Medieval Ibiza DNA Reveals Trans-Saharan Mixing
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- Centre for Palaeogenetics analyzed ancient DNA from 13 individuals in a 10th–12th century Islamic cemetery in Ibiza, revealing ancestries ranging from predominantly European to predominantly North African following the 902 CE Muslim conquest.
- Two individuals carried sub-Saharan African ancestry tracing to present-day Senegambia and southern Chad — the first direct genetic evidence of trans-Saharan military and slave networks reaching Islamic Iberia.
- Genomic analysis placed the main admixture event in the late 9th century CE, estimating North African gene flow into Ibiza began only 2–7 generations before these individuals died.
- One individual carried Mycobacterium leprae — the first genetically confirmed leprosy case from medieval Islamic Iberia — and was buried according to standard Islamic practices with no signs of exclusion.
- The M. leprae genome sat near the base of a European lineage spanning the 7th–13th centuries, suggesting the bacterium dispersed from the Mediterranean into broader Europe through shared epidemiological networks.
- Lead author Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela said the genomes show people from both the western and central Sahel joined Islamic Iberian communities, confirming long-distance networks described in historical Arabic texts.
Why it matters: The 13 genomes show North African gene flow into Ibiza occurred just 2–7 generations before burial — meaning medieval Islamic Iberia was demographically reshaped almost immediately after the 902 CE conquest, not gradually — forcing a revision of how rapidly trans-Saharan and Mediterranean populations fused.
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