Genetic structure of 15,000y old North Africans associated with the Iberomaurusian. Homo sapiens

We report genome-wide ancient DNA from nine ancient North African individuals from Grotte des Pigeons, Taforalt, Morocco, dated to 15,000 cal. yBP and attributed to the Iberomaurusian culture. We find a strong genetic affinity of these ancient individuals with early Holocene Near Easterners, best represented by Levantine Natufian hunter-gatherers, suggesting a pre-agricultural connection between northwestern Africa and the Near East. We do not find evidence for gene flow from Paleolithic European hunter-gatherers into Late Pleistocene North Africans as previously suggested based on archaeological connections. We also find that the Taforalt individuals derive one third of their ancestry from sub-Saharan Africans, best approximated by a mixture of genetic components preserved in present-day West and East Africans.