Within just a few years of Christopher Columbus’ journey to the New World, West African slaves appeared in the Western Hemisphere. And researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Autonomous University of the Yucatan, in Merida, Mexico, may have found one of the earliest gravesites of these unwilling travelers.
In a Yucatan church graveyard, dated between 1550 and the late 1600s – around the time of Shakespeare – four bodies of African origin have been discovered. Their racial identity was confirmed by dental chemistry and appearance.