TheKongoEmpire
The First Men
In this blog post I will analyze the 1342 African DNA matches I found on Ancestry for 50 of my African American survey participants.1 I was able to find these matches by using my scanning & filtering method. Actually long overdue because this has been in the making since 2020 already! But I am very happy to finally present these survey findings which are part of a blogseries featuring the African DNA matching patterns for people across the Afro-Diaspora (n=240). Aside from 50 African American participants also including 50 Cape Verdeans, 30 persons from Haiti, 30 from Jamaica, 30 from other parts of the West Indies, 30 from various Hispanic countries and 20 Brazilians.2 See link below for a full overview of all the separate blogposts and also my methodology:
For the individual African American results follow this link:
For anyone wanting to skip to the juicy parts, just read the bolded parts.
Table 1 (click to enlarge)
On average I found 24 African matches for each person. Nigerian matches (10x) were clearly prevailing and most consistent (frequency no matches = 0). Plus also most of the biggest matches (7/9) were from Nigeria. In line with regional admixture scores for āNigeriaā (26%) also being primary. Perhaps less prominent than imagined but notice how Upper Guinean matches (4x) were still more frequent than Ghanaian matches (3x). Compared with my previous surveys African Americans therefore appear to be somewhere in between Caricom West Indians and Hispanic Americans (see this chart). Another stand-out feature is the elevated level of Southeast African matches, in particular from Madagascar! A historically justified outcome despite the relatively low amount of shared DNA (<8 cM). Do notice as well the minimal scores of associated admixture (below 1%).
For the individual African American results follow this link:
- Spreadsheet with DNA matching patterns specified for 50 African Americans (scroll all the way to the right for complete overview; additional tabs can also be consulted)
For anyone wanting to skip to the juicy parts, just read the bolded parts.Table 1 (click to enlarge)
On average I found 24 African matches for each person. Nigerian matches (10x) were clearly prevailing and most consistent (frequency no matches = 0). Plus also most of the biggest matches (7/9) were from Nigeria. In line with regional admixture scores for āNigeriaā (26%) also being primary. Perhaps less prominent than imagined but notice how Upper Guinean matches (4x) were still more frequent than Ghanaian matches (3x). Compared with my previous surveys African Americans therefore appear to be somewhere in between Caricom West Indians and Hispanic Americans (see this chart). Another stand-out feature is the elevated level of Southeast African matches, in particular from Madagascar! A historically justified outcome despite the relatively low amount of shared DNA (<8 cM). Do notice as well the minimal scores of associated admixture (below 1%).