World News | Their stories were lost through slavery.Now DNA is writing them

CHARLESTON (USA), March 29 (AP) — In the 1700s, a boy was born into slavery in the American colonies. He spent his entire life working in the coastal city of Charleston, South Carolina. When he died in middle age, he was buried with 35 other slaves.

That may be the history the researchers uncovered for this individual — there are no written records of him or anyone else buried at this long-forgotten site. Their names have been lost, along with any details of their lives. But their stories are now told through what’s left behind: bones, teeth and, above all, DNA.

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In recent decades, advances in DNA research have allowed scientists to use ancient remains to peer into the lives of long-dead people. In Charleston, that meant tracing some of the African roots severed by slavery.

“We’re bringing their memory back to life,” said Raquel Fleskes, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut who studied the remains. “It’s a way of restoring the dignity of individuals that they should always have.”

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The Charleston project began a decade ago when construction workers unearthed the remains of the Gaillard Center, an arts venue in the city that was undergoing expansion.

The remains date from the second half of the 18th century and are believed to be mostly from African-American slaves who lived nearby. Some of these people may have been among the estimated 175,000 Africans brought through the port of Charleston, the center of the transatlantic slave trade.

The city reburied the remains at the original site, where it plans to build a memorial fountain. But with few recorded details available, community members are also interested in using science to learn more about people, Fleskes said.

Thus, the Anson Street African Burial Project was born, and researchers set out to find clues.

Theodore Schurr, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania who worked on the study, explained that artifacts from the site indicate that the bodies were buried with care. Some of them had beads in their hair and coins over their eyes. Minerals in their teeth suggest that only a few were born in Africa, while the majority were probably born into slavery in or around Charleston.

Scientists have also extracted DNA from centuries-old bones—drilling small samples from bones and teeth, grinding them into powder, mixing them into a solution, and filtering out all but human DNA . They were able to obtain some genetic material from most of the 36 people and the complete genomes of half of them, and compare them with the genetic makeup of Africans today.

It turned out that they were associated with many different places along the West African coast, from Gambia to Gabon. They were mostly male and most died as adults. They range in age from children under 3 years old to men over 50 years old.

Their DNA showed they were not related, save for a possible mother and child.

Researchers also today provided DNA testing to 78 African-Americans living in the Charleston area, said La’Sheia Oubré, who directs community education for the project. So far, they have not been able to locate any immediate family members of those buried on Anson Street.

Still, Oubré, who took the DNA test, said she and other community members still consider them family.

“They have such a story to tell,” she said, “and because they’re not related to us, it doesn’t mean we don’t have a moral responsibility to care for them.”

Thanks to the ability to sequence DNA from ancient remains, the technology has brought us back to the days of Neanderthals and woolly mammoths.

Some researchers have been using ancient DNA to fill in the gaps in our recent history. This includes cases like Charleston and the New York African Burial Project, which revealed new details about Africans and their descendants in 18th-century Manhattan.

Anthropologist Michael Blakey, who served as scientific director of the New York project, said there were not many records of these people at the time. Existing records focus on things like how much enslaved people paid and what laws were used to keep them in check, he said.

Oubré said it would be useful to have DNA reveal some of the “stolen history” of those buried in her city.

“It’s still exciting to me to know all of this,” Oubré said. “It still warms my heart because we’re able to find where we came from — where we really came from.”

In some cases, ancient DNA studies have also challenged the history of certain communities.

Anthropologist Maria Nieves-Colon, who grew up in Puerto Rico, was told that the island’s indigenous people were quickly wiped out by European colonists and did not pass on their genes to the people on the island today. But after looking at ancient remains on the island in a 2020 study, Nieves-Colon found that there was indeed a genetic link between these indigenous groups and modern-day Puerto Ricans.

Research like this shows that “we need to think more critically about what’s left in the historical record,” says Nieves-Colon, now at the University of Minnesota.

While ancient DNA can be a powerful tool for revealing history, it needs to be used with caution, especially when vulnerable populations are involved, the researchers note.

Unlike in vivo studies, research on recovered human remains doesn’t require the scientists’ consent, explains Krystal Tsosie, a geneticist at Arizona State University. In the past, most researchers did not consult groups such as indigenous tribes or people of African descent before studying possible ancestral remains.

But researchers say this kind of work does impact living communities, and they should be part of the conversation.

“In many ways, it’s about power,” Blakey said. “The right to tell your story.”

In Charleston, project leaders seek consent from community members before every step, Oubré said. The names of 36 people had been forgotten, and the team gave them new names — such as Coosaw, Welela, Isi and Kuto — so they wouldn’t be just numbers on a cemetery, said Joanna Gilmore, director of research and interpretation for the Anson Street Project.

Now, the new memorial will honor the lives of those 36 individuals, along with the thousands of slaves who helped build Charleston, project leaders said.

The memorial will be located at the Gaillard Center, where a small plaque now marks where the remains were found. It will include a fountain surrounded by paired bronze hands cast by current residents, and a plinth made of soil from other African cemeteries throughout the city, Gilmore explained.

In an art studio last month, residents made replicas of their hands, elbow-deep in vats of pink goo that hardened into molds. Artist Stephen Hayes pours liquid plastic into molds to create shiny white replicas.

Adrian Swinton’s hands represent a woman named Tima. Swinton, who was herself a descendant of slaves, said the memorial was a powerful way to commemorate their sacrifice.

“Her legacy has not gone unnoticed,” Swinton said. “And she’s not property. She’s human. She’s part of my black history.”

Retiree Ervin McDaniel Jr. dizzy as he holds up his freshly made plastic hand, which will be cast in bronze to represent the boy born into slavery, whom he has named Fumu .

“They lived, they worked, they died — now they will be remembered forever,” McDaniel said. (Associated Press)

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