The Iron Age People of the Swat Valley

In the Swat Valley of northern Pakistan, the Italian Archaeological Mission excavated cemeteries at Loebanr, Katelai, Udegram and Butkara, the Swat Protohistoric Graves, whose dead have become key witnesses in one of archaeology's great debates. Their genomes carry steppe ancestry layered onto ancestry from the Indus Periphery, mixed roughly 26 generations before they died, around 1900 to 1500 BCE. Strikingly, that steppe ancestry arrived largely through women: only five percent of 44 Y chromosomes belong to the steppe lineage R1a-Z93, against about twenty percent steppe ancestry in the genome as a whole. These twelve, from Katelai, Loebanr and Udegram, are the strongest evidence yet linking the steppe expansion to the arrival of Indo-Iranian languages in South Asia.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in The formation of human populations in South and Central 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 Iron Age People of the Swat Valley 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 Iron Age People of the Swat Valley?

  The Iron Age People of the Swat Valley (c. 1400-800 BCE, Loebanr, Swat Valley, Pakistan) are one of the Iconic discoveries entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 12 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia".

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  What does "matching" the Iron Age People of the Swat Valley 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 Iron Age People of the Swat Valley?

  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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