Isotope map of Angola helps trace life histories across African Diaspora
news.ucsc.edu
news.ucsc.edu
There's a long history here of slave trade, but it's largely glossed over in the national origin myth context.
> The team then used machine learning to combine the strontium isotope data from those samples with information about elevation, soil characteristics, climate, and geological variables across Angola.
Is it machine learning or statistical inference? Or are these the same thing these days? For a country as large as Angola (twice the size of Texas for Americans), 101 botanical samples is not that many.
no difference anymore. if you open excell you can already claim grants.
using one of the most common elements on earth (10th?) alone is weird, and the article have some hand-waiving on that. But at the same time seems to be building on previous failures. Sounds cool. While also sad this is a somewhat recent problem we have to find solutions for...
I'm a descendant of the tribes and nations who migrated from Angola to present day DR Congo in the 1600s-700s to escape the slave trade. My DNA test revealed a few distant relatives all over the Americas. Yet it took me a lot of effort as an adult to dig into this part of our history and to discover that some of it is very well documented yet little of it is known by the general public in Angola, DR Congo or among afro descendants in the Americas.