When individuals migrate from their homes to different geographic regions, they encounter people from different backgrounds. This can lead to peaceful coexistence or intergroup violence, or both.
Over the past few decades, Europe has seen an influx of people from Africa and the Middle East. However, their integration into receiving societies has not always been smooth. As a result, a subset of the local population in almost all European countries holds highly negative attitudes towards newcomers.
The problem has been exacerbated by the fact that especially many muslim-background immigrants have been guilty of appalling sexual crimes against women in the majority population. For example, in UK an organised child sexual abuse in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Northern England continued for decades from the late 1980´s until the 2010´s. And in Finland the raping frequency per Iraqi male is more than an order of magnitude higher compared to local men.
Therefore it was interesting to read a recent study on the genetic makeup of individuals from medieval and early modern coastal towns on the Swahili coast of eastern Africa. The study found that many individuals had a mix of African and Asian ancestry, with a significant proportion of their DNA coming from primarily female African ancestors and primarily male Persian ancestors.
This raises the question of whether something happened in Africa during the Middle Ages that is commonplace for Europeans today. Should we learn something from it?
Previous thoughts on the same topic:
A set of immigration-derived sexual crimes in a Finnish town
Rape statistics in Finland and Sweden are breaking prejudices
When will they ever learn?
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