IT IS not often that cultural and religious persecution makes countries more diverse, but the Spanish Inquisition may have done just that. It now seems that many Spanish and Portuguese people have Jewish or North African ancestors.
In 1492 Catholic monarchs forced Muslims and Sephardic Jews to “convert, go, or die,” says Mark Jobling, a geneticist at the University of Leicester, UK. If they chose to convert, the groups were more likely to integrate into society by marrying Christian Europeans.
To gauge the extent of this social integration, Jobling and colleagues analysed the DNA of over 1000 Spanish and Portuguese…
