Extended Data Fig. 4: Proportions of North African ancestry inferred using the 2D PCA and qpAdm for 123 Punic individuals.
From: Punic people were genetically diverse with almost no Levantine ancestors
We exclude from this analysis the Akhziv sample, the three individuals from Sicily and Sardinia that cluster near Levantine individuals in the 2D PCA, and one individual for which we could not fit a qpAdm model. The qpAdm estimates are based on the smallest proportions estimated for the individual in a valid qpAdm model (see Methods). The PCA-based estimates of North African ancestry were computed by projecting the location of each sample in the PCA onto a cline from the cluster defined by Bronze Age individuals from Sicily to the cluster defined by North African individuals (see Supplementary Information S3 for more details). The two approaches yield similar estimates, with qpAdm being more sensitive to low ancestry proportions. Individuals from Kerkouane (depicted as squares) appear to have a broad range of North African ancestry (0 - 94%). Individuals from Sicily typically have lower proportions of North African ancestry (<20%), and we observe no significant shift in time. On the other hand, in Sardinia, none of the 12 individuals for which we inferred more than 10% North African ancestry (according to at least one of the two approaches) dated before 400 BCE, suggesting that North African ancestry was likely introduced around that time (Supplementary Information S3). We see a similar pattern in Iberia, but since we only have one individual from Iberia dating before 400 BCE, we cannot confidently infer the absence of North African ancestry during this time.
