The DNA of a man from medieval Spain sheds new light on the radicalism with which the Catholic Reconquista was supposed to eradicate earlier Islamic influence. The “Giant of Segorbia” lived in the area of Valencia in the eleventh century and was descended from the North African Berbers who had settled there. But after the Catholics had recaptured the area, almost the entire Moorish population was driven out, as the genetic analyzes show.
The Iberian Peninsula was shaped in many ways by nearby North Africa: Already in the Neolithic Age there was an exchange between both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar, which continued into the time of the late antique vandals. With the Islamic conquest in 711, however, a strong influx of Arabs and the recently Islamized Berbers from North Africa set in. Especially at the beginning, the Arabs exercised political rule over Moorish Spain, while the Berbers were more of the infantry of the Moorish conquering power.
The giant of Segorbia
In the eleventh century, however, this changes: At this point in time, with the Almoravids and Almohads, Moorish rulers of Berber origin came to power and the Berbers also gained influence in Moorish Spain. How high the percentage of the Moors of North African descent was at that time, however, is still unclear. One reason for this are the upheavals that took place through the Catholic reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula up to 1492 and the expulsion of the Moors in the course of this Reconquista.
The genetic material of a man who was buried in the Islamic necropolis Plaza del Almudin in Segorbia in the eleventh century now provides more information about the population in the time of the Moors and the later change. “Because of its height of 1.84 to 1.90 meters, which was unusual for the time, it was christened the Giant of Segorbia by archaeologists,” explain Marina Silva from the University of Huddersfield in England and her colleagues. Based on studies of the bones and anatomy of this “giant”, scientists had previously suspected that it could be descended from the North African Berbers.
North Africa and Europe in the genome
Silva and her team have now investigated whether this is true using DNA and isotope analyzes of bone and tooth samples from this man. The analyzes showed that the Segorbian giant had inherited typical gene signatures of the North African Berbers from both his mother and his father. These showed up on his Y chromosome and in the mitochondrial DNA. This makes him one of the oldest known individuals with this genetic origin on the Iberian Peninsula, as the researchers report.
However, the rest of the genome revealed that this man and his parents were not newcomers to Spain. Because the isotope analyzes showed that the giant from Segorbia must have lived in the region around Valencia all his life. In addition, the research team found clear evidence of crossings between his ancestors and the indigenous European population of this area – after all, their genes made up around half of his genome. “The fact that this man still had the North African parent markers suggests that this intermingling had only existed for a few generations – probably at the height of Berber rule,” say Silva and her colleagues.
Radical displacement
But what is even more exciting is what the genetic data revealed about the future fate of the Berbers and their descendants in Spain. Because in the genetic material of the Spaniards living in the area of Valencia today there are no traces of the once numerous Moors with Berber ancestors. According to the research team, this may reflect the brutality and radicalism with which the Catholic rulers carried out ethnic and religious cleansing after the expulsion of the Moors and the recapture of the Iberian Peninsula in 1492.
Many Moors, the so-called Moriscuses, first tried to evade the repression by baptism. But in 1609 around a third of all Moriscos still living in Spain were expelled by the Catholic rulers and deported to North Africa, as Silva and her team report. While the extent of these purges was rather moderate in Castile and Andalusia and many Moriscos integrated there, this does not seem to have been the case in the Valencia region, as the DNA comparisons now show.
“There, the population with North African roots who had been living in the region for centuries was practically completely expelled,” said the team. Instead, people from the north who were mainly of European descent were settled there. “The effects of this dramatic population change, which can be traced back to a brutal political decision hundreds of years ago, can still be traced in the genetic make-up today – such as the genome of the giant from Segorbia and his contemporaries,” says Silva.
Source: University of Huddersfield; Technical article: Scientific Reports, doi: 10.1038 / s41598-021-95996-3