Global InformationGenetic history of North Africa information
The genetic history of North Africa encompasses the genetic history of the people of North Africa. The most important source of gene flow to North Africa from the Neolithic Era onwards was from Western Asia, while the Sahara desert to the south and the Mediterranean Sea to the North were also important barriers to gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Europe in prehistory. However, North Africa is connected to Western Asia via the Isthmus of Suez and the Sinai peninsula, while at the Straits of Gibraltar, North Africa and Europe are separated by only 15 km (9 mi), similarly Malta, Sicily, Canary Islands, Lampedusa and Crete are close to the coasts of North Africa.
North Africa is a genetically heterogenous and diverse region, and is characterized by its diverse ethnic groups, the main ones being Arabs, Berbers and Copts (in Egypt).[1] North African populations show a complex and heterogeneous genetic structure that has been described as an amalgam of at least four different ancestral components from the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and also indigenous North Africans who are distinct from these three.[2] Although North Africa has experienced gene flows from the surrounding regions, it has also experienced long periods of genetic isolation.[3] Some genetic studies have been criticised for their interpretation and categorisation of African genetic data.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Current scientific debate is concerned with determining the relative contributions of different periods of gene flow to the current gene pool of North Africans. Anatomically modern humans are known to have been present in North Africa during the Middle Paleolithic (300,000 years ago), as attested by the by Jebel Irhoud 1.[11] Without morphological discontinuity, the Aterian was succeeded by the Iberomaurusian industry, whose lithic assemblages bore close relations with the Cro-Magnon cultures of Europe and Western Asia, rather than to the contemporary cultures of sub-Saharan Africa or the Horn of Africa.[12] The Iberomaurusian industry was succeeded by the heavily West Asian influenced Capsian industry (8000 BCE to 2700 BCE) in the eastern part of North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, eastern Algeria, Malta).
After migrating to North Africa in the 1st millennium BC, Semitic Phoenician settlers from the cities of Tyre and Sidon in the Levant established over 300 coastal colonies throughout the region (as well as the Iberian peninsula, Sicily, Malta, Sardinia etc) and built a powerful empire that controlled most of the region from the 8th century BC until the middle of the 2nd century BC.[13] A recent study has found that nearly 40% of modern Maghrebi males carry the paternal marker E-M81, which is thought to have expanded from the Levant into North Africa.[14]
In the 7th century A.D., the region was conquered by Muslim Umayyad Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula. Under the relatively brief Arab-Umayyad conquest and the later arrival of nomadic Bedouin, Levantine Arabs and Arabized peoples from the Near East in Western Asia and the arrival of some Sephardi Jews and Iberian Muslims fleeing the Spanish Catholic Reconquista of Iberia, a partial population mix or fusion have taken place and have resulted in some genetic diversity among some North Africans.[15]
A recent study from 2017 suggested that the Arab migrations to the Maghreb was mainly a demographic process that heavily implied gene flow and remodeled the genetic structure of the Maghreb, rather than a mere cultural replacement as claimed by older studies.[16] Another study found out that the majority of J-M267 (Eu10) chromosomes in the Maghreb are due to the recent gene flow caused by the Arab migrations to the Maghreb in the first millennium CE as both southern Qahtanite and northern Adnanite Arabs added to the heterogenous Maghrebi ethnic melting pot. The Eu10 chromosome pool in the Maghreb is derived not only from early Neolithic dispersions but to a much greater extent from recent expansions of Arab tribes from the Arabian Peninsula.[17]
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:232was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Arauna, L. R.; Hellenthal, G.; Comas, D. (May 2019). "Dissecting human North African gene-flow into its western coastal surroundings". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 286 (1902). doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.0471. PMC 6532504. PMID 31039721.
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Loosdrecht et al 2018was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Lieberman, Leonard; Jackson, Fatimah Linda C. (1995). "Race and Three Models of Human Origin". American Anthropologist. 97 (2): 231–242. doi:10.1525/aa.1995.97.2.02a00030. ISSN 0002-7294. JSTOR 681958.
- ^ "It is not clear to what degree certain genetic systems usually interpreted as non-African may in fact be native to Africa. Much depends on how "African" is defined and the model of interpretation. The various genetic studies usually suffer from what is called categorical thinking, specifically, racial thinking. Many investigators still think of "African" in a stereotyped, nonscientific (evolutionary) fashion, not acknowledging a range of genetic variants or traits as equally African".Celenko, Theodore (1996). "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians" In Egypt in Africa. Indianapolis, Ind.: Indianapolis Museum of Art. pp. 20–33. ISBN 0936260645.
- ^ Ryan A.Brown and George J. Armelagos (2001). "Apportionment of racial diversity: A review". Evolutionary Anthropology. 10, Issue 1 (34–40): 34–40. doi:10.1002/1520-6505(2001)10:1<34::AID-EVAN1011>3.0.CO;2-P. S2CID 22845356.
- ^ Eltis, David; Bradley, Keith R.; Perry, Craig; Engerman, Stanley L.; Cartledge, Paul; Richardson, David (12 August 2021). The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500-AD 1420. Cambridge University Press. p. 150. ISBN 978-0-521-84067-5 – via Google Books.
- ^ Candelora 2022, pp. 101–122.
- ^ Keita, S. O. Y.; Kittles, Rick A. (1997). "The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence". American Anthropologist. 99 (3): 534–544. doi:10.1525/aa.1997.99.3.534. ISSN 0002-7294. JSTOR 681741.
- ^ Ehret, Christopher (20 June 2023). Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 83–86, 167–169. ISBN 978-0-691-24409-9.
- ^ Callaway, Ewen (7 June 2017). "Oldest Homo sapiens fossil claim rewrites our species' history". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22114.
- ^ Hublin, Jean-Jacques; McPherron, Shannon (31 March 2012). Modern Origins: A North African Perspective. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 180. ISBN 9789400729285.
- ^ Woolmer, Mark (30 April 2017). A Short History of the Phoenicians. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 201. ISBN 978-1-78672-217-1.
- ^ Penninx, Wim. "The male lines of the Maghreb: Phoenicians, Carthage, Muslim conquest and Berbers".
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ Rando, J. C.; Pinto, F.; Gonzalez, A. M.; Hernandez, M.; Larruga, J. M.; Cabrera, V. M.; Bandelt, H.-J. (November 1998). "Mitochondrial DNA analysis of Northwest African populations reveals genetic exchanges with European, Near-Eastern, and sub-Saharan populations". Annals of Human Genetics. 62 (6): 531–550. doi:10.1046/j.1469-1809.1998.6260531.x. PMID 10363131. S2CID 2925153.
- ^ Arauna, Lara R.; Mendoza-Revilla, Javier; Mas-Sandoval, Alex; Izaabel, Hassan; Bekada, Asmahan; Benhamamouch, Soraya; Fadhlaoui-Zid, Karima; Zalloua, Pierre; Hellenthal, Garrett; Comas, David (February 2017). "Recent Historical Migrations Have Shaped the Gene Pool of Arabs and Berbers in North Africa". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 34 (2): 318–329. doi:10.1093/molbev/msw218. PMC 5644363. PMID 27744413.
- ^ Nebel, Almut; Landau-Tasseron, Ella; Filon, Dvora; Oppenheim, Ariella; Faerman, Marina (June 2002). "Genetic Evidence for the Expansion of Arabian Tribes into the Southern Levant and North Africa". The American Journal of Human Genetics. 70 (6): 1594–1596. doi:10.1086/340669. PMC 379148. PMID 11992266.