The Gullah-Geechee: Scientists Tested Their DNA — 96.5% Came From One Continent

The Gullah-Geechee people of South Carolina's Sea Islands have preserved an extraordinary 96.5% African ancestry (3.5% European), unlike most African Americans who show 14-20% European ancestry. This preservation resulted from deliberate economic decisions by plantation owners who specifically imported West Africans from the Rice Coast (Sierra Leone, Guinea, Senegambia) for their rice cultivation expertise, creating isolated communities where African languages, cultural practices, and genetic heritage survived intact. The 2021 genome-wide study, co-authored by Queen Quet of the Gullah-Geechee Nation, confirmed this genetic heritage while revealing the Gullah are a deliberate mosaic of multiple West African populations rather than a single village.