Using DNA, scientists have found descendants of people whose skulls were taken to Germany more than a century ago
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German scientists have identified the living descendants of people whose remains were stolen and taken to Germany for scientific experiments during the colonial era. This is reported by The Guardian. Since 2017, the Berlin Museum of Prehistoric and Early History has been conducting research on 1,100 stolen skulls. They were brought to Germany at the beginning of the 20th century from what was then called German East Africa (present-day Burundi, Rwanda, parts of Tanzania and Mozambique). As the publication informs, with the help of DNA analysis in Tanzania, it was possible to find living relatives of the people whose remains were examined. Photo: Photo 12/Universal Images Group/Getty Images Scientists were able to establish information about eight skulls. For one of them, a complete genetic match with a living person was found. “The name ‘Aqida’ on the skull indicated that it belonged to a high-ranking adviser to Mangi Meli, a powerful leader of the Chagga ethnic group in the late 1800s. A DNA sample provided a direct match to a descendant of Aqida,” The Guardian reported. The researchers also saw an almost complete correspondence of two more skulls to the descendants of the Chagga people. “Finding such a match is a small miracle, which will probably remain a rare case, even with the most careful studies of provenance,” commented the president of the museum, Hermann Partzinger. The skulls are said to be part of a collection acquired by the museum in 2011 from Charité Hospital. It includes about 7,700 skulls, some of which were collected by the anthropologist Felix von Luschan during the German colonial rule. These remains were stolen from cemeteries and other burials around the world. It will be recalled that scientists found a skull in China, which may belong to an unknown race of people. Read also: Scientists near Antarctica found a creature with 20 “hands”. PHOTO
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