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The first human presence in Ivory Coast has been difficult to determine because human remains have not been well preserv...
19/05/2026

The first human presence in Ivory Coast has been difficult to determine because human remains have not been well preserved in the country’s humid climate. However, newly found weapon and tool fragments (specifically polished axes cut through shale and remnants of cooking and fishing) have been interpreted as a possible indication of a large human presence during the upper Paleolithic period (15,000 to 10,000 BC), or at the minimum, the Neolithic period.
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Rougerie, Gabriel (1978), L’Encyclopédie générale de la Côte d’Ivoire (in French), Abidjan

Papel are an ethnic group established in Casamance (Senegal), Guinea Bissau and Guinea. Most Papel people today are Chri...
19/05/2026

Papel are an ethnic group established in Casamance (Senegal), Guinea Bissau and Guinea. Most Papel people today are Christians, usually Catholic, but some still adhere to traditional beliefs, Ancestor veneration amongst traditional spiritual practitioners is central to Papel culture.
Papel people live traditionally around the city of Bissau, in the Biombo Region. They are linguistically and culturally close to mankagnes and Manjack or Manjacas. They are traditionally farmers. So, they have one of the most suitable land for rice cultivation.
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Photo of Nahés (Papel) by Serra. 1962
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Einarsdóttir, Jónina (2024). Tired of Weeping: Mother Love, Child Death, and Poverty in Guinea–Bissau. University of Wisconsin Press.

The Wodaabe culture is one of the 186 cultures of the standard cross-cultural sample used by anthropologists to compare ...
26/04/2026

The Wodaabe culture is one of the 186 cultures of the standard cross-cultural sample used by anthropologists to compare cultural traits. One interesting custom of the Wodaabe is parents are not allowed to talk directly to their two first born children, who will often be cared for by their grandparents. During daylight, husband and wife cannot hold hands or speak in a personal manner with each other.
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Photographer
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Carol Beckwith, Niger’s Wodaabe: “People of the Taboo”. National Geographic, 1983, vol. 164, no4, pp. 483-509

The Lango people live in north central Uganda. The region covers the area formerly Lango District until 1974, when it wa...
24/04/2026

The Lango people live in north central Uganda. The region covers the area formerly Lango District until 1974, when it was split into the districts of Apac and Lira, and subsequently into several additional districts. The current Lango Region now includes the districts of Amolatar, Alebtong, Apac, Dokolo, Kole, Lira, Oyam, and Otuke.
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A Lango chief with elaborate headdress. Photo published in 1902.
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Tarantino, A (1949). Lango clans. Makerere University Library: The Uganda Journal.

Soup joumou (soupe au giraumon) is a soup native to Haitian Culture. In 2021, soup joumou was added to the UNESCO intang...
18/04/2026

Soup joumou (soupe au giraumon) is a soup native to Haitian Culture. In 2021, soup joumou was added to the UNESCO intangible Cultural Heritage List.
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Soup joumou commemorates Haiti’s liberation from French colonial rule on January 1, 1804. During enslavement in Haiti, only French colonial masters and plantation owners were allowed to enjoy the delicacy, which was prepared by the enslaved Haitians.
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After the revolution, the free Haitians were finally able to eat the soup and it came to represent freedom, emancipation and independence.
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On January 1, Haitians both at home and in the diaspora eat this soup to celebrate the first successful slave rebellion that transferred political power to its free enslaved majority.
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University, Tracey Nichols, Soka (2012-03-09). An Ethics of Improvisation: Aesthetic Possibilities for a Political Future. Lexington Books.

Dehghan, Saeed Kamali (December 17, 2021). “Culture in a bowl: Haiti’s joumou soup awarded protected status by Unesco”. www.theguardian.com.

The hunter-gatherer Sān are along the oldest cultures on Earth, and are thought to be descended from the first inhabitan...
14/04/2026

The hunter-gatherer Sān are along the oldest cultures on Earth, and are thought to be descended from the first inhabitants of what is now Botswana and South Africa. The Historical presence of the Sān in Botswana is particularly evident in northern Botswana’s Tsodilo Hills region. In this area, stone tools and rock art paintings date back over 70,000 years and are by far the oldest known art.
Sān were traditionally semi-nomadic, moving seasonally within certain defined areas based on the availability of resources such as water, game animals, and eligible plants.
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Coulson, Sheila (12 February 2012). World Oldest Ritual Discovered. Worshipped the Python 70,000 Years Ago (Report). Apollon Research Magazine.

