via Wikimedia
Valle da Gafaria used to be where Portuguese citizens threw out their trash. Not at all the place one expected to find a body buried.
Unless, of course, you were looking for the remains of enslaved Africans.
Archeologists evaluating the condition of some 158 bodies found there concluded that, based on the positions of the bones, most had been bound in unusually degrading positions either prior to or following their deaths.
The reason for the binding and dumping goes back to what was happening in Portugal during the 15th through 17th centuries.
Before the Transatlantic Slave Trade, European countries were snatching up our ancestors and trading them in major port cities like Lagos.
If an enslaved person became ill and did not survive the traumatic journey from their African homeland to the port, Portuguese traders would carelessly toss them into the trash site.
Our ancestors deserved far better treatment than this. Tragically, this was the reality of European-African relations that set a precedent for the horrors our descendants experienced during the Transatlantic Slave Trade centuries later.