Afro-Jamaicans

Afro-Jamaicans or Black Jamaicans are people from Jamaica who have ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa, whose ancestors were brought to the island from West and Central Africa through the transatlantic slave trade starting in the 17th century.
Afro-Jamaicans are Jamaicans of predominantly African descent. They represent the largest ethnic group in the country.
The ethnogenesis of the Black Jamaican people stemmed from the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th century, when enslaved Africans were transported as slaves to Jamaica and other parts of the Americas. During the period of British rule, slaves brought to Jamaica by European slave traders were primarily Akan, some of whom ran away and joined with Jamaican Maroons and even took over as leaders.

Origin

During the Atlantic slave trade, millions of people from West and Central Africa were enslaved and sold to European slave traders, primarily for transportation to the Americas. Most were captured in the frequent wars between African states, which were often fomented by the slave traders for this purpose, or were kidnapped in raids by African or European slavers directly.
After the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, in 1834, free African labourers known as indentured labourers, came to Jamaica between 1841 and 1865—during the period of indentureship.

African Ethnicities

Based on slave ship records, enslaved Africans mostly came from the Akan people followed by the Igbo. Others belonged to the Bakongo, Gbe speakers, Yoruba, and Ibibio. To a lesser extent, some slaves came from the Fulani, Temne, and Mande people.] Akan culture was the dominant African culture in Jamaica.
Originally in earlier British colonization, the island before the 1750s was in fact mainly Akan imported. However, between 1663 and 1700, only six per cent of slave ships to Jamaica listed their origin as the Gold Coast, while between 1700 and 1720 that figure went up to 27 per cent. The number of Akan slaves arriving in Jamaica from Kormantin ports only increased in the early 18th century. But due to frequent rebellions from the then known "Coromantee" that often joined the slave rebellion group known as the Jamaican Maroons, other groups were sent to Jamaica. The Akan population was still maintained, since they were the preference of British planters in Jamaica because they were "better workers", according to these planters. According to the Slave Voyages Archives, though the Igbo had the highest importation numbers, they were only imported to Montego Bay and St. Ann's Bay ports, while the Akan were more dispersed across the island and were a majority imported to seven of 14 of the island's ports.

Afro-European

The majority of the house slaves were mulattoes. There were also Brown/Mulatto or mixed-race people at the time who had more privileges than the Black slaves and usually held higher-paying jobs and occupations.
In 1871 the census recorded a population of 506,154 people, 246,573 males, and 259,581 females. Their races were recorded as 13,101 White, 100,346 "Coloured," and 392,707 Black.

History

Atlantic slave trade

Plantation economy

Rebellions

Culture

Myal and Revival

Kumfu was documented as Myal and originally only found in books, while the term Kumfu is still used by Jamaican Maroons. The priest of Kumfu was called a Kumfu-man. In 18th-century Jamaica, only Akan gods were worshipped by Akan as well as by other enslaved Africans. The Akan god of creation, Nyankopong was given praise but not worshipped directly. They poured libation to Asase Ya, the goddess of the earth. But nowadays they are only observed by the Maroons who preserved a lot of the culture of 1700s Jamaica.
"Myal" or Kumfu evolved into Revival, a syncretic Christian sect. Kumfu followers gravitated to the American Revival of 1800 Seventh Day Adventist movement because it observed Saturday as god's day of rest. This was a shared aboriginal belief of the Akan people as this too was the day that the Akan god, Nyame, rested after creating the earth. Jamaicans that were aware of their Ashanti past while wanting to keep hidden, mixed their Kumfu spirituality with the American Adventists to create Jamaican Revival in 1860. Revival has two sects: 60 order and 61 order. 60 order worships God and spirits of air or the heavens on a Saturday and considers itself to be the more "clean" sect. 61 order more deals with spirits of the earth. This division of Kumfu clearly shows the dichotomy of Nyame and Asase Yaa's relationship, Nyame representing air and has his 60 order'; Asase Yaa having her 61 order of the earth. Also the Ashanti funerary/war colours: red and black have the same meaning in Revival of vengeance. Other Ashanti elements include the use of swords and rings as means to guard the spirit from spiritual attack. The Asantehene, like the Mother Woman of Revival, has special two swords used to protect himself from witchcraft called an Akrafena or soul sword and a Bosomfena or spirit sword.

