Gene science helps black Britons trace African roots

Black Britons whose families came from the Caribbean have been able for the first time to trace their African roots using a genetic analysis that has also revealed the extent of sexual contact between white men and their female slaves.

Black Britons whose families came from the Caribbean have been able for the first time to trace their African roots using a genetic analysis that has also revealed the extent of sexual contact between white men and their female slaves.

Scientists have analysed the DNA of more than 200 Afro-Caribbean men and women living in Britain to discover where in Africa their ancestors would have lived before they were uprooted by the slave trade more than 200 years ago.

They have been able to locate the precise region in Africa where some of the ancestors were likely to have lived. Some families have found near relatives who are still living there.

Their story, which is to be described in a BBC2 documentary on 14 February, could only be told with the help of modern DNA sequencing, which precisely matches one person's genetic material with that of a near relative.

The researchers, from Leicester and Cambridge universities, also found that about one in four black Britons from the Caribbean had a distant male ancestor who was white.

The study, commissioned by the BBC for the programme Motherland, found that 26 per cent of the Afro-Caribbean men carried a male Y chromosome of European origin, which they could only have inherited from a white male.

In contrast, the men's mitochondrial DNA – which they could only have inherited from their mothers through their maternal line – is less than 2 per cent white in origin.

Mark Jobling, a geneticist at Leicester University, who took part in the study, said the conclusion was that whereas sex between white women and black men during slavery was almost non-existent, sex between white men and black women during the same period was quite common. "[Slavery] was a power relationship between two populations and in that power relationship, it was European men who were having sex with African women," Dr Jobling said.

The volunteers for the study were selected partly on the basis that all their grandparents were black and originally from the Caribbean. This excluded the possibility of gene shuffling due to more recent mixed-race marriages, Dr Jobling said.

Using the DNA analysis, the programme makers were able to trace the part of Africa and the Caribbean where some of the volunteers are thought to have roots. The film follows the emotional journey these people make.

Mark, a music industry public relations executive from south London, for instance, travels to Niger, the second poorest country in the world, to meet the Kanuri people where he reclaims a local tribal name.

Jacqueline, a Peterborough schoolteacher, explores her roots in Jamaica where she discovers that a significant proportion of her ancestry is European. And Beaula, a youth worker from Bristol, goes to her homeland of Bioko in Equatorial Guinea.

Archie Baron, the director of the programme, said the documentary had two objectives: to see how genetics can shed light on black ancestry and to try to locate living relatives of people whose ancestors had been taken as slaves.

"The results of the three-year project were more than we could have hoped for. People have for the first time reconnected themselves to their lost ancestry in ways that, 25 years ago, Alex Haley, author of Roots, could scarcely have imagined would ever be possible," Mr Baron said.

'I felt like a daughter who was returning'

Report by Arifa Akbar

Beaula McCalla, a youth worker from Bristol, travelled to the island of Bioko, in Equatorial Guinea, after scientists traced her ancestry through her maternal DNA.

There, Ms McCalla, whose parents were born in Jamaica, met her distant relative Beatriz, from the indigenous Bubi tribe.

After a two-day trek across the island to meet more relatives, she was given African names by her family and underwent a ritual to mark womanhood.

She said she always had a yearning to discover her lineage. "My eyes were flooded with tears and my heart was pounding as the plane descended. I remember seeing the Atlantic. I have memories of the Atlantic as somewhere my ancestors were lying at the bottom of," she said. On meeting Beatriz, she said: "I felt like a daughter returning. It was like blood touching blood."

The reaction of Beatriz to the meeting was one of excitement, and relief at what Ms McCalla may be able to offer. "Maybe she can help me," she said.

Ms McCalla was content to return to Britain. But she felt the experience helped her reconcile her British nationality with her ancestral past. "If I know where my home is, I can go back whenever ... I don't need to shout from the rooftops that I am an African woman. I know and that's enough," she said.

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