Century-old photo shows Tibetan nuns in Bhutan, not African settlers in Japan
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on October 7, 2021 at 18:48
- 2 min read
- By Segun OLAKOYENIKAN, AFP Nigeria
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“At about 35,000 b.c a group of African/Nubian Chinese, later known as the Jomon, took this route and entered Japan, they became the first humans ever to inhabit the Japanese Islands (sic),” reads the Facebook post, which has been shared more than 19,000 times since September 14, 2021.
The photo also circulated on other pro-African accounts, including here and here, with the same claim.
Nubians are an ethnolinguistic group of people who are indigenous to southern Egypt and northern Sudan.
The image, however, has been used in a false context and is unrelated to Japan or the Jomon people who settled in the Asian country.
Tibetan nuns
AFP Fact Check conducted a reverse image search and traced a larger version of the image to a 2010 online article published by American non-profit media National Public Radio (NPR).
The NPR article described a collection of photos, which show some of the hidden histories of China’s autonomous region of Tibet more than a century ago. Tibet is located in southwest China and is known as the “roof of the world” because the region occupies a vast area of high mountains and plateaus.
“A portrait of Tibetan women circa 1903 is one of many in the album being auctioned,” reads NPR’s caption of the photo with credit given to UK-based art auctioneer Bonhams.
AFP Fact Check found the image was indeed auctioned in London by Bonhams, as well as on the website of global art archive Bridgeman Images.
“Group of nuns at the Taktsang monastery, Bhutan, 1904,” reads the caption on the black and white photo, which was taken by John Claude White during the Younghusband Expedition of 1903 to 1904.
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