Hausa, Igbo, Bamoun: diverse origins of three 17th century Africans from Saint Martin

[Domen]

The island of Saint Martin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin

And the story of three enslaved Africans who died there in the 17th century:

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/12/3669.full.pdf

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.

Three 17th century Africans - two women and one man - buried on the island of Saint Martin, their time of death was dated to between 1660 and 1688. Despite the tropical climate it was possible to extract DNA from those bones and compare it with modern African ethnic groups.

Though they died together and were buried together, they traced their origins apparently to three different ethnic groups.

The male sample turned out most similar to modern Chadic-speaking Hausa people, while females were most likely Igbo (speakers of non-Bantu Igboid languages) and Bamoun, a Bantu-speaking ethnic group of Cameroon (but as you can see below, Kongo people - who also speak Bantu - and some part of the Xhosa Bantu-speaking individuals from South Africa - are quite similar to Bamoun people, so she could be from South Africa, Congo or Angola as well):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausa_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamum_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongo_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa

Genetic similarity between 17th century Saint Martin individuals (STM 1, 2, 3) and modern individuals of African ethnic groups:

It seems that some of the Xhosa people of South Africa are close to the Bamoun and to the Kongo, but others are very different - this probably reflects the mixed origin of South African Bantu tribes dating back to Bantu migrations southward, in which they assimilated local southerners:



Y-DNA of that Hausa male was R1b-V88, which is typical of Hausa people (about 40% of them have it):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-DNA...f_Sub-Saharan_Africa#cite_ref-Hassan_2008_3-6

When it comes to mtDNA, the females were respectively of L3d1b2 and L2a1f lineages, while the male was L3b1a.

L3b1a is also consistent with Chadic-speaking Hausa, as this is one of the most common lineages found in the Lake Chad Basin.