The Dong Son Drum-Makers

The Dong Son culture of northern Vietnam is famous above all for its great bronze drums. At Nui Nap in Thanh Hoa province, about ten kilometres from the site that gave the culture its name, more than thirty extended burials held bronze spearheads, daggers, axes and drums, glass beads and the occasional Han coin, along with the earliest verified betel-nut use in northern Vietnam. Four of those people, buried between about 390 and 180 BCE, are gathered here. Their genomes show that Bronze Age Vietnam had seen a large turnover since the Neolithic community of Man Bac, with a new influx of ancestry from southern China. Present-day Kinh Vietnamese are the closest living population to these drum-makers, even though the Kinh speak an Austroasiatic language.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in The prehistoric peopling of Southeast Asia.

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 Dong Son Drum-Makers are your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about Ancestry Map, the full Global25 report.

• 01

  Who were the Dong Son Drum-Makers?

  The Dong Son Drum-Makers (c. 390-180 BCE, Nui Nap, Dong Son district, Thanh Hoa province, Vietnam) are one of the Iconic discoveries entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 4 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "The prehistoric peopling of Southeast Asia".

• 02

  What does "matching" the Dong Son Drum-Makers 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 Dong Son Drum-Makers?

  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:

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