There was not an Iberian back Migration into North Africa

Rosa Fregel, et al.(2018). Ancient genomes from North Africa evidence prehistoric migrations to the Maghreb from both the Levant and Europe. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/20/191569

Argue that the “ farming and pottery production, could have been introduced into northern Morocco through sea voyaging by people from Iberia or the central Mediterranean as early as ca. 5400 BCE”, only problem with this hypothesis is that the oldest evidence for pottery comes from Morocco—not Iberia. Fregel et al, maintain that Iberia was the source of Maghrebi civilization eventhough they admit that Andalusian Early Neolithic cultures show North African influences before the Cardial expansion into the Western Mediterranean basin. The authors constantly contradict themselves, as evidence by the reality that if North African cultures existed in Iberia prior to the Cardial expansion, how could Cardial culture be evidence of North African adoption of Iberian culture, when the North African cultures preceed Cardial.

Another problem is that not only did agro-patoral traditions in North Africa preceed the Iberian traditions --Bell Beaker pottery appears first in Africa, not Iberia makes their claim that North African cultures influenced North Africa and a back migration took place from Europe to North Africa without merit.This is why Fregel et al, constantly use the phrase “could” when they make claims about possible Iberian sources for North African technics and genes. This indicates that Iberians could not have introduced any genes into North Africa, but Fregel et al, pretend that the North African sites are more recent than the Iberian sites when this is not supported by the archaeological research.

I agree with the authors that the IAM genomes are North African--but there is no evidence Iberians introduced any genes to North Africa. The presence of North African cultures in Iberia dating before Cardial and other Iberian cultures makes it clear that the Iberian genes came from North Africa and not the other way around.