Short answer for the impatient: lat, long: -2.27, 37.53 is a reasonable point estimate.
One of the more extensively analyzed human population genomic samples is the Maasai in Kinyawa, Kenya (MKK) sample from the International HapMap Project. However, Kinyawa, Kenya is not in Google Maps or Google Earth. Microsoft's Bing Maps and MapQuest just show the country of Kenya for that search term. OpenStreetMap has got nothing. The original HapMap Phase III publication does not - as far as I can tell - include any coordinates for Kinyawa, Kenya. Coriell - the repository that maintains and provides access to the HapMap samples - does not have any further information on Kinyawa on their summary page for the MKK sample. As a side note, the other Kenyan sample in the HapMap project doesn't have this problem: a location for the Luhya in Webuye, Kenya (LWK) sample is easy to find because Webuye is a town in western Kenya that is on every map.
For many studies that analyze these data, it's probably not important if they can plot their geographic origin on a map beyond "somewhere in Kenya" - although there are some hilariously misplaced markers for the MKK sample in some published maps. However, where Kinyawa actually is often should matter - at the very least in order to respect the people who generously agreed to participate in the project.
Moreover, the colonial history of the Maasai will matter here too. In brief, at the end of the 1890s, the Maasai lived over a large swath of what is now western Kenya and northern Tanzania including much of the Rift Valley, from the foothills of Mount Elgon and the Loriyu Plateau in the north to the area of Kibaya, Tanzania in the south. With the completion of the Uganda Railway from Mombasa to Kisumu in 1901, the British colonials were eager to encourage colonial settlement along the railway line. Along the railway line that passed directly through where many Maasai lived.
In 1904, the colonial authorities negotiated an agreement with many representatives of Maasai sections [1], in which they agreed to leave the Central Rift and settle in two reserves: one in the north on the Laikipia Plateau and a second in the south on the Tanzania border in Kajiado. The language of this agreement promised these areas to the Maasai in perpetuity. The northern reserve roughly corresponded to the present-day Laikipia County and the southern reserve to approximately the western third of Kajiado County. While many Maasai in the Rift did not leave and some sections had no representation in the agreement, a substantial number did decamp to Laikipia and Kajiado. Over time, most of those who did not the rift leave were pushed out.
Beginning in 1910, the local colonial administration began, by various gambits, to induce the Maasai in Laikipia to move to the southern reserve in order to free up the Laikipia Plateau for white settlers. In 1911, a new "agreement" was made with some of the Maasai sections to abandon the northern reserve in Laikipia for an expanded reserve in the south (notably breaking the "in perpetuity" terms of the 1904 agreement). During 1911-13, the majority of the Maasai in Laikipia are eventually induced, coerced, or forced out to the southern reserve. Some refused to leave and others returned by various means in later years.
Today, the main Maasai area corresponds largely to Narok County and Kajiado County - which are broadly congruent with the expanded area of the southern reserve in the 1911 Maasai Agreement.
Now, in this region, there is no Kinyawa, but anyone with any experience reading East African historical documents constantly encounters 3-4 different spellings of pretty much every local group or place. For instance, in eastern Uganda, the Bagisu, Bagishu, Gisu, and Gishu are all the same people, with and without the 'ba' ('people of') prefix and two different spellings of the root name. So I searched for a bunch of different possible spellings of Kinyawa. And it turns out that there is a Kenyawa-Poka ward in the Kajiado East constituency of Kajiado county (shown below, the light grey region is Kajiado county, the darker grey is Kajiado East constituency, the black area is Kenyawa-Poka ward). This is the only place with a reasonable spelling variant of Kinyawa that I could find in the region. I'd be very surprised if Kinyawa and Kenyawa are not one and the same.
One of the more extensively analyzed human population genomic samples is the Maasai in Kinyawa, Kenya (MKK) sample from the International HapMap Project. However, Kinyawa, Kenya is not in Google Maps or Google Earth. Microsoft's Bing Maps and MapQuest just show the country of Kenya for that search term. OpenStreetMap has got nothing. The original HapMap Phase III publication does not - as far as I can tell - include any coordinates for Kinyawa, Kenya. Coriell - the repository that maintains and provides access to the HapMap samples - does not have any further information on Kinyawa on their summary page for the MKK sample. As a side note, the other Kenyan sample in the HapMap project doesn't have this problem: a location for the Luhya in Webuye, Kenya (LWK) sample is easy to find because Webuye is a town in western Kenya that is on every map.
For many studies that analyze these data, it's probably not important if they can plot their geographic origin on a map beyond "somewhere in Kenya" - although there are some hilariously misplaced markers for the MKK sample in some published maps. However, where Kinyawa actually is often should matter - at the very least in order to respect the people who generously agreed to participate in the project.
