The Medieval Islanders of Soqotra

Soqotra lies far out in the Arabian Sea at the crossroads of Africa and Arabia. Its medieval dead were laid in tafoni, natural rounded hollows in the karst that islanders used for storage, shelter and burial. Their genomes point to the mainland: about 86 percent of their ancestry resembles the Hadramawt population of Yemen today and about 14 percent is Iranian-related, with essentially no sub-Saharan African admixture (unusual for Arabia) and an exceptionally high share of Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer ancestry. Paternal lineages are nearly all J2b. The team worked with the Soqotra Governorate, the antiquities authority and village sheikhs, and trained islanders to record and collect the burials. These twelve are Muslim-era forebears of a living community.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in Medieval DNA from Soqotra points to Eurasian origins of an isolated population at the crossroads of Africa and Arabia.

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 Medieval Islanders of Soqotra 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 Medieval Islanders of Soqotra?

  The Medieval Islanders of Soqotra (c. 650-1150 CE, Soqotra island, Yemen) are one of the Historical figures entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 12 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "Medieval DNA from Soqotra points to Eurasian origins of an isolated population at the crossroads of Africa and Arabia".

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  What does "matching" the Medieval Islanders of Soqotra 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 Medieval Islanders of Soqotra?

  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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