Three mysterious 300-year-old slave skeletons discovered on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin may finally be identified through DNA analyses.
There are no written records of the existence of theses African-born individuals, but their remains were unearthed in 2010 during a construction project, Stanford University Medical Center reported. A team of researchers extracted and sequenced bits of DNA from the skeletons' teeth, allowing them to estimate where in Africa the people were captured and enslaved.The recent findings marks the first time scientists have used such old and poorly preserved DNA to identify the ethnic origins of skeletons with such high specificity.
"Through the barbarism of the middle passage, millions of people were forcibly removed from Africa and brought to the Americas," said Carlos Bustamante, professor of genetics at Stanford. "We have long sought to use DNA to understand who they were, where they came from, and who, today, shares DNA with those people taken aboard the ships. This project has taught us that we cannot only get ancient DNA from tropical samples, but that we can reliably identify their ancestry. This is incredibly exciting to us and opens the door to reclaiming history that is of such importance."
In order to accomplish this feat, the researchers used a technique called whole-genome capture, which allowed them capture enough DNA to perform an analysis. Through this method they were able to identify highly specific genetic details, such as that one skeleton belonged to a man who was most likely a member of a Bantu-speaking group in northern Cameroon.
The Atlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in history, but many of these shipping records are disappointingly incomplete. These new findings could help provide insight into the specifics of this massive slave trade.
"We were able to determine that, despite the fact that the three individuals were found at the same site, and may even have arrived on the same ship, they had genetic affinities to different populations within Africa," said postdoctoral scholar Maria Avila-Arcos. "They may have spoken different languages, making communication difficult. This makes us reflect on two things: the dynamics of the trans-Atlantic slave trade within Africa, and how this dramatic, ethnic mingling may have influenced communities and identities in the Americas."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
