Early Africans in the New World - Archaeology and Isotope Analysis at Campeche, Yucata

Stable isotope analysis has assisted in identifying what may be among the earliest Africans in the New World, and perhaps indications of slavery in the early 16th century between West Africa and the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico.

These two upper incisors were taken from a skeleton within the cemetery who appears to have been born in West Africa and died in the Yucatan peninsula. Each has been purposefully filed or chipped on the inside corner, a common trait of people in precolonial West Africa. Photograph courtesy T. Douglas Price.