John Canoe

A festival was dedicated to the heroism of the Akan king 'John Canoe' an Ahanta from Axim, Ghana, in 1708. See John Canoe section.

Jamaican Patois

Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patwa, is an English creole language spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of English. The language developed in the 17th century, when enslaved peoples from West and Central Africa blended their dialect and terms with the learned vernacular and dialectal forms of English spoken: British Englishes and Hiberno English. Jamaican Patwa is a post-creole speech continuum meaning that the variety of the language closest to the lexifier language cannot be distinguished systematically from intermediate varieties nor even from the most divergent rural varieties. Jamaicans themselves usually refer to their use of English as patwa, a term without a precise linguistic definition.
Jamaican Patois contains many loanwords of African origin, a majority of those etymologically from Gold Coast region.

Proverbs

Most Jamaican proverbs are of Asante people, while some included other African proverbs.

Genetic studies

Jamaican mtDNA

A DNA test study submitted to BMC Medicine in 2012 states that "....despite the historical evidence that an overwhelming majority of slaves were sent from the Bight of Biafra and West-central Africa near the end of the British slave trade, the mtDNA haplogroup profile of modern Jamaicans show a greater affinity with groups found in the present-day Gold Coast region Ghana....this is because Africans arriving from the Gold Coast may have thus found the acclimatization and acculturation process less stressful because of cultural and linguistic commonalities, leading ultimately to a greater chance of survivorship and a greater number of progeny."
More detailed results stated: "Using haplogroup distributions to calculate parental population contribution, the largest admixture coefficient was associated with the Gold Coast with most of the samples taken from the Asante-Akyem area of the Ashanti region of Ghana, suggesting that the people from this region may have been consistently prolific throughout the slave era on Jamaica. Modern day Jamaicans and the Asante people, both share the MTDNA haplogroup of L2a1. The diminutive admixture coefficients associated with the Bight of Biafra and West-central Africa is striking considering the massive influx of individuals from these areas in the waning years of the British Slave trade. When excluding the pygmy groups, the contribution from the Bight of Biafra and West-central rise to their highest levels, though still far from a major contribution. When admixture coefficients were calculated by assessing shared haplotypes, the Gold Coast also had the largest contribution, though much less striking at 0.196, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.189 to 0.203. When haplotypes are allowed to differ by one base pair, the Jamaican matriline shows the greatest affinity with the Bight of Benin, though both Bight of Biafra and West-central Africa remain underrepresented. The results of the admixture analysis suggest the mtDNA haplogroup profile distribution of Jamaica more closely resembles that of aggregated populations from the modern-day Gold Coast region despite an increasing influx of individuals from both the Bight of Biafra and West-central Africa during the final years of trading enslaved Africans.
The aforementioned results apply to subjects whom have been tested. Results also stated that black Jamaicans on an average have 97.5% of African MtDNA and very little European or Asian ancestry could be found. Both ethnic and racial genetic results are based on a low sample of 390 Jamaican persons and limited regional representation within Jamaica. As Afro-Jamaicans are not genetically homogeneous, the results for other subjects may yield different results.

Jamaican Y-DNA

Pub Med results were also issued in the same year : "Our results reveal that the studied population of Jamaica exhibit a predominantly South-Saharan paternal component, with haplogroups A1b-V152, A3-M32, B2-M182, E1a-M33, E1b1a-M2, E2b-M98, and R1b2-V88 comprising 66.7% of the Jamaican paternal gene pool. Yet, European derived chromosomes were detected at commensurate levels in Jamaica, whereas Y-haplogroups indicative of Chinese and Indian ancestry were restricted to Jamaica. African paternal DNA 66.7%
European paternal DNA 19.0%
Chinese paternal DNA 3.8%
Indian paternal DNA 1.2%

Jamaican autosomal DNA

The gene pool of Jamaica is about 80.3% Sub-Saharan African, 10% European, and 5.7% East Asian; according to a 2010 autosomal genealogical DNA testing.