North Africa's West Eurasian mtDNA

North Africans are a mixture of people related to Sub Saharan Africans and West Eurasians. In this post I’ll examine mostly North African mtDNA, but also Y DNA and autosomal DNA, to gain insight into who their West Eurasian ancestors were.

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Summary

In my opinion NorthWest African mtDNA is mostly descended from Neolithic Near Easterners closely related to Neolithic Europeans. Whether it visited Europe before arriving in NorthWest Africa or not is impossible to detect at this point. Egyptian mtDNA is mostly Ancient Near Easterners aswell but from Near Easterners related to Natufians and Neolithic Levanties not Europeans.

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The spreadsheet below displays the frequency of Eurasian mHGs, mHG H subclades, mHG JT subclades, and European vs Middle Eastern vs Eurasian African mHG frequencies in North Africa.

West Eurasian HG frequencies

NorthWest Africans’ Eurasian mtDNA, especially in Berbers, mostly belong to European-specific and Northern African-specific lineages. Egyptian mtDNA though belongs mostly to Middle Eastern-specific lineages.

The frequency of European-specific mHGs is on average 40% in NorthWest Africa but at only 4% in Egypt. The frequency of Middle Eastern-specific mHGs in Egypt is 51.2% but at only about 10% in NorthWest Africa.

The region of the Middle East Egyptian mtDNA is most similar to Arabia. R0a, T1a(xEuropean and Iranian T1a1), and H2a peak in Egypt and Arabia.

Here’s some graphs visually displaying the links between NorthWest Africa to Europe and Egypt to the Middle East.

NorthWest Africa=Algeria, Tunisia, Tunisia, Morocoo.
Egypt=Egypt.
Europe=Spain, Ukraine.
Middle East=Syria, Arabia, Turkey.



U6, M1: Eurasian mHGs most popular in Africa

U6 and M1 are mHGs which branch from the Eurasian mHGs U and M that are most popular in Africa. U6 peaks in NorthWest Africa at about 8%. U6 exists in SouthWest Asia and Egypt at about 1-3%. It exists in Iberia and Southern Italy at about 0.5-1%. M1 is at about 7-10% in NorthWest Africa and Egypt. M1 exists in SouthWest Asia at about 1-3%. I don't have a lot of Eastern or Western African mtDNA data yet but I do know U6 and M1 exist in both of those regions aswell.


Neolithic European-related Ancestry in NorthWest Africa?

I wrote “Neolithic European-related” not “Neolithic European” because the similarity in mtDNA between NorthWest Africa and Neolithic Europe could have been caused by common ancestry from the Near East not direct descent.

H1, H3, and HV0 are more frequent in NorthWest Africa than Europe itself(if you don’t count Sub Saharan mtDNA). Ancient mtDNA indicates HV0, H1, and H3 in modern Europe descend from Neolithic European farmers. They were especially frequent in Neolithic Iberians and French(See here).

NorthWest African mtDNA isn’t completely consistent with having lots of Neolithic European ancestry. T2b, K1a, and J1c took near 40% of Neolithic European mtDNA but aren’t frequent in modern NorthWest Africans(5-10%). Though NorthWest African JT is more similar to Neolithic and modern European than to Middle Eastern JT.

Neolithic Middle Eastern-related Ancestry in Egypt?

There’s a decent amount of Middle Eastern-specific mHGs in all of North Africa, not just Egypt, which are unheard of in Europe. R0a, HV(xHV0), U1, U3, and J2a2 exist in both NorthWest Africa and Egypt. J1b(xJ1b1a1), J1d1, T1a7, and U7 are Middle Eastern-specific lineages only found in Egypt. So in no way can NorthWest African mtDNA be a simple European+Sub Saharan mix.

There’s much less published ancient Middle Eastern mtDNA than European but important matches already exist between ancient Middle Eastern mtDNA and NorthWest Africa.

7722-7541 BC. Jordan. R0a(20.3% in Egypt).
11840-9760 BC. Israel. J2a2.
7446-7058 BC. Jordan. T1a.
3956-3796 BC. Iran. U7(Only exists in Egypt).
11000 BC. Israel. N1b.

Autosomal DNA Reflection

Here are results modelling North Africans as a mixture of ancient West Eurasians and Sub Saharan Africa. I used D-stats provided by David Wesoloski at Eurogenes blog to produce these results.

Morocco
Levant Neolithic: 60.05%
Anatolia Neolithic: 0%
Caucasus Paleolithic: 5.4%
Iran Neolithic: 7.95%
Europe Mesolithic: 9.45
Sub Saharan African: 17.15%

Egypt
Levant Neolithic: 60%
Anatolia Neolithic: 0%
Caucasus Paleolithic: 0%
Iran Neolithic: 23%
Europe Mesolithic: 10%
Sub Saharan African: 7.05%

So basically autosomal DNA indicates NorthWest Africans are mostly Neolithic Near Eastern and Sub Saharan African with a little Neolithic Iranian. Egyptians are the same mixture with more Neolithic Iranian and less Sub Saharan African.

Keep in mind Neolithic Near Easterners were closely related to Neolithic Europeans. Therefore the above results are consistent with the high amount of Neolithic European-like mtDNA in NorthWest Africa.

Y DNA Reflection

Like mtDNA and autosomal DNA, Y DNA connects Northern Africans mostly with ancient Near Easterners. Both Egyptian and NorthWest African Y DNA are mostly E1b1b and J1. NorthWest African Eb1b is specifically M81, with few exceptions. Ancient DNA indicates J1 is from the Mesolithic Caucasus and Iran and documents the presence of E1b1b in Mesolithic Israel(Natufians).