The genetic history of North Africa encompasses the genetic history of the people of North Africa. The most important source of gene flow to North Africa was from the Middle East, although the Sahara desert to the south and the Mediterranean Sea to the North were also important barriers to gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Europe in prehistory. However, North Africa is connected to Western Asia via the Isthmus of Suez and the Sinai peninsula, while at the Straits of Gibraltar, North Africa and Europe are separated by only , similarly Malta, Sicily, Canary Islands, and Crete are close to the coasts of North Africa.
North Africa is a genetically heterogenous and diverse region, and is characterized by its diverse ethnic groups, the main ones being the Arabs and Berbers. North African populations show a complex and heterogeneous genetic structure that has been described as an amalgam of at least four different ancestral components from the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and indigenous North Africans. Although North Africa has experienced gene flows from the surrounding regions, it has also experienced long periods of genetic isolation. Some genetic studies have been criticised for their interpretation and categorisation of African genetic data.
Current scientific debate is concerned with determining the relative contributions of different periods of gene flow to the current gene pool of North Africans. Anatomically modern humans are known to have been present in North Africa during the Middle Paleolithic (300,000 years ago), as attested by the by Jebel Irhoud 1. Without morphological discontinuity, the Aterian was succeeded by the Iberomaurusian industry, whose lithic assemblages bore close relations with the Cro-Magnon cultures of Europe and Western Asia, rather than to the contemporary cultures of sub-Saharan Africa or the Horn of Africa. The Iberomaurusian industry was succeeded by the heavily West Asian influenced Capsian industry (8000 BCE to 2700 BCE) in the eastern part of North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, eastern Algeria, Malta).
In the 7th century A.D., parts of the Berber inhabited region was conquered by Muslim Umayyad Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula. Under the relatively brief Arab-Umayyad conquest and the later arrival of Bedouin and Levantine Arabs and Arabized peoples from the Near East in Western Asia and the arrival of some Sephardi Jews and Iberian Muslims fleeing the Spanish Catholic Reconquista of Iberia, a partial population mix or fusion have taken place and have resulted in some genetic diversity among some North Africans.
A recent study from 2017 suggested that the Arab migrations to the Maghreb was mainly a demographic process that heavily implied gene flow and remodeled the genetic structure of the Maghreb, rather than a mere cultural replacement as claimed by older studies. Another study found out that the majority of J-M267 (Eu10) chromosomes in the Maghreb are due to the recent gene flow caused by the Arab migrations to the Maghreb in the first millennium CE as both southern Qahtanite and northern Adnanite Arabs added to the heterogenous Maghrebi ethnic melting pot. The Eu10 chromosome pool in the Maghreb is derived not only from early Neolithic dispersions but to a much greater extent from recent expansions of Arab tribes from the Arabian Peninsula.
Y-chromosome
Previous works with Y-chromosome markers have shown that in North Africa the most widespread and common Y lineages are E-M81 and J-M267. E-M81 reaches an average frequency of 45% across the region and is thought to have a very recent origin possibly in Northwest Africa. J-M267 is the second most-frequent haplogroup, accounting for around 30% of North Africans and assumed to have spread out of the Arabian Peninsula into North Africa.
Haplogroup E is thought to have emerged in prehistoric North Africa or East Africa, and would have later dispersed into West Asia. The major subclades of haplogroup E found amongst Berbers belong to E-Z827, which is believed to have emerged in North Africa. Common subclades include E1b1b1a, E1b1b1b and E1b1b1*. E1b1b1b is distributed along a west-to-east cline with frequencies that can reach as high as 100 per cent in Northwest Africa. E1b1b1a has been observed at low to moderate frequencies among Berber populations with significantly higher frequencies observed in Northeast Africa relative to Northwest Africa. Loosdrecht et al. 2018 demonstrated that E1b1b is most likely indigenous to North Africa and migrated from North Africa to the Near East during the Paleolithic.