The second major layer is the ancestry of Neolithic farmers who spread from the Fertile Crescent into North Africa beginning approximately 7,000-10,000 years ago, introducing the genetic signal of Near Eastern farmers into the existing population.

The ancient North African populations who predated the Neolithic transition are represented in the genetic record by a few ancient individuals from sites in Morocco and other North African locations, whose genomes show a distinctive ancestry that is more similar to the ancient populations of sub-Saharan Africa than to modern North Africans or ancient Near Easterners.

These ancient North Africans, sometimes called the “Iberomaurusian” cultural tradition after an archaeological horizon in the region, represent the pre-agricultural substrate of North African population history.

The Neolithic transition introduced a fundamentally different ancestry component: the Near Eastern farmers who had developed agriculture in the Fertile Crescent and whose genetic heritage spread with the farming way of life into Europe, South Asia, and parts of Africa.