Guide

Ancient DNA Admixture Calculator

How to read your own DNA against ancient samples using G25 coordinates: which ancient people you sit closest to, which mixture of ancient populations reproduces you best, and how to tell a good model from a misleading one.

How an ancient DNA comparison works

Ancient genomes and your own raw DNA are measured on the same 25 G25 components, so every sample becomes a point in the same space. Two questions follow from that. The first is distance: which ancient individuals or populations sit nearest to you. The second is admixture: which weighted mix of several ancient populations lands closest to your point.

The two answers differ for most people. Most Europeans alive today are not especially close to any one Mesolithic hunter-gatherer, Neolithic farmer or Steppe herder, yet are modelled well as a mix of the three. Distance tells you who you resemble; admixture tells you which older populations could have combined to produce you.

The tools that do each part

  • Closest Populations

    The ancient samples and modern references nearest to you, ranked by G25 distance. This is the direct answer to which ancient people you match most closely.

  • Multi-Way Fits

    Mixture models of 2 to 8 sources. Choose the ancient samples of any one of 10 periods, from the Paleolithic to the Early Modern, and the fit returns the percentages and the distance left over.

  • Hunter-Gatherer and Farmer Split

    The deep components behind most West Eurasian ancestry: Western Hunter-Gatherer, Anatolian and early European farmer, and Steppe, the question a steppe ancestry calculator answers.

  • Periodical Breakdown

    The same question asked period by period, so you can watch your best ancient sources change from the Stone Age towards the present.

  • Archaic Admixture

    Neanderthal and Denisovan signal, which is older than any modern human sample and is measured separately.

Modern rankings run against 3,305 representative modern references by default, so you can set an ancient model beside a modern one.

Reading an ancient model honestly

  • Pick sources that existed before the population you are trying to explain. Modelling a medieval population with sources that lived after it gives a fit, but not a history.
  • Compare several models. When two or three source sets fit almost equally well, the data cannot choose between them, and that is the finding.
  • Expect proxies. The calculator can only use the samples that have been sequenced, so a 30% "Yamnaya" result means a Steppe related source of that kind, not descent from one excavated person.
  • Read the distance. A low fit distance means the mix reproduces your coordinates closely. The guide on admixture calculator accuracy explains what the numbers mean.

Getting started

Everything above runs on your G25 coordinates. If you have a raw DNA file from a testing company, the raw DNA to G25 guide shows how to download and convert it. You can also read about the cultures behind the samples in Ancient Cultures before you start.

Create an account Coordinates only

Questions

What is an ancient DNA admixture calculator?

It models your DNA as a weighted mix of ancient populations. With G25 the calculator searches for the percentages of each ancient source that bring the mix closest to your own 25 coordinates, and reports the distance that is left over, so you can see how well the model fits.

Can I match my DNA to individual ancient samples?

Yes. Closest Populations ranks ancient and modern references by their G25 distance to you, so the ancient samples nearest to your coordinates are listed first. By default it ranks 9,600 ancient population references, and switching on individual samples ranks 28,356 of the 29,688 ancient samples.

Does a close ancient match mean that person was my ancestor?

No. A close match means your autosomal DNA resembles that sample's on the G25 components. Ancient individuals are proxies for the populations they belonged to, and thousands of people alive at the time would have looked much the same genetically.

What do I need to start?

Your G25 coordinates. If you do not have them, upload the raw DNA file from 23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA or another provider and it is converted for you. If you already have scaled G25 coordinates you can import them.

Is it free?

No. The ancient comparisons run on your own DNA and are part of the paid plans, which include a raw DNA conversion. The Population Encyclopedia is free to browse with a free account.