Reproduction of the Battle at Mahenge in German East Africa in 1905.
Scientists in Germany and Rwanda have genetically linked a 100-year-old skull to a male living today. The deceased individual was a high-ranking advisor to Mangi Meli, the king of the Chagga people in the late-1800s who was executed by the German colonial government in 1900 after leading an uprising. The scientists also identified living “likely descendants” of two other skulls.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the invading German empire took thousands of skulls from its colonies for since-discredited research into racial classification. In 2011, Berlin's Museums Authority (SPK) acquired about 7,700 skulls in poor condition from the Charité Hospital Museum. Many of the skulls pillaged from East Africa in the early 1900s are thought to be part of this collection.
Before returning the remains to the proper countries, the museum vowed to find the provenance of at least 1,100 of the skulls. These three recent identifications are part of a project supporting that goal, which was launched in 2017 by the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin.
In this part of the project—which is specifically looking to re-identify 500 of the skulls by the end of 2024—researchers extracted enough usable DNA from eight skulls to seek out potential relatives. Researchers at the University of Göttingen then conducted molecular genetic tests and compared their results with saliva samples taken from 10 people in Tanzania.
One skull was found to be completely genetically identical to a man living in Tanzania today.
"Finding such a match is a small miracle and will probably remain a rare case, despite the most careful provenance research,” said Hermann Parzinger, president of the SPK.
The skull was inscribed with the word "Akida," a title that suggests the likely victim was a very important person to the Chagga people and a high-ranking advisor to Meli. This hypothesis was confirmed when the DNA was a complete match to the living man—who was already known to be a direct descendant of the Akida. While it is unknown what happened to Akida, it is likely he met a violent death like his king, Meli. On March 2, 1900, Meli was hanged and decapitated after leading an uprising against the German invaders.
In two more of the eight skulls examined, DNA matched paternal lines (Y-STRs) to another Chagga family. In this case, a direct biological relationship in an uninterrupted paternal line is at least probable, the research team says.
The museum said the relatives will be contacted to determine what they want to do with the remains.
In the overall collection, the Museum of Prehistory and Early History says 904 skulls have been assigned to areas in present-day Rwanda, 197 to Tanzania and 27 to Kenya. Seven could not be assigned. Researchers say the vast majority of the skulls originate from burial sites, especially cemeteries or burial caves, but also from execution sites run by the German colonial government at that time.
In 2019, the Museum of Prehistory and Early History led genetic investigations of six skulls after Meli’s grandson established a foundation to search for the king’s skull. The six skulls chosen were the only ones that could be Meli due to the geographical allocation and the time of collection. Unfortunately, after a DNA comparison, none of the skulls matched Meli, nor the 19 other men who were executed on that day.
Previous data and research on the skull collection is published in the book, “Human Remains from the Former German Colony of East Africa: Recontextualization and Approaches for Restitution.”