June 24, 2002

Results Announced in Melungeon DNA Study

by

Libby Pearson Killebrew

Scientific test results released at Fourth Union, a Melungeon conference held in Kingsport, confirm oral family traditions that have been consistently scorned by academics.  The long-held myth that Melungeons are the product of "tri-racial isolates" consisting of Northern European (Scots-Irish and English) men married to African slaves and Native American women has finally been laid to rest.  

DNA sequencing proves that Melungeons do indeed have an element of Middle Eastern ancestry, which may be linked to both male and female colonists brought to North America by the Spanish and Portuguese.

            Dr. Kevin Jones, a biologist at the University of Virginia's College at Wise and a native of London, England, spent two years conducting the study.  The subjects were volunteers chosen from various known Melungeon families.  Hair samples were used to obtain mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down unbroken along maternal lines, while cheek swabs produced samples of Y-chromosome, or male DNA.  The genetic sequences were then compared to thousands of others that are part of GenBank, an international genetics database, as well as those available through published scientific literature and the Mitochondrial DNA Concordance. 

            The most immediate confirmation made was that Melungeons are not "inbred", as is implied by the term "tri-racial isolate", but in fact have an extremely diverse genetic background.  In addition to Eurasian, African, and Native American sequences, a significant number of the samples revealed that the Melungeons have ancestral links to the region of Northern India.  The results also indicate that the Eurasian ancestors of the Melungeons were not strictly from Northern Europe, as has been traditionally assumed by historians and other academics.

It can now be proven that the Eurasian ancestors of Melungeons were not only males, but also females, and the males were a multi-racial group as well.  This means that there were women among the settlers who have up until this time been deemed too "exotic" to be accepted as a part Melungeon heritage, and the men were not all Northern Europeans.  In other words, Melungeon history is not just a story of white men who had children with their African and Native American slaves, but of genetically diverse individuals driven together by a society that would not tolerate that diversity.

Historians who cling to the notion that North America is and has always been strictly a product of colonization by Northern Europeans have previously ignored or even ridiculed genealogical and historical evidence.  They somehow believed that the Spanish and other colonists such as free Africans and even Native Americans (outside reservations) were unable to survive and produce offspring – or even that these non-Anglo Americans never existed at all.  Mediterranean, African, and Middle Eastern colonists who arrived as Portuguese/Spanish, French, and even British settlers did not become extinct.  DNA testing has demonstrated that the descendants of these people are indeed alive and well.

Most important of all, the test results disprove the long-held belief that Melungeons belong to a gene pool that is unique from others in their communities.  Gene pools can only be understood by comparing large groups of samples to other large groups, then searching for general patterns.  Individual DNA sequences have a habit of popping up in places far from where they typically occur, particularly in Europe, where any specific gene sequence is liable to be found anywhere.  About five percent of Europeans actually have some "exotic" ancestry that they are not even aware of, such as African or Far Eastern, and many sequences are common throughout the world, across all national, ethnic, and racial lines.  There is no such thing as a genetically pure classification into different "races".  All human beings are related to each other, and everyone is a mixture, descended from millions of individuals over thousands of generations.

Far from writing the final chapter in the history of the Melungeons, this DNA study is only the beginning.  Further research may someday reveal even deeper truths about the North American gene pool, putting an end to myths regarding national origin, ethnic identity, and superficial attempts to classify human beings on the basis of race.