Significance
The transatlantic slave trade resulted in the forced movement of over 12 million Africans to the Americas. Although many coastal shipping points are known, they do not necessarily reflect the slaves' actual ethnic or geographic origins. We obtained genome-wide data from 17th-century remains of three enslaved individuals who died on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin and use them to identify their genetic origins in Africa, with far greater precision than previously thought possible. The study demonstrates that genomic data can be used to trace the genetic ancestry of long-dead individuals, a finding that has important implications for archeology, especially in cases where historical information is missing.
Abstract
Between 1500 and 1850, more than 12 million enslaved Africans were transported to the New World. The vast majority were shipped from West and West-Central Africa, but their precise origins are largely unknown. We used genome-wide ancient DNA analyses to investigate the genetic origins of three enslaved Africans whose remains were recovered on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. We trace their origins to distinct subcontinental source populations within Africa, including Bantu-speaking groups from northern Cameroon and non-Bantu speakers living in present-day Nigeria and Ghana. To our knowledge, these findings provide the first direct evidence for the ethnic origins of enslaved Africans, at a time for which historical records are scarce, and demonstrate that genomic data provide another type of record that can shed new light on long-standing historical questions.
Author Affiliations
- Centre for Geogenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, 1350 Copenhagen, Denmark;
- Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, 2300 Leiden, The Netherlands;
- Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
- Program in Biomedical Informatics and Department of Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
- Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322;
- St. Maarten Archaeological Center, Philipsburg, Saint Martin;
- Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, OX1 3QY Oxford, United Kingdom;
- AMS 14C Dating Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark; and
- Unidade de Xenética, Departamento de Anatomía Patolóxica e Ciencias Forenses, and Instituto de Ciencias Forenses, Facultade de Medicina, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15872 Galicia, Spain
Edited by Rick A. Kittles, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, and accepted by the Editorial Board February 2, 2015 (received for review November 17, 2014)
Credits: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America