Leopoldo Leone
Regular Member
- Messages
- 269
- Reaction score
- 208
- Points
- 43
I know that the thread is somewhat old but the last message is a week old and after having read 300 posts I should like to share my thoughts: I am highly sceptical of the results of the study discussed. before explaining why, I'd like to clarify a point: I have read many messages that make me notice that for some it is a touchy subject either because for some it is a surreptitious attack to the "spanishness" of their fellow countrymen while for other it is racist not to accept the genetic contributions of north africans to the spanish gene pool; I think that if we want to be rational we must put aside these kinds of "interpretations" of the data, which is arguibly beyond the point of discussing the genetics of the Spaniards. Why am I sceptical? because this study ( patterns of genetic differentiation and the footprints of historical migrations in the Iberian Peninsula ) used modern populations as donors and this one ( the genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years ) inferred the ancestry of the general population of the muslims of the Iberian peninsula from the few samples it had and the vast majority of the papers I read lack any precise discussion about both historical migrations and general sociological/anthropological considerations; for example, the first study mentioned acknowledges that the distribution of what appears to be north-west african ancetry is contrary to what could be expected from a historical perspective of the muslim conquest, that is to say that significant north morrocan-like ancetry was found higher in northern regions that the muslims never conquered; it also acknowledges that the invading army was made up of only 30.000 men and the number of civilians from africa and the middle east that migrated there is unknown. A small but significant gene flow due to conquest seems to me unusual but not impossible, but what is harder to explain and is not addressed by the paper is the smoothness of this admixture that reaches the very tip of the peninsula: it seems as if the likely higher admixture levels in the south became diluted and spread up to the north reaching an equilibrium, yet we know that the directions of resettlements was from north to south and not vice versa, and even if it had been the case 600-500 years ( counting from the fall of Granada since the "smoothness" reaches the very tip of the peninsula ) seem too few for such a "levelling" to happen; another possible explanation is that the genetic profile of the people from the north that repopulated the swathes of land retaken from the muslims for whatever reasons became the dominant one ( for example because there was a total population replacement or because they had a higher reproductive success ) in less than a millenium, but it would also mean that north Spain had already a 7/8 percent north african admixture and that in the south it was much higher, and it would become hard to explain such an event, given that it would mean that there was an incredibly high numbers of berbers and that in less than 300 years ( time from the conquest to the beginning of the reconquista ) their admixture became widespread in the general christian population. Now I'd like to introduce the two reasons why I think that the general north african genetic legacy in the general populations ought to have been really small: first because it seems far more easier to achieve political stability by integrating the conquered people into the society of the conquerers ( as the Romans did ) than by having massive military/civilian resettlements that are to replace the local people, and during the expansion of the caliphate it coincided with the spread of Islam amongst the local, so in order to have a large population of muslims it was easier to convert the local to Islam instead of importing thousands of muslims from other areas ( for example, the muslims of the maghreb are and were mainly berbers converted to Islam with little genetic imput from the Arabs ) ; secondly because the sons of a muslim man and a christian woman, in this case a berber/arab and a native iberian, would be brought up by the fathers as muslims and the different religions would act as a semipermeable genetic barrier, which allow genetic flow from the christian population to the muslim one but no vice versa, as we have seen between the turks and both the greeks, balkanites and armenians ( and religion acting as a relativly strong genetic barrier is seen in the history of the Jews ). Now the last objection to the results: it seems that it is rarely taken into accounts the possibility that the genetic affinity between north africans and iberians is due to a gene flow from Spain or more generally from Europe to the Maghreb; in fact we have far more historical accounts of movements of peoples from Europe to the Maghreb than the other way around, and I think it could be argue that the expulsions of moriscos has brought to the Maghreb more spanish admixture than the muslim occupation maghrebi admixture in Spain. Maybe the unsupervised admixture model picked up north Morocco as a donor because this region and Spain share a common genetic similarity due to a gene flow from Spain ( or Europe in general ) to Morocco. It seems also unlikely to me that a small number of new christians, being the persecuted minority they were, even on ethnical grounds ("limpiezza de sangre" and some pogroms), could have left a successive significant genetic legacy in the general iberian population. It seems more reasonable, at least to me, to think that there are some traces of north african admixture in the iberian population, located principally in the south, but due to a very limited gene flow between the two shores that spanned thousands of years, maybe from the neolithic. Maybe I have overlooked some details, but I should be pleased if somebody found my reasoning at least interesting and if somebody pointed out where it might be wrong or weak.
[h=1][/h]
[h=1][/h]
