A study published in Nature Communication used ancient DNA found in tombs dating back to the early Islamic period Ibiza reconstructing the genes of the island’s population during its historical development. Research shows that a small urban community on one of the islands near the Mediterranean was connected to a network of migrations and movements that stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to sub-Saharan Africa.
The research comes at a time of growing interest in what ancient genomes can reveal about people who left behind few written records. For medieval Ibiza, whose pre-Islamic occupation is little documented in contemporary Arab sources, these 13 individuals provide some direct evidence available to understand who actually lived there and where they came from.
Citizens created by Rapid Gathering after Conquest
Ibiza is included in the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba in 902 CE, and settlement took place in about one generation. The 125 tombs excavated in the Madina Yabisa Tombs, a Muslim cemetery in the city that is now Ibiza, show a community that followed the traditional Muslim burial method, the bodies placed on the right side, facing Mecca, in simple, unadorned pits. However, genetic data obtained from 13 of those individuals told a more complex story.
According to the research team, led by Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela at the Palaeogenetics Institute in Stockholm, the genetic components were very different from person to person. Most people showed a mixture of European and North African genes, while two were closely related to sub-Saharan African populations, one followed Senegambia and the other goes to the present day south Chad.
The time of population integration was reconstructed from the length of shared lineages in the genome. Long, unbroken lines show that combination it happened recently, before recombination had time to destroy them throughout the generations. Using this method on seven contemporary populations, the researchers estimate that the main flow of North African genes into the population occurred around 869 CEplacing it within a generation or two of the conquest itself, and corresponds to a continuous consolidation in al-Andalus rather than a single migration event.
Two people in the graves only showed North African descent, about 11 percent and 13 percent respectively, but they were buried in the same Islamic manner as the others. Researchers suggest that these people can wait muladíesMore recently, the Iberians of the region of Iberia, in which the cultural and religious transformation proceeded more rapidly than the genetic mix.
Sub-Saharan Relations and Disease Evidence
The presence of two people with sub-Saharan African ancestry provides what the researchers describe as direct confirmation of the trans-Saharan biological network described in ancient Arabic writings. The genome of one person closely matched the population of present-day Senegambia, while others were similar to groups from southern Chad, more than 2,000 kilometers apart. Radiocarbon dates, adjusted for the possible effects of seafood, put both people later 1115 CEcorresponding to the second major population influx associated with the Almoravid conquest of Mallorca.
“These genes indicate that people from the west and central Sahel were part of the Islamic Iberian communityRodríguez-Varela said.
A metagenomic analysis of dental tissue, which can harbor pathogen DNA that does not leave bone in the bone, has been reported. several infectious agents across 13 people, including hepatitis B virus, human parvovirus B19, and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Crucially, one person carried Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterium that causes leprosy, in what the study says is the first genetically confirmed case from the Islamic Iberia period.
Phylogenetic analysis placed strain within genotype 2F, a lineage recorded in medieval sites from Barcelona to Sigtuna, Sweden, suggesting that Ibiza participated in a network similar to that of the medieval European world. The individual burials showed no signs of being segregated or treated differently.
Taken together, the findings show the small island nation, after only a few generations of being absorbed into the Islamic world, to be home to a people whose origins are part of the known medieval world.
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