page_title: Genetic studies on Moroccans
section_title: Prehistory and antiquity
hierarchical_section_title: Genetic studies on Moroccans / Prehistory and antiquity
caption_attribution_description: In the Chellah
context_page_description: Moroccan genetics encompasses the genetic history of the people of Morocco, and the genetic influence of this ancestry on world populations. It has been heavily influenced by geography.
  In prehistoric times, the Sahara desert to the south and the Mediterranean Sea to the north were important geographical barriers. West Asia and Northeast Africa form a single land mass at the Suez. The Maghreb and Southwest Europe are separated by only 15 km at the Straits of Gibraltar, and a similar distance separates the Horn of Africa from the Arabian peninsula at the Bab el-Mandeb strait. At periods of low sea-levels, such as during a glacial maximum, islands that are currently submerged in the Mediterranean, and possibly in between the Gibraltar straits, would have been habitable. These may have encouraged bidirectional demic diffusion between Africa and Europe. During wetter phases of the Sahara, some populations in central Africa would have moved north into southern parts of North Africa. West Asian populations would have also been attracted to a wet Sahara, arriving either through the Suez, the Bab el-Mandeb or the Mediterranean.
context_section_description: The area of present-day Morocco has been thought to have been inhabited since Paleolithic times, sometime between 90,000 and 190,000 BC but that is no longer the case after the discovery of a 300,000 years homo sapien and instead, it is now suggested that it has been inhabited since primordial times by humans by the same evidence. During the Upper Paleolithic, the Maghreb was more fertile than it is today, resembling a savanna more than today's arid landscape. 22,000 years ago, the Aterian was succeeded by the Iberomaurusian culture, which shared similarities with Iberian cultures. Skeletal similarities have been observed between the Iberomaurusian Mechta-Afalou burials and European Cro-Magnon remains. The Iberomaurusian industry in Morocco was succeeded by the Capsian culture.
  North Africa and Morocco were slowly drawn into the wider emerging Mediterranean world by the Phoenicians, who established trading colonies and settlements in the early Classical period. Mogador was a Phoenician colony as early as the early 6th century BC.
  Morocco later became part of a North African empire headquartered in Carthage. The earliest known independent Moroccan state was the Berber kingdom of Mauretania under king Bocchus I. This kingdom in northern Morocco, not to be confused with the present state of Mauritania, dates at least to 110 BC.
  The Roman Empire controlled this region from the 1st century BC, naming it Mauretania Tingitana. Christianity was introduced in the 2nd century AD and gained converts in the Roman towns, among slaves and some Berber farmers.
  In the 5th century AD, as the Roman Empire declined, the region was invaded from the north first by the Vandals and then by the Visigoths. In the 6th century AD, northern Morocco was nominally part of the East Roman, or Byzantine Empire. Throughout this time, the Berber inhabitants in the high mountains of the interior of Morocco remained unsubdued.
caption: Ruins of Chellah, Salé.
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