Letter to the Editor: Commentary on the Fulani—History,Genetics, and Linguistics, an Adjunct to Hassan et al.,2008

摘要

In their recent work, Hassan et al. (2008) describe andnanalyze patterns of biallelic Y chromosome variation inndiverse groups currently resident in the Republic ofnSudan. They successfully historicize many of the popula-ntions in their study and do not interpret data in staticnracio-typological terms, something to be rejected (Keitanand Kittles, 1997), and largely avoid the problems notednby MacEachern (2000, 2001) and Pluciennik (2001).nHassan et al. show the human biogeography of Sudan tonhave been impacted by Arabic speakers and other non-nAfricans who arrived primarily in the Islamic periodnfrom Asia via Egypt and interacted in various ways withnlocal peoples (Cunnison, 1966; Haaland, 1969; Bayouminet al., 1985; Bayoumi and Saha, 1987; Saha and El Seikhn(sic), 1987; Holl, 2003). Their analysis documents thenintrogression of M89 lineages into certain populations ofnnortheast Africa, where the indigenous haplogroups arenA, B, and E, thus illustrating biological ‘‘levels of his-ntory’’—to borrow a concept from Braudel (1982)—whichnmay be useful in thinking about diachronic changes thatncan occur in populations/regions (Keita, 2005b).