Insights into the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
![Image](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmsF5Y65ioyIuu_dxOihknFTpSkqL6SX9kwOp9Csn1yKe-fHS1_H0YX9C53fOOVyg35R14c0zZMrV5YFJTr9DSA8vnwV2XvC9VYQ94-UrIYnb07JmmjUB-eaiM8wABjaoLCx5fdo3OtQnF/w400-h265/slaves_242_160.jpg)
The following post is an interesting study that has recently come to my attention and continues a theme from my last post on the Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora . Increasingly, genetic studies are becoming an important source of potential information about the human past. As noted in my last post, a diaspora is a specific type of mass relocation of people, defined by Brighton and Orser (2006: 64) as "the forced dispersal or scattering of people from a homeland as the result of famine, war, enslavement, ethnic cleansing, conquest, and political repression." Such movements are permanent and multi-generational. To give one prominent example, between about 1500 and 1850 AD, more than 12 million enslaved Africans were shipped to the Americas as part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Certainly there can be little doubt of the impact that this event has had on modern demographics. Captives being brought on board a slave ship on the West Coast of Africa (Slave Coast). Wood engrav