Maroons was declared by UNESCO as a 'Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.' A fourth community is at Scott's Hall, Jamaica, in the parish of St Mary. Accompong's autonomy was ratified by the government of Jamaica when the island gained independence in 1962. The government has tried to encourage the survival of the other maroon settlements. The Jamaican government and the maroon communities organised the Annual International Maroon Conference, initially to be held at rotating communities around the island, but the conference has been held at Charles Town since 2009. Maroons from other Caribbean, Central, and South America nations are invited. In 2016, Accompong's colonel and a delegation traveled to the Kingdom of Ashanti in Ghana to renew ties with the Akan and Asante people of their ancestors. Puerto Rico In Puerto Rico, Taíno families from neighboring Utuado moved into the southwestern mountain ranges, along with escaped African slaves who intermarried with them. The DNA analysis of contemporary persons from this area shows maternal ancestry from the Mandinka, Wolof, and Fulani peoples through the mtDNA African haplotype associated with them yet also carried at low frequencies by Spaniards, L1b, which is present here. This was carried by African slaves who escaped from plantations around Ponce and formed communities with the Arawak (Taíno and Kalinago) in the mountains. Arawak lineages (Taíno people represented within haplogroups A and Kalinago people represented within haplogroups C) can also be found in this area. Central America Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua Several different maroon societies developed around the Gulf of Honduras. Some were found in the interior of modern-day Honduras, along the trade routes by which silver mined on the Pacific side of the isthmus was carried by slaves down to coastal towns such as Trujillo or Puerto Caballos to be shipped to Europe. When slaves escaped, they went to the mountains for safety. In 1548, in what is now Honduras, slaves in San Pedro rebelled, led by a self-freed slave named Miguel, who set up his own capital. The Spaniards had to send in reinforcements to put down the revolt. In 1648, the English bishop of Guatemala, Thomas Gage, reported active bands of maroons numbering in the hundreds along these routes. The Miskito Sambu were a maroon group who formed from slaves who revolted on a Portuguese ship around 1640, wrecking the vessel on the coast of Honduras-Nicaragua and escaping into