Strontium isoscape of sub-Saharan Africa allows tracing slave trade (2024)
16 comments
·January 15, 2025nolist_policy
Why is there no conclusion?
a2tech
The flagged thread down below makes me feel very sad about my fellows on this site. Be better people. That’s all I can say.
nobodywillobsrv
[flagged]
like_any_other
There is also a second lie of omission in not mentioning the Arab/trans-Saharan slave trade. Which is doubly strange because they explicitly studied slave-trade-borne migration. There is nothing about Strontium isotopes that would discriminate based on who was doing the slave trading - the researchers had to actively limit their scope to only the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
g8oz
The paper specifically deals with the *transatlantic* slave trade presumably because it's better documented. There's no reason to mention the other types just to placate those offended by anything that hints at the spectre of Western historical guilt.
like_any_other
Their method relies only on Strontium, not on old documents. The omission is deliberate.
aredox
The propaganda only exist in your head, as the dynamics of the European slave trade have bben widely studied. Read more material instead of resorting to straw man arguments about a field you don't know enough about.
The same way the Shoah wasn't the first time in history people were slaughtered en masse but was the first time it was done in such a systematic, organised and "scientific" way, the transatlantic trade has characteristics that make it unique in History and not just something you can "whatabout" by pointing at African, Arab and Antique slavery.
https://eji.org/report/transatlantic-slave-trade/origins/#ch...
like_any_other
Yes, they have been widely studied, which is how we know Blacks enslaved and sold each-other, including to Europeans. Though I don't blame your ignorance, as pop-culture depictions omit or even reverse this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman_King#Role_in_slavery
ceejayoz
Sure, like how Central and South America has a role in the drug trade.
The key driver remains the demand.
feoren
There was also a lie of omission where they didn't mention the expansion of humans around Africa leading to that slave trade, nor the weather patterns at the time, nor the slave trade in other parts of the world, nor the Armenian Genocide, nor Tiananmen Square, nor that time that Mark stabbed me with a pencil in elementary school. That makes it so obvious they're pushing an agenda.
sitkack
Anytime the ST is mentioned, someone always has to chime in with It Wasn't Just Whites! It is a trope at this point.
It is really too bad, because the method they are using is really neat and worthy of discussion.
This is a really cool piece of research in how they are using Strontium to track migration (in this case slaves).
> Strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analysis with reference to strontium isotope landscapes (Sr isoscapes) allows reconstructing mobility and migration in archaeology, ecology, and forensics. However, despite the vast potential of research involving 87Sr/86Sr analysis particularly in Africa, Sr isoscapes remain unavailable for the largest parts of the continent. Here, we measure the 87Sr/86Sr ratios in 778 environmental samples from 24 African countries and combine this data with published data to model a bioavailable Sr isoscape for sub-Saharan Africa using random forest regression. We demonstrate the efficacy of this Sr isoscape, in combination with other lines of evidence, to trace the African roots of individuals from historic slavery contexts, particularly those with highly radiogenic 87Sr/86Sr ratios uncommon in the African Diaspora. Our study provides an extensive African 87Sr/86Sr dataset which includes scientifically marginalized regions of Africa, with significant implications for the archaeology of the transatlantic slave trade, wildlife ecology, conservation, and forensics.
I wonder what other mysteries this could be used to solve?