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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)
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.
Footnotes
↵1H.S. and M.C.A.A. contributed equally to this work.
- ↵2To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: hschroeder{at}snm.ku.dk or tgilbert{at}snm.ku.dk.
↵3Present address: IdentifyGenomics, LLC, Menlo Park, CA 94305.
Author contributions: H.S., M.C.A.A., and M.T.P.G. designed research; H.S., M.S.V., M.L.C., J.B.H., M.W.D., and T.W.S. performed research; H.S., M.C.A.A., A.S.M., G.D.P., J.V.M.M., M.S., P.L.F.J., M.E.A., J.A.S., M.W.D., A.S., and L.O. analyzed data; H.S., M.C.A.A., and M.T.P.G. wrote the paper; J.B.H. provided samples; and H.S., E.W., C.D.B., and M.T.P.G. supervised research.
Conflict of interest statement: C.D.B. is the founder of IdentifyGenomics, LLC, and is on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Personalis, Inc., and Ancestry.com as well as the Medical Advisory Board of InVitae. M.L.C. is now the Chief Scientific Officer at IdentifyGenomics, LLC. None of this played a role in the design, execution, or interpretation of experiments and results presented here.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. R.A.K. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial Board.
Data deposition: The data reported in this paper have been deposited in the European Nucleotide Archive, www.ebi.ac.uk/ena (project accession no. PRJEB8269). The mapped data are available upon request.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1421784112/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Genome-wide ancestry of enslaved Africans
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