Recent work in the Maghreb and implications for human dispersal in the LSA

Barton, R.N.E.¹, Bouzouggar, A.² and Humphrey, L.³

1 Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford

2 Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine (INSAP), Rabat

3 Natural History Museum, London 

A newly published aDNA study of 15,000 year old human remains from Morocco (Loosdrecht et al. 2018) shows they shared genetic ancestry with populations from both the Near East and sub-Saharan Africa, but apparently not from Europe. The implied close links with the Near East (63.5% of the genome) was slightly greater than expected and raises new questions about the origins of the LSA in North Africa. According to AMS dating evidence, the Maghreb has some of the earliest LSA sites with dates of around 23-25,000 cal BP for Morocco and Algeria (Bouzouggar et al. 2008; Hogue and Barton 2016), far earlier than in areas to the east such as Libya and Egypt. In this presentation we discuss the archaeological evidence for the origins of the LSA in North Africa and consider the implications for human dispersal across this region in the light of the new genetic studies.

References:

• Bouzouggar, A., Barton, R.N.E., Blockley. S., Bronk-Ramsey, C., Collcutt, S.N., Gale, R., Higham, T.F.G., Humphrey, L.T., Parfitt, S., Turner, E. & Ward, S., (2008), Re-evaluating the age of the Iberomaurusian in Morocco. African Archaeological Review 25, 3-19.
• Hogue, J.T., Barton, R.N.E., 2016. New radiocarbon dates for the earliest Later Stone Age microlithic technology in Northwest Africa, Quaternary International 413 (2016), 62-75.
• Loosdrecht, M. van de, Bouzouggar, A, Humphrey, H., Posth, C., Barton, N., Aximu-Petri, A., Nickel, B., Nagel, S., Talbi, H., El Hajraoui, M., Amzazi, S., Hublin, J-J., Pääbo, S., Schiffels, S., Meyer, M., Haak, W., Jeong, C., Krause. 2018. Pleistocene North African genomes link Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African human populations. Science (March 9th, 2018)