![]() So how do we know who traveled from the Near East to what became West Africa? We know who did, because he left traces, (DNA), which ballooned and expanded where he settled. And even very likely, in places they were inhabited travelers necessarily did not have to pass through ‘custom’ and ‘immigration’ checks, that would have kept records of who was who, and where he or she came from. Just tracts of territory, which in many areas were likely not inhabited. In the period they traveled there were no West Africa, North Africa, and Middle East as we know them today. Well, if the same methods used to report the results of many Ashkenazi and Sefardic Jews are used to report mine, my Middle Eastern would read Igbo-Jewish 92.0% if not 94.1% What my result says, but which was left unsaid is the following: Many thousands Israelites, my ancestors, left Israel, and moved southwards, to what became West Africa thousands of years ago. Why did he think about this? He knew that my raw result gave only the sketchiest hint of my genetic background and migrations: because of where I came from: sub-Saharan Africa. Towards the end of our conversation he let out that he had heard that an ethnic group in the area (of what became West Africa: the Ibo, is Jewish.)Īnother important thing that he mentioned was that he felt that more of the Nigerian quantity would be Middle Eastern too. I maintained silence about the Igbo, and the Israelite connection of the Igbos. When I talked with the representative of MyHeritage, my testing company, he suspected that my Middle Eastern DNA may have something to do with Arab penetration of what became West Africa. This result is not clear, albeit not because of a deliberate action of the company, but because the company’s officials did not use sufficient and adequate information to explain their findings. The raw data shows that I have 5.9% Eastern African DNA, 1.2% Middle eastern DNA, and 92.9% Nigerian DNA. This is because my result was clearly not well explained by my testing company, because it lacked information. It also confirmed another thought I had cultivated: that the reading of DNA results is even more critically important than the raw results. ![]() When the reading arrived, they had what I knew they would have: clear evidence that Igbos once lived in the Land of Israel. I used the services of the company called MyHeritage. To learn more about Igbo Landing, read and listen to GPB's feature story on the rebellion.I had my DNA analysed in 2017. In addition to recounting the historical event, the marker includes a saying attributed to the ethnic Igbo people of Nigeria: “The water brought us here, the water will take us away.” The marker commemorating Igbo Landing - pronounced as “E-bo” and alternatively written as Ebo and Ibo - is located at the northwest corner of Sea Island Road and Frederica Road, on a publicly accessible property known as Old Stables Corner. “I hope that this is just the first in a series of markers that really recognize all of Georgia's diverse history, and there are so many other things that are significant to the story of the state of Georgia,” White said. Another $2,500 came from the Coastal Georgia Historical Society. The marker application process was initiated by students at Glynn Academy - a public high school in nearby Brunswick - who raised roughly $2,500 for the marker. “That often wasn't very kind to the African American experience here, or largely ignored it.” “So many of the monuments and markers in this area were done in what we kind of think of as the heyday for memorials and markers,” said White, referring to the 1950s and 1960s. The group is an affiliate chapter of the Georgia Historical Society, which administers the Georgia Historical Marker Program. “This event seems like it would be an obvious choice for a marker, and yet it took until 2022 to get one,” said Sandy White, education director for the Coastal Georgia Historical Society. Simons Island near the approximate site where, in 1803, as many as 75 newly captured west Africans overtook the ship carrying them, before choosing to drown in Dunbar Creek. The Coastal Georgia Historical Society formally dedicated the marker Tuesday on St. More than 200 years after a group of captive Africans willfully drowned in coastal Georgia, the uprising known as Igbo Landing finally has a historical marker to commemorate the harrowing act of resistance to slavery. Credit: Sandy White / Coastal Georgia Historical Society
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