First known colonial building in sub-Saharan Africa, with dark history, revealed to the public

The Cabo Verde islands, situated in the South Atlantic Ocean between Africa and South America, were an important hub in the slave trade. Archaeologists have now revealed to the public a church there that dates from the 15^th century and is the oldest known formal European building in sub-Saharan Africa. Buried under the church with a huge tombstone was a slave who also served as the capital city’s ‘treasure holder.’

Portuguese colonialists laid the church’s foundation around 1470, and it was not many years after that the islands became a trans-shipping point in the Atlantic slave trade. A couple of centuries after that, the islands came under attack from pirates.

In the 1400s, as they began to explore, the Portuguese found 10 volcanic rock islands that make up Cabo Verde, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) west of the African continent. There were no people, mammals or trees there until the Portuguese brought them beginning in 1456.