PCA of Iron Age Iberians Compared to Present-day Iberians and Neighboring Populations: (reddit)

[Luso]

This was posted on Reddit by the 23andMe mod: "Spacemutant14"- regarding the genetic pool of Iberians. Many people have said that modern Iberians are heavily mixed with North African from the time of the Reconquista, but evidence seems to not correlate with this.




He was responding to a lot of troll behavior to Iberians on the 23andme sub reddit.

Here is what he said:

"Due to some recently....interesting claims flying around the subreddit regarding present day Iberians, I decided to seek out the true.

The jist of these 4chan-level claims can be summed up with 'Modern Iberians are super mixed with Moors and are up to 40% North African and 23andMe won't show it. The original Iberians were blue-eyed, blonde haired North Western Europeans.'

Beyond the fact of how ridiculous these claims are, do they have legitimacy? On the PCA above, we have present-day Iberians (Spanish, Portuguese, Basque), neighboring present-day populations, and most importantly Iron Age Iberians from 800 BCE - 100 BCE. Now, the time frame these Iron Age samples are from is critical as it is right before the major Roman Empire expansion as well as before the Umayyad/Moorish conquest of Iberia.

With that in-mind, what does the PCA above present? Modern Basque are virtually identical to Iron Age Iberians. Spanish and Portuguese are also very similar, however it seems they have a pull towards other southern Europeans implying some additional admixture from them (perhaps from the Romans?). Running separate admixture analyses as well as looking at the PCA via different projections, it actually appears present-day Iberians also have additional admixture from Northwestern Europe. How ironic is that, present-day Iberians have more 'Northwestern European' related admixture compared to Iron Age Iberians, contrary to what some individuals have claimed. This admixture can also be explained due to historic movement of various people during and right after the collapse of the western Roman empire.

Now for the big question, how much did North Africans impact the local Iberian population? Looking at the PCA, clearly nothing over 25% otherwise there would have been a visible shift towards North Africans. Unfortunately for a lot of people hoping for a specific answer, I'm not really going to give one. (Cue my rant about the standards I hold for historic genetic analysis) This is due to a lack of Iron Age North Africans samples and additional Iron Age Iberian samples from the southwest (the current ones are from the North and East) I would like to have before throwing out numbers. There are a few ancient migrant North African samples found in Europe during the Bronze Age and Iron Age which pretty much cluster with modern North Africans, and the current Iron Age Iberian samples will likely be very similar to any future IA southwestern Iberian samples found. However, I still want to wait for more ancient samples before calculating specific numbers to be confident in the information I provide (I might get impatient later and just use what we have now). All I can say is that as of now it seems North African ancestry from Moors in present-day Iberians is roughly within a range of 0-10%. I'm not sure about the average, it could be 1%, 5%, 3%, 8%, idk."


Thoughts?

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/com...tm_name=iossmf

[Luso]

Another comment stated:

"Last year, or a couple of years ago, there was a substantial genetic study in Andalusia (South of Spain) to try verify the claim the Andalusians have more Berber blood than the rest of Spain. Not surprisingly for us historians, they don't. Let me explain.

The Berbers, Arabs, and Syrians that invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 only numbered some 40,000 people, nearly all being Berbers. When they conquered just about all of the Peninsula, they did not intermarry a lot with the local populations, becoming some sort of aristocratic caste. A bit the same applies to the Goths that had invaded the Peninsula three centuries prior.

So, the genetic legacy of Al Andalus is nearly non-existent, but the cultural legacy is immense."

[Bosniensis]

North Africans in the past were FAR superior in technology and everything than Iberians who were tribal people.

Take for example Carthage and it's empire etc..

Even Egypt was superior to Greece or Rome. Syrians were superior to Egypt etc...

It became popular to deal with North Africans because of that, Europe prospered through adopting various tech from Africans and their traders certainly came to Spain which was very close to them.

[Luso]

North Africans in the past were FAR superior in technology and everything than Iberians who were tribal people.

Take for example Carthage and it's empire etc..

Even Egypt was superior to Greece or Rome. Syrians were superior to Egypt etc...

It became popular to deal with North Africans because of that, Europe prospered through adopting various tech from Africans and their traders certainly came to Spain which was very close to them.

Yeah, the mixing between the groups... I think... were more prevalent back then. It is also safer to say the Iberomaurasian admixture in Modern-day North Africans is if anything a lot more consistent in autosomal DNA.

[gixajo]

It would be interesting see the same PCA with Iron age populations of British Islands, France, Germany ,Italy, Greece etc...

Thanks for posting it.

Vou dormir depois de ter visto algo positivo e não discutindo, como de costume neste fórum.

Bom dia manhã, vizinhos.

[Adamm]

According to that PCA the Italians are more shifted towards N. Africa than Iberia?

[Luso]

According to that PCA the Italians are more shifted towards N. Africa than Iberia?

I'm still not exactly sure. It is possible as it is closer shifting on the x axis. However, y is showing Iberia is slightly higher shifting toward NA. I'm going to dm the creator to get his feedback and update you.

[Adamm]

I'm still not exactly sure. It is possible as it is closer shifting on the x axis. However, y is showing Iberia is slightly higher shifting toward NA. I'm going to dm the creator to get his feedback and update you.

alright, thanks

[Pedro Ruben]

The DNA of North Africa certainly arrived with diverse populations ... and I believe it is very old on the peninsula. But, regardless of the percentages, this DNA is important, as is the DNA of the Germanic or Italian peoples, because together with the natives they forged what we are genetically.

[Samnium]

According to that PCA the Italians are more shifted towards N. Africa than Iberia?

Central and Southern Italians plot south of Iberians, nothing surprising, Northern Italians plot very close though, at the same latitude but on an eastern branch.