European immigrants introduced farming to prehistoric North Africa, new research shows

• It was a period that drove great change in the evolution of human society.
• Around 8,500 years ago, members of farming communities crossed the Aegean Sea, bringing techniques similar to those used in Anatolia to Greece and the Balkans.

The Neolithic age reaches the Iberian Peninsula

• Agriculture first appeared on the Iberian Peninsula around 7,600 years ago.
• On the Iberian peninsula, the practices that Neolithic populations brought with them were similar to those that had appeared a few centuries earlier in Italy.
• In a relatively short time, these populations came to occupy the entire Iberian peninsula, where they underwent rapid cultural evolution.

Crossing the Gibraltar strait

• These groups did not seem to have pottery, at least not those in the northern Maghreb.
• There, the hunter gatherer population did seem to have pottery, specifically in areas such as present day Mali, Niger and Sudan.
• Agricultural innovations included cereal crops (wheat and barley) and legumes (beans, peas and lentils), as well as rearing sheep and goats.

How innovation spread

• Such developments raise the question of whether these innovations could have spread from the Iberian peninsula.
• The study of human remains dating from this period, discovered in Kaf Taht el-Ghar, near Tétouan in Morocco, have provided answers.
• This appears to be evidence of the local population simply adopting neolithic practices without assimilating into a new society.

Following the ceramic trail

• These had mottled decorations and, often, rope impressions similar to those seen in the Sahara.
• They seem to be descended from Neolithic populations, not from Anatolia but from the Mediterranean Levant (Middle East).
• The gene pool of the region’s present population is a union – formed over millions of years – of three continents.

Rafael M Martínez Sánchez no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.