Ancient genomes from Antiquity and the Islamic-Christian Medieval period of eastern Iberia. Ancient genomes point to post-Medieval population replacement in eastern Iberia and highlight role of mass deportations in the dissolution of a genetic bridge with North Africa

The population of the eastern fringe of Iberia suffered a population turnover as a direct result of a brutal episode of ethnic cleansing in the early 17th century. Under Philip III, at least 300,000 Moriscos were expelled to North Africa. These were people, largely of mixed Iberian and North African ancestry, who had been settled in Iberia for hundreds of years, and who had been forcibly converted from Islam to Catholicism a century earlier. Despite a hugely civilising legacy on the culture of Europe that endures to the present day, the “Moors” of Spain were largely driven out Iberia between 1609 and 1614 CE. As a result, a genetic bridge that had formed between Europe and Africa and that had been in place for centuries was finally severed. In this study we investigated the genetic implications of this historical episode using time transect of genomes from Late Antiquity to post-Medieval times in the modern Valencian territory of Spain.