You certainly are not so ingenuous, are you? I think you know perfectly well why. The people obsessed with them "Moors" in Iberia are the ones who for their respective agendas are trying to manipulate the history of Spain and Portugal to try to argue that the Iberians of today are not the same as the Iberians of ancient times, and that during the Middle Ages a "huge" change happened that altered the racial/ethnic make-up of these countries. You being an Italian and all should already know what this is all about very well, since the same people try to do it to you as well but by using events particular to Italian history instead. Example:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Slave-Emperor-Historians-Reasons/dp/1493783599
As for your attempt at mocking historical scholarship: it is not far fetched at all that a minority of foreigners managed to take over large parts of Iberia. It had been done before by both Romans and Germanics, so nothing "strange" here. And it has also happened in other parts of the world as well. For example: it took less than 200 Spaniards to defeat the entire empire of the Incas. Military conquests, again, do not require huge numbers of people. The Islamic army that entered Iberia in the 8th century AD was only a few thousand strong, and the Iberian Peninsula already had several million inhabitants. Most people in a given country are NOT combatants. They actually stand aside and watch the people struggling for power duke it out among themselves. To boot, the Iberian population at the time did not like the Visigoths and their inept government and constant fighting among themselves for power, so the Muslims were in fact seen as a welcome intervention to help get rid of them.
I'm afraid you're operating under a misapprehension about my position on this as on other matters. No one could have been more surprised than I was by the Ralph and Coop paper. I've studied the history of my country, and of Rome as part of that endeavor, my whole life, and have read the same things about slavery and its supposed impact on Italian genetics as everyone else. I accepted it almost without question. Slavery was a fact of life in all of the ancient Empires, (and in modern ones like the U.S., certain British possessions, the Spanish and Portuguese areas of the New World as well) The acquisition of slaves was, after all, both one of the goals of empire building, and one of the bulwarks of those empires.
Has it annoyed me that the emphasis was always on the slaves from the Near East and North Africa, and nary a word was said about the multitudes of slaves from Germania and Gaul and Spain and Pannonia and the Balkans as well? Yes, of course it has, just as it has annoyed me that it isn't obvious to people that those slaves were spread all over the empire. But ultimately what difference does it make what some racists think? As my father always said, they're just jealous, lol. When you have true pride in who you are and who your people are, warts and all, the opinions of foreigners just doesn't matter very much. (How the historical record, scant as it is, can be reconciled with the IBD analyses being done is a question for another thread. This isn't a thread about Italy, you know, much as you are attempting to make it one.)
Which brings me to another point. I don't think it's gone unobserved that every time some one mentions any SSA or North African admixture in Iberians, or mtDNA "L" or yDNA "E" in Iberia, the immediate response is...well, there's some in France or Britain or Germany too. The strongest rejoinder, however, seems to be...well, the Italians have more. Were it true in every instance, for argument's sake, how does it make your (in a general sense) situation any better? It doesn't, so far as I can see. It also makes you subject to mockery because it is such a ridiculous tack to take. I recall one epic thread where the claim first was, well, we don't have as much of x as Italy. When that was shown to be untrue, it was, well, we don't have as much as southern Italy. Then it had to become well, at least we don't have as much as Sicily. I thought the heights of absurdity had been reached, but I was wrong. The claim then became that we don't have as much as *western* Sicily! Surely you see the ridiculousness of these arguments? The genetic evidence is what it is...you're not persuading anybody to the contrary by these bizarre antics. I'm afraid you're going to have to deal with it sooner or later. (Oh, and the much maligned and very proud Sicilians in my experience don't give a ***** ***about any of this. Nor do the Calabrians and Apulians. The only comment I've ever heard is oh no, does that Northern European mean German or Irish or something? Prejudice doesn't only run in one direction, you know.)
Now, after this philosophical detour, back to the North African impact on Iberia. As I said to one of your compatriots, my view in most cases is that there is rarely full scale replacement involved with population movements. Rather, the genetic data show a sequence of layers of dna.
In the case of Iberia, north African genetic markers do not appear to have arrived in the Mesolithic, at least not from the results so far.
The Neolithic, as it applies to Iberia, has traditionally been held to come from the east either along the northern littoral of the Mediterranean, or by sea. However, an argument could be made from a recent paper or two (You really are going to have to do your own research.) that there was movement from North Africa into Iberia, or at least southern Iberia during the early Neolithic.
Then, despite your protestations, a cluster or so might date from the Carthaginians, not only because of the trading posts, but because so many of them were in Spain with Hannibal. The slaves brought to Spain and Portugal during the days of the Empire are another possibility, as are, despite the hysteria into which it sends Iberians, the Moors.
The
ONLY way to sort all this out is to do the hard
work of breaking down these uniparental markers into sub-clusters and then attempting to date them. Until that is done, this is all just speculation, by you and by me.
Oh, and if you're going to insist that all of this is Neolithic, you're still going to have to explain why there is an east/west cline. In terms of the relocations after the Reconquista, how would the R1b percentages change if
Moors were relocated? They wouldn't.
And of course, all of this is irrelevant as to the issue of whether Iberians have North African admixture. It isn't less "brown" when it's older, you know. Embrace your diversity...I do.
And now, I'm going to use whatever time I have left today on something other than Spanish dna. Fascinating no doubt, but I have other interests.
