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.
Subject(s)
Enslaved Persons , Genetics, Population , Genome-Wide Association Study , Africa/ethnology , Algorithms , Archaeology , Bayes Theorem , Black People/genetics , Caribbean Region/ethnology , Chromosomes, Human, Y/genetics , Cluster Analysis , DNA, Mitochondrial/genetics , Enslavement , Ethnicity/genetics , Genetic Markers , Genome, Human , Haplotypes , Humans , Likelihood Functions , Principal Component Analysis , Probability , Sequence Analysis, DNAABSTRACT
SUMMARY: We present bammds, a practical tool that allows visualization of samples sequenced by second-generation sequencing when compared with a reference panel of individuals (usually genotypes) using a multidimensional scaling algorithm. Our tool is aimed at determining the ancestry of unknown samples-typical of ancient DNA data-particularly when only low amounts of data are available for those samples. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The software package is available under GNU General Public License v3 and is freely available together with test datasets https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/bammds/. It is using R (http://www.r-project.org/), parallel (http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/), samtools (https://github.com/samtools/samtools). CONTACT: bammds-users@nongnu.org SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
