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The North African Genetic Component
Genetic data from current-day populations suggest a complex pattern of admixture, with a minimum of four main sources of genetic ancestry for North African people. Henn et al. (8) first showed the presence of an autochthonous ancestral component (also known as the Maghrebi component), as well as European, Middle Eastern and sub-Saharan components, in the current North African populations (8). This result showed that North African populations exhibit their own ancestral component and cannot be considered as the result of a mere admixture of exogenous ancestries from neighboring regions. This component is related to an early North Africa population that diverged from the rest of the OOA groups predating the Holocene, more than 12 000 years ago. The component was possibly introduced in a back-to-Africa movement, already suggested by the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups U6 and M1 (24–26), and more recently nuclear data (27); it is distributed in a west-to-east declining gradient across the region (8). Later studies confirmed the presence of this autochthonous component by comparing current-day genomes with data from ancient anatomically modern human samples recovered from different locations in North Africa (23). This analysis refined the sources of ancestry in current North Africa populations, adding a Caucasian hunter–gatherer/Neolithic Irani-related component and locating the possible origin of the autochthonous North African component in Epipaleolithic or Early Neolithic times, given that it is prevalent in Moroccan Epipaleolithic and Early Neolithic samples.
SEE: https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article...449?login=true