English university returns rare Māori cloak to New Zealand.

The Oriental Museum at the University of Durham has returned a traditional Pauku Māori war cloak to New Zealand for a five-year exhibition at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, according to a press release issued on 11 December 2025. How the cloak came to be in the UK is unclear; it was initially loaned to the museum by the Trevelyan family in the 1960s, then donated in 1971, but had remained in storage for decades before being rediscovered. Pauki cloaks are incredibly rare, with the discovery of the Durham cloak bringing the number known to exist to five. 

The Pauku Māori war cloak. Te Ao Māori News.

A Pauku cloak was not a conventional cloak work primarily as a garment, but instead was used as a shield in battle, worn over one arm and held in front of the body. As such it was made of heavy fabric, specifically a tightly woven single-pair weft twined cloth called whatu patahi, and often soaked in water or mud, making it able to absorb much of the energy of a blow. Unfortunately, such cloaks offered little protection against firearms, and are not thought to have been manufactured since the eighteenth century.

The Durham cloak has a wā pōkere border design, popular in the seventeenth century and not previously seen on a Pauku Cloak. This design has a black background, representing the primal void, and a pattern representing the emergence of the world from this.

The cloak will be on display at the Auckland War Memorial Museum for five years, as part of an exhibition funded by the British Council and Creative New Zealand, as part of the Connections Through Culture program. During this time it will be studied by researchers and traditional weavers, and a decision will be made as to where it will be permanently located.

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The deep roots of social inequality in South Africa's Cape Colony.

Thirty one years after the end of the Apartheid system, the World Bank still rates South Africa to be the most unequal country on Earth, with a Gini Index of 0.63, four points ahead of the second-placed nation, Namibia (the Gini Index measures inequality from 0.00 to 1.00, where 0.00 represents all wealth being distributed equally among the population, and 1.00 represents a single person owning everything within a nation). It has been calculated that the richest 1% of the South African population own 55% of the country's wealth, while the top 10% own more than 85%. Thus wealth inequality within South Africa is equal to that of the entire globe.

Most modern research into inequality in South Africa concentrates on the post-Apartheid era, although it is generally accepted that the country's long history of racial discrimination and political repression is linked to the current state of inequality. However, the question of when this inequality first arose has not really been addressed by historians.

In a paper published in the South African Journal of Science on 26 November 2025, Johan Fourie of the Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past at Stellenbosch University presents the results of a study in which he examined historical records from the Dutch Cape Colony of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the British Cape Colony of the early nineteenth century, in order to attempt to understand the origins of the severe inequality seen in South Africa today.

Fourie notes that the Cape Colony was a deeply unequal place, even compared to modern South Africa. There were three distinct populations present, European settlers, enslaved people, and the indigenous Khoesan population (note, this is not always considered to be an acceptable name for this group, as it is linked to a history of persecution and discrimination, however, no term is universally deemed acceptable, and it is the term used by Fourie within his study). The economic inequality between these three groups, was predictably stark, but even within these groups inequality was very high.

Most societies in the developed world became steadily more equal in the decades after the Second World War, however, whilst this continued for the remainder of the twentieth century in continental Europe and Japan, the countries of the English-speaking word have become increasingly unequal since the 1970s, a pattern which has been repeated in India and China. Estimating inequality in pre-twentieth century societies is much harder, due to a paucity of records. Calculations have been made for the mid nineteenth century for the US and some western European countries, suggesting that they were more unequal than today. Studies looking at societies from before the nineteenth century are harder still, as census data simply did not exist in most places (the US undertook its first census in 1790, while the first census in England and Wales was taken in 1801). In Africa, such data is generally absent well into the twentieth century.

The Cape Colony provides a rare opportunity to examine wealth distribution in a pre-industrial society, as it was administered by colonial officials from first the Dutch East India Company and then the British Empire. who kept meticulous records of financial transactions, albeit largely with the aim of extracting wealth from the colony. Furthermore, Cape Town has never been affected by any major military conflict, something which as led to the destruction of records in many other parts of the world. 

Map of the Dutch Cape Colony in 1795, from George McCall Theal (1816). History of Africa south of the Zambesi - from the settlement of the Portuguese at Sofala in September 1505 to the conquest of the Cape Colony by the British in September 1795. G. Allen & Unwin Ltd, London. Internet Archive. 

Previous studies of inequality in South Africa have largely concentrated on the twentieth century, and the entrenching of disparities between racial groups by the Apartheid system, and associated political exclusion, social stratification, and control of the labour market. However, this system only entrenched divisions which were already present.

This concentration on twentieth century inequality has led to two visions of inequality in South Africa emerging, a 'Liberal' view which sees inequality as having arisen as a result of European conquest, with people becoming impoverished as a result of being dispossessed from their traditional lands, and a 'Radical' view, which views poverty as a result of a prolonged struggle over land, labour and markets. However, the debates between these two camps have generally been based around the way in which the problems should be viewed, with neither side concentrating particularly on the measurement of inequality.

The Cape Colony was founded by the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) in 1652, as a resupply station for ships on their way to Asia. It subsequently grew into a settler colony with a large agricultural economy, where at least a portion of the population enjoyed a standard of living comparable to that of Europe. This colony subsequently expanded into the African interior, with an expanding agricultural economy built upon the labour of  enslaved and Khoesan workers, and producing grain, wine, and livestock products.

Landing of Van Riebeeck at the Cape of Good Hope by Charles Davidson Bell (painted in about 1850). Wikimedia Commons.

By 1825 the Cape Colony comprised 11 districts, with more than 10 420 settler households. At the abolition of slavery in the colony in 1834, a census found over 37 000 enslaved individuals. Records of Khoesan labourers are less clear, though this appears to have increased steadily over time.

