berber8 min
Berber and Maghrebi DNA: Ancient Origins from Taforalt to Today
Amazigh and Maghrebi ancestry through ancient DNA: Taforalt, the Neolithic farmers, the Guanche genomes, Arab-era gene flow, the Saharan gradient and qpAdm.
Articles
north-africa
6 articles on north-africa, ancient-DNA research written up for readers who want the evidence, not just the headline.
North Africa in ancient DNA is a story of a deeply rooted local lineage, visible in two 7,000-year-old women from Takarkori in the Sahara, layered with movement along the Mediterranean coast and up the Nile from the Near East. Egypt now has its first Old Kingdom genome, the Punic world has sampled ancestry from Sicily, the Aegean and North Africa, and the region's later populations carry all of it in varying amounts. Any of those layers is a fact of descent, not an identity.
The articles read the first whole genome from Old Kingdom Egypt, with its deep North African ancestry, its eastern Fertile Crescent connection and the limits of a single sample, follow Egyptian ancestry from the mummy-era samples to the modern Nile, report the Green Sahara genomes that suggest pastoralism spread mainly through culture, cover the Phoenician-culture communities of the Punic world, and separate the Levantine, Iberian and North African layers in Sephardic genomes.
What the paid qpAdm analysis includes
ancient-egypt4 minEgyptian DNA: ancient origins from the Old Kingdom genome to the modern Nile
Egypt finally has ancient genomes: what the Old Kingdom and mummy-era samples show about ancient Egyptian ancestry, how the modern Nile gene pool differs, and how to read an Egyptian genome honestly.
jewish-ancestry5 minSephardic Jewish DNA: Iberia, the exile and the ancient sources
What ancient DNA says about Sephardic ancestry across Turkey, the Balkans, North Africa and Iberia, why 'Sephardic' covers several different genetic histories, and how a qpAdm model separates the Levantine, Iberian and North African layers.
ancient-egypt9 minAncient Egyptian DNA: What the First Old Kingdom Genome Reveals
The first whole genome from Old Kingdom Egypt reveals deep North African ancestry and an eastern Fertile Crescent connection—with major limits.
phoenicians8 minPhoenician DNA: The Unexpected Ancestry of the Punic World
Ancient DNA reveals that Punic communities shared Phoenician culture but drew most sampled ancestry from Sicily, the Aegean and North Africa.
green-sahara9 minGreen Sahara DNA: Who Lived in North Africa 7,000 Years Ago?
DNA from two women at Takarkori reveals a deeply rooted North African lineage and suggests Saharan pastoralism spread mainly through culture.