The Melungeons people of the Appalachian Mountains could be the evidence of black migration before s

For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of Appalachian residents with dark skin, formerly known by the derisive term Melungeons . Some have speculated that they descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps slaves or Turkish Gypsies. With the technology we see a little clearer , a new DNA study appeared last in 2012 in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy, has attempted to distinguish truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking . The study revealed a truth that does not sit well with the American consciousness, about a black presence in the United States by other methods than slavery .

DNA evidence shows that families historically called Melungeons are descendants of men from sub- Saharan Africa, and from Central and Northern Europe, white women. A stir when researchers based on the results have made assumptions that sub-Saharan African well before slavery time, could have meet and marry Nordic women, the study of the sequence of DNA can provide answer on the time of interbreeding. Nevertheless it's well-known that, slavery laws prohibited any union between black and white especially when talking about the marriage of a black man and a white woman things were almost impossible, since white men had the opportunity of camouflaging their black wives as their servants.

What was the origin of these black men who married Scandinavian women, when it’s known that slavery became more popular in the late 16th until the 19th century when it was abolished.

The sub-Saharan male line, evoked in the research is very interesting because it shows that among Melungeons the DNA of sub-Saharan origin is exclusively male. When it’s known that the exploration business and the army were confined exclusively to male subjects in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s important to remember the expedition of 2 000 vessels chartered by Abu Bakary II in 1311. The Malian monarch predecessor of Kankan Mussa, lover of science and adventure had already chartered a first expedition of several hundred of ships. Only one ships returned from the adventure, promting Abubakary II, himself to take the path of adventure, in 1311 he took off, leaving the throne to his younger brother, surely with the insurance of the way forward and the reality of a land beyond the ocean.

In 1325 Kankan Mussa did the revelation of the departure of his elder brother to the lands beyond the ocean to Arab historians who kept this story in their writings, while the Mandingo oral tradition has been telling this tale for centuries, a story that today seems true with the new development. If these tales are founded, it is obvious that some vessels touched land on American shores, and these men arriving in the Americas were free, they were able to have a social life. The non-watered down version of the tale Journey of Christopher Columbus to the Americas would had reported the sighting of a mosque in the americas ... Mandingo sailors could well had have married women of other races, while they crossed in the new world , and these women could have been settlers from northern Europe, and consequently would be directly related to Vikings, who are probably one of the first civilization of the ancient world, to visit America. Archaeological research have determined that they had visited the North American continent between the 10th and 14th century AD . (a period coincidental to the trips of Mandinguo in the americas)

In 1960 the Norwegians couple, Helge Ingstad, and Anne Stine Ingstad, found the ruins of Straumfiord based on Viking sagas of medieval manuscripts from Iceland . The remains of this millennial Viking site at L'Anse aux Meadows in Canada are known as the first inhabited by Europeans in North America. Indeed, the Vikings built three long houses in wood and grass, with five smaller buildings , in addition to having worked bones, bronze, and iron, a material unknown of in the New World. Another thesis to explore, is the one of Prof. Van Sertimas which placed the arrival of blacks in the Americas during the pre-Columbian period well before the Christian era. The discovery of the skull of Luzia in a cave in Brazil reinforces the thesis of African migration to the Americas more than 30 000 years ago. After reconstitution of the facies of the young woman, she had a striking resemblance to sub-Saharan Africans.

However since the early 1800s, or possibly before, the term Melungeons ( meh - LUN '- jun) was applied as an insult to a group of about 40 families along the border of Tennessee and Virginia . But it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed ancestry. Also during the period of slavery to be spared, the horrors of racist laws of that era, descendants of the ancient union have always shouted out they were of Portuguese origin , when some believed that they were a Native American, an assumption proved false after the discovery of the DNA sequence , to the surprise of descendants and researchers ... it’s now well established that the Vikings have indeed stayed in America before Columbus, but to show how sub-Saharan Africans got in America before the Carthaginian navigator, remains a very difficult task, especially when the scientific community is afraid of upsetting political conception , some cannot allow themselves to accept that sub-Saharan African, in the earliest time , could have been able to master navigation and cross the seas. slavery later did not help matters because at the end of the 16th century all black person found on the Americas became enslaved by force of circumstances, the memory of their arrival in the new world by other means than slave ships was thus destroyed.