# Is it possible for American slave descendents to know which country from Africa their ancestors... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 24, 2012, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-for-american-slave-descendents-to-know-which-country-from-africa-their-ancestors/613818 "2012-02-24T06:44:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![heathen\_earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/13edae/32.png) [@heathen\_earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heathen_earthling)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-for-american-slave-descendents-to-know-which-country-from-africa-their-ancestors/613818/21 "2012-02-24T17:25:55Z")
Thanks, **constanze**. I better understand now that there is a vast difference in the amount of historical information that exists for the genealogically curious. My point about settling for a continent-level precision of ancestry was more that I and probably many other white people will never bother looking that information up, even if it is out there. ---
**Author:** ![FlyByNight512](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/82dd89/32.png) [@FlyByNight512](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyByNight512)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-for-american-slave-descendents-to-know-which-country-from-africa-their-ancestors/613818/22 "2012-02-24T20:32:45Z")
> [@heathen\_earthling](#): > > Thanks, **constanze**. I better understand now that there is a vast difference in the amount of historical information that exists for the genealogically curious. My point about settling for a continent-level precision of ancestry was more that I and probably many other white people will never bother looking that information up, even if it is out there. True, most WASP types don’t look too deeply into their heritage and probably can’t state their genetic makeup with any accuracy. But there’s an identity in being able to say ‘well, one grandfather was the son of Swedish immigrants, and the rest is a mix of similar stories’. I can state with certainty that I’m a descendant of the Vikings. I’m guessing that having a family tree that is cut off with a sword stroke around the time of the American civil war is a very different feeling. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-for-american-slave-descendents-to-know-which-country-from-africa-their-ancestors/613818/23 "2012-02-24T20:53:17Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > As far as I know, it was always marketed as fiction. Apparently it’s quite the rage for people to find out that fiction is made up. I know several scandals in the past decades about books, and it was always in the context of novels that were portrayed as “true accounts” (often personal). One million little lies; the story of Margaret whoever walking with aborigines in the outback (earlier, the story of Castaneda); the story of Little Tree (double worse because it was written by a racist), the memories and life of a young girl in an Arabic country really being written by an English male pastor; Ask Alice about drugs - all those were exposed as fictional, but stated clearly in the novel that they were real. Now, an established fiction author like Micheal Chrichton goes to great lenghts to give the impression that his novels are documentaries - but people know he’s a novelist. In Frankenstein and similar works, we find the at-that-time popular conceit of “I met a traveler in a guesthouse who told me the following story/ I found a diary on my attic”, because back then fictional stories weren’t as good as real ones. But an author claiming today “I experienced this mystical journey/ this horrible experience/ I researched my family history” and then being exposed as novelist who invented it upsets people because it’s cheating. Novels who are labelled as novels no longer have a stigma. But duping people to make bucks is not a good idea. It’s similar with pastors or old aunts who dress up a parable or urban legend by prefacing it as true story, instead of just a good story. It actually undermines the value to be lied to like that. ---
**Author:** ![barbitu8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/839c29/32.png) [@barbitu8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barbitu8)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-for-american-slave-descendents-to-know-which-country-from-africa-their-ancestors/613818/24 "2012-02-24T21:19:58Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > In addition, slaves usually lost their own names as they were replaced with Christian names (even without conversion, because it was easier to use for the slave owners and overseers). Especially easier for the slave owner since the slave was given the master’s name. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-for-american-slave-descendents-to-know-which-country-from-africa-their-ancestors/613818/25 "2012-02-25T02:27:39Z")
TriPolar writes: \> As far as I know, it was always marketed as fiction. Yes and no. It was marketed as a fictionalized version of his family’s real story: > **[Roots: The Saga of an American Family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family)** > > Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a 1976 novel written by Alex Haley. