The Crusader-Era Burials of Sidon

Beside the Crusader castle at Sidon, two burial pits held at least twenty-five men, thrown in without arrangement, many with battle trauma, some burnt, and among them a coin struck in Italy between 1245 and 1250. These five are war dead of the Crusader era. Three are locals, genetically indistinguishable from present-day Lebanese; two are Europeans, carrying the paternal lineage R1b and clustering with Spanish, French and North Italian populations. Others in the pits were of mixed descent, evidence of intermarriage between newcomers and locals. Yet the Crusader admixture proved a transient pulse: it left no lasting mark on the Lebanese of today. They are remembered here simply as men who died together.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in A Transient Pulse of Genetic Admixture from the Crusaders in the Near East Identified from Ancient Genome Sequences.

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 Crusader-Era Burials of Sidon are your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about Ancestry Map, the full Global25 report.

• 01

  Who were the Crusader-Era Burials of Sidon?

  The Crusader-Era Burials of Sidon (c. 1150-1290 CE, Sidon (Saida), South Lebanon, Lebanon) are one of the Historical figures entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 5 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "A Transient Pulse of Genetic Admixture from the Crusaders in the Near East Identified from Ancient Genome Sequences".

• 02

  What does "matching" the Crusader-Era Burials of Sidon 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.

• 03

  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.

• 04

  How do I see my own distance to the Crusader-Era Burials of Sidon?

  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 Piast Dynasty12th-16th century CE

• The Christians of Stratonikeiac. 1000-1400 CE

• The Well-man of Sverresborgd. 1197 CE

• Duke Béla of Macsó1245-1272 CE

• Grand Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich1250-1294 CE

• Golden Horde Elite of the Jochi Khan Mausoleum13th-14th century CE

• Prince Izyaslav Ingvarevichc. 1180-1223 CE

• The Aba Clan1276-1450 CE

• The Medieval Rus' of Galiciac. 1000-1300 CE

• King Béla III of Hungary1148-1196 CE

• The Mongols of the Empirec. 1280-1440 CE

• Prince Gleb Svyatoslavich1052-1078 CE