Medieval Chinese skeletons found in Kenya

[archaeologist]

A team consisting of archaeologists from China, the United States and Kenya announced in 2017 the excavation of three human skeletons who probably are of Chinese origin. Both osteological studies and DNA studies have been conducted on these skeletons. One of them is dated to the time of the Chinese admiral Zheng He who visited the coast of East Africa in the first half of the 15th century. The other two skeletons seem slightly younger.

From China Daily, 2017:


Kenya excavates skeletons of people with Chinese blood

A team consisting of archaeologists from China, the United States and Kenya announced last Friday the excavation of three human skeletons associated with Chinese blood at the first "Ancient and Contemporary Relations between China and East Africa" conference opened in Lamu county, off the northern coast of Kenya, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The team leader Kusimba, a professor with American University, said it marked the first time such relics were found in East Africa.

All the skeletons had front teeth that are exclusive for the East Asians and one of them could be determined to be from the same period when Chinese admiral Zheng He traveled to East Africa in the 15th century.

The other two are determined to be living in a period after Zheng's expeditionary voyages.

Kusimba said these people might have come to East Africa through land trade routes or the Maritime Silk Road, adding that no belongings were found at their tombs.

Chinese navigator, explorer and diplomat Zheng He, known as the Christopher Columbus in China, might have come to East Africa among his seven voyages to the Indian Ocean between 1405 and 1433 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

Zhu Tiequan, an archaeologist with Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University, was quoted as saying that the excavation on the island began in December 2012.

Kenya excavates skeletons of people with Chinese blood



In the book China and East Africa: Ancient Ties, Contemporary Flows the skeletons are also mentioned. The book also mentions (on page 73) the DNA study conducted on the skeletons. The study seems not to have been published in any paper yet.

DNA analysis by Yu Dong at Sun Yat Sen University China shows that in three out of ten samples from Manda there are genomic connections to East Asia.

China and East Africa: Ancient Ties, Contemporary Flows

[zarahan]

Not surprising considering Commander Zheng He's expedition as well as Chinese trade in the region

[archaeologist]

Yes indeed. Earlier also Chinese coins have been found along the Kenyan coast.

For example in 2013 one coin was found on Manda. It was from the time of Zheng He

Ancient Chinese coin found on Kenyan island

A joint expedition of scientists led by Chapurukha M. Kusimba of The Field Museum and Sloan R. Williams of the University of Illinois at Chicago has unearthed a 600-year-old Chinese coin on the Kenyan island of Manda that shows trade existed between China and east Africa decades before European explorers set sail and changed the map of the world.

The coin, a small disk of copper and silver with a square hole in the center so it could be worn on a belt, is called "Yongle Tongbao" and was issued by Emperor Yongle who reigned from 1403-1425AD during the Ming Dynasty.

Ancient Chinese coin found on Kenyan island


Another similar coin was found in 2010 in Mambrui, a small village just north of Malindi in Kenya

Could a rusty coin re-write Chinese-African history?

A joint team of Kenyan and Chinese archaeologists found the 15th Century Chinese coin in Mambrui - a tiny, nondescript village just north of Malindi on Kenya's north coast.

In barely distinguishable relief, the team leader Professor Qin Dashu from Peking University's archaeology department, read out the inscription: "Yongle Tongbao" - the name of the reign that minted the coin some time between 1403 and 1424.

"These coins were carried only by envoys of the emperor, Chengzu," Prof Qin said.

"We know that smugglers would often take them and melt them down to make other brass implements, but it is more likely that this came here with someone who gave it as a gift from the emperor."

Could a rusty coin re-write Chinese-African history?

[anansi]

Keep in mind travel was a bi-directional event even long before the Swahili, others, traveled and setup trading station as far away as India and China ,remember this from some time ago.

The trade ties are very old, we have indication of Pearl millet and Sorghum from about 1500 B.C reaching China, perhaps indirect trade connected through India?

The Meroitic Empire: Trade and Cultural Influences in an Indian Ocean Context



The Meroitic Empire was a powerful Kushite state in the Middle Nile region of the Sudan, lasting from the fourth century BCE to the fourth century CE. In the early phase from the ninth century BCE, the seat of power was in the north at Napata. Influences from Egypt clearly dominated symbolic expressions of royal power in this early phase, but over time, elements linked to different cultural traditions occurred. Here, I explore the possibility that some of these new elements (e.g. the lion god Apedemak and elephant imagery) may be related to interactions across the Indian Ocean involving trade, migrations of craft specialists and the diffusion of ideas.

