I have read several blogs posting about the Olmec "heads" as an example of an early presence of Africans in America (this is a typical example). I usually consider those theories a bit outlandish and shrug them off with little effort. But today I found something a bit more scientific; A paper by Dr. Clyde Winter who looks into the HLA variants to pinpoint an African expedition to Mesoamerica around 1310 AD.
Read his article here: Winters C. Inference of Ancient Black Mexican Tribes and DNA. WebmedCentral GENETICS 2015;6(3):WMC004856 doi: 10.9754/journal.wmc.2015.004856.
Apparently Abubakari II, ruler of Mali in Africa sent an expedition to America in 1310 and that is the source of admixture in Mesoamerica (not the later slave trade that brought millions of unfortunate Africans to work and die in the New World; read more about this African king.
For a good explanation on African - Native American admixture, see this website. The first Africans to reach America did so in what is now Santo Domingo Island in 1502. Some escaped, met the local natives and that led to the first admixture.
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Hello Austin,
ReplyDeleteI don't know what to say, I've come across this while doing my morning online chores, at work, so I haven't had a chance to thoroughly read the paper.
Usually, I take Dr. Winters with a grain of salt, as he has more often than see's the world through a very focused afro-centrist lens.
But, that is not to say his work is without value, it was in one of his articles that I learned that the type of millet grown by the Indus valley civilization was an African varietal.
As soon as I'm off work, I am going to read that paper, very very well.
P.S.
I do have two comments on some items that pop out.
Sickle cell anemia, is not an African only disease, its a natural defense against malaria, and is found through out tropical populations, it just reaches its peak distributions in Africans.
And the assertion that Mt Dna HG A is not found in western northamerican is just ludicrous.
As you well know Hg A is a definitive native American haplogroup,
nearly all Hg A haplogroups are found in tribes of central cal.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ixcvqjzcyomg4q4/PagesfromV40N1a.pdf?dl=0
I think what he has found is actually a shadow of very ancient NA admixture into Africa.
Thanks for your comment Ron. The part regarding sickle cell anemia as a common defense against tropiical diseases among non-Africans is very intersting. So it points at positive selection of those with a falciform anemia because they survived to mate and the others didn't. Surely different genes code for sickle cell anemia. I must check this lead out. It is very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you regarding Dr. Winter's remark on HgA in western North America.
Austin,
ReplyDeleteThe notion of late admixture among Africans and Meso Americans is intriguing.
I have read a "coffee table" book, "Into the Rising Sun" by Luc Cuvyer?, it details the Portuguese age of exploration, and their search for the passages around Africa to India.
With regards to this conversation, two things stand out about it, one is the apperant lack of any open water boating tech among the west Africans, with the exception of a small number of fishermen going out to some offshore islands, off of central west Africa.
The Portuguese explored the waters of west Africa and the south Atlantic starting in the late 14 century,
and there is no mention of any indigenous open water traffic.
Secondly, the author implies that the Portuguese made landfall in south America long before Columbus, who was sailing for the Portuguese arm of the Templars, the Knights of Christ.
He backs up this assertion with an account by Spaniards, who while exploring the north coast of Brazil, in the first decade of the 16th cent., found fully working sugar plantations on the offshore islands, complete with black slaves. This is before the African slave trade was supposed to have robust enough to supply a viable workforce for multiple plantations.
This brings me to the Maroons, specifically the Maroons of French Guyana , the tribe that is supposed to be comprised of escaped early slaves.
I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around how a viable population could arise from a couple of slaves ,here and there , could build a multi clan tribe in just a few years.
Could they and other maroon communities have been the descendants of this proposed African migration.