Who lived in Southern Levant (0 to 600 AD)?

Southern Levant is one of the 183 curated source populations in the Bronze Age to Middle Ages 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 Southern Levant in my result mean the people there 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 Southern Levant 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 Southern Levant?

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 Bronze Age to Middle Ages era draws on Southern Levant where it improves the fit.

Can I model Southern Levant 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.

Ancestry populations · Bronze Age to Middle Ages

Southern Levant

The settled population of the southern Levant in the Roman and Byzantine centuries, the layer that Levantine Arabs and Middle Eastern Jewish communities share, represented by present-day genomes of the region. One of the 183 curated source populations in the Bronze Age to Middle Ages era of Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis.

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Who they were

Artistic interpretation of the Southern Levant (AI-generated artwork, not documentary evidence)

Period: 0 to 600 AD
Era in the analysis: Bronze Age to Middle Ages
Region: Southern Levant
Role in the model: Source (left) population, a reference qpAdm tests against

The southern Levant of the Roman and Byzantine centuries was a land of hill-country villages, coastal cities and the towns of the Jordan valley, home to Jews, Samaritans, Nabataeans and the Aramaic-speaking farmers who became the Christian and later the Arab population of Palestine and Jordan. Ancient genomes from the wider Levant in these centuries show a population still built on the Bronze Age Canaanite foundation, with the Iranian- and Anatolian-related additions of the Iron Age and only modest later input (Haber et al. 2017; Agranat-Tamir et al. 2020; Haber et al. 2020).

Because the reference panel holds few ancient genomes of the southern Levant itself from these centuries, this source is built from present-day reference genomes of the region that best preserve that ancestry, in the same way the Arabian Peninsula source stands on present-day Bedouin genomes. What it measures is the settled Levantine population as it stood before the Islamic conquests: the ancestry that present-day Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Syrians carry as their largest component, and that Sephardi, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jewish communities share as the Levantine thread in their ancestry (Behar et al. 2010; Waldman et al. 2022).

In Ancient Ancestry, Ancestrify's qpAdm analysis, Southern Levant 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 Classical era Levantine pole, the successor of the Canaanite source, and its weight should be read together with the Eastern Mediterranean, Arabian Peninsula and Parthian Iran sources, which describe the neighbouring populations a Levantine or Jewish genome may also draw on.

Y haplogroups J1, J2, E1b1b and G2a, and mtDNA H, K, J, T and HV, are common in the region's populations. A haplogroup alone is never evidence of a share.

In your report
The southern Levantine ancestry of the Classical period (c. 0-600 CE), represented by the present-day population of the region that best preserves it. Like the Arabian Peninsula entry, this population is built from present-day reference genomes, because the AADR holds few ancient genomes of the southern Levant from these centuries. It stands for the settled farming and town population of the hill country, coastal plain and Jordan valley, descendants of the Bronze and Iron Age peoples of the region, whose ancestry both Levantine Arabs and Middle Eastern Jewish communities carry 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 Bronze Age to Middle Ages era has 183 curated source populations, and Southern Levant 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 lived in Southern Levant (0 to 600 AD)?
Southern Levant is one of the 183 curated source populations in the Bronze Age to Middle Ages 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 Southern Levant in my result mean the people there 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 Southern Levant 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 Southern Levant?
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 Bronze Age to Middle Ages era draws on Southern Levant where it improves the fit.
Can I model Southern Levant 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 Bronze Age to Middle Ages era

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