It is probable that, when the influence of India on Meroe at this period is realized, other traces will be recognized. (Arkell 1951, p. 36)

…the ways between Rome, Persia, India, and China were opened in this period to an ever increasing commerce, and to such a degree that nowhere in the hemisphere was there any longer the possibility of local mythological developments in isolation.

The exchange of ideas was multifarious. And yet, there was in each domain a local force (I have termed style or signature). (Campell 1979, p. 288)

Introduction
Texts pertaining to early global history tend to focus on Eurasian, Indian, Chinese and Southeast Asian trade connections; African connections are given less consideration, although Edens and Kohl (1993) refer to Sudan and the Arabian Peninsula as being included in West Asian Bronze Age trade.

During Pharaonic times, Sudan’s position in global trade was largely related to the flow of goods such as ivory and gold, as well as slaves that were channelled to Egypt.

This position changed as politico-economic processes affected movements of goods over regions of global scale from the Roman Hellenistic world to South Asia.

This became particularly important in the area and time I shall discuss here, namely, the Kushite kingdom of Meroe, which represents a later development of the Kushite kingdom of Napata.
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10437-014-9169-0

A Chinese in the Nubian and Abyssinian Kingdoms (8th Century)
The visit of Du Huan to Molin-guo and Laobosa

This article focuses on the first Chinese whose presence in Africa is clearly documented. Due to the geographical curiosity of the T'ang dynasty, extracts of an 8th century travel report of a Chinese military officer, Du Huan, were documented and preserved. He visited Arabian and African countries. The location of Molin-guo, an African country, seems to be clarified today: it appears to be located in the dry desert lowlands in Sudan and Eritrea. Likewise, this source clarifies the location of another region: Laobosa appears to have been south of Molin-guo, which is the first mention of Abyssinia in an ancient Chinese source. This text is thus one of the very few ancient sources contemporary to the late Aksumite kingdom. Briefly, but with significant details, the relevant peoples' customs are described, most of them still identifiable today.
journals.openedition.org/cy/33

An African trader or ambassador to Ming China.

A miniature from a Persian Manuscript(Al-Maqamat) showing a Swahili(Zanji) Trading ship.-1237 C.E
www.swahiliweb.net/ziff_journal_3_files/ziff2006-07.pdf
It was in craft like these that the Zanj sailed the Indian ocean along with their Persian Arab Indian and Chinese trading partners

theyounghistorian7.blogspot.jp/2012_01_01_archive.html

Ambassadors/Envoys

The Sung Shi (History of the Sung Dynasty) recorded visits to China in 1071 CE and 1081-3 CE of the embassy of Zenjistan. Zenjistan is the Persian form of the Arabic Zenjibar for the East African Coast.[6] The leader of the embassy, whose name is recorded in Chinese as Zengjiani, made a considerable impression at the Imperial Court.

On his 2nd visit, he received a large amount of "white gold" in exchange for tribute, and was given treatment due an honored guest. He is said to have taken 160 days to reach China, passing through Sohar in Oman, Kulam-Malay in South India and Palembang in Sumatra.

[archaeologist]

Yes, Asian African contacts are very old. Already around 2500 BC the banana reached Africa from South East Asia.

Early Africans Went Bananas Yellow fruit was cultivated more than 2000 years earlier than thought

Around 1500 BC pearl Millet reached Asia from Africa. South East Asians landed on Madagascar around 2000 years ago.

Around the first or second century AD we find a Buddha statue in Berenice which show an Indian presence on the coast of Egypt. We find also inscriptions in sanskrit.

Both China and India are mentioned in the famous Periplus of the Erytrean Sea in the first century.

Some of the earliest contacts between China and Africa were probably indirect. But during the Tang dynasty we have evidence of direct contact. As you showed above Chinese officer Du Huan visited African countries in the 8th century.

When it concerns African travelers to China we have an interesting case in the 14th century when the Somali scholar and traveler Sa'id of Mogadishu visited China.

