"How do we know they came from Africa?"

SUMMARY"How do we know they came from Africa?" (Nov 3) Tito's challenge, on record: "Africa" first named Ifriqiya, the Roman/Arab province around Carthage (today's Tunisia), not West Africa; period maps called West and Central Africa "Guinea," "Nigritia," "Lower Ethiopia," or Bilad al-Sudan (Record: the label "Africa" for the whole continent is later). The Carolina "exported as many as imported" figure covers Carolina before 1720 only, not the whole trade. Witnesses NOT written by the slavers (rule 2 and 3 pass): (1) Vodou itself keeps Fon, Yoruba and Kongo words and spirits (Legba, Ogou, Damballa, the Petwo and Kongo rites), and the ancestral home is "Ginen," Guinea; (2) King Afonso I of Kongo wrote to the king of Portugal in 1526 protesting the taking of his people (an African ruler's own letters); (3) first-person writers who were enslaved: Omar ibn Said, a Fula scholar enslaved in the Carolinas, wrote his life in Arabic in 1831; Bilali Muhammad on Sapelo Island left an Arabic manuscript; Yarrow Mamout, the Muslim elder Peale painted in 1819 (P146), was described as from Guinea. Physical: Elmina Castle (built 1482) and Cape Coast Castle still stand; Columbus himself wrote that he had sailed to Mina before 1492. Logistics: trade winds and the Canary Current made the Guinea-to-Caribbean crossing a few weeks' sail. SYNTHESIS (strongest Ayiti lens): the enslaved of Ayiti were BOTH the land's own people (P159) and people taken from Ginen; they met, mixed and fought as one (1521 onward), and Ginen lives on in Vodou. STILL ON TRIAL: the scale in the ship records (who counted, why, who gained), and the labels the colonizers put on the people.