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Genetic Evidence of African Slavery at the Beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

An archaeological excavation in Valle da Gafaria (Lagos, Portugal), revealed two contiguous burial places outside the medieval city walls, dating from the 15(th)–17(th) centuries AD: one was interpreted as a Leprosarium cemetery and the second as an urban discard deposit, where signs of violent, unc...

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Autores principales: Martiniano, Rui, Coelho, Catarina, Ferreira, Maria Teresa, Neves, Maria João, Pinhasi, Ron, Bradley, Daniel G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4125989/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25104065
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep05994
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author Martiniano, Rui
Coelho, Catarina
Ferreira, Maria Teresa
Neves, Maria João
Pinhasi, Ron
Bradley, Daniel G.
author_facet Martiniano, Rui
Coelho, Catarina
Ferreira, Maria Teresa
Neves, Maria João
Pinhasi, Ron
Bradley, Daniel G.
author_sort Martiniano, Rui
collection PubMed
description An archaeological excavation in Valle da Gafaria (Lagos, Portugal), revealed two contiguous burial places outside the medieval city walls, dating from the 15(th)–17(th) centuries AD: one was interpreted as a Leprosarium cemetery and the second as an urban discard deposit, where signs of violent, unceremonious burials suggested that these remains may belong to slaves captured in Africa by the Portuguese. We obtained random short autosomal sequence reads from seven individuals: two from the latter site and five from the Leprosarium and used these to call SNP identities and estimate ancestral affinities with modern reference data. The Leprosarium site samples were less preserved but gave some probability of both African and European ancestry. The two discard deposit burials each gave African affinity signals, which were further refined toward modern West African or Bantu genotyped samples. These data from distressed burials illustrate an African contribution to a low status stratum of Lagos society at a time when this port became a hub of the European trade in African slaves which formed a precursor to the transatlantic transfer of millions.
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spelling pubmed-41259892014-08-14 Genetic Evidence of African Slavery at the Beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Martiniano, Rui Coelho, Catarina Ferreira, Maria Teresa Neves, Maria João Pinhasi, Ron Bradley, Daniel G. Sci Rep Article An archaeological excavation in Valle da Gafaria (Lagos, Portugal), revealed two contiguous burial places outside the medieval city walls, dating from the 15(th)–17(th) centuries AD: one was interpreted as a Leprosarium cemetery and the second as an urban discard deposit, where signs of violent, unceremonious burials suggested that these remains may belong to slaves captured in Africa by the Portuguese. We obtained random short autosomal sequence reads from seven individuals: two from the latter site and five from the Leprosarium and used these to call SNP identities and estimate ancestral affinities with modern reference data. The Leprosarium site samples were less preserved but gave some probability of both African and European ancestry. The two discard deposit burials each gave African affinity signals, which were further refined toward modern West African or Bantu genotyped samples. These data from distressed burials illustrate an African contribution to a low status stratum of Lagos society at a time when this port became a hub of the European trade in African slaves which formed a precursor to the transatlantic transfer of millions. Nature Publishing Group 2014-08-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4125989/ /pubmed/25104065 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep05994 Text en Copyright © 2014, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Martiniano, Rui
Coelho, Catarina
Ferreira, Maria Teresa
Neves, Maria João
Pinhasi, Ron
Bradley, Daniel G.
Genetic Evidence of African Slavery at the Beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
title Genetic Evidence of African Slavery at the Beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
title_full Genetic Evidence of African Slavery at the Beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
title_fullStr Genetic Evidence of African Slavery at the Beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
title_full_unstemmed Genetic Evidence of African Slavery at the Beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
title_short Genetic Evidence of African Slavery at the Beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
title_sort genetic evidence of african slavery at the beginning of the trans-atlantic slave trade
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4125989/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25104065
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep05994
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