Sa'id is said to have afterwards travelled across the Muslim world and visited Bengal, China. During his stay at a mosque on the west coast of India, he encountered fellow Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta. According to scholar Peter Jackson, Sa'id might have during this occasion shared with Battuta accounts of his travels in China and detailed the political landscape and succession of the Yuan Dynasty, information which Battuta would eventually add in his own chronicles. Sa'id may have died on 1361 or 1365.

Sa'id of Mogadishu




Sa'id of Mogadishu, picture from Wikipedia

[archaeologist]

A beautifully made video about Zheng He´s travels and contact with Africa.

[anansi]

Yeah saw it the vid well made, btw you should look up the African pirates who operated on the behalf of a Chinese Warlord and rebel.

[archaeologist]

Indeed an interesting story. Seems the admiral, pirate leader, merchant, translator, military general, and politician Zheng Zilong 鄭芝龍; established a bodyguard of former African slaves. Zheng was a Ming loyalist just like his famous son Zheng Zhenggong 鄭成功 (Koxinga). Both father and son were pirates. Koxinga became famous for conquering Taiwan from the Dutch in 1662. There he established a Ming loyalist regime that sought to retake all of China from the Manchus who had conquered Beijing in 1644. However, Koxinga failed to retake the mainland and he died on Taiwan in 1662. About the African bodyguard one can read, among other things:

Coxinga’s African Bodyguards 

Swordsmanship was a vital component in the young Coxinga’s education, not purely as a skill that a gentleman warranted, but also as a means of self-defence. [His father Nicholas] Iquan [Zheng Zilong] had many enemies, among the Dutch, Chinese and Japanese, and China was still reeling from the after-effects of drought and famine. As the son and heir of China’s richest man, Coxinga was a valuable prize for kidnappers, and he was assigned minders hand-picked from Iquan’s own personal battalion, the Black Guard. When the boy asked his father where he had found such fearsome warriors, Iquan simply replied that they had come from ‘beyond the sea’.

Experience had taught Iquan that he could trust nobody; though he may never have known, his own mother had even conspired against him with [Dutch commander] Pieter Nuijts, so his paranoia was wholly justified. His Chinese associates were former pirates whose allegiance was unsure, his family were often out to get whatever they could, and he had long since learned never to trust the barbarians of Europe. Consequently, Iquan recruited the Black Guard from a place that had no relationship to any other country or associate: Africa.

The Black Guard, approximately 500-strong, had once been Negro slaves in the service of the Portuguese, but were now all freed men. Iquan had somehow acquired them in Macao, and had turned them into his own imposing private army. Perhaps some of them were among the slaves who fought so bravely to defend Macao from the Dutch in 1622, freed in the aftermath only to find themselves thousands of miles from home, with no hope of getting back. Others may have defected from the service of the Dutch, though Chinese sources imply that Iquan bought them in Macao and freed them himself. With many of its members unable to speak any language but Portuguese, the Black Guard was Iquan’s most trusted unit, and he ‘confided more in them than in the Chinese, and always kept them near his person’. Their mere appearance struck fear into his enemies, and rumours spread that even devils had joined Iquan’s forces at Anhai: black-skinned giants with strangely curly hair, whose imposing forms were bulked out still further by hefty armour under gaudy silks. Fortunately, the Black Guard did not get to hear of such tales, as they were all devout Catholics, whose war-cry was a blood-curdling scream of Santiago, in praise of their patron St James.

SOURCE: Coxinga and the Fall of the Ming Dynasty, by Jonathan Clements (Sutton, 2005), pp. 79-80

Coxinga’s African Bodyguards


I once saw a Chinese movie named Sino Dutch War 1661, where one met Koxinga, his Japanese mother and his father. But in the film one did not see any trace of the African bodyguard. Also as a funny detail in the film was that the Dutch were depicted as rather ugly with enormous noses (大鼻子). 

The subject of Taiwan is still hot stuff in China and in the propaganda war between mainland China and Taiwan both claim Koxinga as their special hero.

