Do North Africans have any overlap with Europeans?

[GeistFaust]

I think Berbers are an interesting group.

Not as interesting as Caspian Sea peoples who are commonly represent a very diverse mix or some Eurpoid populations over in Central to Eastern Asia that have European looks of sorts.

[Sikeliot]

Some Moroccan Berbers

[Rouxinol]

I have heard three different explanations for the presence of some heavily European types in North Africa but I am not sure if any of them are true;

1) Descendants of the Vandals
2) When the Moors were expelled from Iberia, some of the people expelled were those who had mixed with native Iberians, thus bringing Iberian ancestry back into North Africa
3) These types are indigenous to North Africa and represent the original population before there was any mixture.

I think those three explanations might be true to some extent, but not so much the first one (much time has passed since the Vandals were there, so any trait of them must have diluted over time). I believe that the Moors who have ruled over parts of Iberia were an elite and no major settling of the Iberian peninsula by foreign Moorish people did happen, so many Iberians might have been forced - or freely - converted to the Islamic faith - what could have happen is that in the time period after the Christian Reconquest where major "cleansing" happened some of those native Iberians were probably expelled along with the Moorish ruling elite for not converting back to Christianism. But as to the pictures you've been posting so far I think all of them have quite noticeable foreign admixture and hardly would pass unnoticed in Iberia - you have already posted before less exotic samples. Only one picture so far would pass easier in my opinion.

[safinator]

They don't look at all like Europeans but if i could pick a country i would choose Cyprus.

[Sicilianu101]

A few very interesting genetic studies of North Africans (mainly mitochondrial with I think one Y-chromosomal study). Please read

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2156/4/15/
http://www.cell.com/AJHG/retrieve/pii/S0002929707624173
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/314/5806/1767.short
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journ...7.1cherni.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...531.x/abstract

[Comte Arnau]

Well, the Capsian presence in the Maghreb is quite old, specially if the Ibero-Maurusians are their progenitors.

I agree with the theory that Proto-Berber wasn't spoken by the Capsians, but that there was another input from the Nile Valley which brought Proto-Berber westwards much later, an expansion maybe just previous to the Roman Empire. That explains why the difference scale between the Berber languages is relatively low, comparable to that of the Romance languages. It also can be associated to haplogroup M81. Phenotypically, that might explain the North-Eastern African input into the Cromagnoid+Protomediterranean look.

Posterior Arabid and Negrid inputs aside.

[alzo zero]

Do "unmixed" North Africans even exist? Even if a North African doesn't show any visible negroid admixture it doesn't mean he has no SSA admixture (often in significant amount).

[Grumpy Cat]

I think some of them do genetically. The haplogroup U5, which is probably the most European haplogroup, is found among North Africans. The theory is that during the last Ice Age, people in Europe migrated to North Africa, and that's how it got there.

[alzo zero]

I think some of them do genetically. The haplogroup U5, which is probably the most European haplogroup, is found among North Africans. The theory is that during the last Ice Age, people in Europe migrated to North Africa, and that's how it got there.

Ok, but how long ago was that?

[Grumpy Cat]

Ok, but how long ago was that?

About 12,000 years ago.