The Citizens of Alalakh

Alalakh, today the mound of Tell Atchana on the Orontes bend of the Amuq Valley, was the capital of the kingdom of Mukish, with palaces, temples and a cuneiform archive that recorded life under the shifting shadows of Mitanni and the Hittites. Its cemetery holds a surprise. The townspeople are strikingly homogeneous in their genes, yet strontium isotopes in their teeth flag five of them as incomers who grew up elsewhere, including one who arrived in later childhood. A settled gene pool with real individual mobility, in other words: the city took people in without being remade by them. These twelve are Alalakh's citizens across the Middle and Late Bronze Age.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in Genomic History of Neolithic to Bronze Age Anatolia, Northern Levant, and Southern Caucasus.

Every Ancestry Map includes the free Notable Matches lens: your coordinates are compared to every sequenced member of every catalog entry, and the distance to the closest member is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional space the Distance lens uses. Because these are a small group of real individuals, not a population average, distances naturally run larger than population distances. That is expected, not a poor result. And one thing is never claimed: a small distance means similar ancestry composition, not that the Citizens of Alalakh are your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about Ancestry Map, the full Global25 report.

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  Who were the Citizens of Alalakh?

  The Citizens of Alalakh (c. 2000-1350 BCE, Tell Atchana (Alalakh), Reyhanlı, Hatay, Turkey) are one of the Iconic discoveries entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 12 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "Genomic History of Neolithic to Bronze Age Anatolia, Northern Levant, and Southern Caucasus".

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  What does "matching" the Citizens of Alalakh mean?

  Your Global25 coordinates are compared to the entry's sequenced members and the distance to the closest one is reported, a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional reference space the Distance lens uses. A notable entry is one person or one small burial group, not a population average, so distances naturally run larger than population distances.

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  Are they my ancestor?

  No, and no DNA test can show that. A small distance means your genome sits near theirs in a shared reference space: similar ancestry composition, not descent. Ancestrify never claims a notable individual is your ancestor or relative.

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  How do I see my own distance to the Citizens of Alalakh?

  Notable Matches is a free lens on every Ancestry Map, never sold separately. Order Ancestry Map, our Global25 analysis (29.99 EUR), and your report ranks your coordinates against the full catalog, with a portrait, dossier and map for every entry. The public demo shows the lens with example data.

The catalog holds every published entry across three tiers. Browse the full Notable Matches directory. Nearby entries:

• The Funadomari Jōmon Womanc. 1800-1500 BCE

• The Old Babyloniansc. 1900-1600 BCE

• The Bronze Age Anatolians of Kaman-Kalehöyükc. 2000-1500 BCE

• The Canaanitesc. 2000-1150 BCE

• The Mycenaeans of Mygdaliac. 1600-1450 BCE

• The Cetina Culturec. 2200-1600 BCE

• The Kingdom of El Argarc. 2200-1550 BCE

• The Únětice Culturec. 2200-1600 BCE

• The Trzciniec Culturec. 1650-1250 BCE

• The Mokrin Necropolisc. 2100-1800 BCE

• The Tombs of Aidoniac. 1600-1200 BCE

• The Stone City of Shimaoc. 2150-1800 BCE