayed in Marou and Sarakhs (modern day Turkmenistan) are known as the Turkomans. Between 1370 and 1424 the Saluer came to Samarkand and then passed through the Turpan Basin (present day Xinjiang), and Suzhou, ultimately reaching the Salar's present home in the region known today as Xunhua.

The second explanation draws on the work of Mula Sulaiman's investigations into the Hui ethnic’s group origins. Mi has suggested that the Salar were the descendants of the brothers Kharaman and Akhman who lived near Salark in Turkmenistan. When they moved to Qinghai they took 170 families with them, and these were the ancestors of the Salar.

The third explanation lies in linguistic similarities. Scholars have suggested that the similarities in the languages of the Salar, the Turkoman and the Uzbek suggest that they were all one people at one time.

The Salar celebrate their heritage with the doye oyna, a play which traces their migration from Samarkand to China. It is a way for these remarkable people to remember their Central Asian heritage.

Bibliography:

Jianzhong, Ma & Stuart, Kevin (1996) "Stone Camels and Clear Springs" The Salar's Samarkand Origins, Asian Folklore Studies, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.

A History of the Lahu in China

China is a united country made up of various ethnicities; indeed, there are 56 officially recognised ethnic groups that call China home. The largest numbers of these minority groups are the Zhuang, the Han and the Manchus, but the smaller groups have just a rich and fascinating history of their own.

As of 1990, the Lahu has a population of 411,476 and can be found across Yunnan's Lancang Lahu Autonomous County and neighboring counties such as Menglian, Shuangjiang, and Simao. The Lahu have their own language which belongs to Yi branch of the Tibeto-Burman Austronesian of the Chinese -Tibetan Phylum. For a long time, messages were passed by woodcarving the western alphabets that western priests had used. However, in 1957, an alphabetical script was created for them. Due to their frequent contact with the Han and Dai people, a large amount of the Lahus can also speak Chinese and the language of the Dais.

There are several branches of the Lahu family; the main groups are the Lahu Na, the Lahu Shi, the Lahu Nyi, and the Lahu Shehleh. All refer to themselves as Lahu instead of their individual sub-group identities. Lahu is the name they have given to themselves due to their long practice of hunting tigers. ‘La’ means ‘tiger’ and ‘hu’ means the method of roasting and eating. ‘Lahu’ in their own language can be translated as ‘roasting tiger-meat on a fire’.

The agricultural living of the Lahu is a combination of farming, raising domestic animals, gathering, hunting, and fishing. While many Lahu have engaged in altering degrees of intensive agriculture (irrigated wet-rice), slash-and-burn cultivation of hill rice, wheat, and buckwheat stays a noteworthy pattern of Lahu livelihood, especially for those in Burma and Thailand. The growth of cash crops, such as tea in Lancang, has also been increasing since the 1980.

There is a saying which is common among the Lahu, “"Hus-band and wife do it together" (phawd mawd nud ma ted gie te) and the often cited metaphor," Chopsticks work only in pairs”. These sum up the gendered allocation of labour among the Lahu. Married couples tend to own their properties jointly and practice a monogamous marriage. “The Lahu kinship system is fundamentally bilateral, although there are varying degrees of matrilineal or patrilineal skewing in different regions or subgroup”.

The main god of the Lahu is Xeul Sha and they practice an animalistic faith, although Mahayana Buddhism was introduced in the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911 CE), only a small proportion has converted to this. According to Lahu creation myths, the supreme god is actually a pair of male and female deities who emerged simultaneously. Since they exist only as a pair, they are frequently addressed in the Lahu vernacular by the single proper noun, Xeul Sha.

The Lahu are descended from the ancient Qiang tribe, who immigrated to present day northern Yunnan from northwestern China early in the third century CE. The emergence of the Nanzhao Kingdom forced the Lahu to move south. From the 18th century onwards, the Lahu are first mentioned in Imperial records as a distinctive ethnic group.

Like with many of the other ethnic groups in China, the Lahu underwent significant changes during the period when Chairman Mao was in power and the Cultural Revolution. These changes were not only political, but they suffered radical socioeconomic changes as well. But despite these, the Lahu have “since the dissolution of communes in Lancangi n 1982 Nevertheless, since the dissolution of communes in Lancang in 1982 Lahu married couples have regained their authority in managing the production and labourers of their households, reviving their ideal of "husband and wife do it together."

Bibliography:

Du, Shanshan (2000) “Husband and Wife Do It Together”: Sex/Gender Allocation of Labor Among the Qhawqhat Lahu of Lanchang, Southwest China, American Anthropologist, Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association.