Fourie was able to access a variety of records to facilitate his study. The most important of these were annual tax censuses, which were kept by both the Dutch East India Company and British colonial officials, and many of which have been transcribed in the past decade by a team of historians at the Cape Archives. Another source of information was probate inventories (records of people's assets at the time of their death, and how these were divided amongst their heirs), which were collected by the Master of the Orphan Chamber, a public official esponsible for administering estates when individuals died intestate, left heirs under 25 or unmarried or had heirs who were untraceable. A third source of information was the Slave Emancipation Dataset, which provided detailed information about the ownership of slaves at the time of emancipation. This survey was carried out by officials appointed from London, who toured the colony documenting who owned slaves, how many slaves they owned, and estimating the value of those slaves.

A wealthy family with slaves in Cape Town in 1760. Stellenbosch Museum.

Fourie began by calculating annual Gini coefficients for the district of Stellenbosch-Drakenstein based upon annual censuses taken between 1685 and 1844. This dataset comprised 142 219 individual household records, with an average of 995 households each year. To calculate relative wealth, six assets were examined, Horses, Cattle, Sheep, wheat reaped, vines and wine.

Three trends became immediately obvious from this dataset. The first was that wealth distribution in the Cape Colony was remarkably uneven, even when only free households were included. Second is that this applies to all assets, with no asset producing a Gini coefficient less than 0.5 at any point in the record. The third was that whole there were some periods of volatility in the records, these largely reflect points at which the data collecting method was changed, rather than political events.

Fourier then combined all six asset datasets into a single bucket, using values for each item derived from the Orphan Chamber dataset. This again produced a record of remarkably uneven wealth distribution, with the Gini coefficient remaining between 0.6 and 0.75 throughout the eighteenth century, then rising further in the nineteenth century (although this was lower than for the most extreme asset types).

Looking at the share of wealth held by the wealthiest portion of the population, Fourier found that the top 1% of the population held an average of 12% of the total wealth over the eighteenth century at, but that this increased over time, with their holding on average 18% of the wealth over the period 1800-1830. This was true for smaller wealth divisions too, with the wealthiest 0.1% of the population holding an average of 2% of the total wealth in the eighteenth century and 3.7% of the total in the period 1800-1830, while the top 0.01% owned an average of 0.5% of the total wealth through the eighteenth century, and an average of 0.8% of the total wealth in the period 1800-1830. Fourier notes that because these figures reflect only agricultural assets, that they cannot be directly compared to modern statistics, but that they do demonstrate evidence for early wealth inequality.

Fourier also calculated a Gini coefficient for slave ownership, which again was very high, consistently remaining above 0.7. Adding slaves into the general basket, however, reduced the average slightly, which Fourier suggests may reflect many slaves being involved in non-taxable activities, such as domestic servitude.

However, slaves are not just assets, they are people, and members of the community. Since most slaves could be assumed to have no assets (this is not always strictly the case), Fourier first tried representing each male slave as the head of a household with zero assets. This skewed wealth distribution even further, reaching 0.92 by the end of the eighteenth century. Since slaves do have to be provided for in some way, Fourier next repeated the experiment with the assumption that slave households had resources equivalent to six sheep per year. This produced a Gini coefficient with varied between 0.89 and 0.91 over the course of the eighteenth century, comparable for the figures calculated for the slave-owning communities of the Caribbean. Thus the Cape Colony would have been one of the most unequal societies of the early modern world.

Because these records are only from a single district, Stellenbosch-Drakenstein, there remains the possibility that this district was uniquely uneven in its wealth distribution. Records were not available for all districts throughout the period, but Fourier was able to assemble a roughly coeval record set by using 1825 for the Cape District, Stellenbosch, Graaff-Reinet, Swellendam, Albany, Beaufort, George and Uitenhage; 1824 for Clanwilliam and Worcester; and 1823 for Cradock. Using this data, he created Gini coefficients for Horses, Oxen, Cattle, Sheep, wheat and wine. This record included 10 420 individual households.

The Gini coefficient remained above 0.5 for all agricultural measures in all districts, with the single exception that Albany District does not produce any wine. In all other districts, wine produced a Gini coefficient of 0.8 or higher. Distributions were most even for Horses and Oxen. Fourier suggests that Stellenbosch was at the upper end of wealth distribution inequality for two reasons; high wine production and a large number of slaves.

'Mossel Bay on the Indian Ocean' by Robert Cocking, 1818. British Library/Wikimedia Commons.

Next Fourier looked at information derived from probate records. Potentially, this could be used to examine household possessions, something absent from the taxation records, though Fourier instead chose to remain with agricultural assets, as this allowed easier comparison with records derived from other sources. Probate records were available for all districts for the entire period, with little variation in how records were made. 

Using these records, Fourier examined five agricultural assets, Cattle, Horses, Sheep, ploughs, and wagons, for the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This produced similar results to the taxation records, consistently showing a Gini coefficient of greater than 0.6 for all assets, and from 1770 onwards, a Gini coefficient greater than 0.7, indicating a high rate of wealth inequality among settlers from the earliest days of the colony. 

The slave emancipation report records the value of each slave owned at the time of abolition, plus the compensation paid to each slave-owner, with a total of 36 417 individual records. All records come from the year 1834. Gigi coefficients constructed for slave ownership by district showed a high level of inequality, but not as great as for other assets, ranging from 0.29 for Somerset and Uitenhage to a 0.47 for Worcester. Gini coefficients for compensation for the loss of slaves ranged from 0.45 in Somerset to 0.55 in the Cape District. 

However, these figures only show inequality among slave-owning colonists, with less than 30% of the settler population at the time actually owning slaves. Once the 13 033 non-slave-owning settler households were added to the equation, the Gini coefficients shifted considerably, giving coefficients for slave-ownership between 0.49 in Stellenbosch (where slave-ownership was comon) and 0.75 in Beaufort (where slave-ownership was unusual). Coefficients for compensation were even higher, ranging from 0.83 in Somerset to 0.92 in the Cape District.

