Eurasian Origins of Berbers and modern North Africans.
Essentially, about ten thousand years ago a population wave from the near East swept over North Africa, bringing in gracile Mediterranean people in the Capsian era. A later wave of immigration occurred in the Neolithic when the expanding farmers from the near east ploughed their way across North Africa, some leaving artwork in the central Sahara to mark their passage. As far as DNA studies can tell, the Arab invasions that converted North Africans to Islam made virtually no impact to the population; essentially they converted the local population and didn’t replace them. There was a only trace contribution made to North Africa by Europe during the Barbary slavery era, but quite a significant amount of sub Saharan maternal ancestry was added. The modern North African is mainly Eurasian in ancestry, and cluster with Europeans and west Asians. To quote Cavalli Sforza..
Berbers are located primarily in the northern regions of Algeria and Morocco, but somewhat to the interior, usually not far from the sea. . Berbers are believed to have their ancestors among Capsian Mesolithics and their Neolithic descendants, possibly with genetic contributions from the important Neolithic migrations from the Near East. It is reasonable to hypothesize that the Berber (Afro-Asiatic) language was introduced by the Neolithic farmers
Anyway, this page has a few links to DNA studies of North Africans.
Abstract
The process by which pastoralism and agriculture spread from the Fertile Crescent over the past 10,000 years has been the subject of intense investigation by geneticists, linguists and archaeologists. However, no consensus has been reached as to whether this Neolithic transition is best characterized by a demicdiffusion (witha significant genetic input from migrating farmers) or a culturaldiffusion (without substantialmigration of farmers). Milk consumption and thus lactose tolerance are assumed to have spread with pastoralism and we propose that by looking at the relevant mutations in and around the lactase gene in human populations, we can gain insight into the origin(s) and spread of dairying. We genotypedthe putatively causal allele for lactose tolerance (–13910T) and constructed haplotypes from several polymorphisms in and around the lactase gene (
LCT) in three NorthAfrican Berber populations and compared our results with previously published data. We found that the frequency of the –13910T allele predicts the frequency of lactose tolerance in several Eurasian and North African Berber populations but not in most sub-Saharan African populations. Our analyses suggest that contemporary Berber populations possess the genetic signature of a past migration of pastoralistsfrom the Middle East and that they share a dairying origin withEuropeans and Asians, but not with sub-Saharan Africans.
Mitochondrial DNA heterogeneity in Tunisian Berbers
Berbers live in groups scattered across NorthAfrica whose origins and genetic relationships with their neighbours are not well established. The first hypervariablesegment of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region was sequenced in a total of 155 individuals from three Tunisian Berber groups and compared to other North Africans. The mtDNA lineages found belong to a common set of mtDNA haplogroups already described in NorthAfrica. Besides the autochthonous North African U6 haplogroup, a group of L3 lineages characterized by the transition at position 16041 seems to be restricted to North Africans, suggesting that an expansion of this group of lineages took place around 10500 years ago in NorthAfrica, and spread to neighbouring populations. Principal components and the coordinate analyses show that some Berber groups (the Tuareg, the Mozabite, and the Chenini-Douiret) are outliers within the NorthAfrican genetic landscape. This outlier position is consistent with an isolation process followed by genetic drift in haplotypefrequencies, and with the high heterogeneity displayed by Berbers compared to Arab samples as shown in the AMOVA. Despite this Berber heterogeneity, no significant differences were found between Berber and Arab samples,
suggesting that the Arabization was mainly a cultural process rather than a demographic replacement.
Genetic studies have emphasized the contrast between North African and sub-Saharan populations, but the particular affinities of the North African mtDNA pool to that of Europe, the Near East, and sub-Saharan Africa have not previously been investigated. We have analysed 268 mtDNA control-region sequences from various Northwest African populations including severalSenegalese groups and compared these with the mtDNAdatabase. We have identified a few mitochondrial motifs that are geographically specific and likely predate the distribution and diversification of modern language families in North and West Africa. A certain mtDNA motif (16172C, 16219G), previously found in Algerian Berbers at high frequency, is apparently omnipresent in Northwest Africa and
may reflect regional continuity of more than 20,000 years.
The majority of the maternal ancestors of the Berbers must have come from Europe and the Near East since the Neolithic.The Mauritanians and West-Saharans, in contrast, bear substantial though not dominant mtDNAaffinity with sub-Saharans.
This is actually a bit innacurate, as the approximate arrivalof a lot of the Eurasian DNA , excluding U, coincides withthe Neolithic expansion and arrival of the Capsian culture about 10,000 years ago (from Cranio facial studies of ancient Magrebian skulls). The Capsians show a gracile build and small face traceable to the eastern Mediterranean.
The faces of modern North Africa.
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There are more studies in the link, all of them are very interesting//
https://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/eurasian-origins-of-the-berbers/
https://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/eurasian-origins-of-the-berbers/
Mitochondrial DNA transit between West Asia and North Africa inferred from U6 phylogeography
Abstract
World-wide phylogeographicdistribution of human complete mitochondrial DNA sequences suggested a West Asian origin for the autochthonous North African lineage U6. We report here a more detailed analysis of this lineage, unraveling successive expansions that affected not only Africa but neighboring regions such as the Near East, the Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands.
Results
Divergence times, geographic origin and expansions of the U6 mitochondrial DNA clade, have been deduced from the analysis of 14 complete U6 sequences, and 56 different haplotypes, characterized by hypervariable segment sequences and RFLPs.
Conclusions
The most probable origin of the proto-U6 lineage was the Near East. Around 30,000 years ago it spread to North Africa where it represents a signature of regional continuity. Subgroup U6a reflects the first African expansion from the Maghrib returning to the east in Paleolithic times. Derivative clade U6a1 signals a posterior movement from East Africa back to the Maghriband the Near East. This migration coincides with the probable Afroasiatic linguistic expansion. U6b and U6c clades, restricted to West Africa, had more localized expansions. U6b probably reached the Iberian Peninsula during the Capsian diffusion in North Africa. Two autochthonous derivatives of these clades(U6b1 and U6c1) indicate the arrival of North African settlers to the Canarian Archipelago in prehistoric times, most probably due to the Saharan desiccation. The absence of these Canarian lineages nowadays in Africa suggests important demographic movements in the western area of this Continent.
https://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/eurasian-origins-of-the-berbers/
