Rwandan – Hutu and Tutsi
Central African ǀ African
Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda since 2000
Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley, where the African Great Lakes region and East Africa converge. One of the smallest countries on the African mainland, its capital city is Kigali. Modern human settlement of what is now Rwanda dates from, at the latest, the last glacial period, either in the Neolithic period around 8000 BC, or in the long humid period which followed, up to around 3000 BC.
Archaeological excavations have revealed evidence of sparse settlement by hunter-gatherers in the late Stone Age, followed by a larger population of early Iron Age settlers, who produced dimpled pottery and iron tools. These early inhabitants were the ancestors of the Twa, aboriginal pygmy hunter-gatherers who remain in Rwanda today. The earliest form of social organization in the area was the clan. The clans were not limited to genealogical lineages or geographical area, and most included Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa. From the 15th century, the clans began to coalesce into kingdoms; by 1700 around eight kingdoms existed in present-day Rwanda.
In the 1620s, farmers in Caracas discovered that cacao beans could be sold, first selling them to native people of Mexico and quickly growing across the Caribbean. The city moved from largely native slave labor to African slaves, the first of the Spanish colonies to become part of the slave trade.
The Hutu, also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic or social group native to the African Great Lakes region of Africa, an area now primarily in Burundi and Rwanda. They are the largest of the three main ethnic groups. Historically, the Tutsi were pastoralists and filled the ranks of the warrior caste. Prior to 1962 they regulated and controlled Rwandan society, which was composed of Tutsi aristocracy and Hutu commoners, by means of a clientship structure. Belgian forces captured Rwanda during WWI. When the Belgian colonists conducted censuses, they wanted to identify the people throughout Rwanda-Burundi according to a simple classification scheme. They defined “Tutsi” as anyone owning more than ten cows (a sign of wealth) or with the physical feature of a longer nose, or longer neck, commonly associated with the Tutsi. The debate over the ethnic origins of the Hutu and Tutsi within Rwandan politics predates the Rwandan genocide and continues to the present day. In general, the Hutu appear to share a close genetic kinship with neighboring Bantu populations, particularly the Tutsi. However, it is unclear whether this similarity is primarily due to extensive genetic exchanges between these communities through intermarriage or whether it ultimately stems from common origins.
Rwandan – Hutu represents 52 unrelated workers of the Catholic Parish at Nyarurema, in northeastern Rwanda. The samples were amplified by PCR using the commercial AmpFISTR Identifiler kit. Testing was carried out in the Laboratory of Forensic Hematology of the Catholic University of Rome.
Rwandan – Tutsi represents 63 unrelated donors of the Tutsi ethnic group in Central Rwanda. The samples were amplified by PCR using the commercial AmpFISTR Identifiler kit. Testing was carried out in the Laboratory of Forensic Hematology of the Catholic University of Rome.
Source publication: “Allele Distribution of 15 PCR-based loci in the Rwandan population by multiplex amplification and capillary electrophoresis”, Forensic Science International 143, 2004, pp 61-63
[Population 207, 218]
