Jamaican Genetics

Today we are going to dwelve into the science of Jamaican origins a bit further. Have you all had your coffee? Yes? Then let's get started!

After genetic analyses were performed on a cohort of 390 Jamaicans, genetics were found to be associated with aggregated populations from the Gold Coast region or modern-day Ghana, which made up 60% of Jamaican dna, with minimal contribution from populations from the Bight of Biafra and West-Central Africa, despite increasing numbers of these peoples arrive in Jamaica in the later years of slavery (Deasonet al., 2012).

2.5% of Jamaican MtDNA is said to be made up of European or Asian ancestry. It is worth noting that this information comes from a relatively small sample size with limited regional representation within Jamaica and so may be less generalisable.

When another study performed on Jamaican’s patrilineal ancestry was performed, African DNA was reported to comprise 66.7% of the Jamaican paternal gene pool. This was followed by 18.9% European paternal DNA, 3.8% Chinese paternal DNA and 1.2% Indian paternal DNA (Simms et al., 2012) – (Compare with paternal DNA from an African from Africa?…)

Short but sweet. Hopefully this article has given more nuance to your knowledge base.

Deason, M.L., Salas, A., Newman, S.P., Macaulay, V.A., Morrison, E.Y.,Pitsiladis, Yannis, P. ( 2012). "Interdisciplinary approach to the demography of Jamaica". BMC Evolutionary Biology. 12 (1): 24. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-12-24. PMC 3299582. PMID 22360861.

Simms, Tanya M.; Wright, Marisil R.; Hernandez, Michelle; Perez, Omar A.; Ramirez, Evelyn C.; Martinez, Emanuel; Herrera, Rene J. (Aug 2012). "Y-chromosomal diversity in Haiti and Jamaica: contrasting levels of sex-biased gene flow". Am J Phys Anthropol. 148 (4): 618–31.