Ancient DNA
Ancient DNA by Culture
What genomes recovered from ancient remains have revealed about the peoples of the past, culture by culture, with the samples our catalogue holds for each and how to compare your own DNA with them.
Viking DNA
about 750 to 1050 CE. 965 catalogue entries.
The Viking Age carried Scandinavian seafarers, traders and settlers across the North Atlantic, the British Isles and Eastern Europe. Ancient DNA has shown who travelled where, and that being a Viking was a way of life rather than a single ancestry.
Ancient Roman DNA
the Roman Republic and Empire, about 500 BCE to 476 CE in the west. 840 catalogue entries.
Ancient DNA from Rome and its provinces shows an empire that moved people as well as goods. The population of the capital changed markedly over its history, and provincial towns held a mix of local and incoming ancestry.
Celtic DNA
the Hallstatt (about 800 to 450 BCE) and La Tene (about 450 BCE to the Roman conquest) Iron Age. 1,027 catalogue entries.
Celtic is a family of languages and a set of Iron Age material cultures, not one people. Ancient DNA shows that most Iron Age Celtic communities descended largely from the Bronze Age populations of their own regions, with movements that differ from place to place.
Anglo-Saxon DNA
about 450 to 1066 CE. 385 catalogue entries.
For a long time historians argued over whether the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England was a mass migration or the spread of a culture. Ancient DNA has largely settled the question: it was a substantial migration that mixed with the people already living there.
Hun DNA
about 370 to 470 CE in Europe. 174 catalogue entries.
The Huns appeared in Eastern Europe in the late fourth century and built a short-lived empire centred on the Carpathian Basin. Ancient DNA shows a genetically diverse population with a small, distinctive eastern element.
Scythian DNA
about 900 to 200 BCE. 195 catalogue entries.
Scythian is the name Greek writers gave to the horse-riding nomads north of the Black Sea, and it is now used for a wider family of related Iron Age steppe cultures. Ancient DNA shows they were not one people but several, linked by a shared way of life.
Sarmatian DNA
about 500 BCE to 400 CE. 419 catalogue entries.
The Sarmatians were Iranian-speaking steppe nomads who succeeded the Scythians and came into long contact with the Roman Empire. Ancient DNA traces their movement west across the steppe.
Phoenician DNA
about 1200 to 146 BCE. 184 catalogue entries.
The Phoenicians spread from the cities of the Levant to found trading colonies across the Mediterranean, with Carthage the greatest. Recent ancient DNA has overturned the idea that those colonies were peopled mainly by migrants from the Levant.
Canaanite DNA
the Bronze Age, about 3300 to 1200 BCE. 115 catalogue entries.
The Canaanites lived in the cities of the Bronze Age Levant. Ancient DNA shows a population formed from local Neolithic farmers and later arrivals from the north and east, and a lasting legacy in the region.
Ancient Egyptian DNA
from the Old Kingdom, about 2700 BCE, to the Roman period. 20 catalogue entries.
Egypt's heat destroys ancient DNA, so few ancient Egyptian genomes exist, and every new one matters. What has been recovered points to North African and Near Eastern roots.
Ancient Mesopotamian DNA
from the first cities, about 3500 BCE, through the Bronze and Iron Ages. 31 catalogue entries.
Mesopotamia saw the first cities and the first writing, yet it remains one of the least sampled regions in ancient DNA, because heat and conflict have limited access to remains. The genomes that do exist show a meeting point of the Near East's farming populations.
Minoan DNA
about 3100 to 1100 BCE. 103 catalogue entries.
The Minoans built the palaces of Bronze Age Crete and wrote in Linear A, which is still undeciphered. The name is modern; we do not know what they called themselves. Ancient DNA has shown where their ancestors came from.
Mycenaean DNA
about 1600 to 1100 BCE. 108 catalogue entries.
The Mycenaeans ruled palaces such as Mycenae and Pylos and wrote an early form of Greek in Linear B. Ancient DNA shows they were close relatives of the Minoans, with one important difference.
Etruscan DNA
about 900 to 100 BCE. 55 catalogue entries.
The Etruscans dominated central Italy before Rome and spoke a language unrelated to the Indo-European languages around them. Ancient writers argued that they came from Anatolia. Ancient DNA says otherwise.
Maya DNA
from the Preclassic, about 2000 BCE, through the Classic and Postclassic to the Spanish conquest. 142 catalogue entries.
The Maya built cities across the lowlands and highlands of Mesoamerica over more than three thousand years. Ancient DNA shows a long continuity between ancient and present-day Maya peoples.
Inca DNA
the Inca Empire, about 1400 to 1532 CE. 50 catalogue entries.
The Inca built the largest empire in the pre-Columbian Americas in about a century. Ancient DNA shows a region whose genetic structure was already old by then, and an empire that moved people across it.
Gothic DNA
about the first to the eighth century CE. 176 catalogue entries.
The Goths appear in Roman sources moving from northern Europe toward the Black Sea, then into the empire, where Visigoths ruled Iberia and Ostrogoths Italy. Archaeologists link their early history to the Wielbark culture of Poland and the Chernyakhov culture of Ukraine.
Lombard DNA
about 500 to 774 CE. 150 catalogue entries.
The Lombards, or Langobards, moved from Pannonia into Italy in 568 CE and ruled much of it for two centuries. Their cemeteries were among the first early medieval sites studied in depth with ancient DNA.
Frankish DNA
about 400 to 750 CE for the Merovingian period. 60 catalogue entries.
The Franks founded the Merovingian kingdom that grew into France. Ancient DNA from Merovingian cemeteries shows communities in which incoming and local ancestry mixed.
Avar DNA
about 567 to 822 CE. 1,466 catalogue entries.
The Avars arrived in the Carpathian Basin from the Eurasian steppe in 567 to 568 CE and ruled a khaganate there for more than two centuries. Ancient DNA has made the Avars one of the best studied populations of early medieval Europe.
Xiongnu DNA
about 209 BCE to 100 CE. 201 catalogue entries.
The Xiongnu built the first great steppe empire, rival to Han China. Ancient DNA shows a population as diverse as the empire was large.
Yamnaya DNA
about 3300 to 2600 BCE. 305 catalogue entries.
The Yamnaya were mobile herders of the Bronze Age steppe whose descendants spread across Europe and into Asia. Their ancestry, often called steppe ancestry, is found in most present-day Europeans and many South Asians.
Bell Beaker DNA
about 2800 to 1800 BCE. 453 catalogue entries.
The Bell Beaker culture is named after its bell-shaped drinking vessels, found from Iberia to Hungary. Ancient DNA shows that the culture spread in two ways: by ideas in some regions and by people in others.
Corded Ware DNA
about 3000 to 2350 BCE. 235 catalogue entries.
The Corded Ware culture, named for pottery decorated with cord impressions, spread across Northern and Central Europe at the start of the third millennium BCE. Ancient DNA identified it as the main route by which steppe ancestry entered Europe.
Byzantine DNA
about 330 to 1453 CE. 144 catalogue entries.
The Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire in the east, Greek-speaking and Christian, for more than a thousand years. Ancient DNA from Byzantine Anatolia and its neighbours shows deep regional continuity.
Entry counts are measured from the live catalogue (2026-10-17). To compare your own DNA with these samples, start with getting G25 coordinates from your raw DNA, or browse all guides.