Biomolecular insights into North African-related ancestry, mobility and diet in eleventh-century Al-Andalus Marina Silva, Gonzalo Oteo-García, […]Martin B. Richards Scientific Reports volume 11, Article number: 18121 (2021)
Abstract Historical records document medieval immigration from North Africa to Iberia to create Islamic al-Andalus. Here, we present a low-coverage genome of an eleventh century CE man buried in an Islamic necropolis in Segorbe, near Valencia, Spain. Uniparental lineages indicate North African ancestry, but at the autosomal level he displays a mosaic of North African and European-like ancestries, distinct from any present-day population. Altogether, the genome-wide evidence, stable isotope results and the age of the burial indicate that his ancestry was ultimately a result of admixture between recently arrived Amazigh people (Berbers) and the population inhabiting the Peninsula prior to the Islamic conquest. We detect differences between our sample and a previously published group of contemporary individuals from Valencia, exemplifying how detailed, small-scale aDNA studies can illuminate fine-grained regional and temporal differences. His genome demonstrates how ancient DNA studies can capture portraits of past genetic variation that have been erased by later demographic shifts—in this case, most likely the seventeenth century CE expulsion of formerly Islamic communities as tolerance dissipated following the Reconquista by the Catholic kingdoms of the north.
Methods Islamic Segorbe: aDNA and stable isotope analysis We collected teeth from thirteen individuals from the medieval Islamic necropolis of Plaza del Almudín in Segorbe27 (province of Castellón, Spain) (Supplementary Fig. S2; Supplementary Table S1). Although the necropolis is dated to the eleventh–thirteenth centuries CE, the samples studied here come from a context dated to the eleventh century. We screened three individuals for aDNA, but only one, UE2298/MS060 (dubbed the “Segorbe Giant” due to his unusual height), excavated in 1999, yielded sufficient DNA for genomic analysis
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Although he carries both uniparental markers of North African origin, autosomal evidence paints a more complex picture. The individual is positioned in the PCA mid-way between modern/ancient Iberian populations, and Late Neolithic Moroccan, Guanches and modern North African individuals (Fig. 3a), and formal tests of admixture point to high proportions of Iberian-like ancestry (Fig. 4; Supplementary Table S7).
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Although North African-related ancestry in present-day Spain is present at low values (typically ~ 3–8%), with a slight southwest-to-northeast decline19,20, increased African-related ancestry has been present in south Spain since the third century CE6.
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