Who went with Columbus?

La Isabela was not the first settlement established by Columbus. When the Santa Maria ran aground off the Caribbean island of Hispaniola on Christmas Eve,1492,during his first voyage,the 39 stranded sailors built a fort they christened La Navidad. When Columbus returned the next year,the fort had been burned and the crew massacred.

The study of the La Isabela skeletons grew out of a project in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula,where in 2000,researchers were surprised to find the remains of West Africans among those buried in a mid-16th-century church cemetery in Campeche. Vera Tiesler and Andrea Cucina from the Autonomous University of Yucatan invited Douglas Price,director of the Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison,to do isotopic analysis of those skeletons’ teeth.

Isotopes are different forms of an element,atoms with different molecular weights based on their varying numbers of neutrons. Depending on their diet and water supply,humans concentrate specific isotopes in varying ratios in the enamel of their teeth. For example,the ratio of strontium isotopes indicates whether the person grew up in a region underlain by very old bedrock,such as West Africa,or newer rock,such as Latin America. That is because older rock has a higher ratio of strontium 87 to strontium 86.

Ratios of carbon isotopes in the teeth reflect what foods a person ate. A diet heavy in corn,sorghum and other tropical plants yields more carbon 13,whereas grains such as barley and wheat produce more carbon 12. Europeans of Columbus’ time would have relatively little carbon 13 in their teeth; Mexicans would have much of the heavier isotope. Natives of Hispaniola and many Africans,who are believed to have eaten a mixed diet,would probably fall somewhere in between.

“Mexicans are about as heavy (on carbon 13) as you can get,” said James Burton,a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin involved in the La Isabela and Campeche projects. “Africans are in between,Europeans at the other end.”

Scientists are also analysing the oxygen composition of the teeth. Oxygen isotopes in water differ according to a region’s climate,with warmer climates yielding water with more “heavy oxygen” (oxygen 18) and cooler areas having “lighter oxygen” (oxygen 16).

Based on such analyses,scientists are certain that a number of people found in the Campeche cemetery were African. It looks highly possible they have found at least three Africans in La Isabela as well,although Burton warns against jumping to conclusions.

“They look a little like Africans,but we can’t say for sure they’re not Spanish yet because we don’t have a full range of understanding what is the cut-off in isotopic ranges for people from Spain and for local people,” he said. For comparison,the team is analyzing bones,nails and,when possible,teeth from Spain and Hispaniola.

DNA analysis is also being done on the skeletons. But after excavation and years of storage,the samples could be heavily contaminated with DNA from other sources.

The researchers note that bones,teeth and DNA yield no clues as to whether someone was a slave or not. “The people on that expedition were reasonably well known by Spanish historians; there were (African) servants of households,but they didn’t bring African slaves,” said Kathleen Deagan,a University of Florida historical archaeologist and author of two books on La Isabela. “There were African sailors on early expeditions.”