Genetic studies on Moroccans

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 to influx from Sub SaharanAfrica and Europe. However West Asia and North Africa form a single land mass at the Sinai. Neolithic West Asian populations would have also been attracted to a wet Sahara, arriving either through the Suez, the Bab el-Mandeb or the Mediterranean.

As a result of these geographic influences, the genetic profile of the Moroccan population is a complex mosaic of autochthonous Maghrebi lineages, as well as North African, European, West Asian and West African elements in variable degrees. Though Northwest Africa has experienced gene flow from the surrounding regions, it has also undergone long periods of genetic isolation in some parts. This has allowed distinctive genetic markers to evolve in some Maghrebi populations, especially in certain isolated Berber-speaking groups.

The population of Morocco is genetically heterogenous. This is mostly due to the Arab migrations to the Maghreb, a demographic process that heavily implied gene flow and remodeled the genetic structure of the Maghreb. The J-M267 chromosome pool is derived not only from significan early Neolithic Revolution era dispersions from West Asia but to a much greater extent from recent expansions of Arab tribes from the Arabian Peninsula, during which both southern Qahtanite and northern Adnanite Arabs added to the heterogenous ethnic melting pot.