European Neolithic hunter-gatherer groups traveled the sea to make their home all the way in Africa, according to a new archaeological discovery in the eastern Maghreb region in present-day Algeria and Tunisia.
The results of the first genomic study ever conducted on the area’s 6,000 to 10,000-year-old human remains provide the first evidence that they were partly descended from Europeans. Earlier archaeological evidence suggested some early exchange between Europeans and North Africans, but this is the first direct evidence of Mediterranean Sea voyages from Europe.
Ancient Europeans Migrate to Africa
Existing research traced agriculture to 12,000 years ago in the Middle East before spreading to Europe, but Africa’s role has remained poorly explored.
“There’s not been much of a North African story,” said co-author David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, who co-led the study. “It was a huge hole.”
Reich co-led a team with members in Algeria, Tunisia, and Europe to sequence teeth and bone remnants from nine individuals found in multiple eastern Maghreb Neolithic archaeological sites. The analysis found that one male from the Tunisian Djebba site had 6% European DNA, much more than in a female found co-located at the site.
Researchers Examine Neolithic Maghreb Remains
The results echoed earlier Moroccan studies in finding elements of local hunter-gatherers in the western Maghreb. The differences are in how Indigenous North African populations mixed with new arrivals. In the west, European farmers, who likely arrived by crossing the narrow strait of Gibraltar, mostly replaced the local hunter-gatherer population. Yet in the eastern Maghreb, local ancestry continued long past European arrival.
The material record bears out such a mixed existence in the eastern Maghreb. Inhabitants hunted animals like land snails and gathered wild plants, but they also farmed sheep, goats, and cattle at the same time, with plant agriculture only thriving much later. That slow adoption of new agriculture techniques may explain the continued local population, according to Reich.
Identifying the Neolithic DNA Source
While the findings shed new light on Neolithic human migration, questions remain. The genomic analysis could not pinpoint the exact origin of the man’s European DNA. Researchers hypothesize that Italy’s southern island of Sicily or one of the small islands between southern Europe and northern Africa are the most likely.
Again, material evidence offers some clues, as archaeologists have discovered obsidian from the tiny Italian island of Pantelleria in Tunisian sites. Study co-author Giulio Lucarini suggests that the plethora of small islands would have made for many possible paths on a long, winding journey navigated by sight. With so many potential routes and many of the stopovers that would have existed at the time now underwater, finding evidence and tracing the exact route is extremely difficult.
The work proves that the Mediterranean was readily traversable by hunter-gatherers, leaving coastal archaeologists with the possibility of further surprises.
The paper “High Continuity of Forager Ancestry in the Neolithic Period of the Eastern Maghreb” appeared on March 12, 2025 in Nature.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.