Ancient genomes from North Africa evidence prehistoric migrations to the Maghreb from both the Levant and Europe - PubMed (original) (raw)

Comparative Study

. 2018 Jun 26;115(26):6774-6779.

doi: 10.1073/pnas.1800851115. Epub 2018 Jun 12.

Fernando L Méndez 2, Youssef Bokbot 3, Dimas Martín-Socas 4, María D Camalich-Massieu 4, Jonathan Santana 5, Jacob Morales 6, María C Ávila-Arcos 2 7, Peter A Underhill 2, Beth Shapiro 8, Genevieve Wojcik 2, Morten Rasmussen 2, André E R Soares 8, Joshua Kapp 8, Alexandra Sockell 2, Francisco J Rodríguez-Santos 9, Abdeslam Mikdad 3, Aioze Trujillo-Mederos 4, Carlos D Bustamante 2

Affiliations

Comparative Study

Ancient genomes from North Africa evidence prehistoric migrations to the Maghreb from both the Levant and Europe

Rosa Fregel et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018.

Erratum in

Abstract

The extent to which prehistoric migrations of farmers influenced the genetic pool of western North Africans remains unclear. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Neolithization process may have happened through the adoption of innovations by local Epipaleolithic communities or by demic diffusion from the Eastern Mediterranean shores or Iberia. Here, we present an analysis of individuals' genome sequences from Early and Late Neolithic sites in Morocco and from Early Neolithic individuals from southern Iberia. We show that Early Neolithic Moroccans (∼5,000 BCE) are similar to Later Stone Age individuals from the same region and possess an endemic element retained in present-day Maghrebi populations, confirming a long-term genetic continuity in the region. This scenario is consistent with Early Neolithic traditions in North Africa deriving from Epipaleolithic communities that adopted certain agricultural techniques from neighboring populations. Among Eurasian ancient populations, Early Neolithic Moroccans are distantly related to Levantine Natufian hunter-gatherers (∼9,000 BCE) and Pre-Pottery Neolithic farmers (∼6,500 BCE). Late Neolithic (∼3,000 BCE) Moroccans, in contrast, share an Iberian component, supporting theories of trans-Gibraltar gene flow and indicating that Neolithization of North Africa involved both the movement of ideas and people. Lastly, the southern Iberian Early Neolithic samples share the same genetic composition as the Cardial Mediterranean Neolithic culture that reached Iberia ∼5,500 BCE. The cultural and genetic similarities between Iberian and North African Neolithic traditions further reinforce the model of an Iberian migration into the Maghreb.

Keywords: Neolithic transition; North Africa; ancient DNA; paleogenomics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

Geographical location (Left) and calibrated radiocarbon date (Right) of the samples included in this study, as well as other ancient DNA samples from the literature.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

Ancestry inference in ancient samples from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula (ancient population codes are as in Fig. 1). (A) PCA analysis using the Human Origins panel (European, Middle Eastern, and North African populations) and LASER projection of aDNA samples. (B) ADMIXTURE analysis using the Human Origins dataset (European, Middle Eastern, and North African populations) for modern and ancient samples (K = 8). (C) Detailed ADMIXTURE plot for European Neolithic samples from previous analysis (K = 8). (D) Detail of ADMIXTURE analysis using the Human Origins dataset (European, Middle Eastern, North African, and sub-Saharan African populations) for modern and ancient samples, including Taforalt.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.

Outgroup f3-statistic for IAM (A), KEB (B), and TOR (C); admixture f4-statistic for IAM (D) and admixture f3-statistic for KEB (E).

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