Vast Slave Graveyard Found On St. Helena

Posted by admin on Dec 14, 2009

Probably the largest-ever slave graveyard, containing the mortal remains of some 10,000 young Africans, has been found on the mid-Atlantic island of St .Helena. Many of the bodies were those of children, who died between 1840 and 1874.

A team of British archaeologists found the graves last year during preparations to build a new airport on this isolated British territory, Times Online reports.

Ironically, most of the victims of the 19th-century slave trade had been taken there not by slave traders, but by British Royal Navy patrols hunting slavers, following the abolition of slavery in Britain in 1807. The captured ships were taken to the island after the slavers were arrested and the young African slaves liberated.

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