Moreover, the colonial history of the Maasai will matter here too. In brief, at the end of the 1890s, the Maasai lived over a large swath of what is now western Kenya and northern Tanzania including much of the Rift Valley, from the foothills of Mount Elgon and the Loriyu Plateau in the north to the area of Kibaya, Tanzania in the south. With the completion of the Uganda Railway from Mombasa to Kisumu in 1901, the British colonials were eager to encourage colonial settlement along the railway line. Along the railway line that passed directly through where many Maasai lived.
In 1904, the colonial authorities negotiated an agreement with many representatives of Maasai sections [1], in which they agreed to leave the Central Rift and settle in two reserves: one in the north on the Laikipia Plateau and a second in the south on the Tanzania border in Kajiado. The language of this agreement promised these areas to the Maasai in perpetuity. The northern reserve roughly corresponded to the present-day Laikipia County and the southern reserve to approximately the western third of Kajiado County. While many Maasai in the Rift did not leave and some sections had no representation in the agreement, a substantial number did decamp to Laikipia and Kajiado. Over time, most of those who did not the rift leave were pushed out.
Beginning in 1910, the local colonial administration began, by various gambits, to induce the Maasai in Laikipia to move to the southern reserve in order to free up the Laikipia Plateau for white settlers. In 1911, a new "agreement" was made with some of the Maasai sections to abandon the northern reserve in Laikipia for an expanded reserve in the south (notably breaking the "in perpetuity" terms of the 1904 agreement). During 1911-13, the majority of the Maasai in Laikipia are eventually induced, coerced, or forced out to the southern reserve. Some refused to leave and others returned by various means in later years.
Today, the main Maasai area corresponds largely to Narok County and Kajiado County - which are broadly congruent with the expanded area of the southern reserve in the 1911 Maasai Agreement.
Now, in this region, there is no Kinyawa, but anyone with any experience reading East African historical documents constantly encounters 3-4 different spellings of pretty much every local group or place. For instance, in eastern Uganda, the Bagisu, Bagishu, Gisu, and Gishu are all the same people, with and without the 'ba' ('people of') prefix and two different spellings of the root name. So I searched for a bunch of different possible spellings of Kinyawa. And it turns out that there is a Kenyawa-Poka ward in the Kajiado East constituency of Kajiado county (shown below, the light grey region is Kajiado county, the darker grey is Kajiado East constituency, the black area is Kenyawa-Poka ward). This is the only place with a reasonable spelling variant of Kinyawa that I could find in the region. I'd be very surprised if Kinyawa and Kenyawa are not one and the same.
A planning map from the 2011 Kenyan Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission shows Poka and Kenyawa as separate wards, with - roughly - Poka as the western half and Kenyawa as the eastern half of the now combined Kenyawa-Poka ward. The white dot in the previous map at lat, long: -2.27, 37.53 is approximately the center of the old Kenyawa ward (I cannot find any shapefile with the older wards, so I had to eyeball it in).
Now that the location of Kinyawa/Kenyawa is identified, what else can we learn about this area? Grandin [2] has a map (below) showing the distribution of Maasai Sections [1] in Kajiado county. This map shows that Kenyawa ward falls within the area of the Kaputiei Section of Maasai. The Kaputiei Maasai are one of the Maasai sections that was moved out of the Central Rift in 1904 [3]. Now, this is not to say that the Maasai in Kinyawa are "really" Central Rift Maasai; they are who they are and they are where they are. It's been over 100 years and Maasai sections are not hermetically sealed off from each other and the world. There have been enormous social, technological, and economic changes across all groups in Kenya in that time. Nonetheless, a more complete and nuanced understanding of the location and history of this particular sample that is commonly analyzed in population genomic studies can only help ward off some of the more simplistic interpretations of the results of these analyses.
[1]: The largest socio-political unit of the Maasai is the "section" and there are about 16 sections today. The Maasai are unified by a more or less shared culture and language, but each section is autonomous.
[2]: Grandin BE. 1991. The Maasai: Socio-historical context and group ranches. pp. 21-39 in "Maasai herding: An analysis of the livestock production system of Maasai pastoralists in eastern Kajiado District, Kenya". S Bekure, PN de Leeuw, BE Grandin, PJH Neate (Eds). ILCA Systems Study 4. ILCA (lnternational Livestock Centre for Africa), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
[3]: pg. 68 in Hughes L. 2002. Moving the Maasai: A colonial misadventure (Doctoral dissertation). St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
[2]: Grandin BE. 1991. The Maasai: Socio-historical context and group ranches. pp. 21-39 in "Maasai herding: An analysis of the livestock production system of Maasai pastoralists in eastern Kajiado District, Kenya". S Bekure, PN de Leeuw, BE Grandin, PJH Neate (Eds). ILCA Systems Study 4. ILCA (lnternational Livestock Centre for Africa), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
[3]: pg. 68 in Hughes L. 2002. Moving the Maasai: A colonial misadventure (Doctoral dissertation). St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
RSS Feed