The Ghanaian forest was well settled by agricultural communities prior to the opening of the Atlantic trade in the late fifteenth century. The most prominent of these settlements were earthworks sites, construction of which began in the first millennium ce and continued until their abrupt abandonment prior to the mid-fifteenth century. In this article, previous archaeological data are evaluated in light of current research to provide a plausible alternative hypothesis for the history of the Akan, placing that history in a much broader and deeper context.
Ancient dental pulps are highly precious samples because they conserve DNA from humans and blood-borne pathogens for ages. However, little is known about the microbial communities present in dental pulps. Here, we analyzed ancient and modern dental pulp samples from different time periods and geographic regions and found that they are colonized by distinct microbial communities, which can be differentiated from other oral cavity samples. We found that despite the presence of environmental bacteria, ancient dental pulps conserve a clear and well-conserved record of oral microbes. We were able to detect several different oral pathogens in ancient and modern dental pulps, which are commonly associated with periodontal diseases. We thus showed that ancient dental pulps are not only valuable sources of DNA from humans and systemic infections, but also an open window for the study of ancient oral microbiomes.
Puisqu'il n'existe pas de mots qui ne soient à personne(Bakhtin 1979 in Todorov 1981: 83)Le discours, c'est-à-dire le langage dans sa totalité concrète et vivante.(Bakhtin 1963 in Todorov 1981: 44)European travel accounts are widely used as sources to write the history of societies that did not themselves produce a large amount of textual documentation. On the Coast of Guinea, and more particularly on the area formerly known as Gold Coast (approximately the littoral of modern Ghana), many of the written documents providing historians with information on coastal societies prior to nineteenth century were produced by Europeans travelers. Most of these individuals were merchants, craftsmen, pastors or soldiers who had settled several years in the numerous forts and trading posts erected along the seashore to protect and enhance the trade of chartered companies. Others were seamen and merchants who only spent a few weeks at a stretch plying the African Coast aboard men-of-war or trading ships, exchanging manufactured goods for gold, slaves, and ivory. Professional writers, who had not traveled to Africa, but had obtained data from various written sources or from travelers, also composed some of the accounts. Therefore, these documents show an extraordinary diversity in form and content, which historians and archeologists need to investigate before using them as primary sources for reconstructing the past.In the first part of the present paper, which focuses on a specific genre, the seventeenth-century travel accounts, I recall the historiography of the recent critique of these sources. I also point out that despite decisive methodological breakthroughs, some heuristic dimensions or attributes of these texts are yet to be recognized and assessed. I then re-examine these sources from the dual perspective of historic and linguistic anthropological methods and introduce an exploratory approach centered on the Bakhtinian approach to discourse.
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