Ancestral stories of Ghanaian Bimoba reflect millennia-old genetic lineages.

ABSTRACT: Oral history and oral genealogies are mechanisms of collective memory and a main cultural heritage of many populations without a writing system. In the effort to analytically address the correspondence between genetic data and historical genealogies, anthropologists hypothesised that genealogies evolve through time, ultimately containing three parts: literal--where the most recent ancestry is truthfully represented; intended--ancestry is inferred and reflects political relations among groups; and mythical--that does not represent current social reality. While numerous studies discuss oral genealogies, to our knowledge no genetic studies have been able to investigate to what extent genetic relatedness corresponds to the literal and intended parts of oral genealogies. We report on the corres

SUBMITTER: Sanchez-Faddeev H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3680464 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature