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Ancestry populations · Classical Antiquity

Medieval Socotra

The medieval islanders of Socotra in the Arabian Sea, herders and fishers whose ancestry came mostly from the Hadramawt coast of South Arabia. One of the 50 curated source populations in the Classical Antiquity era of Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis.

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Who they were

Artistic interpretation of the Medieval Socotra (AI-generated artwork, not documentary evidence)
Period
640 to 1300 AD
Era in the analysis
Classical Antiquity
Region
Socotra, Arabian Sea
Role in the model
Source (left) population, a reference qpAdm tests against

Socotra is the largest island of a small archipelago at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, between the south coast of Arabia and the Horn of Africa, known for its dragon's blood trees and for plants found nowhere else. This source is built from twelve medieval islanders buried in natural caves and rock hollows at four places across the island (Wadi Asserho, Zaflah, Sayiher Di Hadiboh and Jebel Hawari), whose genomes were published by Sirak et al. (2024) and dated to between about AD 640 and 1300.

For centuries Socotra was a stop on the sea routes between Arabia, Africa, India and the Mediterranean: inscriptions in Hoq cave name traders from Roman Egypt, Palmyra, Aksum and India, drawn by the island's aloe, incense and dragon's blood, and by the sixth century Christian missionaries from Persia had settled there. Yet the medieval islanders descended mostly from a population like the present-day people of the Hadramawt on the South Arabian coast, with the rest best matched by an Iranian-related source that includes a small share from the Indian subcontinent, and unlike every other genotyped population of Arabia they carried no sub-Saharan African admixture from the last ten thousand years. Their deep ancestry, like the Hadramawt's, also owes more to the Natufian hunter-gatherers of the Levant and less to its early farmers than that of other Arabians, and they lived as a small, isolated population (Sirak et al. 2024). Soqotri, a Modern South Arabian language, is still spoken on the island.

In Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis, Medieval Socotra is a source in the "Classical Antiquity" era. The report shows its weight with a standard error and a Z-score, so you can see not only how much of the model it carries but how confidently that share is separated from zero, and a model that cannot support it is rejected rather than published. It is the era's reference for southern Arabia and the Arabian Sea, beside the Arabian Peninsula source to its north and the Sub Saharan African source across the Gulf of Aden; read its weight together with theirs, since the model may divide one Arabian signal among them.

Almost every medieval man of the island carried Y haplogroup J2, unlike the J1 that dominates mainland Yemen today, and their mtDNA belongs mostly to the Eurasian N and R branches, including R2c and U2b2, lineages that point toward Iran and South Asia (Sirak et al. 2024). A haplogroup alone is never evidence of a share.

In your report

The people of medieval Socotra lived on a remote island in the Arabian Sea, between the Horn of Africa and the south coast of Arabia, from about 640 to 1300 AD. They herded goats, sheep and cattle across the island's limestone plateaus, fished its coasts and tended date palms in the valleys, and each family laid its dead together in a small cave in the rocks. For centuries traders from Egypt, Ethiopia, Persia and India sailed to the island for its aloe, incense and dragon's blood, the red resin of its umbrella-shaped trees, and a Christian community from Persia took root there. Their ancestry came mostly from the peoples of the Hadramawt on the South Arabian coast, with a smaller share related to Iran and a trace from India. Unlike every other people of Arabia whose DNA has been studied, they carried no recent ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. They lived as a small, isolated community, and Soqotri, a South Arabian language, is still spoken on the island today.

Artwork is an AI-generated artistic interpretation informed by the archaeological record, not documentary evidence.

Where this population sits in the model

Ancient Ancestry, our qpAdm analysis, models your genome once per era. The Classical Antiquity era has 50 curated source populations, and Medieval Socotra is one of them: every candidate model for that era is a combination of these sources, tested against a fixed set of outgroup populations, and only a model that passes the statistical fit check is published, with a p-value and a standard error on every proportion.

A reference, not a verdict: every population on this page is a source the model tests your genome against, a well-sampled point in ancient genetic space that a mixture of ancestries can be expressed in terms of. A weight on it means your genome is well described as partly resembling those people; it is never a statement that they, specifically, were your ancestors, and a population that fits well is not the only one that could.

Read how qpAdm works on the Ancient Ancestry page, or the definitions in the glossary.

Model it yourself for free

The Ancestrify Lab runs in your browser, with no account. Paste a Global25 row into an admixture calculator that covers the Classical Antiquity era, rank the closest ancient populations in the distance tool, or run f4, qpWave and qpAdm on the public panel in the AdmixTools 2 workbench. These are Global25 fits and exploratory statistics, not the formal qpAdm model of Ancient Ancestry.

Questions

  • Who were the Medieval Socotra (640 to 1300 AD)?

    Medieval Socotra is one of the 50 curated source populations in the Classical Antiquity era of Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis: a group of published genomes pooled as a single reference the model can test your genome against. These are ancient individuals from one archaeological context wherever the record holds them, and present-day genomes standing in where it does not, which the description on this page says.

  • Does Medieval Socotra in my result mean they were my ancestors?

    No. A source population is a reference the model tests against, never a statement about who your ancestors were. A coefficient on this source means the ancestry those burials represent helps explain your genome to within statistical noise: similar ancestry composition, not descent from those individuals. Ancestrify never claims a population is your ancestor.

  • What does a Medieval Socotra percentage in a qpAdm model mean?

    qpAdm estimates the mixture proportions that best explain your genome as a combination of the chosen sources, given a fixed set of outgroup (right) populations, and reports a p-value for whether the model is statistically acceptable together with a standard error for every proportion. The percentage is that estimated share, with its uncertainty published beside it.

  • How do I get a qpAdm model that uses Medieval Socotra?

    Order Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis (€29.99, one-time), and upload the raw file you already have from a consumer test. Your genome is merged into the AADR reference panel and modelled across both eras; each era's model is built from that era's source populations, so a model for the Classical Antiquity era draws on Medieval Socotra where it improves the fit.

  • Can I model Medieval Socotra ancestry for free first?

    Yes. The Ancestrify Lab runs Global25 admixture calculators, a nearest-populations distance tool and an AdmixTools 2 workbench in your browser with no account, and several calculators cover the Classical Antiquity era. Those are G25 fits, not formal qpAdm models. Ancient Ancestry, the paid analysis, is the one with a p-value.

More populations from the Classical Antiquity era

Browse the full directory of source populations, or continue with another population from the same era:

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