Why so many African Americans have Nigerian ancestry
During the period of the transatlantic slave trade, more than 12.5 million enslaved persons were shipped from Africa to the Americas with about 3.5 million of them from Nigeria.
Today there are communities of people with Nigerian ancestry mostly in Brazil, Cuba, and Jamaica who have retained some some of their ancestral beliefs and traditions.
In the largest DNA study of people of African ancestry in the Americas, researchers found an overrepresentation of Nigerian genetic ancestry in the United States and Latin America compared to the proportion of enslaved people shipped to these places from regions within modern day Nigeria. While the finds from the genetic study are largely supported by established narratives and historic records of the transatlantic slave trade, there were also inconsistencies.
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