Another article about the African body gard

Africans in Ancient China & Vice Versa, Part 1: Chinese Explorations–Guest Blog by Eccentric Yoruba


About the pirate and commander Koxinga:

Koxinga


And about his father Zheng Zilong

Zheng Zilong

[archaeologist]

An interesting article about the find of coins from the Northern Song dynasty in Harla, Ethiopia. These findings suggest that there were previously unknown Silk Roads connecting China to the Horn of Africa. The discovery of these coins shows possible trade relations between China and Ethiopia during the Middle Ages.

Northern Song coin finds in Harla, Ethiopia point to newly found silk routes from China to the Horn of Africa


The recent recovery of two coins dated respectively 1080 and 1040 AD from Harla, the great ancient town near Dire Dawa poses an interesting question.


How come coins from inner oriental China ever got there, about a thousand years ago? One thing we deduce for sure: as people do not in general walk around for centuries with coins in their pockets, Harla is about a thousand years old, refuting a previous French dating to the 15th century. My dating appears compatible with a date engraved on a stone tumb inscription from VI century Egirah, 12 th century found in Harla, Ahimed Zacariah, National Museum Curator, Addis Ababa, pers. communication. The coins were found by peasants in superficial soil in two different areas of Harla main village.

A visit by Cherinnet, around 1984, as some rescue archaeology was proposed pending the foundation of a local school overlaying a noted, but never excavated or properly surveyed area in Harla, brought to the finding of several objects, including this coin and others, arab, coins, from a well filled by topsoil by local peasants at an unspecified period, according to Cherinnet.

Locals recall instead attempting to redig a dry well, effectively landifllled to avoid accidents, during the Ethiopian 1984 great famine. As I collected during my three visits between 2009 and 2011.


This first recovered coin was identified in 2010 by Prof. Dashu Qin, Bejing University, at my request, as a II mint Yuan Feng Tong Bao bronze piece, 1078-1085.


The original of the Tong Bao coin designed in Harla by Cherinnet Tilahun, ca 1984, coin of a considerable numismatic commercial value tied probably to the popularity of its minting sovereign ShenZheng of Song is now lost. This pushed me to look for further evidence and brought to the second, slightly older coin discovery.


The second coin, the one I physically recovered in peasant's hands has been identified again by prof. Dashu Qin as a Huang Song Tong Bao piece, 1039-1053, less valuable to collectors.



At the time of discovery I was accompanied by a chief explorer at British Gaz, Mark Tringham, who had joined me on a speleological mission to Mt. Kundudo and Hararge. He found a vein of quartzite he deemed to be likely to be auriferous in Harla itself, a datum worth further verification, as it may explain both the location and the sudden decline of the huge settlements of Harla in eight clustered villages.


Further historic and numismatic clues hint at a trade route spanning from the inner Horn of Africa to the far east. In 1949 J.J.L. Duyvendak had pointed out to Zheng-He travels, in his "The Chinese Discovery of Africa" , Richard Pankhurst cites a number of Axumite coins recovered betweend India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.


"There was a road that went through Eritrea and to the port of Azab and Adule conducted trade with the Far East, Greece, Egypt and India.


This trade consisted of commodities such as ivory, gold, rhino horn, hippo hides and teeth, wild animals, frankincense, Nubian emeralds and slaves. The trade was wide and varied and skills employed in the manufacture of these goods were extensive. There were imports of silk, cotton, swords, wine glasses, silver and gold which were manufactured into plates as well as the creation of large gold and bronze statues. Trade links existed with Kush, Egypt, the Roman Empire, the Mediterranean Basin, Arabia, India, Sri Lanka and China. Again the skills and knowledge employed to make these links possible was enormous. This was a world which was connected and which carved out and developed trade routes some of which still are in existence today. The Straits of Bab al-Mandeb was one of the three major shipping routes of the ancient world. Ethiopia was the first country in the world to mint a coin with a Christian symbol and the second country in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion."
Richard Pankhurst in R. Hopkins, "Trade ".


It is no novelty that by the year one thousand the world power, China, had little or no interest in Europe. Three centuries before the celebrated Marco Polo voyages, China was instead, it would now appear, extensively trading with the African oriental coast. Much as it is today.


A 'treasure' including 105 pieces of gold coins from inner India was found, specularly, in the Debre Damo Monastry mountain fortress grounds, ca 1940 AD.


