About three centuries ago, three Africans had died in slavery on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. Now, scientists have traced them back to their homelands. According to reports, the scientists analyzed snippets of DNA that were recovered from the roots of the three Africans’ teeth.

The scientists had conducted a study to understand the complex history of slavery. The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that out of the three Africans, one man possibly belonged to a Bantu-speaking group in northern Cameroon, while the other two would have belonged to non-Bantu-speaking groups in present-day Nigeria and Ghana. Out of the three individuals, two were men, while one was a woman.

Before the new study, historians knew that about 12 million slaves came from West and West-Central Africa between 1500 and 1850. But, they didn’t have complete records to know everything about ethnic origins of slaves. In the new study, the scientists had used a DNA technique to understand about slaves.

In a press release, Hannes Schroeder, a researcher at the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen's Natural History Museum and lead author of the study, said, “To our knowledge, this is the first time that genome-wide data has been used to identify the origins of enslaved Africans. And given the limited knowledge we have on the slaves' origins, this is obviously quite a breakthrough”.

The remains of the three Africans were unearthed about four years ago during a construction project Philipsburg. According to the scientists, the three Africans had died in the late 1600s and they were between 25 and 40 years old when they died. More than 12 million Africans were brought to New World during 1500 and 1850s, the scientists said.

According to the scientists, they had extracted DNA from samples to know the origins of the three African slaves.