However, European settlers and their slaves were never the only people present in the Cape Colony. By the early nineteenth century a number of Khoe settlements had been incorporated into the colonial administrative system, with some, notably mission stations, having produced documentation which is now being transcribed and analysed by modern scholars. To try to represent this population, Fourier looked at three such settlements, Bethelsdorp, Swartrivier, and Groenekloof, concentrating on records from 1825.

Bethelsdorp, near Algao Bay, was founded in 1804 by the London Missionary Society, and became an important settlement where the Khoe people were able to gain some protection and autonomy within the colonial system, with a population of 425 households by 1814. However, the settlement suffered from poil soil quality, and a variety of other economic problems. 

The Swartrivier settlement in Swellendam District grew more organically, attracting pastoralist Khoe who worked as herders of labourers for European farmers, often under exploitative conditions. By 1825 Swartrivier was home to 364 households.

Groenekloof, located on the coast 55 km to the north of Cape Town, was founded by the Moravian Missionary Society in 1808, and became a haven for freed slaves and Khoesan, By 1825 the settlement comprised 108 households, practising subsistence farming, or working as labourers on settler-owned farms.

Tax records were collected for these settlements in the same way as they were for settler communities, although the number of variables per household was generally lower, probably as a reflection of these households owning fewer assets. In analysing these households, Fourier looked at five assets, Cattle, Horses, Oxen, Sheep and wheat reaped. 

Creating Gini coefficients for these assets revealed severe inequality within all three settlements. Only a single asset type (Cattle at Bethelsdorp) produced a coefficient lower than 0.75, and that was 0.72. The distribution of many assets approached near perfect inequality (i.e. the situation where one person owns all of the asset). For example, only ten families owned sheep in Bethelsdorp and only one family owned Sheep in Groenekloof. Thus, inequality among the Khoe was typically more severe than among European settlers. Including this group with the general population pushed inequality even further, due to the greater wealth typically held by settler households. This led to a Gini coefficient for Cattle ownership of 0.92, and measures for Horses, Oxen and wheat all in excess of 0.77.

Korah/Koranna preparing to move. Samuel Daniell, 1831. William Fehr Collection/Iziko Museums of South Africa.

Fourier's findings reflect severe inequality (generally interpreted as a Gini coefficient of greater than 0.6) for all assets, and both within and between communities, throughout the history of the Cape Colony. Such inequality had clearly arisen long before the beginning of the twentieth century. While comparing historic income and wealth to their modern equivalents is notoriously problematic, within-period comparisons can determine the distribution of assets, and therefore how equal or unequal societies were.

See also...

The Blood Customs of Dahomey.

The West African coast on the Gulf of Guinea comprises a network of lagoons and waterways stretching from the Volta River to Lagos, with hundreds of miles of navigable waterways, good agricultural land, and both access to the Atlantic Ocean shelter from its storms. People have lived in this area for at least two-and-a-half thousand years, potentially much longer, although we do not really know how long. The archaeological record of this area is poor. The wet tropical climate does not favour preservation, much of the landscape is made up of shifting islands and waterways, which appear and vanish over time, and many old occupation sites are seen as sacred by the local population.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD, Aja-speaking peoples migrated from the Tado area on the River Mono in what is now eastern Togo migrated southeast onto what is now southern Benin, conquering or intermingling with the peoples already living their, and forming a new ethnic identity, the Fon. By around 1600 AD, this are had been split into three kingdoms, Allada (or Greater Arda), on the southeastern coastal plain of modern Benin, Ajatche (or Lesser Arda) on the southwestern coastal plain, and Dahomey on the Abomey Plateau, inland and to the north of both.

Initially Allada appears to have been dominant to the other two kingdoms, which paid it tribute, but sometime between 1620 and 1645, however, this relationship was overturned when a King of Dahomey, probably Dakodonu, overthrew the king of Allada. The name Dahomey itself is probably a misnomer, meaning, roughly 'The King had his stomach ripped out' in the Fon language, in reference to this overthrowing of Allada; the people of the kingdom probably always referred to it as 'Abomey', the name of both the capitol city and the plateau on which it stands, but European travellers favoured Dahomey, which was the name eventually given to the French colony which was formed in 1894; this later gained independence as the Republic of Dahomey in 1960, changing its name to the People's Republic of Benin in 1975 (confusingly, this refers to the Bight of Benin, part of the Gulf of Guinea; the city of Benin is far to the east in Nigeria), and the Republic of Benin in 1990.

Dahomey appears to have embraced the opportunity to trade with Europeans early. It initially traded extensively with Portugal, importing firearms, cloth, beads and Cowrie shells, cloth, and alcohol, and exporting local goods and slaves. This trade appears to have been profitable to both sides, relations were good between the nations, and Dahomey established a permanent diplomatic mission in Brazil, so important was the trade relationship. Portuguese traders recorded Dahomey as a civilised country with a ruling class living in walled cities and an agricultural economy, based largely on serf labour, not notably different to its neighbours. Most of the slaves purchased there were local serfs, with some prisoners of war captured from neighbouring states.

Over time, the Portuguese were replaced as the main trading partners of Dahomey by the British, whose merchants told a very different story. They recounted Dahomey as a fierce warrior kingdom, with a standing army of over ten thousand, including regiments of female amazon warriors. This Dahomey waged constant war against its neighbours, and exported thousands of slaves every year, all apparently taken in battle. The agricultural system had been transformed, with a plantation system imported from the Americas and manned by more captured slaves, the Dahomeans themselves appear to have been almost entirely employed in the business of war (even the women). Furthermore, each year a great ceremony, known to Europeans as the 'Customs of Dahomey' took place in which hundreds of slaves were sacrificed to the local deities of the Voodún (or Voodoo) religion (despite their willingness to trade with Europeans, the Kings of Dahomey appear to have had little time for Christian missionaries). 