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent, sold into slavery in Africa, and transported to North America; it follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the United States down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural sensation in the United States. The novel spent forty-six weeks on T... Haley claimed that, while he had to create fictional conversations since he wasn’t there to record them, the basic outline of the story was accurate. As has been shown though, the basic outline of his family’s (early) story is made up. monstro writes: \> My grandmother says we have a long-ago ancestor who was from Nigeria. \> \> I think this is no doubt true, but only in the same way that I’m pretty sure I \> have a descendent from the British Isles too. Nigeria was not a country back in \> slave times. Perhaps the individual would have referred to their home by a \> more localized name, but it is suspicious that this name isn’t mentioned in the \> family folklore. So yeah, I can see having “Nigerian” history, but it can’t be \> verified. Even DNA analysis can only tell me that I had one ancestor who hailed \> from that part of the world. It can say “Yeah, you have evidence of Nigerian \> ancestry.” But it cannot say, “You do NOT have Nigerian ancestry.” People often \> fail to recognize this. Yes, it’s possible that you have Nigerian ancestry (in the sense that one of your ancestors was someone captured in the region presently constituting Nigeria just before being sold to a slave trader). Here are the regions where the slaves transported across the Atlantic came from: > **[File:Africa slave Regions.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Africa_slave_Regions.svg)** > > Original file ‎(SVG file, nominally 1,525 × 1,440 pixels, file size: 565 KB) > >   > This image is a derivative work of the following images: Here is where Nigeria is: > **[File:Location Nigeria AU Africa.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Location_Nigeria_AU_Africa.svg)** > > Original file ‎(SVG file, nominally 1,400 × 1,300 pixels, file size: 1.64 MB) > Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. > You cannot overwrite this file. The following page uses this file: So one of the regions where Americans whose ancestors were brought over as slaves is indeed present-day Nigeria. My impression from watching _African-American Lives_ (as mentioned in my last post) is that DNA analysis is sufficiently precise now that it would be able to pick out which of the regions given in the map of African slave regions your ancestors came from. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-for-american-slave-descendents-to-know-which-country-from-africa-their-ancestors/613818/26 "2012-02-25T03:07:19Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > Also, there were far less families torn apart compared to slaves. Even if 90% of a village die in the 30-years-war, or 1/3 of a town dies of the black plague, the written records in the churches etc. will survive. It wasn’t just fewer families being torn apart. For the Africans it was entire cultures stripped away and effectively erased from the people in the new land forever. Europeans who came to America could always find some way to reconnect with the culture they’d come from, no matter what hardships they had to endure to get here. There were always communities somewhere that maintained and continued the various cultures (and subcultures) that people had come from. Africans didn’t have that; they were not only taken to America against their will and enslaved, but also left with little or no way to connect back to where they’d come from. The effects of this kind of disconnect may be intangible but nevertheless are very destructive to a people on many levels. What things they were able to hold onto (more immediate and concrete things like types of cooking or music) often survived only just barely intact. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-for-american-slave-descendents-to-know-which-country-from-africa-their-ancestors/613818/27 "2012-02-25T03:53:26Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > So one of the regions where Americans whose ancestors were brought over as slaves is indeed present-day Nigeria. My impression from watching _African-American Lives_ (as mentioned in my last post) is that DNA analysis is sufficiently precise now that it would be able to pick out which of the regions given in the map of African slave regions your ancestors came from. It can tell you which ancestral markers you carry. It doesn’t tell you anything about the ancestral markers your lineage randomly lost along the way. Or how many of your ancestors came from a certain place. I read an article about a black guy–a dark-skinned, not-very-mixed-looking fellow–whose DNA analysis showed no traces of sub-Saharan ancestry. But he had plenty of European markers. A bit surprising, but also understandable if you consider how alleles are constantly shuffled and lost through the generations. I’m ripping up the internet in search of this story, and I cannot seem to find it. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2012, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-for-american-slave-descendents-to-know-which-country-from-africa-their-ancestors/613818/28 "2012-02-25T03:54:01Z")
> [@heathen\_earthling](#): > > Thanks, **constanze**. I better understand now that there is a vast difference in the amount of historical information that exists for the genealogically curious. My point about settling for a continent-level precision of ancestry was more that I and probably many other white people will never bother looking that information up, even if it is out there. I know quite a bit about my family’s history, but thanks to this thread, I have done some online research and found the actual ship’s manifest from 1882 showing the names of my father’s grandmother and great-grandfather, and including the information that they came from Kiev, then part of Russia, now the capital of Ukraine. Pretty fascinating. Of course this information would not be available for people who are the descendants of American slaves. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-for-american-slave-descendents-to-know-which-country-from-africa-their-ancestors/613818.md?page=1)