Where They Came From

Advances in genetics, like any major innovation, are both intriguing and scary. On the plus side, they have brought us a lot of exciting new information. Where exactly, for example, did all those unfortunate human beings who ended up as slaves on this side of the world come from? Researchers have been working to understand the origins of a group of slaves on the Dutch side of 17th-century St. Martins, in the Caribbean. Of the individuals found in a cemetery there, three had filed teeth, but analysis showed that they all came from different places in Africa. Although these individuals and many like them came on the same boat, then, they probably spoke different languages and couldn't understand each other. Similar findings are coming from the British colony of St. Helena whose graves were recently found. They were people on slave ships that had been intercepted by the British Royal Navy and who were taken to the island only to die there shortly afterward. Such work is also being conducted in southeastern Cuba: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160204-tracing-slave-dna-africa-mesoamerica/