Have you ever imagined discovering that you are a descendant of enslaved? In the United States, a study published in the renowned Science magazine revealed the identification of living descendants of people who were enslaved between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century.
Researchers from Harvard University, in collaboration with the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and the company 23andMe, specializing in DNA analysis, conducted the research.
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The research process began with collecting genomic data from 27 individuals buried in the Catoctin Furnace, a former industrial facility that operated from 1776 to 1903 in the state of Maryland.
Enslaved black people performed domestic and agricultural tasks there until the abolition of slavery in 1865, after the Civil War.
Today, the Catoctin Furnace is an open-air museum that preserves the architecture, objects used by the captives and a cemetery with 35 graves, 32 of which contain the remains of individuals of ancestry African.
After genetic analysis of these remains, researchers crossed the data with information from a genetic database that contained data from 9.3 million people from 23andMe.
Harvard researcher Éadaoin Harney emphasized: “(…) we had to develop an approach that could identify genetic connections between historical and living people, optimized to work with DNA data ancient.”
Researchers were able to trace the ancestral origins of many of the buried individuals, uncovering particularly interesting connections.
They had genetic relationships with current populations in the regions of Senegal, Gambia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Additionally, some were of European ancestry, with connections in Britain and Ireland.
The Dr. Éadaoin Harney highlighted the difficulty of accessing a genetic database diverse enough to find living relatives of individuals buried at Catoctin.
The 23andMe database was instrumental, along with the meticulous extraction of DNA from the remains, which were often fragmented and damaged.
Although research has revealed these important connections between historical individuals and their descendants Today, researchers have not yet been able to connect these descendants with their communities of origin in Catoctin.
The next step is to target search results to people who have genetic data on 23andMe. At the However, this process raises delicate ethical questions, which researchers are studying carefully.
In addition to being highly innovative, genetic research could be applied in other parts of the world, including Brazil, to better understand the history and ancestry of Afro-descendant populations.