An illustration depicting victims awaiting sacrifice at a ceremony in Abomey in 1793, from Archibald Dalzel's The history of Dahomy, an inland Kingdom of Africa. New York Public Library/Wikimedia Commons.

There are a number of potential explanations for this difference. Possibly, the Portuguese were unaware, or untroubled, by the ferocious nature of the Dahomeans, although given the apparent closeness of the two nations, and the general enthusiasm of the Portuguese Empire for spreading the Catholic faith (which was willing to put up with quite a bit of brutality in the name of Christ, but nor any pagan deity), this seems unlikely. Alternatively, British merchants may have greatly exaggerated the behaviour of the Dahomeans. This would have had some advantages, if Dahomey was such a wild and savage place, then the merchants who ventured there would be seen as correspondingly more brave and adventurous by their peers. Also, slavery was much easier to justify if you were taking slaves from brutal masters in Africa, who might sacrifice at any moment on the whims of the priests of some terrible pagan god, and selling them on into the comparatively benign stewardship of a Christian planter in the New World. A third explanation is that the size of the slave industry had a brutalising affect on the kingdoms of West and Central Africa, as over time each nation had to raise a larger-and-larger army to protect its own citizens from raids by its neighbours, and was forced to fund its armies by carrying out more-and-more raids on its neighbours. Under this scenario, which was favoured by abolitionists in Britain and elsewhere, smaller African states were wiped from the map, with their citizens being shipped en mass to the Americas, while the remaining nations needed not just to be well armed, but to appear sufficiently alarming to be left alone.

The Voodún religion is not a doctrinal monolithic faith with a single religious text like Christianity or Islam, but rather a polytheistic religion with a large (and variable) number of deities, with different stories told about them in different places. The religion has historically been followed in the southeast of Ghana, southern parts of Togo and Benin, and the southwest of Nigeria (although the variable nature of the religion means that there can be some doubt about where it starts and finishes), and has spread to areas of the New World, including parts of Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Southwestern United States. 

Voodún is split into a large number of cults, each dedicated to a specific deity, with different forms of worship, although most commonly through 'fetishes', idols in which divine spirits are believed to reside, and to which sacrifices (typically of food) are made. Some are open in their worship, organising large public festivals and parades; others are secretive in nature. A persistent rumour among Voodún worshippers, and neighbouring peoples, is that some of these more secretive cults practised Human sacrifice (a popular trope in both Hollywood and Nigerian movies), something which appears to have become part of the official state religion in Dahomey. 

From 1728 the Oyo Empire, a Yoruba state based in western Nigeria, which had by this time expanded to cover most of Yorubaland (the area occupied by culturally Yoruba people) and several areas outside it, staged a series of invasions of Dahomey, finally incorporating it as a vassal state in 1748. During this time a Dahomean King named Agaja married a Voodún priestess named Hwanjile, about whom there are a variety of legends. Hwanjile may have been herself captured by the Dahomeans as a slave, before marrying the king, and may have brought two sons from a previous relationship with her, who then became stepsons of the king. It is also said that when the Oyo Emperor demanded a son of the King of Dahomey be sent to him as tribute, and all of the other wives of the king refused to send their sons, that Hwanjile sent one of hers. 

The Oyo Empire at its greatest extent in about 1780. Lovejoy (2014)/Wikimedia Commons.

Agaja was a successful military leader, who expanded to borders of Dahomey in several directions by taking over smaller states, but was unable to completely repel assaults by the Oyo Empire, a much bigger state with a large and highly effective cavalry. In 1740 Agaja died, probably in another battle with Oyo, he was not succeeded by his oldest son and official heir, Zinga, but by a younger son, Tegbessu, who was either a son of Hwanjile, or had made an alliance with her. 

Upon becoming king, Tegbessu appointed Hwanjile his 'Kpojito' a title which translates roughly as 'Queen Mother'. Similar roles exist in many traditional African kingdoms, and imply a female relative who co-rules with a king. This is not usually the king's spouse, and while it could be his mother, it might equally be an aunt or sister. In this role Hwanjile appears to have significantly re-arranged religious practices within Dahomey, introducing new deities, and (allegedly) the custom of human sacrifice. The name Hwanjile has itself become an important title, with a succession of priestesses descended from the original Hwnajile taking on the name and serving as chief priestess to this day. Tegbessu was eventually forced to submit to dominion by the Oyo Empire, but remained an important ruler, reigning over Dahomey until his death in 1774.

Tegbessu was followed as king by Kpengla (the relationship between the two is unclear), who ruled till 1789, with the throne passing to his son, Agonglo, who ruled till 1797, and was succeeded by his son, Adandozan. All three of these kings struggled against, but were ultimately unable to overthrow, dominion by the Oyo Empire. In 1818 Adandozan was overthrown in a coup by his brother (or son, depending on the version of the story), Ghézo, with the aid of a Brazilian slave trader called Francisco Félix de Sousa. With de Souza's help, Ghézo significantly restructured the Dahomean state, replacing a peasant-based agricultural system with plantation system manned by captive slaves, similar to that of Brazil, and using the freed Dahomean workforce to vastly expand the military. 

In 1823, the Dahomeans began raiding areas outside of Dahomey but considered to be under the protection of the Alaafin (Emperor) of Oyo. The Alaafin immediately ordered that this cease, and a large sum of reparations be paid. Instead, Ghézo sent de Souza as a messenger to Oyo, demanding that Oyo make peace. The Alaafin rejected this, and dispatched an expeditionary force to Dahomey, with the aim of putting down the rebellion, but this was defeated by Ghézo's reformed military, securing independence for the kingdom.

Portrait of King Ghézo of Dahomey, painted some time before 1851. From Frederick Forbe's Dahomey and the Dahomans. New York Public Library/Wikimedia Commons.