The Eyo masquerade essentially admits tall people, which is why it is described as Agogoro Eyo (literally meaning the ta...
13/04/2026

The Eyo masquerade essentially admits tall people, which is why it is described as Agogoro Eyo (literally meaning the tall Eyo masquerade). In the manner of a spirit (An Orisha) visiting the earth on a purpose, the Eyo masquerade speaks in a ventriloquial voice, suggestive of its otherworldliness; and when greeted, it replies: Mo yo fun e, mo yo fun ara mi, which in Yoruba means: I rejoice for you, and I rejoice for myself. This response connotes the masquerades as rejoicing with the person greeting it for the witnessing of the day, and its own joy at taking the hallowed responsibility of cleansing. During the festival, Sandals and foot wear, as well as Suku, a hairstyle that is popular among the Yorubas one that has the hair coverage at the middle, then shoot upward, before tipping downward are prohibited.
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The festival has also taken a more touristic dimension in recent times, which like the Osun Osogbo festival, attracts visitors from all across Nigeria, as well as Yoruba diaspora populations. In fact, it is widely believed that the play is one of the manifestation of the customary African revelry that serves as the forerunner of the modern carnival in Brazil and other parts of the New World, which may have been started by the enslaved Yoruba people transplanted in that part of the world due to the Atlantic slave trade.
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Eyo Olokun
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Traditional Festivals, Vol. 2 [M - Z]. ABC-CLIO. 2005. p. 346.

The migration of Yoruba people all over the world has led to a spread of the Yoruba culture across the globe. Yoruba peo...
25/08/2025

The migration of Yoruba people all over the world has led to a spread of the Yoruba culture across the globe. Yoruba people have historically been spread around the globe by the combined forces of the Atlantic slave trade [1] and voluntary self migration. Their exact population outside Africa is unknown, but researchers have established that the majority of the African component in the ancestry of African Americans is of Yoruba and/or Yoruba-like extraction.[2]
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1. Nicholas J. Saunders (2005). The Peoples of the Caribbean: Encyclopedia of Archaeology and Traditional Culture. ABC-CLIO. p. 209.
2. Fouad Zakharia; Analabha Basu; Devin Absher; Themistocles L. Assimes; Alan S. Go; Mark A. Hlatky; Carlos Iribarren; Joshua W. Knowles; Jun Li; Balasubramanian Narasimhan; Stephen Sydney; Audrey Southwick; Richard M. Myers; Thomas Quertermous; Neil Risch; Hua Tang (22 December 2009). “Characterizing the admixed African ancestry of African Americans” (PDF). Genome Biology. 10(12): R141.

Ibrahim Njoya is credited with developing the Bamum script, a semi-syllabic system for writing in the Bamum language. Be...
25/08/2025

Ibrahim Njoya is credited with developing the Bamum script, a semi-syllabic system for writing in the Bamum language. Before his reign, the long history of the Bamum people was preserved primarily through oral transmission. Recognizing the inherent danger of important historical facts being omitted or corrupted, he set out to establish a means of written recording of Bamum history. When his work was completed, his alphabet, called, A-ka-u-ku based on its first four signs, contained 73 signs in total. After initially starting the project in the 1980s, his grandson, Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya, the latest ruler in the Bamoun Dynasty, has continued the transition of the palace into a museum, in which school children are learning the Bamum script developed by Ibrahim Njoya.
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Fomine, Forka, Leypey Mathew (2012). “A Concise Historical Survey of the Bamum Dynasty and the influence of Islam in Foumban, Cameroon, 1390 –Present”. The African Anthropologist. 16:92

According to a Y-Chromosome DNA study by Wood et al. (2005), around 73% of Gĩkũyũs belong to the common paternal haplogr...
18/08/2025

According to a Y-Chromosome DNA study by Wood et al. (2005), around 73% of Gĩkũyũs belong to the common paternal haplogroup E1b1a. The remainder carry other clades: 19% E1b1b with E-M293 contributing 11%, 2% A, and 2% B.
In terms of maternal lineages, Gĩkũyũs closely cluster with other Eastern Bantu groups like the Sukuma. Most belong to various Africa-centered mtDNA macro-haplogroup L lineages such as L0f, L3x, L4g and L5 per Castri et al. (2009). According to Salas et al. (2002), other Gĩkũyũs largely carry the L1a clade, which is one of the African mtDNA Haplogroups.
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de Filippo, C; Barbieri, C; Whitten, M; et al. (March 2011). “Mol Biol Evo”. Mol. Biol. Evol. 28 (3): 1255-69.

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