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Afro-Jamaicans

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Afro-Jamaicans, or Jamaican Creoles,[5][6] also called Taíno Jamaicans, are Jamaicans of predominantly Caribbean Creole descent.[7] They represent the largest ethnic group in the country, and are the indigenous people of Jamaica.[8][9]

Jamaican Creoles[1][2][3]
Total population
76.3% of Jamaica[4]
Regions with significant populations
Throughout Jamaica, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, The Raizal Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands
Languages
Jamaican Patois, Jamaican English
Religion
Predominantly Protestantism, with minorities of other forms of Christianity, Judaism, and Rastafari
Related ethnic groups
Caribbean Creoles, British Jamaicans, Black Canadians, Jamaican Americans, Belizean Creoles, Asante people

The ethnogenesis of the Jamaican Creole people stems from the indigenous Taíno, and the Cromanty ethnic group who were abducted from the Gold Coast, and taken to Jamaica during the Atlantic slave trade.[10] Both the Taíno, and the Cromanty were persecuted, and held captive during slavery, and intermarried with one another over the course of time.[11] Their descendants the (Creoles) are now the predominant ethnic group in Jamaica, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, the Raizal Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands;[12] who all share a common (Creolian) heritage and ancestry.[13]

Origin

West Africans were enslaved in wars with other West African states and kidnapped by either African or European slavers.

Originally in earlier British colonization, the island before the 1750s was in fact mainly Akan imported. However, between 1663 and 1700, only six per cent of slave ships to Jamaica listed their origin as the Gold Coast, while between 1700 and 1720 that figure went up to 27 per cent. The number of Akan slaves arriving in Jamaica from Kormantin ports only increased in the early 18th century.[14] But due to frequent rebellions from the then known "Coromantee" that often joined the slave rebellion group known as the Jamaican Maroons, other groups were sent to Jamaica. The Akan population was still maintained, since they were the preference of British planters in Jamaica because they were "better workers", according to these planters. According to the Slave Voyages Archives, though the Igbo had the highest importation numbers, they were only imported to Montego Bay and St. Ann's Bay ports, while the Akan (mainly Gold Coast) were more dispersed across the island and were a majority imported to seven of 14 of the island's ports (each parish has one port).[15]

History

Atlantic slave trade

Main article: Atlantic slave trade

Jamaican Patois

Main articles: Jamaican Patois and List of Jamaican Patois words of African origin

Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patwa, is an English creole language spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of English. The language developed in the 17th century, when enslaved peoples from West and Central Africa blended their dialect and terms with the learned vernacular and dialectal forms of English spoken: British Englishes (including significant exposure to Scottish English) and Hiberno English. Jamaican Patwa is a post-creole speech continuum (a linguistic continuum) meaning that the variety of the language closest to the lexifier language (the acrolect) cannot be distinguished systematically from intermediate varieties (collectively referred to as the mesolect) nor even from the most divergent rural varieties (collectively referred to as the basilect). Jamaicans themselves usually refer to their use of English as patwa, a term without a precise linguistic definition.

Jamaican Patois contains many loanwords of African origin, a majority of those etymologically from Gold Coast region (particularly of the Asante-Twi dialect of the Akan language of Ghana).[16]

Proverbs

Most Jamaican proverbs are of Asante people, while some included other African proverbs.[17]

Genetic studies

Jamaican mtDNA

A DNA test study submitted to BMC Medicine in 2012 states that "....despite the historical evidence that an overwhelming majority of slaves were sent from the Bight of Biafra and West-central Africa near the end of the British slave trade, the mtDNA haplogroup profile of modern Jamaicans show a greater affinity with groups found in the present-day Gold Coast region Ghana....this is because Africans arriving from the Gold Coast may have thus found the acclimatization and acculturation process less stressful because of cultural and linguistic commonalities, leading ultimately to a greater chance of survivorship and a greater number of progeny."

More detailed results stated: "Using haplogroup distributions to calculate parental population contribution, the largest admixture coefficient was associated with the Gold Coast (0.477 ± 0.12 or 59.7% of the Jamaican population with a 2.7 chance of Pygmy and Sahelian mixture), suggesting that the people from this region may have been consistently prolific throughout the slave era on Jamaica. The diminutive admixture coefficients associated with the Bight of Biafra and West-central Africa (0.064 ± 0.05 and 0.089 ± 0.05, respectively) is striking considering the massive influx of individuals from these areas in the waning years of the British Slave trade. When excluding the pygmy groups, the contribution from the Bight of Biafra and West-central rise to their highest levels (0.095 ± 0.08 and 0.109 ± 0.06, respectively), though still far from a major contribution. When admixture coefficients were calculated by assessing shared haplotypes, the Gold Coast also had the largest contribution, though much less striking at 0.196, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.189 to 0.203. When haplotypes are allowed to differ by one base pair, the Jamaican matriline shows the greatest affinity with the Bight of Benin, though both Bight of Biafra and West-central Africa remain underrepresented. The results of the admixture analysis suggest the mtDNA haplogroup profile distribution of Jamaica more closely resembles that of aggregated populations from the modern-day Gold Coast region despite an increasing influx of individuals from both the Bight of Biafra and West-central Africa during the final years of trading enslaved Africans.[18]

