The small island of Saint Helena, lost in the middle of the South Atlantic more than 1,800 kilometers from the coast of Africa, is famous for being the place chosen by the British government to exile Napoleon. The French emperor remained a prisoner there from his defeat at Waterloo in 1815 until his death in 1821. But this remote territory has also gone down in history for a lesser-known but highly important episode: the liberation between 1840 and 1867 of some 27,000 African slaves. aboard 87 ships intercepted by the British Royal Navy traveling to America through a maritime corridor from Angola to Brazil. Most of these individuals were taken to the island to start a new life in freedom (relative, since they were trapped in 120 square kilometers in the middle of nowhere), but until now little was known about who they were and where they came from. Ancient DNA analyzes have managed to find the answer and, in some way, repair a historical oversight. Researchers Marcela Sandoval-Velasco and Hannes Schroeder from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) sequenced the ancient DNA of 20 slaves who died on Saint Helena and were buried in Rupert Valley. The ancestral remains were recovered between 2007 and 2008 after appearing during the construction works of the island's first airport. Genetic evidence indicates that most came from a narrow area between northern Angola and Gabon. They also show that males prevailed (17 versus three females), supporting a well-documented sexual bias in the last phase of the transatlantic slave trade. The authors used modern genomic technologies to trace markers of the mitochondrial DNA (the maternal lineage) and the Y chromosome (the paternal lineage) of the human remains, validating the historical data. Until this study, published in 'The American Journal of Human Genetics', historians knew that these freed slaves probably originated in areas south of the equator, but their exact provenance was unclear. "By sequencing their DNA and comparing it to that of thousands of living people from across sub-Saharan Africa, we were able to infer where in Africa they originated and thus help restore knowledge of their ancestral connections," says Sandoval-Velasco. Related News standard No History is in the genes: 42,000 living relatives of 27 African-American slaves from a foundry in Maryland are found Patricia Biosca This is the first study to relate ancient DNA with a database from a private company specialized in genetics Recover the past Researchers hope the findings will raise new awareness about the fate of the 27,000 Africans liberated on St. Helena. They also note that their results may have great meaning for communities descended from slaves trying to recover aspects of their past. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, it is estimated that more than 12 million men, women and children were forcibly taken from Africa to America to be sold as slaves and carry out different tasks. Settlement of freed slaves on Saint Helena in an 1861 image Andrew Pearson "This study illustrates how ancient genomics can be used to recover long-lost aspects of the lives and experiences of enslaved communities and other marginalized groups whose stories are often were omitted from the written records or deliberately obscured,” says Schroeder. Researchers focused primarily on the question of origins, but historical records indicate that slave health was poor and it is estimated that of the 27,000 freed Africans who were brought to Saint Helena, between 7,000 and 8,000 died on the island. MORE INFORMATION news No A walking, running dinosaur sheds light on the appearance of birds news No Japan successfully launches Moon Sniper, its mission to try to land on the Moon with a precision never seen before Along the same lines, Helena Bennett, also co-author of the studio and resident of Saint Helena, hopes that by telling the story of these slaves "we can honor their legacy and ensure that their lives and destinies are not forgotten." There is no descendant community on Saint Helena and the authors have not attempted to identify living descendants using genetic data, "but it is clear that descendants must exist on and off the island and it may be possible in the future to link them back to Africans." released," says Schroeder. There are plans to build a memorial and interpretation center on the island and the authors plan to track or reconstruct individual stories from the genetic evidence.
