Proportion of Madagascar & Mozambique captives
This last chart is comparing the percentage of Madagascar captives with those from the
slave port of Mozambique (not the country!). The presentday country of Mozambique was named after this
island fortress but actually there were several more slave ports located in Mozambique and other parts of Southeast Africa. But Mozambique (the slave port) was firstmost in importance for almost all destinations in the Americas. For a complete overview see
this chart. The striking thing about the chart below is that
the USA clearly stands out as the only American destination where Madagascar captives were a majority among Southeast Africans.
Madagascar is increasingly being discovered as a potential place of origin by African Americans who have taken a DNA test (most recently for 2 guests on this
Finding Your Roots episode). Malagasy ancestry might be
surprisingly widely dispersed within the African American genepool even if strongly diluted, in almost all cases. This would be judging from personal observation and based on these indicators:
- minor Southeast Asian percentages (usually inbetween 0,5%-2%) being reported for a multitude of African Americans tested on 23andme.
- minor but still noticeable frequency of haplogroups associated with Malagasy ancestry among African Americans tested on 23andme.
- frequent occurence of shared DNA segments between DNA tested Malagasy and African Americans.
Unlike most other destinations in the Americas it was Madagascar rather than Mozambique which provided most of the Southeast African captives to the USA. Also unlike most other destinations (safe for the Anglo Caribbean) these captives arrived mostly during an early timeperiod (1650-1750). For several reasons it seems they may have been in a favourable position to have relatively many descendants who due to the Domestic Slave trade also ended up in the Deep South aside from Virginia and the Northern states where they were initially concentrated.
The very fortunate circumstance about tracing any possible Madagascar ancestry is that it can be confirmed much more easily by way of the
unique Southeast Asian component in Malagasy genetics and the inheritance of these markers among their descendants in the Americas. The first map below explains how this came to be. The Malagasy are however not a homogenously blended group but rather consisting of many diverse ethnic (sub)groups. Undoubtedly they will therefore show much individual variation themselves in their admixture compositions. If we were to make a purely hypothetical assumption that
on average the Malagasy arriving in the US might have been a 50/50 mix of Southeast Asian and Southeast African. It then becomes an interesting excercise to speculate on what a percentage of inbetween 0.5%-2% Southeast Asian on 23andme might imply about the generational distance and also the potential number of Malagassy ancestors relocated to the US. Again in most cases it will probably represent a single and very diluted family lineage. But either way it will be ancestry which is relatively easier to track and possibly even identify.
Follow these links if you want to learn more about any possible Madagascar connection:
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smiley because those africans were already practicing non-native, african religion(s) before they even got to the Americas since some were making a big deal about them being Christianized like Islamicized is any different or better