The People of Gordion

Gordion was the capital of Phrygia, the city of the Midas legend, excavated by Penn Museum teams since 1950. These five, though, are not the Phrygians of the old stories. Only one of them lived before the Persians took Anatolia; the rest span the Hellenistic and Roman centuries, when Galatian Celts held the site and left evidence of sacrificial ritual, commingled human and animal bone bearing butchery marks. Four are women, and one is a small boy of between four and eight, laid down in that sacrificial context. Their genomes are homogeneous northwest Anatolian blended with Caucasus hunter-gatherer ancestry, with only a trace of Eastern European hunter-gatherer descent.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe.

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 People of Gordion 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 People of Gordion?

  The People of Gordion (c. 775 BCE-245 CE, Gordion (Yassıhöyük), Polatlı, Ankara, Turkey) are one of the Iconic discoveries entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 5 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe".

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  What does "matching" the People of Gordion 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 People of Gordion?

  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 Dong Son Drum-Makersc. 390-180 BCE

• The Qin Ancestorsc. 400-200 BCE

• The Lost City of Teneac. 525 BCE-200 CE

• The La Tène Celts of Bohemiac. 430-230 BCE

• The Saka of the Tian Shanc. 350-25 BCE

• The Bog People of Denmarkc. 800 BCE-100 CE

• The Celts of the Cornaux Bridgec. 260-80 BCE

• The Chariot Riders of East Yorkshirec. 230-110 BCE

• The Vergina Royal Tombsc. 400-350 BCE

• The Balkan Celtsc. 300-50 BCE

• The Carthaginiansc. 600-146 BCE

• The Pazyryk Horse-Lordsc. 500-300 BCE