Who were the Indigenous Berber (300 – 1400 AD)?

Indigenous Berber is one of the 27 curated source populations in the Classical Antiquity era of the Ancestrify qpAdm analysis: a group of published ancient genomes from one archaeological context, pooled as a single reference the model can test your genome against.

Does Indigenous Berber in my result mean they were my ancestors?

No. A source population is a reference the model tests against, never a statement about who your ancestors were. A coefficient on this source means the ancestry those burials represent helps explain your genome to within statistical noise — similar ancestry composition, not descent from those individuals. Ancestrify never claims a population is your ancestor.

What does a Indigenous Berber percentage in a qpAdm model mean?

qpAdm estimates the mixture proportions that best explain your genome as a combination of the chosen sources, given a fixed set of outgroup (right) populations, and reports a p-value for whether the model is statistically acceptable together with a standard error for every proportion. The percentage is that estimated share, with its uncertainty published beside it.

How do I get a qpAdm model that uses Indigenous Berber?

Order the Ancestrify qpAdm analysis (€29.99, one-time) and upload the raw file you already have from a consumer test. Your genome is merged into the AADR reference panel and modelled across both eras; each era's model is built from that era's source populations, so a model for the Classical Antiquity era draws on Indigenous Berber where it improves the fit.

Can I model Indigenous Berber ancestry for free first?

Yes. The Ancestrify Lab runs Global25 admixture calculators, a nearest-populations distance tool and an AdmixTools 2 workbench in your browser with no account, and several calculators cover the Classical Antiquity era. Those are G25 fits, not formal qpAdm models — the paid analysis is the one with a p-value.

Indigenous Berber — ancient DNA source population (qpAdm)

Who they were

Artistic interpretation of the Indigenous Berber (AI-generated artwork, not documentary evidence)

Period: 300 – 1400 AD
Era in the analysis: Classical Antiquity
Region: Maghreb, north-west Africa
Role in the model: Source (left) population — a reference qpAdm tests against

The Berbers, or Amazigh, are the indigenous peoples of the Maghreb, and this source represents them from the late Roman period through the Islamic centuries — the Mauri of the Byzantine frontier, the tribes that shaped the Almoravid and Almohad empires, and the Canary Islanders who carried the same heritage across the Atlantic before the Spanish conquest. Genetic studies show a population built on the deep Iberomaurusian and Neolithic North African lineage, with Iberian, Levantine and sub-Saharan contributions layered on top at different times (Fregel et al. 2018; Serra-Vidal et al. 2019).

This ancestry is the core of present-day Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians and Libyans, both Berber- and Arabic-speaking, and reaches into southern Iberia, Sicily and Malta through medieval contact. In the model it is the North African pole of the era, distinct from the Numidian Berber source of the Roman centuries in its later Arabian and sub-Saharan admixture and from the Carthaginian source in its lower Aegean- and Levantine-related components.

In Ancestrify's qpAdm service, Indigenous Berber is a source in the "Classical Antiquity" era. The report shows its weight with a standard error and a Z-score, so you can see not only how much of the model it carries but how confidently that share is separated from zero, and a model that cannot support it is rejected rather than published. For genomes from the Maghreb it usually carries the largest weight; read it against the Numidian Berber and Arabian Peninsula sources, which describe the same region earlier and the eastern inflow that followed.

Y haplogroups E-M81 and E-M78, and mtDNA U6, M1, H1 and L lineages, are characteristic of these populations. A haplogroup alone is never evidence of a share.

In your report
The indigenous Amazigh (Berber) peoples of the Maghreb, represented by the Guanches of the Canary Islands (c. 300-1400 CE). Berber settlers reached the archipelago from north-west Africa and were then cut off from the Phoenician, Roman, Vandal and Arab gene flow that reshaped the mainland, so their genomes preserve the indigenous North-African ancestry - Iberomaurusian forager plus Maghrebi Neolithic farmer - in a far less admixed form than any mainland population of the same period. They are the reference for the Berber component that entered Iberia and the western Mediterranean.

Artwork is an AI-generated artistic interpretation informed by the archaeological record — not documentary evidence.

Where this population sits in the model

The Ancestrify qpAdm analysis models your genome once per era. The Classical Antiquity era has 27 curated source populations, and Indigenous Berber is one of them: every candidate model for that era is a combination of these sources, tested against a fixed set of outgroup populations, and only a model that passes the statistical fit check is published — with a p-value, and a standard error on every proportion.

A reference, not a verdict: every population on this page is a source the model tests your genome against — a well-sampled point in ancient genetic space that a mixture of ancestries can be expressed in terms of. A weight on it means your genome is well described as partly resembling those people; it is never a statement that they, specifically, were your ancestors, and a population that fits well is not the only one that could.

Read how the method works on the qpAdm analysis page, or the definitions in the glossary.

Model it yourself for free

The Ancestrify Lab runs in your browser, with no account. Paste a Global25 row into an admixture calculator that covers the Classical Antiquity era, rank the closest ancient populations in the distance tool, or run f4, qpWave and qpAdm on the public panel in the AdmixTools 2 workbench. These are Global25 fits and exploratory statistics, not the formal qpAdm model of the paid analysis.

Questions

Who were the Indigenous Berber (300 – 1400 AD)?
Indigenous Berber is one of the 27 curated source populations in the Classical Antiquity era of the Ancestrify qpAdm analysis: a group of published ancient genomes from one archaeological context, pooled as a single reference the model can test your genome against.
Does Indigenous Berber in my result mean they were my ancestors?
No. A source population is a reference the model tests against, never a statement about who your ancestors were. A coefficient on this source means the ancestry those burials represent helps explain your genome to within statistical noise — similar ancestry composition, not descent from those individuals. Ancestrify never claims a population is your ancestor.
What does a Indigenous Berber percentage in a qpAdm model mean?
qpAdm estimates the mixture proportions that best explain your genome as a combination of the chosen sources, given a fixed set of outgroup (right) populations, and reports a p-value for whether the model is statistically acceptable together with a standard error for every proportion. The percentage is that estimated share, with its uncertainty published beside it.
How do I get a qpAdm model that uses Indigenous Berber?
Order the Ancestrify qpAdm analysis (€29.99, one-time) and upload the raw file you already have from a consumer test. Your genome is merged into the AADR reference panel and modelled across both eras; each era's model is built from that era's source populations, so a model for the Classical Antiquity era draws on Indigenous Berber where it improves the fit.
Can I model Indigenous Berber ancestry for free first?
Yes. The Ancestrify Lab runs Global25 admixture calculators, a nearest-populations distance tool and an AdmixTools 2 workbench in your browser with no account, and several calculators cover the Classical Antiquity era. Those are G25 fits, not formal qpAdm models — the paid analysis is the one with a p-value.