The aforementioned results apply to subjects whom have been tested. Results also stated that black Jamaicans (that make up more than 90% of the population) on an average have 97.5% of African MtDNA and very little European or Asian ancestry could be found. Both ethnic and racial genetic results are based on a low sample of 390 Jamaican persons and limited regional representation within Jamaica.[18] As Afro-Jamaicans are not genetically homogeneous, the results for other subjects may yield different results.[19]

Jamaican Y-DNA

Pub Med results were also issued in the same year (2012): "Our results reveal that the studied population of Jamaica exhibit a predominantly South-Saharan paternal component, with haplogroups A1b-V152, A3-M32, B2-M182, E1a-M33, E1b1a-M2, E2b-M98, and R1b2-V88 comprising 66.7% of the Jamaican paternal gene pool. Yet, European derived chromosomes (i.e., haplogroups G2a*-P15, I-M258, R1b1b-M269, and T-M184) were detected at commensurate levels in Jamaica (19.0%), whereas Y-haplogroups indicative of Chinese [O-M175 (3.8%)] and Indian [H-M69 (0.6%) and L-M20 (0.6%)] ancestry were restricted to Jamaica.[20] African paternal DNA 66.7% European paternal DNA 19.0% Chinese paternal DNA 3.8% Indian paternal DNA 1.2%

Jamaican autosomal DNA

The gene pool of Jamaica is about 80.3% Sub-Saharan African, 10% European, and 5.7% East Asian;[21] according to a 2010 autosomal genealogical DNA testing.

Notable Afro-Jamaicans

See also

References

  1. ^ Allsopp, Richard (1996). Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. UWI Press. p. 176-177. ISBN 978-976-640-145-0.
  2. ^ Frederic G. Cassidy., Robert B. Le Page (1980). Dictionary of Jamaican English. Cambridge University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-521-11840-8.
  3. ^ "Who and What are the Creole Peoples and Languages?". Who and What are the Creole Peoples. Masaman. 2018. Retrieved 16 September 2024.
  4. ^ "Jamaica | The University of the West Indies". www.uwi.edu.
  5. ^ Allsopp, Richard (1996). Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. UWI Press. p. 13, 176-177. ISBN 978-976-640-145-0.
  6. ^ Frederic G. Cassidy., Robert B. Le Page (1980). Dictionary of Jamaican English. Cambridge University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-521-11840-8.
  7. ^ "Who and What are the Creole Peoples and Languages?". Who and What are the Creole Peoples. Masaman. 2018. Retrieved 16 September 2024.
  8. ^ "How Taíno Culture Affects Us Today". How Taíno Culture Affects Us Today. Pero Like. 2018. Retrieved 16 September 2024.
  9. ^ "Jamaica Population 2021 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs)". World Population Review. Archived from the original on 22 December 2013. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  10. ^ Frederic G. Cassidy., Robert B. Le Page (1980). Dictionary of Jamaican English. Cambridge University Press. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-521-11840-8.
  11. ^ Dr Hannes Schroeder & Professor Eske Willerslev (19 February 2018). "Study identifies traces of indigenous 'Taíno' in present-day Caribbean populations". eurekalert.org. University of Cambridge. Retrieved 16 September 2024.
  12. ^ Allsopp, Richard (1996). Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. UWI Press. p. 176-177. ISBN 978-976-640-145-0.
  13. ^ Frederic G. Cassidy., Robert B. Le Page (1980). Dictionary of Jamaican English. Cambridge University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-521-11840-8.
  14. ^ Siva, Michael, After the Treaties: A Social, Economic and Demographic History of Maroon Society in Jamaica, 1739–1842, PhD dissertation (Southampton: Southampton University, 2018), p. 27.
  15. ^ "Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade". Slavevoyages.org. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
  16. ^ Cassidy, F. G. (October 1966), "Multiple etymologies in Jamaican Creole". American Speech, Vol. 41, No. 3, 211–215.
  17. ^ "Psychic Phenomena of Jamaica: CHAPTER I". Sacred-texts.com. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
  18. ^ a b Deason, Michael L.; Salas, Antonio; Newman, Simon P.; Macaulay, Vincent A.; Morrison, Errol Y. st A.; Pitsiladis, Yannis P. (23 February 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.
  19. ^ Salas, Antonio; Richards, Martin; Lareu, María-Victoria; Scozzari, Rosaria; Coppa, Alfredo; Torroni, Antonio; MacAulay, Vincent; Carracedo, Ángel (2004). "The African Diaspora: Mitochondrial DNA and the Atlantic Slave Trade". The American Journal of Human Genetics. 74 (3): 454–465. doi:10.1086/382194. PMC 1182259. PMID 14872407.
  20. ^ Simms, Tanya M.; Wright, Marisil R.; Hernandez, Michelle; Perez, Omar A.; Ramirez, Evelyn C.; Martinez, Emanuel; Herrera, Rene J. (August 2012). "Y-chromosomal diversity in Haiti and Jamaica: contrasting levels of sex-biased gene flow". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 148 (4): 618–31. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22090. PMID 22576450.
  21. ^ Simms, Tanya M.; Rodriguez, Carol E.; Rodriguez, Rosa; Herrera, Rene J. (2010). "The Genetic Structure of Populations from Haiti and Jamaica Reflect Divergent Demographic Histories". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 142 (1): 49–66. doi:10.1002/ajpa.21194. PMID 19918989. Retrieved 22 September 2021.
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