In theory, this should have left Dahomey well-placed, and independent nation with a strong military, no need to pay tribute to a larger state, and having good contacts with the market to which its primary commodity, slaves, was sold. Unfortunately, in the 1833 slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire, and the British Navy began imposing a blockade on the Atlantic coast of Africa intended to prevent everyone else stop trading in slaves too. This did not bring an immediate end to the slave trade (demand for slaves was growing in the Americas at this time, British merchants were still quite happy to trade in goods derived from slave labour, and those freed by the British Navy intercepting slave ships were more likely to end up in indentured servitude in a British colony somewhere), but it did present a significant problem for African states with economies reliant on the export of slaves. 

This lead to a slow weakening of Ghézo's power both at within his kingdom, where a poor economy undermined support for his reign, particularly following the death of de Souza in 1849, and in the wider region, where states such as Abeokuta and Badagry in southern Nigeria profited by forming close ties with the British. In 1851 Ghézo launched a disastrous invasion of Abeokuta, in which the armies of Dahomey were defeated with British support, and which led to a British naval blockade of all ports controlled by Dahomey. In 1852 Ghézo was forced to sign in a treaty promising to end the trade in slaves (although British officials in the region never believed he was completely sticking to this), and in 1853, in a second treaty, he agreed to end the sacrifice of captives taken in wars in the annual customs (convicted criminals could still be executed at these events). In 1857 Ghézo officially announced he was breaking these treaties and resuming the slave trade probably in response to internal pressures within his kingdom, and in 1858 launched a second war against Abeokuta. Unfortunately, the Dahomean army was defeated just as quickly on this occasion, and Ghézo was (probably) assassinated later that year, being replaced by his son Glele. Dahomey never regained its military strength, and in 1890 was invaded by France, being first made a protectorate, and then four years later officially part of French West Africa. 

Each of the Kings of Dahomey built their own palace complex, including a mixture of residential, administrative, and ceremonial buildings. In 1944, Charles André Maurice Assier de Pompignan, Lieutenant-Governor of the Dahomey Colony and Dependencies, converted these palaces into a museum, the Royal Palaces of Abomey, open to the public, something which they remain to this day, additionally becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. Between 2018 and 2022, a collaboration between the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, the Université d'Abomey-Calavi, and the French Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères, were allowed to carry out archaeological investigations at the Royal Palaces of Abomey.

Entrance to the Palace of Ghézo at the Royal Palaces of Abomey. Karalyn Monteil/UNESCO.

Within the compound of Ghézo at the Royal Palaces of Dahomey is the tomb of the king himself. The mortar from which these buildings were made is reputed to have contained a mixture of ritual ingredients, including the blood of 41 sacrificed Human victims (the ritual inclusion of magical or sacred ingredients into the mortars from which traditional buildings were made is not unusual in West Africa, but including the blood of sacrificed Human victims certainly is).

The archaeologists were able to take two samples from an inside wall of King Ghézo's tomb at the Royal Palaces of Dahomey. These were then tested for their protein content, with the results of the study being published in May 2024 in a paper in the journal Proteomics, by Philippe Charlier of the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, the Laboratory of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Biology at Université Paris-Saclay, and the Foundation of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Biology at the Institut de France, Virginie Bourdin, also of the Laboratory of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Biology at Paris-Saclay University, Didier N’Dah of the Département d’Histoire et d’Archéologie at the Université d’Abomey-Calavi, and Mélodie Kielbasa, Olivier Pible, and Jean Armengaud of the Département Médicaments et Technologiespour la Santé at Université Paris-Saclay, present the results of this study and discuss its implications. 

Proteomics, the study of proteins recovered from ancient materials, is a relatively new discipline, which has some distinct advantages over the more established discipline of palaeogenomics. Proteomics it targets ancient proteins rather than DNA. Since protein is much more stable than DNA, this enables the study of much older samples, as well as samples from environments where DNA is unlikely to be preserved well, such as the wet tropical climate of the Abomy Plateau. Moreover, while our DNA is identical in every cell, each tissue the body produces contains a number of unique proteins, which not only helps to determine the type of tissue being examined, but also helps to rule out contamination, as this is typically in the form of skin or hair cells, and can be excluded from a study such as that carried out by Charlier et al. which was looking primarily for traces of blood.

Illustration of the wall of King Ghezo’s tomb. Panel A shows a general view of the cenotaph wall. Panel B shows specific detail of the red wall buttressed by a wood beam. Philippe Charlier in Charlier et al. (2024).

Charlier et al. were able to identify 5866 different peptides (short chains of amino acids, which can be combined together to form proteins) in their sample, including 4208 from Bacterial proteins, 1240 from Eukaryotes, and 50 from Archaeans. Of the Eukaryotic peptides, 271 could be assigned to Chordates, including 49 from Bovids, 21 from Chickens, and 215 from Humans. Furthermore, while the Bovine peptides were largely associated with milk, many of the the Human and Chicken peptides were associated with blood, indicating that both Human and Chicken blood had been added to the mixture from which the mortar had been made, with Human blood making up a significantly larger portion.

Taxonomical results obtained for dataset B3. Five taxonomical ranks (Superkingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Genus) are represented by rings (from the inner to the outer, respectively). The number of entities identified for each of the taxonomical ranks are separated by white lines,and their width corresponds to the abundance measured (TSMs ratio). The most abundant genera are indicated. Charlier et al. (2024).

Thus, Charlier et al.'s data strongly indicates that Human blood was a significant ingredient of the mixture from which the walls of the tomb of Ghézo were made. This in turn appears to support the more lurid stories of European, particularly British, visitors to the Dahomey from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which emphasise the frequency and large scale of Human sacrifice within the kingdom. However, this is a study of a single tomb from a specific point in the history of Dahomey, and does not imply that this was the case throughout the kingdom's history, thus the earlier, largely Portuguese, accounts which do not mention these practices may equally be true, in which case the kingdom may have adopted these practices during its long involvement with the slave trade and constant wars with neighbouring states.

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France returns skull of King Toera of Menabé to Madagascar.

