BackgroundCapture, extensive migration, torture, forced labor, and detribalization exerted tremendous stress on the biology of enslaved Africans and severely taxed their abilities to remediate effectively. The likely epigenetic effects were so dramatic as to modify the directionality of ancestral trajectories in the surviving descendants of these Africans. In other words, enslavement in the Americas and its sequelae produced a wide assortment of new and powerful selective pressures on kidnapped and enslaved Africans. Under these conditions, old responses that had been effective in the African context may have been less advantageous and even disadvantageous in the American context. Each step in the enslavement process exerted its unique cluster of effects on the biology of enslaved individuals at specific stages in the lifecycle.Kidnapping and extensive migration within Africa took its toll on targeted individuals and groups; torture and forced labor required new responses to ensure survival. In the Americas, detribalization