DEMOGRAPHIC AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE
CHABU HUNTER-GATHERERS OF SOUTHWESTERN ETHIOPIA
RICHARD E.W. BERL¹, SHYAMALIKA GOPALAN²,
GILLIAN M. BELBIN³, CHRISTOPHER R. GIGNOUX⁴,
MARCUS W. FELDMAN⁵, BRENNA M. HENN⁶, BARRY S. HEWLETT⁷
¹Colorado State Univ.; ²Stony Brook Univ.; ³Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; ⁴Univ. of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus; ⁵Stanford Univ.; ⁶Univ. of California, Davis; ⁷Washington State Univ., Vancouver
Second Meeting of the Cultural Evolution Society
October 23, 2018, Tempe, AZ
2
CHABU
ENVIRONMENT
Afromontane rainforest: elevation 1000-2000m; average temp. 18-25°C; rainy season rainfall 1500-2000mm
SUBSISTENCE
Primarily hunting and gathering supplemented by apiculture, limited horticulture (last 10 years)
LANGUAGE
Chawi kaw (“the mouth of the Chabu forest”)
[Isolate]
DEMOGRAPHY
Roughly 1700-2500 individuals in semi-permanent settlements and forest camps, low fertility (~4), 40% juvenile mortality
3
Dira and Hewlett 2018a; Kibebe 2015
RESEARCH QUESTION
Who are the Chabu?
4
‣ Migration ‣ Genealogy ‣ Demography
JUSTIFICATION
HUB OF DIVERSITY
Southern Ethiopia is one of the most ethnically, linguistically, and biologically diverse areas in the world (Levine 1974); Chabu are one of few remaining hunter-gatherer groups
ISOLATED
Chabu are a linguistic isolate surrounded by major language groups: Surmic (N-S), Omotic (A-A), Cushitic (A-A), Semitic (A-A) (Ehret 1995; Schnoebelen 2009; Kibebe 2015)
THREATENED
Not recognized as official ethnic group; Traditional land being encroached upon by nearby coffee plantations, recent disputes have resulted in violence and killings
5
HYPOTHESES
FORMERLY
AGROPASTORAL
ORIGINAL INHABITANTS
6
Oral history
“Created in the forest”
Archaeology
Hunter-gatherers present 800-1000 YA and 4500 YA
Linguistics
Isolate at edge of “spread zones”
Integration
Minority hunting group?
Domesticates
Caprines and cattle by 2000 YA, probable enset and Arabica coffee by 4700 YA
Oral history
Former clan of neighboring group?
Case studies
Southeast Asia, Pacific Islands
Dira and Hewlett 2018a; Kibebe 2015; González-Ruibal et al. 2014;
Nichols 1997; Dimmendaal 2008; Stauder 1970; Hildebrand et al. 2010
7
Nilo-Saharan
Niger-Congo
Afro-Asiatic
N = 568
8
Llorente et al. 2015
9
Nilo-Saharan
Afro-Asiatic
Niger-
Congo
K = 5
10
11
12
13
80
60
40
20
0
14
2
-2
0
1
-1
Posterior mean migration rates (log10)
ESTIMATING EFFECTIVE MIGRATION SURFACES (“EEMS”)
Petkova et al. 2016
15
GENES
ENVIRONMENT
16
Niger-Congo
Afro-Asiatic
Nilo-Saharan
Khoisan
Austronesian
LOCAL CONVEX HULL ESTIMATION (“LoCoH”)
Ethnologue
Getz et al. 2007
17
GENES
LANGUAGE
OUTCOMES
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
Chabu most closely resemble Mota and likely represent continuation of the original hunter-gatherer inhabitants of the region; data do not support transition from agropastoralism
BENEFITS TO CHABU
Support ethnic recognition with national and regional governments; Establish protections for rights, lands, and sovereignty
CONSERVATION
Cultural, linguistic, and biological; Biodiversity is best conserved by local traditional knowledge holders (Gadgil et al. 1993)
18
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Y-DNA
Additional information on genealogy, gene flow, sex-biased migration
EXPAND STUDY
23andMe Populations Collaborations grant; Additional samples and additional populations; Collaboration with local African researchers with relationships to communities
19
PRIMARY REFERENCES
Dira, S.J., & Hewlett, B.S. (2016). Learning to spear hunt among Ethiopian Chabu adolescent hunter-gatherers. In Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers (pp. 71-81). Springer, Tokyo.
Dira, S.J., & Hewlett, B.S. (2018a). The Chabu hunter-gatherers of the highland forests of Southwestern Ethiopia. Hunter Gatherer Research, 3(2), 323-352.
Dira, S.J., & Hewlett, B.S. (2018b). Cultural resilience among the Chabu foragers in Southwestern Ethiopia. African Study Monographs, 39(3), 97-120.
Hewlett, B. L. (2016). Innovation, processes of social learning, and modes of cultural transmission among the Chabu adolescent forager-farmers of Ethiopia. In Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers (pp. 203-215). Springer, Tokyo.
Kibebe T. T. (2015). Documentation and grammatical description of Chabu. Dissertation. Addis Ababa University.
Schnoebelen, T. (2009). (Un)classifying Shabo: Phylogenetic methods and results. In Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 2, P. K. Austin, O. Bond, M. Charette, D. Nathan and P. Sells, eds. (London: SOAS).
20
Thank You
Collaborators: Barry Hewlett, Shyamalika Gopalan, Brenna Henn,
Marc Feldman, Chris Gignoux, Gillian Belbin
Funding: Washington State University IGERT Program in Evolutionary
Modeling, The Explorers Club
Organizers: Lucy Aplin, Rob Boyd, Sarah Mathew, Vanessa Ferdinand,
Tom Morgan, Cristina Moya, Michael Muthukrishna, Charles Perreault,
Paul Smaldino, Masanori Takezawa
… and You!
Questions? Comments? Jobs?
Photos by
REW Berl