Swahili culture

[2][3] Currently, there are 173 identified settlements that flourished along the Swahili coast and nearby islands from the ninth to the seventeenth centuries, which include the sites of Kilwa, Malindi, Gedi, Pate, Comoros, and Zanzibar.

[4] The most recent excavations at these coastal sites have been used to examine the spread of Islam in East Africa and the development of the Swahili culture.

[10] Increased contact with the Islamic world then would have led to the integration of local African and Arab traditions, creating an indigenous Swahili culture.

[11] A blend of these two interpretations exists with accounts of Arab merchants marrying local women, which created a distinctive Arab-African Swahili culture.

The research concluded that the ancient persons "genomes point to the diverse origins of Swahili culture, with people carrying a mix of local African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian ancestry" and support the accuracy of oral histories that often have been discounted about the origins of the Swahili culture.

[14] Anthropological archaeologist Chapurukha Kusimba, who co-led the study, stated that the subjects "were descended from people who began mixing around 1000.

Eventually, Swahili trading centers went out of business, and commerce between Africa and Asia on the Indian Ocean collapsed.

[18] Some food items common in everyday lives of the Swahili are fish, tropical fruits, and exotic spices.

In the last decades of the century, most Swahili music was in the afropop vein, which includes several local derivatives of American hip hop (e.g., bongo flava).