Sada Mire, archaeologist, head of antiquities in the Somaliland Government, Hargeysa and a lecturer at the London SoAS, has found around seventy towns and trade posts that cover the north Somalia coast and point inland to eastern Ethiopia. Interestingly, she has also found beautiful Ming blue pottery shards and more ancient Chinese pottery in a mountain site excavation, at Fardowsa near Sheikh around 2010.


In October 2010 came news of an equally significant discovery. A team of Kenyan and Chinese archaeologists unearthed a small 15th century Chinese brass coin on Kenya’s northern coast. According to Professor Qin Dashu of Beijing University, that type of coin was minted between 1403 and 1424 and carried only by envoys of Emperor Chung Zu. He surmised that the recent find was brought to the coast as a gift from the emperor – almost 100 years before the arrival in the region of the first European. The coin, which came to light during a US33 million three-year expedition funded by Beijing University, follows the netting by Kenyan fishermen of 15th century Chinese vases and DNA confirmation of a long-held belief that some local villagers have Chinese ancestry. Conjecture links such fragmentary evidence of a distant Chinese presence in East Africa with the exploits of the Chinese admiral Zheng He, who is said to have taken an enormous fleet of ships across the Indian Ocean in 1418. The voyages are thought to have been attempts to increase recognition and trade for the Ming Dynasty.


Indeed, the DNA testing, carried out in 2006, was part of an event celebrating the 600th anniversary of Zheng He’s first voyage and the larger aim of the joint archaeology project is to discover the remains of one of the admiral’s ships, said to have sunk off the Kenyan coast.


No one knows how far Zheng He got. The Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama, who arrived in 1499, was traditionally credited with being the first foreign trader to open up East Africa and laying the foundation of more than five centuries of European colonial power. ‘We’re discovering that the Chinese had a very different approach from the Europeans to East Africa,’ archaeologist Herman Kiriama from the National Museums of Kenya told a BBC interviewer. ‘Because they came with gifts from the emperor, it shows they saw us as equals.’ A good start, after 500 years of Chinese absence on the African Coast.


In 1414, an emissary from the town of Malindi, in modern day Kenya, paid a visit to the Chinese royal court. Ancient Chinese texts also testify that Admiral Zheng He visited thrice the Sultan of Malindi, the most powerful ruler on the Kenyan coast at the time.

As DNA of Kenya Fang Mao Fishermen has been proven to show a Chinese descent, the DNA of an 'Argobba' man we collected from Aliyu Amba, Ethiopia, has distinctively proven him to be of Arab blood. We are at present collecting a set of further samples.(Fulvio Cruciani, Rome Darwin Institute, personal communication). My expectations are DNA testing of a very limited present day “Harella” or Harla population remnant may relate them directly to present day Hararis.


A number of Chinese, Axumite and Indian coin, chinese porcelain shards from Kilwa, Tanzania to inner Ethiopia and inner Somaliland prove further a trade link about 2000 years old along the shores of the Indian Ocean, since well before Zheng He's famed fabulous voyages, until colonization tied to slave trade destroyed it for the interests of european new powers.


Chinese ceramics and coins have also been found in the ruins of The Great Zimbabwe civilization, an extensive indication of the commercial relations that once existed between Eastern and Southern Africa and the Chinese empire. We are convinced further Archaeological exploration along the Extended East Route between Ethiopia and Somaliland, concentrating on recently highlighted towns like Harla, Gendabello, Mesal, Asberi, Bia Woraba, Bubassa, Dakar, Derbiga and more on the Somaliland side, with particular attention to marine archaeology in the ports of Berbera, Zeyla and along the Somali North Coast will yield amazing discoveries.


Bringing us to the proof we still need: the Extended East Route we are promoting from the Abyssinian Highlands to the Somali and Djibouti coasts was a commercial route: the uncovered treasure of the most extensive and durable trade link ever, the Indian Ocean or African Silk Route.


The Extended East Route for Sustainable tourism we are mapping now has shown a string of towns pointing from the main Somaliland-north Somalia ports of Zeyla and Berbera to the Ethiopian highlands, and is ever more producing finds that tie the medieval reigns of Christian and Islamic Abyssinia to far eastern powers, to Song dinasty China in particular.


Marco, 2011

Northern Song coin finds in Harla, Ethiopia point to newly found silk routes from China to the Horn of Africa