By CHEYENNE MACDONALD From DAILY MAIL UK

– even though he died 200 years ago and his body has been lost

Researchers reconstructed the maternal genome of escaped slave Hans Jonatan
He was born in the late 1700s on the island of St Croix, and died in 1827
As a young man, he was brought to – and escaped – Denmark, and fled to Iceland
He became the first person of African heritage to have lived on the Nordic island

Researchers in Iceland have reconstructed the partial genome of a remarkable man who died in 1827, after escaping slavery and becoming the first person of African heritage to live in the Nordic country.

The whereabouts of Hans Jonatan’s remains are unknown – but, using DNA samples from 182 of his descendants, geneticists with deCODE have traced his family back to distinct areas of West Africa.

The study reconstructs Jonatan’s maternal genome, revealing where his mother or family before her were likely abducted from to be sold into the slave trade.

‘Using these data, we reconstructed 38% of HJ’s maternal genome and inferred that his mother was from the region spanned by Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon, the team wrote in the journal Nature Genetics.

Jonatan’s story rose to international fame after the publication of the biography, The Man Who Stole Himself.

He was born into slavery on the island of St Croix in 1784.

While there are some uncertainties about his father, it’s thought he was born to a white Dane named Hans Gram, who was a plantation secretary.

His mother was a house slave named Emilia Regina.

WHO WAS HANS JONATAN?

Hans Jonatan was born into slavery in 1784 on a sugar plantation in St. Croix, a Danish colony in the Caribbean.

His story rose to international fame after the publication of the biography, The Man Who Stole Himself.

While there are some uncertainties about his father, it’s thought he was a white Dane named Hans Gram, who was a secretary on one of the island’s plantations.

His mother was a house slave named Emilia Regina.

Eventually, the plantation owner returned to Denmark and took the two with him – but, slavery was illegal in the country.

Jonatan fought for the Danish navy and later declared himself a free man, according to New Scientist.

After a court battle, however, a judge ruled in 1802 that he should be sent back to the Danish West Indies to return to slavery.

To avoid this fate, Jonatan escaped to Iceland, where he was greeted ‘with open arms,’ Kári Stefánsson of deCODE Genetics in Reykjavik, Iceland, told New Scientist.

The whereabouts of Hans Jonatan’s remains are unknown – but, using DNA samples from 182 of his descendants, geneticists with deCODE have traced his family back West Africa, from a region that covers Benin, Nigeria, and Cameroon.

Eventually, the plantation owner returned to Denmark and took the two with him – but, slavery was illegal in the country.

Jonatan fought for the Danish navy and later declared himself a free man.

After a court battle, however, a judge ruled in 1802 that he should be sent back to the Danish West Indies to return to slavery.

To avoid this fate, Jonatan escaped to Iceland, where he was greeted ‘with open arms,’ Kári Stefánsson of deCODE Genetics in Reykjavik, Iceland, told New Scientist.

‘He was the first black man to set foot on Icelandic soil and was received with open arms, showing that racism was not innate in this insular 19th-century community of Icelanders,’ Stefánsson told New Scientist.

According to the study published in Nature Genetics, Hans Jonatan marks the first – and only – presence of African gene migration to Iceland before the 20th century.

‘The reconstruction of HJ’s maternal genome was unusually tractable because chromosome fragments from recent African ancestors are very rare in the Icelandic gene pool,’ they wrote.

During his life in Iceland, Jonatan had two children with an Icelandic woman, according to GenomeWeb.

He died in 1827.

The researchers used DNA from 182 of his decedents to reconstruct his genome despite not having access to his remains.

Iceland offers a unique opportunity for reconstructing Jonatan’s genome, as it has a massive database that accounts for nearly half of its population – and, he was the only inhabitant of African heritage for at least 100 years

‘The Icelandic population was founded by settlers from Scandinavia and the British Isles around 1,100 years ago, and remained relatively isolated until recently,’ the researchers wrote.’

As a result, his DNA was quite distinct.

The researchers were able to pinpoint 674 African chromosome fragments from the decedents studied.

They eventually narrowed this down even further after screening for a number of required criteria.

Using this information, the deCODE team reconstructed 38 percent of Hans Jonatan’s maternal genome.

The work could be a major breakthrough for genealogists.

‘To our knowledge, this study demonstrates the first use of genotype data from contemporary individuals, along with information about their genealogical relationships, to reconstruct a sizeable portion of the genome from a single ancestor born more than 200 years ago,’ the team wrote.

‘Ancestor genome reconstruction of this kind can be viewed as a virtual ancient DNA study, whereby genotype information is retrieved from a long-dead individual without the need for DNA samples from physical remains.’

IMAGES:

There are no pictures of Hans Jonatan, and the wherabouts of his remains are unknown. His grandson is pictured

The researchers were able to pinpoint 674 African chromosome fragments from the decedents studied. They eventually narrowed this down even further after screening for a number of required criteria. Seven of his decedents are shown

The whereabouts of Hans Jonatan’s remains are unknown – but, using DNA samples from 182 of his descendants, geneticists with deCODE have traced his family back to distinct areas of West Africa. Some of his descendants are pictured

For more on this story go to: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5272825/Geneticists-reconstruct-DNA-man-died-200-years-ago.html#ixzz54M2PGGKh