A genetic and linguistic analysis of the admixture histories of the islands of Cabo Verde

  1. Romain Laurent
  2. Zachary Alfano Szpiech
  3. Sergio S da Costa
  4. Valentin Thouzeau
  5. Cesar A Fortes-Lima
  6. Françoise Dessarps-Freichey
  7. Laure Lémée
  8. José Utgé
  9. Noah A Rosenberg
  10. Marlyse Baptista
  11. Paul Verdu  Is a corresponding author
  1. CNRS-MNHN-Université Paris Cité, France
  2. Pennsylvania State University, United States
  3. CNRS-Université Paris-Dauphine- PSL University, France
  4. Uppsala University, Sweden
  5. Institut Pasteur, France
  6. Stanford University, United States
  7. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, United States

Abstract

From the 15th to the 19th century, the Trans-Atlantic Slave-Trade (TAST) influenced the genetic and cultural diversity of numerous populations. We explore genomic and linguistic data from the nine islands of Cabo Verde, the earliest European colony of the era in Africa, a major Slave-Trade platform between the 16th and 19th centuries, and a previously uninhabited location ideal for investigating early admixture events between Europeans and Africans. Using local-ancestry inference approaches, we find that genetic admixture in Cabo Verde occurred primarily between Iberian and certain Senegambian populations, although forced and voluntary migrations to the archipelago involved numerous other populations. Inter-individual genetic and linguistic variation recapitulates the geographic distribution of individuals' birth-places across Cabo Verdean islands, following an isolation-by-distance model with reduced genetic and linguistic effective dispersals within the archipelago, and suggesting that Kriolu language variants have developed together with genetic divergences at very reduced geographical scales. Furthermore, based on approximate bayesian computation inferences of highly complex admixture histories, we find that admixture occurred early on each island, long before the 18th-century massive TAST deportations triggered by the expansion of the plantation economy in Africa and the Americas, and after this era mostly during the abolition of the TAST and of slavery in European colonial empires. Our results illustrate how shifting socio-cultural relationships between enslaved and non-enslaved communities during and after the TAST, shaped enslaved-African descendants’ genomic diversity and structure on both sides of the Atlantic.

Data availability

The novel genome-wide genotype data, the linguistic utterance counts, and the self-reported anthropo-logical data presented here can be accessed and downloaded via the European Genome-Phenome Ar-chive (EGA) database accession numbers EGAD00001008976, EGAD00001008977, EGAD00001008978, and EGAD00001008979. All datasets can be shared provided that future envi-sioned studies comply with the informed consents provided by the participants, and in agreement with institutional ethics committee's recommendations applying to this data.All data will be made publically available on eGA in the event of acceptance.

The following data sets were generated
    1. Verdu P
    (2022) The admixture histories of Cabo Verde
    European Genome-Phenome Ar-chive (EGA) database accession numbers EGAD00001008976, EGAD00001008977, EGAD00001008978, EGAD00001008979.
The following previously published data sets were used

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Romain Laurent

    UMR7206 Eco-anthropologie, CNRS-MNHN-Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0363-2954
  2. Zachary Alfano Szpiech

    Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6372-8224
  3. Sergio S da Costa

    UMR7206 Eco-anthropologie, CNRS-MNHN-Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Valentin Thouzeau

    EcoAnthropology and Ethnobiology, CNRS-Université Paris-Dauphine- PSL University, Paris, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Cesar A Fortes-Lima

    Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9310-5009
  6. Françoise Dessarps-Freichey

    UMR7206 Eco-anthropologie, CNRS-MNHN-Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Laure Lémée

    Plate-forme Technologique Biomics-Centre de Ressources et Recherches Technologiques (C2RT), Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. José Utgé

    UMR7206 Eco-anthropologie, CNRS-MNHN-Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Noah A Rosenberg

    Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Marlyse Baptista

    Department of Linguistics, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  11. Paul Verdu

    UMR7206 Eco-anthropologie, CNRS-MNHN-Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
    For correspondence
    paul.verdu@mnhn.fr
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6828-268X

Funding

Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR METHIS 15-CE32-0009-1)

  • Romain Laurent
  • Sergio S da Costa
  • Valentin Thouzeau
  • Cesar A Fortes-Lima
  • Françoise Dessarps-Freichey
  • José Utgé
  • Paul Verdu

France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies

  • Noah A Rosenberg

National Institutes of Health (R35 GM146926)

  • Zachary Alfano Szpiech

Marcus Borgströms Foundation for Genetic Research

  • Cesar A Fortes-Lima

Bertil Lundman Foundation for Anthropological Studies

  • Cesar A Fortes-Lima

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: Research sampling protocols followed the Declaration of Helsinki guidelines and the French laws of scientific research deontology (Loi n{degree sign} 2016-483 du 20 avril 2016). Research and ethics authorizations were provided by the Ministério da Saúde de Cabo Verde (228/DGS/11), Stanford University IRB (Protocol ID n{degree sign}23194-IRB n{degree sign}349), University of Michigan IRB (n{degree sign}HUM00079335), and the French ethics committees and CNIL (Declaration n{degree sign}1972648). All volunteer participants provided written and video-recorded informed consent.

Copyright

© 2023, Laurent et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Romain Laurent
  2. Zachary Alfano Szpiech
  3. Sergio S da Costa
  4. Valentin Thouzeau
  5. Cesar A Fortes-Lima
  6. Françoise Dessarps-Freichey
  7. Laure Lémée
  8. José Utgé
  9. Noah A Rosenberg
  10. Marlyse Baptista
  11. Paul Verdu
(2023)
A genetic and linguistic analysis of the admixture histories of the islands of Cabo Verde
eLife 12:e79827.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79827

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79827

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