300-Year-Old DNA Reveals the Origins of Slave Skeletons in Saint Martin

About 300 years ago, three African-born slaves died on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. For years, though, their fate, their names and their precise background remaineda mystery. Now, though, researchers have extracted and sequenced tiny bits of DNA remaining in the skeletons' teeth to determine where in Africa these individuals lived before they were captured and enslaved.

"Through the barbarism of the middle passage, millions of people were forcibly removed form Africa and brought to the Americas," said Carlos Bustamante, one of the researchers, in a news release. "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 htat is of such importance."

The scientists used a new technique called whole-genome capture to isolate enough ancient DNA to properly sequence and analyze. This revealed that one skeleton was of a man who had likely belonged to a Bantu-speaking group in northern Cameroon. The other two shared similiarties with non-Bantu-speaking groups in present-day Nigeria and Ghana. All three of them were from between the ages of 25 to 40 years, and all died in the late 1600s.

"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 Maria Avila-Arcos, one of the researchers, in a news release. "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 are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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