Aari people

Aari or Ari are a tribal Omotic people indigenous to Omo Valley of Ethiopia. According to 2007 census there are 289,835 ethnic Aari in Ethiopia, which makes up around 0.29% of the country's total population. Nearly all Aari speak the South Omotic Aari language, though more than half of them are multilingual and can also speak other languages such as Amharic.[1]: 73 [2]

Aari children in Ethiopia

Before being conquered by Ethiopian forces during the 19th century Aari people lived under independent chiefdoms. The divine ruler of the Aari tribal societies were called baabi. Between 1900s and 1930s Aari lived as serfs under the Ethiopian Empire and the land was settled by northern soldier populations. Aari is partially Christianized through Western missionary work (such as those by SIM) beginning in the mid 20th century. The vast majority of the Christianized Ari are Protestants.[3]

Society
The Aari, like many other Omotic speakers of Ethiopia, have largely preserved their traditional lifestyles, particularly due to their isolation from outside groups.

The Ari peoples of Ethiopia are comрrised of different occupational groups and their society is socially divided and stratified according to each Aari individual's respective occupation. The lower castes of the society is composed of potters, tanners and blacksmiths and collectively named as mana in the Aari language. Blacksmiths (faka mana)i who also do woodworking are marginalized and occupy an inferior position to tanners and potters (tila mana). Kantsa is the name given to the agriculturalist caste which holds a privileged position in the society. Intermarriage between mana and katsa is forbidden and considered as taboo according to Aari customs. After the introduction of Christianity the social division between Christian Aari belonging to differing castes have reported to become less important.[4]

Genetics

Genetic studies confirmed the existence of an ancestral component indigenous to the Horn of Africa – "Ethiopic" (Hodgson et al.) or "Omotic" (Pagani et al.) – which is most prevalent among speakers of the Omotic branch of Afroasiatic in southwestern Ethiopia, especially the Aari people.[5][6] This lineage is associated with that of a 4,500 year-old sample (Mota) found in a cave in southwestern Ethiopia, which has high genetic affinity to modern Ethiopian groups, especially the endogamous blacksmith caste of the Omotic Aari people. Like the Mota sample, Aari blacksmiths do not show evidence for admixture with West-Eurasians, demonstrating population continuity in this region for at least 4,500 years. In a comparative analysis of Mota’s genome referencing modern populations, Gallego et al. (2016) concluded that the divergence of Omotic from other Afroasiatic languages has resulted from the relative isolation of its speakers from external groups.[7]

A 2018 re-analysis of autosomal DNA using modern populations as a reference found that the ancient Natufian samples of the Levant harbored a Sub-Saharan African component at a frequency of 6.8%, which can be linked to Omotic-related ancestry. The study also suggests that this Omotic component can be associated with the spread of Y-haplogroup E (particularly Y-haplogroup E-M215, also known as "E1b1b") and Afroasiatic languages to Western Eurasia.[8]

See also

References
  1. "Ethiopian Census 2007". csa.gov.et. Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Central Statistics Agency. 2007. Archived from the original on 2011-07-28. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
  2. "Aari". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2021-07-31.
  3. Böll, Verena; Kaplan, Steven; Alos-Moner, Andreu Martinez d' (2005). Ethiopia and the Missions: Historical and Anthropological Insights. LIT Verlag Münster. ISBN 978-3-8258-7792-7.
  4. Terashima, Hideaki; Hewlett, Barry S. (2016-10-22). Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers: Evolutionary and Ethnographic Perspectives. Springer. ISBN 978-4-431-55997-9.
  5. Hodgson, Jason A.; Mulligan, Connie J.; Al-Meeri, Ali; Raaum, Ryan L. (2014-06-12). "Early Back-to-Africa Migration into the Horn of Africa". PLoS Genetics. 10 (6): e1004393. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004393. ISSN 1553-7390. PMC 4055572. PMID 24921250.
  6. Pagani, Luca; Kivisild, Toomas; Tarekegn, Ayele; Ekong, Rosemary; Plaster, Chris; Gallego Romero, Irene; Ayub, Qasim; Mehdi, S. Qasim; Thomas, Mark G.; Luiselli, Donata; Bekele, Endashaw (2012-07-13). "Ethiopian genetic diversity reveals linguistic stratification and complex influences on the Ethiopian gene pool". American Journal of Human Genetics. 91 (1): 83–96. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.05.015. ISSN 1537-6605. PMC 3397267. PMID 22726845.
  7. "Erratum for the Report "Ancient Ethiopian genome reveals extensive Eurasian admixture in Eastern Africa" (previously titled "Ancient Ethiopian genome reveals extensive Eurasian admixture throughout the African continent") by M. Gallego Llorente, E. R. Jones, A. Eriksson, V. Siska, K. W. Arthur, J. W. Arthur, M. C. Curtis, J. T. Stock, M. Coltorti, P. Pieruccini, S. Stretton, F. Brock, T. Higham, Y. Park, M. Hofreiter, D. G. Bradley, J. Bhak, R. Pinhasi, A. Manica". Science. 351 (6275): aaf3945. 2016-02-19. doi:10.1126/science.aaf3945. ISSN 1095-9203. PMID 26912899.
  8. Shriner, Daniel (2018-07-20). "Re-analysis of Whole Genome Sequence Data From 279 Ancient Eurasians Reveals Substantial Ancestral Heterogeneity". Frontiers in Genetics. 9: 268. doi:10.3389/fgene.2018.00268. ISSN 1664-8021. PMC 6062619. PMID 30079081.

Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.