Echoes of the Iberian Foragers

Beneath limestone shelters and highland caves, the Spain_HG story unfolds across a vast span—from Upper Paleolithic horizons into late Mesolithic contexts (approximately 40,000–5,000 BCE). Archaeological sites such as La Braña-Arintero (León), Cueva de la Carigüela (Piñar, Granada), Cingle del Mas Nou (Ares del Maestre, Castelló) and Cueva de la Cocina (Dos Aguas, València) preserve stone tools, hearths and faunal remains that speak to seasonal mobility, specialized hunting, and long-standing coastal and interior traditions.

Material culture indicates continuity and regional adaptation: blade industries and microlithic toolkits appear alongside site-specific practices tied to upland oak forests, river valleys and Mediterranean scrub. Limited evidence suggests population continuity in some valleys, while changes in tool form and site use around 7,000–5,000 BCE hint at broader ecological and social shifts. Archaeological data indicate that these groups lived in small, mobile bands with deep knowledge of local landscapes—an image evoked by the layers of charcoal and flint in cave floors and the dispersed scatters of butchery debris.

While the archaeological record is robust in places, geographic gaps remain. The long time span covered by the Spain_HG designation encompasses multiple climatic oscillations and cultural responses, and so any single narrative must treat continuity and change as regional and time-dependent phenomena.

Seven ancient genomes attributed to Spain_HG have been analyzed, a small sample that requires cautious interpretation. Mitochondrial DNA is dominated by haplogroup U (6 of 7 samples), with at least one U5b lineage—patterns consistent with broader Western European hunter-gatherer (WHG) maternal ancestry. On the paternal side, recovered Y-DNA haplogroups include C (2), F (1), CT (1) and I (1). The detection of haplogroup I aligns with known European hunter-gatherer lineages, while occurrences of C, F and CT point to either rare deep-rooted Eurasian lineages persisting in Iberia or to previously under-sampled diversity in prehistoric western Europe.

Archaeogenetic affinity analysis places Spain_HG individuals closer to WHG clusters than to early Neolithic farmers, supporting archaeological inferences of long-term forager lifeways. However, with only seven genomes, population-level parameters—such as effective population size, micro-regional structure, and gene flow events—remain tentative. Limited evidence suggests pockets of continuity amid episodes of demographic turnover elsewhere in Europe, but further sampling across the peninsula is needed to resolve questions about migration, admixture and the persistence of archaic lineages.

In sum, the genetic portrait is evocative: a maternal signature dominated by U lineages and a paternal record that preserves both common WHG markers and rarer haplogroups, highlighting the Iberian Peninsula as a repository of ancient genetic diversity.