The Iberian Peninsula of modern day Spain and Portugal has long held one of human history’s lingering mysteries. Now, two new studies covering nearly 20,000 years have outlined the region’s transformative genetic influence.

“It shows how tremendously powerful such transect through time studies are,” said Wolfgang Haak, an anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, who led one of the two works. “Both studies should rather be seen as c