there were normal compsition of the Roman troops led from Carthage who occupied the peninsula fortified position on uncontrolled regions empire. The troops were varied in composition depending on the area that are occupied and as Carthage had taken dominion over the Iberian Peninsula in Rome for a long time.
Well, let's see why and for how long that runs.
This can't be part of the blind Africanism running savage elsewhere, but a "lite-version" of it trying to conscript all African traces in Europe into some pseudo-military "invader" intruder set. Is that it? And I hope is not either from the Nordicist rehash-supremacy kitchens.
So let's start with the Iberians peninsula conundrum, and the supposedly Legionnaire-theories. Which will it may work "as well" as those who LUMPED all "Asian" (Middle-easterners' most common) haplogroups present in the modern population of the peninsula, to their only brand of "Semites"... What was that, up to one THIRD of the modern inhabitants of Spain (perhaps Portugal) are "Jews" or descendants of them? Lost tribes, renegade Hebrews or what not?
But on the Military narrower view, it could explain those in "occupied" parts of Iberia or of Europe where the Romans or Carthaginians held territory, that must have cantoned larger numbers of soldiers or slaves just from Africa _including or composed mostly of those with E-M81.
But how that SPQR colonii-manumitio for their slaves or veterans discharge... works to explain the presence of those genetically alike beyond their maximum reach in Europe??? The Jews again, the Vatican, and their missionary missions sent to spread the news to the pagans among Slavs, Scandinavians, Balts or Finns, etc but integrated just.... with those from the African or -concentrated formula of E1b1b1- Iberian clergy? They must have been very busy proselytizing.Let's review the hard evidence (or until the bones "speak" from their time-period qualified graves) of the Classical sources, however incomplete they may be. The first reports of Africans within the Iberian peninsula comes from those -second hand- that witnessed them along the Ancient Greeks, Thyrrhenians, Lybians or Lydians and even Egyptians -not always middlemen involved- visiting and trading in the Tartessian Atlantic ports beyond the Mediterranean. Now, we do not have a way to know, if they just touched and go did their business and never stayed or left issue, however there must have been as true as it always have been yesterday as today, many "Polynesian style" welcoming Iberian women that were... expecting more, much more, many times from those happy sailors, and for many generations. We know that the Phoenician and later the Libyo-phoenicians did stay longer, and some forever thanks to their elaborate burials way before they built their own citadels, however not as much is left of their as sophisticated living rich refinements in the archaeological findings so far, as it is known from others sources contemporary to them. So, considering the proximity and for sure, a higher percentage presence of North-Africans among those from more distant ports through such busy navigated waters as those of the Tartessians and their neighbors, the input in the local demographic must have only snowballed over time and generations, as much if not higher as that of the so called "Orientals" genetic evidence left in the modern record, on that southern half of the Iberian peninsula before the arrival of others from the Urnfields-Hallsttat cultural spheres.
Next we hear of African-Iberian possible affairs in the Ancient Classical records, may be indirectly taken when they speak of Iberian mercenaries involved in the Greeks wars in Sicily. If they went, or were sent for, that far...would they have carried with as much ease but inversely as them, some North-Africans to be employed so in the Greek colonies in the coasts of Iberia or Gaul? But little is seen of that in the Mediterranean coasts where Greeks were masters of ceremonies for centuries.
Short after that, we read that the Phoenicians -locally made big in North Africa- started to take under Hannibal's father a serious interest in spreading their might and safety of colonies in the Iberian coasts, to which his sons took a serious effort before jumping themselves on the throat of Rome within the Italian peninsula. But Hannibal and his brothers or fellow generals never had time to go and do their "invader conquests in Spain", so they never took their North-African elephants and cavalry allies, much far inland than to "flex muscle and lean over" smaller neighbor tribes, with the purpose to leave a breathing space treaties with which to cover their backs and to extort as many troops FROM the Iberians as they did from the North-Africans before their road to Rome. The most far north they did campaigns was near modern Salamanca and Madrid, but on the Central plains! And it is known from contemporary and latter records that the local Celtiberians or Lusitanians didn't become "African occupied"....
So, however garrisoned or on campaign, the Carthaginians endeavours never took them anywhere near over the areas were the presence of the E-M81 is attributed to their African troops. Hannibal's brothers left in charge of their peninsula affairs had exactly this problem, lack of any kind of troops to confront the arrival of new Roman armies to contest the "control of Iberia" and even the very existence of the Carthaginian cities...
After this dramatic period, however confusing war times are, the Classical record becomes much better kept in line of events and provided with all sorts of details. The Romans on taking over the "control of Iberia" from the Carthaginians didn't got it all solved and done, not even the romantic view of North-African and Carthaginian troops at their northern mythical forts just changing flags and cruising in Latin, garbed in the latest Italian fashions. The Roman record is more concise and precise. They had to start from the scratch, and almost all past treaties of Iberians with Carthaginians became wet-papyrus, having to suffocate repeated rebellions even within coastal colonies and own former allies as the Saguntians were. By the time the Roman legates sent to their Iberian provinces arrived anywhere near the Iberian regions -where the presence of E-M81 is today more conspicuously notorious among the locals, their employed North-African auxiliaries in their armies have been fighting and stationed too all the way from Carthage-Nova. But interestingly and strangely, given the theory of "Military-M81's".... their imprint on the local population of those older Roman or Carthaginian provinces is soooo much less in lower percentage than in the other side of Iberia.
WHY IS THAT SIMPLE & COMMON LOGIC FAILING???
Even juxtaposing it too for the centuries later Arabs-Muslim dominion of similar Mediterranean coastal provinces of Iberia for many centuries too.
Where is the archaeological backing evidence of any substantial North-African presence in the North West of Iberia, if Moorish with their Mosques plants ruins or their minimal Moabite cenobiums, or just their tombstones (even recycled within later buildings) and their military accouterments from same origin, as they have been found in other regions of the peninsula -where their presence is supposedly on the genetic outcome to have been less-.
And they don't need to be even as big as the African elephant bones -from that period- found outside Numantia!
Just some North-African lesser things, anything somewhere within Portugal-Galicia-NW Spain. From small tweezers for personal use or horse trappings of the equestrian wings of North Africans within the Roman Empire, seen even by the Hungarian Limes stations. Why not more profuse in Northwest Iberia.... according to theory?