The head of King Toera (or Itoera) of Menabé, a former kingdom in the west of Madagascar, betweem the Mangoky and Manambalo rivers, has been returned to the island by France. The former king was captured in battle following a rebellion against the French government of Madagascar in 1897, and was subsequently beheaded along with two of his supporters. The three heads were then taken to Paris, where they were placed in the collection of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle as 'anthropological specimens'.

Harea Georges Kamamy, the current King of Menabé, carrying his ancestors skull following a ceremony at the French Ministry of Culture on 27 August 2025. Stéphane du Sakutin/AFP.

The Kingdom of Menabé was formed in about 1540 by Adriamandazoala, who led a group of Sakalava people from the south of the island on a migration into the area (one of two kingdoms in the west of Madagascar formed by migrating Sakalava people at about this time, along with Boina, to the north of the Manambalo River. The kingdom grew under notable rulers such as Andriandahifotsy, (died 1685) and Andriandrainarivo (died 1727), but was incorporated into a unified Kingdom of Madagascar by Radama I in 1820 (although sporadic uprisings would occur until 1840 when Queen Ranavalona I placed garrisons in all the major towns of  Menabé and moved farmers into the region from other regions of Madagascar to dilute loyalty to the Menabé kings (who were nevertheless able to keep their titles, albeit as rulers of a subordinate kingdom).

In 1883 France invaded Madagascar, with fighting continuing till 1886, when a treaty was signed granting the French control of the port of Diego-Suarez (now Antsiranana) as well as the right to determine Malagasy foreign policy, making the island an effective (but not official) French protectorate. In 1894 France launched a second invasion, marching upon the capital, Antananarivo, which fell in September 1895, following a brief shelling by French artillery.  On 1 October 1895 Queen Ranavalona III signed a treaty making Madagascar an official protectorate of France. 

In 1897, following an uprising in central Madagascar, the Malagasy monarchy was abolished and Queen Ranavalona III was exiled to Réunion, never to return. The French military commander, Joseph Gallieni. King Toera did not take part in this initial rebellion, but when direct rule by France was declared, he joined the rebellion, putting together an army of 10 000 warriors armed with riffles. An expedition to Menabé was launched under the French General Augustin Gérard, who reached the Menabé capitol, Ambiky on 30 August 1987, which, like Antananarivo before it, fell after a short artillery bombardment. 

King Toera was captured and beheaded along with two of his senior advisers. Their heads were subsequently shipped to France and placed in the anthropological collection of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. During the entire campaign only two French casualties were recorded, both soldiers from the Tirailleurs Sénégalais (a West African regiment that did not recruit exclusively from Senegal).

More than 20 000 sets of Human remains are still held in the collection of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, including hundreds more from Madagascar, with collections also held by other French museums and universities. Similar collections are held by institutes in other countries in Europe, as well as other parts of the world. 

In 2023 France changed its laws on the ownership of such remains, in order to allow their return to countries from which they were obtained, this having become a sticking point in relations with many nations around the world. The return of the skulls of King Toera and his advisers is the first such repatriation under the new law.

DNA tests carried out at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle proved unable to determine which of the skulls belonged to King Toera, although they were able to determine that they did belong to people of Sakalava origin, so an identification was carried out by a Sakalava spirit medium. The three skulls were handed over in a ceremony in Paris on 27 August 2025, and reached Antananarivo on 1 September. From here they are being taken overland to Menabé, where they will be buried.

The three skulls arriving in Antananarivo on 1 September 2025. Mamyrael/AFP.

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Little Foot.

In the late nineteen thirties, palaeontologist Robert Broom discovered a series of Hominin skeletons in a cave system in Sterkfontain, South Africa. These, he assigned to the genus Australopithecus, which had been described in 1925 by Raymond Dart, suggesting that he had found a second species in the same genus. At the time, these discoveries did not receive a great deal of attention from the international scientific community. The cave deposits at Sterkfontain were estimated by Broom to be Late Pleistocene in age. This made Broom's material much younger than Dart's and contemporary with modern Human remains from many parts of the world, which meant that, while interesting, Broom's new 'Ape-man' could not be ancestral to modern Humans.

More locally, however, the discoveries caused considerable interest, leading many amateur fossil hunters to begin exploring the Sterkfontain cave system. One of these was Helmut Kurt Silberberg, a Johannesburg art dealer and antiquarian with an interest in prehistory. In 1942, Silberberg's explorations led to the discovery of a small cave with numerous bones embedded in the walls. Unfortunately, the rock in which the bones were embedded was extremely hard (more so than the bone) making excavation difficult. Silberberg paid a local man to hammer free a chunk of rock, during which process several bones were broken, displeasing Silberberg. When the bones in the rock were examined, they were found to belong to a Hyena and a Baboon. 

Discouraged by these findings, Silberberg lost interest in the work, giving his specimens to Broom, and moving onto other projects. While the fossils were not interesting to Silberberg, the material proved to be much more useful to Broom, who recognised the Hyena as a member of the genus Lycyaena, which was otherwise known from the Early Pliocene of Europe and India. Even if this South African specimen was younger than other fossil Hyenas assigned to the genus, it was unlikely to be Late Pleistocene in age. This caused him to re-evaluate the age of the cave system using Mammal fossils to establish an age sequence, which proved that his Australopithecus fossils were much older, and therefore much more significant, than he had originally realised. Broom named the Hyena fossil Lycyaena silberbergi (a name which is no longer used) and the cave where it was found was eventually named Silberberg Grotto.

In 1966, palaeoanthropologists Philip Tobias and Alun Hughs began a new series of excavations at the Sterkfontein Caves, working methodically through the cave system from west to east, and uncovering several new specimens, albeit mostly fragmentary. In 1978 they revisited Silberberg Grotto, removing large sample of breccia, which was cleaned by technicians at the site to recover a larger amount of fossil material, most of which was moved to the University of the Witwatersrand, while some remained in storage at Sterkfontein.

