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We’re looking at two main areas of

Western Africa, so, the Upper Guinea coast

and the Congo/Angola region.

With almost 80% of the captives

who disembark into the low country –

coastal Georgia and coastal South Carolina –

coming from these regions.

More actually from Upper Guinea coast

coming into coastal Georgia.

And for those Upper Guinea coast captives

the landscape was relatively similar.

There was a lot of similarity in

the vegetation and the soils.

What we suspect is that enslaved people

were growing rice in their provision grounds.

And we see, in the 1600s,

enslaved people actually selling rice.

And that it’s probably from these

provision grounds that planters got

the idea as they are searching for

a staple crop for the Carolina colony

that rice could be that crop.

And through the experimentation

of enslaved people began to

experiment in their other fields

with commercial rice production.

We are approximately 100 years plus,

give or take, since the demise of the

commercial rice industry in the low country.

And yet the landscape still exists,

the rice fields are still there,

the dykes, the trunks, everything -

Not everything but a lot of

the modifications that were made to

the landscape to erect these rice fields

and to erect the hydraulic irrigation system

are still in the ground.

And you think about the technology

that’s available today and the technology

that was available during the antebellum

period, which was really very rudimentary,

and the fact that we have not been

able to re-remake the landscape,

I think is fairly phenomenal.

And so, that enslaved people

did this work with hand tools

and baskets is really quite phenomenal

and that with all the mechanized and

motorized equipment that we have now,

that we can’t undo it.