High continuity of forager ancestry in the Neolithic of the eastern Maghreb

Abstract

Ancient DNA from the Mediterranean region has revealed long-range connections and population transformations associated with the spread of food producing economies [1-6]. However, in contrast to Europe, genetic data from this key transition in northern Africa are limited, and have only been available from the far western Maghreb (Morocco) [1-3]. Here, we present genome-wide data for nine individuals from the Later Stone Age (LSA) through the Neolithic in Algeria and Tunisia. The earliest individuals cluster with pre-Neolithic people of the western Maghreb (~15000-7600 Before Present (BP)), showing that this “Maghrebi” ancestry profile had a substantial geographic and temporal extent. At least one individual from Djebba (Tunisia), dating to ~8000 BP, harbored ancestry from European hunter-gatherers, likely reflecting early Holocene movement across the Strait of Sicily. Later Neolithic people from the eastern Maghreb retained largely local forager ancestry together with smaller contributions from European farmers (by ~7000 BP) and Levantine groups (by ~6800 BP), and were thus far less impacted by external gene flow than were populations in other parts of the Neolithic Mediterranean.