Population affinities of African Colombians to Sub-Saharan Africans based on dental morphology.
The Atlantic slave trade moved more than 13 million Africans to American lands between the 15th and 19th centuries. Previous historical, linguistic, and social-cultural studies suggested a Western-Central Bantu African origin for the Colombian slaves; however, their precise provenance remains unclear. The present study investigates the variation of the epigenetic dental traits in the deciduous and permanent dentition and phenotypic affinities of a contemporary Afro-Colombian community (n=178) in an attempt to identify their possible African ancestors. The results of a multivariate analysis of principal components show that Afro-descendents from Guapi have strong phenotypic relationships with several Bantu-speakers groups of Western and Western-Central Africa (Sub-Saharan region), specifically from Gabon, Congo, Pygmies, Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo and Benin. In concordance with recent mtDNA studies, this research suggests a distant but important relationship between Afro-Colombians and Eastern and South-Eastern African populations. This analysis also shows a marked dental divergence with North African samples. The dental information is not very different from the cultural, linguistic and historic data; however, it is more in agreement with studies based on molecular variation. In addition, this study reveals that African-Americans from North America, Central America-Caribbean and South America have high biological variation essentially identical to their several Sub-Saharan sources. Although a microevolutionary model, based on differential rates of gene flow with Native American and European-American groups and little selective pressures influence, better explains the phenotypic variation observed, more African-American dental samples must be analyzed from a regional perspective.
Departamento de Antropología, Universidad del Cauca, Grupo de Investigación Antropos, Oficina 313, Museo de Historia Natural-Vicerrectoria de Investigaciones, Universidad del Cauca, Popayán, Colombia. medelgado@unicauca.edu.co
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Delgado-Burbano
D000293:Adolescent; D017954:Africa South of the Sahara / Q000208:ethnology; D001741:Black or African American / Q000208:ethnology / Q000235:genetics; D044383:Black People / Q000235:genetics; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003105:Colombia; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D044127:Epigenesis, Genetic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009656:North America; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000235:genetics; D012940:Social Problems; D013020:South America; D014070:Tooth / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D014094:Tooth, Deciduous