From left to right, Raymond Dart, Alun Hughes, and Phillip Tobias at Witwatersrand University in the mid-1970s. Clarke & Kramer (2012).

In 1992 Tobias' team returned to Silberberg Grotto, this time employing two mining engineers, John Cruise and Dusty van Rooyen, to blast away a section of the fossil-rich wall of the cave. Analysis of the material recovered by this process in 1994 by palaeoanthropologist Ronald Clarke revealed something surprising. The rocks had produced numerous bones associated with Carnivores and Monkeys, but for some reason almost no Bovids (usually the most abundant Mammals in South African deposits). This led him to return to the material stored at Witwatersrand, which he also analysed for the proportions of different Mammal groups. 

While examining this material, Clarke discovered what appeared to be the talus, navicular, medial cuneiform and proximal half of the first metatarsal of an unknown Hominin. This was surprising for two reasons. Firstly, the material had been examined previously by specialists palaeoanthropologists looking for exactly this sort of material, and secondly because the Silberberg Grotto had by this time been identified as somewhat older than the previous Hominin-producing deposits at Sterkfontein, implying any fossil Hominin found here could be the oldest yet identified specimen from the cave system. In addition to these four bones, Clarke found what appeared to be a badly damaged lateral cuneiform from the right foot, and a fragment of a possible Hominid calcaneum.

This material suggested a small Hominin, capable of standing upright like a Human, but still retaining an disposable big toe like an Ape, which suggested that at least some of its time was still spent within the trees. This specimen was given the official designation StW 573, but quickly became known as 'Little Foot'.

In 1997 Clarke discovered a box labelled 'D18 Cercopithecoids' (Old World Monkeys), which when inspected was found to also contain material labelled 'D20 Cercopithecoids'. Since D20 implied the layer of material exposed at Silberberg Grotto, and Clarke was interested in the fauna of this cave, he took down this box to inspect its contents. Within this material he found a Hominid intermediate cuneiform, which he found fit with the lateral cuneiform associated with Little Foot. Along with this was the left lateral cuneiform, the proximal end of the left second metatarsal and the left distal fibula. A subsequent search of related material uncovered the disto-medial portion of a Hominid tibia. This did not fit exactly with the Little Foot talus, but was close enough that, once the damage to the material was taken into account, Clarke considered it likely to have come from the same individual.

This tibia had a break across its shaft consistent with the sort of damage caused by mine blasting, Clarke next turned to the material stored at Sterkfontein. Here, in a bag of material labelled as Bovid tibiae, he found another Hominid tibia, which this time fit perfectly with the left talus of StW 573, leading him to realise that the previously discovered tibia was in fact from the right leg. Further inspection of this material also produced a second piece of cuneiform, which fit together with the one from the original Little Foot material, giving a complete bone. This had a bowl-like surface on its articular surface with the cuboid bone, indicating that these bones still articulated (could be moved relative to one-another), as in Chimpanzees, and unlike the condition seen in Modern Humans, where the two are immobilised by a keel-and-socket arrangement, which gives more stability when walking and running upright.

This gave Clarke a collection of twelve bones from the feet and lower legs of a single Hominin, including the left tibia and fibula, which joined to an articulated set of eight foot and ankle bones, and the distal fragment of a right tibia and right lateral cuneiform.

Convinced that more material might still be found in Silberberg Grotto, Clarke prepared a cast of the distal fragment of the right tibia of StW 573, which he gave to two perpetrators based at Sterkfontein, Nkwane Molefe and Stephen Motsumi. Molefe and Motsumi then searched the area exposed by blasting within Silberberg Grotto, looking for an exposed cross section of bone which would fit this cast. 

Clarke was not optimistic that this approach would work. The various excavations had turned the grotto into a cavern of some size, with exposed breccia on the walls, floor and ceiling, all of which might contain the matching bone fragment - if it was there at all. As if this was not difficult enough, there was neither natural light nor a rigged lighting system within the cave, forcing the two investigators to search using hand-held torches. 

After two days Molefe and Motsumi reported finding a bone embedded in a talus slope at the western end of the grotto, which was a perfect match for the cast given to them by Clarke. This was unexpected, as this was not the area where Cruise and van Rooyen had carried out their blasting, but an older area of excavations where blasting had been carried out by commercial miners extracting limestone for use in the construction industry, an operation which had stopped 65 years before. Furthermore, a second section of bone could be seen to the left of this bone, which turned out to be a perfect match for the broken left tibia.

Ronald Clarke, Stephen Motsumi and Nkwane Molefe. Kathleen Kuman/Mail & Guardian.

Following this discovery, Clarke, Molefe, and Motsumi began excavating the site using hand tools, taking almost a year to uncover the left tibia shaft and the distal ends with lower shafts of the left and right femurs. After which, however, the material apparently stopped, until Motsumi hammered away a section of travertine (dense limestone deposited by hot springs) higher up the slope exposing more breccia, and the distal and of a Hominid humerus and mandible. The skeleton had apparently been entombed in rock, broken in half by an ancient rockfall, and covered by travertine from an ancient hot spring, before eventually being exposed by limestone miners some time in the early twentieth century.

In the following months, and eventually years, the skull, left forearm, left hand, pelvis, ribs, vertebrae, humerus, and most of the lower limb bones were extracted. The final skeleton was 90% complete, the most complete non-Human Hominin skeleton ever recovered. For comparison, the famous Lucy (or Dink'inesh) skeleton AL 288-1, considered to be the most complete specimen of Australopithecus afarensis, is only 40% complete.

The complete skeleton of StW 573, Little Foot.  Paul John Myburgh/ University of the Witwatersrand.

