DNA Evidence of a Croatian and Sephardic Jewish Settlement on the North Carolina Coast Dating from the Mid to Late 1500s

While the British origins of North American colonization currently are widely accepted, there is new evidence that other countries and non-Christians may have been earlier in establishing permanent settlements on the North Atlantic coast. Using the new research tool of human genomics, this paper pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hirschman, Elizabeth C., Vance, James A., Harris, Jesse D.
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository 2019
Subjects:
1500s North American Settlement
Croatia
Sephardic Jews
Lumbee Tribe
DNA Testing
Anthropology
Communication
Genealogy
Geography
History
International and Area Studies
Jewish Studies
Political Science
United States History
North Atlantic
Online Access:https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol95/iss2/2
https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1361&context=issr
Description
Summary:While the British origins of North American colonization currently are widely accepted, there is new evidence that other countries and non-Christians may have been earlier in establishing permanent settlements on the North Atlantic coast. Using the new research tool of human genomics, this paper provides DNA evidence that Croatians and Sephardic Jews were absorbed into the ancestral population of the Lumbee Native American tribe of North Carolina during the mid- to late-1500s. We further propose that these Sephardic Jews originated, in part, from a subgroup of the Roanoke colonists of 1586. Given this, a new historical narrative of early European colonization in North America during the 1500s is proposed.

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