Before the ship

The people who were put on board had trades, languages and countries.

The Africans brought to Brazil did not come from nowhere. They came from places with governments, currency, crafts and trade routes: the Mali Empire, Songhai, the Kingdom of Kongo, Benin.

They brought what they knew. In Minas Gerais, the women and men who came from the Mina Coast already knew mining from Africa. They knew how to spot where there was gold, take it from riverbeds and use the right tools.

The historian Júnia Furtado, of UFMG (the Federal University of Minas Gerais), calls this African mining technology. It was used extensively to extract Brazil's gold and diamonds.