The Sterkfontein cave system, now part of the Maropeng Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, are a karstic cave system on the south side of the Bloubank River, about 50 km to the northwest of Johannesburg. Karstic cave systems form as water percolates through limestones, dissolving some of the mineral to create voids. This is a complex process, as cave systems form, are enlarge by the hollowing-out of water erosion, then collapse bringing sediments from above down to lower levels and often redirecting the water flow which caused the hollowing out. Furthermore, the limestone dissolved in one place is typically re-deposited in another, as travertines or flowstones. All of this makes establishing timelines for the karstic deposits extremely complicated.

Sterkfontein Caves began to form about six million years ago, towards the end of the Miocene. Throughout much of the intervening time the local environment has been a mosaic of grasslands, woodlands, and lakes, albeit with warmer, wetter phases, and cooler, dryer phases. At least five different Hominin species have been found within the caves, some of whom appear to have sought shelter within cave systems, others to have been dragged their for consumption by cave-dwelling carnivores, while others appear to have fallen into sinkholes.

Skeleton StW 573, or Little Foot, was found closely associated with a large Baboon (an animal quite capable of predating a small Hominin), but does not show any signs of having been consumed. Rather, it seems to have fallen face-down into a shallow puddle of water within a sinkhole. Possibly the Hominin and Baboon fell together following a struggle, but this is guesswork we will never be able to prove. The chamber where it was found contained Pliocene Hyenas, and was directly below the chamber which produced Bloom's most famous Australopithecus specimen, Mrs. Ples (STS 5), and therefore must be older than that specimen.

In 1978, geomorphologist Timothy Cooper was part of the team led by Tobias and Hughes which re-examined the Silberberg Grotto. He established that the chamber had formed as a cone-shaped void, the walls of which had then been covered by flowstone (dissolved and then re-deposited limestone), before an opening had reached the surface, forming a sinkhole into which surface sediments, and various Animals now preserved as fossils, had fallen, filling in the cone. These sediments were then covered by a second flowstone deposit. The sediments within this cone were thought to be about 2.8 million years old (Late Pliocene) on the basis of the fossil fauna they contained, implying a similar age for Little Foot. 

However, Molefe and Motsumi had established that Little Foot had in fact come from below the lower flowstone deposit, with only a small portion displaced into the accessible sediments by an ancient rockfall and the actions of early twentieth century miners. Various attempts have been made to date this flowstone deposit, including cosmogenic uranium-lead series nuclide dating, palaeomagnatism. These studies produced dates between 4 million years and 1.07 million years ago, although most fell into the range between 2.8 and 2.2 million years ago. However, subsequent studies also established that the flowstone itself contained pockets of younger, redeposited material, making all dating of this layer suspect.

Cosmogenic aluminium²⁶ and beryllium¹⁰ dating works because both aluminium²⁶ and beryllium¹⁰ are produced in quartz exposed to cosmic rays (i.e. on the surface) at a steady rate, producing a ration of 6.75 aluminium²⁶ to 1.0 beryllium¹⁰. Once the quartz is buried no more of either radioisotope is formed. Since the half-life of aluminium²⁶ is roughly half that of beryllium¹⁰, over time the ratio between the two radioisotopes will change, enabling the precise measurement of both how long a piece of quartz was exposed on the surface, and how long ago this happened. In April 2015 a study led by Darryl Granger of Purdue University produced a date for the sediments in which StW 573 was directly lying, based upon cosmogenic aluminium²⁶ and beryllium¹⁰, yielding an age of 3.67 million years before the present (equivalent to the dates for early Australopithecus afarensis specimens from East Africa. 

Darryl Granger. Lena Kovalenko/Purdue University.

This also makes StW 573 the oldest Hominin fossil discovered in South Africa, as well as the most complete pre-Human Hominin fossil ever found. It also predates the oldest stone tools in South Africa by over a million years, and the oldest known stone tools anywhere by over 300 000 years, suggesting that it came from a population which did not yet have this technology. 

Studies of Little Foot have suggested that she was female, and stood about 1.20-1.30 m tall, with longer legs than arms (similar to modern Humans, but unlike Chimpanzees). She had an 'S' shaped collarbone, which is a more Human-like trait, and but the shape of her pectoral girdle and shoulder blades, suggest that she was comfortable moving in trees suspended by her arms. The structure of its foot suggests that it was able to walk in an erect manner, similar to modern Humans, but still had an opposable big toe, implying it was still a comfortable climber (Pliocene Hominins are in general thought to have been woodland species, with the preference for open grasslands emerging in the Pleistocene when a cooler, dryer climate led to the retreat of forests and expansion of grasslands). 

This fits well with the environment in which her remains were found. While the Silberberg Grotto produced the remains of some terrestrial Animals, such as Antelope and Hyenas, the majority of the fossils are of Animals associated with an arboreal lifestyle, such as small Monkeys and Felids. Such Animals might have climbed down into the sinkhole in order to obtain water and become trapped, or possibly have fallen directly from trees into the hole - in Little Foot's case, possibly while trying to escape from a large Baboon.

Surprisingly, despite the completeness and significance of Little Foot, she has never been assigned to a specific species. She was referred to by Ronald Clarke as possibly a specimen of Australopithecus prometheus. However, this species name is now considered to be invalid; it was used by Raymond Dart to refer to a partial occipital bone (part of the back of the skull) from Makapansgat, but this has now been assessed as a specimen of Australopithecus africanus, a species common in South Africa from about 3.3 to about 2.1 million years ago. However, Little Foot is not generally accepted as belonging to Australopithecus africanus, which it predates as well as differing from in its brain capacity (smaller in Little Foot) and shoulder arrangements (more Ape-like in Australopithecus africanus). Nor does she conform to Australopithecus afarensis, a species whose time range she overlaps, but which is not found in Southern Africa. 

Thus Little Foot appears to be an otherwise entirely unknown species of Australopithecus from South Africa, with an arboreal lifestyle and no use of stone tools. This is not completely surprising, as species such as Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus afarensis are clearly already some way removed from their closest Ape relatives. and species which live in trees seldom have good (if any) fossil records.

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