Melungeon DNA Study Reveals Ancestry, Upsets ‘A Whole Lot Of People’Posted in Anthropology, Articles, New Media, Tri-Racial Isolates, United States on 2012-05-25 16:44Z by Steven |
Melungeon DNA Study Reveals Ancestry, Upsets ‘A Whole Lot Of People’
The Associated Press
2012-05-24
Travis Loller
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| Jack Goins poses with a photo dated to have been taken in 1898 of his step-great-great grandfather George Washington Goins, who died in 1817, left, and great-great grandmother, Susan Minor-Goins who died in 1813 at the Hawkins County Archives Project building Wednesday, May 23, 2012 in Rogersville, Tenn. Goins is of Melungeon descent and has researched Melungeon history for around 40 years. A new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy found that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin. (AP Photo/Wade Payne) |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves or Gypsies.
Now a new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin.
And that report, which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn’t sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry.
“There were a whole lot of people upset by this study,” lead researcher Roberta Estes said. “They just knew they were Portuguese, or Native American.”…
…In recent decades, interest in the origin of the Melungeons has risen dramatically with advances both in DNA research and in the advent of Internet resources that allow individuals to trace their ancestry without digging through dusty archives.
G. Reginald Daniel, a sociologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara who’s spent more than 30 years examining multiracial people in the U.S. and wasn’t part of this research, said the study is more evidence that race-mixing in the U.S. isn’t a new phenomenon.
“All of us are multiracial,” he said. “It is recapturing a more authentic U.S. history.”
Estes and her fellow researchers theorize that the various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery…
Read the entire story here.