High continuity of forager ancestry in the Neolithic of the eastern Maghreb

Ancient DNA from the Mediterranean region has revealed long-range connections and population transformations associated with the spread of food producing economies. However, in contrast to Europe, genetic data from this key transition in northern Africa are limited, and have only been available from the far western Maghreb (Morocco). Here, we present genome-wide data for nine individuals from the Later Stone Age (LSA) through the Neolithic in Algeria and Tunisia. The earliest individuals cluster with pre-Neolithic people of the western Maghreb (~15000-7600 BP), showing that this "Maghrebi" ancestry profile had a substantial geographic and temporal extent. At least one individual from Djebba (Tunisia), dating to ~8000 BP, harbored ancestry from European hunter-gatherers, likely reflecting early Holocene movement across the Strait of Sicily. Later Neolithic people from the eastern Maghreb retained largely local forager ancestry together with smaller contributions from European farmers (by ~7000 BP) and Levantine groups (by ~6800 BP), and were thus far less impacted by external gene flow than were populations in other parts of the Neolithic Mediterranean.