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Moorish Iberia and Latin American Ancestry

Moorish Iberia and Latin American Ancestry traces how North African, Middle Eastern, Jewish and European peoples mixed in Spain and Portugal over eight centuries, and how that mixture then met Native American and African ancestry in the Americas. Alpha.

1. Al-Andalus (711–1492)

• Record: In 711 an army of mostly Berber (Amazigh) soldiers under Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed from North Africa; within a decade most of the peninsula was under Umayyad rule. Arabs from the Levant and Arabia formed a smaller ruling class.
• Record: Córdoba became one of the largest and most learned cities of Europe; Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities lived side by side for long periods.
• Record: The Christian kingdoms' conquest (the Reconquista) ended with Granada in 1492 — the same year Jews were expelled from Spain (Portugal followed in 1496–97). The Moriscos, Muslims forced to convert, were expelled in 1609–1614.

2. What it left in Iberian DNA

• Record: On average about 20% of Iberian paternal lineages trace to Sephardic Jewish ancestry and about 11% to North African ancestry, with North African ancestry highest in the west and south (Adams et al. 2008, AJHG).
• Record: Genome-wide, North African ancestry in Iberians ranges from near zero in the Basque country to about 20% in parts of the west and south (Botigué et al. 2013, PNAS), and it was introduced mainly in the medieval period (Bycroft et al. 2019).
• Record: Earlier layers also mattered: Phoenician and Punic colonies (Gadir/Cádiz, Malaka/Málaga), Greeks, Romans and Visigoths.

3. The Americas

• Record: The first peoples of the Americas descend from Northeast Asian populations that mixed with Ancient North Eurasians in Siberia, crossed Beringia and entered the continent at least ~16,000 years ago (footprints at White Sands suggest ~21,000–23,000; debated) (Raghavan et al. 2015; Moreno-Mayar et al. 2018).
• Record: Native Americans carry little Denisovan ancestry — far less than Papuans or Aboriginal Australians — though some trace variants are present.
• Record: After 1492, Spanish and Portuguese settlers (themselves carrying the Iberian mixture above), Native Americans and enslaved Africans mixed in different proportions across the continent. Average ancestry in Mexico, for example, is roughly half Native American and half European with a smaller African share, varying greatly by region (Moreno-Estrada et al. 2014, Science); Brazil, Puerto Rico and Colombia each have their own proportions.
• Record: Colonial Spanish America ranked people by ancestry in the casta system, painted in the casta paintings of the 18th century.

4. Heterosis

• Latin American populations are among the most recently mixed in the world — a living example of the admixture discussed on Ancestral Temple Elites Royal Inbreeding and Sacred Marriage, where mixing, not purity, carries genetic vigour.

Sources

• Adams S. et al. 2008, AJHG 83. Botigué L. et al. 2013, PNAS 110. Bycroft C. et al. 2019, Nature Communications 10.
• Raghavan M. et al. 2015, Science 349. Moreno-Mayar J. V. et al. 2018, Science 362. Moreno-Estrada A. et al. 2014, Science 344.

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