Who were the Corinthian (200 – 100 BC)?

Corinthian is one of the 37 curated source populations in the Classical Antiquity era of the Ancestrify qpAdm analysis: a group of published ancient genomes from one archaeological context, pooled as a single reference the model can test your genome against.

Does Corinthian in my result mean they were my ancestors?

No. A source population is a reference the model tests against, never a statement about who your ancestors were. A coefficient on this source means the ancestry those burials represent helps explain your genome to within statistical noise — similar ancestry composition, not descent from those individuals. Ancestrify never claims a population is your ancestor.

What does a Corinthian percentage in a qpAdm model mean?

qpAdm estimates the mixture proportions that best explain your genome as a combination of the chosen sources, given a fixed set of outgroup (right) populations, and reports a p-value for whether the model is statistically acceptable together with a standard error for every proportion. The percentage is that estimated share, with its uncertainty published beside it.

How do I get a qpAdm model that uses Corinthian?

Order the Ancestrify qpAdm analysis (€29.99, one-time) and upload the raw file you already have from a consumer test. Your genome is merged into the AADR reference panel and modelled across both eras; each era's model is built from that era's source populations, so a model for the Classical Antiquity era draws on Corinthian where it improves the fit.

Can I model Corinthian ancestry for free first?

Yes. The Ancestrify Lab runs Global25 admixture calculators, a nearest-populations distance tool and an AdmixTools 2 workbench in your browser with no account, and several calculators cover the Classical Antiquity era. Those are G25 fits, not formal qpAdm models — the paid analysis is the one with a p-value.

Corinthian — ancient DNA source population (qpAdm)

Who they were

Artistic interpretation of the Corinthian (AI-generated artwork, not documentary evidence)

Period: 200 – 100 BC
Era in the analysis: Classical Antiquity
Region: Corinthia, northeastern Peloponnese
Role in the model: Source (left) population — a reference qpAdm tests against

Tenea was a small town of the Corinthia on the road from Corinth to Mycenae, which claimed descent from Trojan captives settled there after the war and which supplied colonists to Syracuse. The Corinthian source is built from Hellenistic-period burials at Tenea published by the APOIKIA project (Genome Biology 2026), dated to the second century BC, in the decades around Rome's destruction of Corinth in 146 BC. Their genomes carry the Anatolian-farmer, Iranian- or Caucasus-related and steppe-related ancestry of the Bronze Age Peloponnese, essentially unchanged from the Mycenaean age.

This ancestry is the closest ancient reference for present-day Peloponnesians and for the Greek populations of the old Corinthian colonies in Sicily, the Ionian islands and Epirus, and it is related to the Epirote source, since Amvrakia was a Corinthian foundation. In the model it sits between the Epirote source to the northwest and the Aegean source, which represents the later Roman-era population of the same world.

In Ancestrify's qpAdm service, Corinthian is a source in the "Classical Antiquity" era. The report shows its weight with a standard error and a Z-score, so you can see not only how much of the model it carries but how confidently that share is separated from zero, and a model that cannot support it is rejected rather than published. Its weight is best read against the Epirote and Aegean sources, since the three describe neighbouring regions of the same Greek world at different dates and the model may divide one signal among them.

Y haplogroups J2, G2a, R1b and E-V13, and mtDNA H, K, J and T2, are reported from Hellenistic Peloponnesian sites. A haplogroup alone is never evidence of a share.

In your report
The Hellenistic Greeks of Tenea in the Corinthia, a small town on the road from Corinth to Mycenae that claimed descent from Trojan captives and sent colonists to Syracuse. Their genomes, Hellenistic-period burials of the second century BC published by the APOIKIA project (Genome Biology 2026), in the decades around the Roman destruction of Corinth in 146 BC, carry the Anatolian farmer, Caucasus and Iranian related and steppe related ancestry of the Bronze Age Peloponnese, essentially unchanged from the Mycenaean age. This is the closest ancient reference for present-day Peloponnesians and for the Greek populations of the old Corinthian colonies in Sicily, the Ionian islands and Epirus, and it is related to the Epirote source, since Amvrakia was a Corinthian foundation. This is the source a Peloponnesian or southern Greek genome is tested against for its Hellenistic era share.

Artwork is an AI-generated artistic interpretation informed by the archaeological record — not documentary evidence.

Where this population sits in the model

The Ancestrify qpAdm analysis models your genome once per era. The Classical Antiquity era has 37 curated source populations, and Corinthian is one of them: every candidate model for that era is a combination of these sources, tested against a fixed set of outgroup populations, and only a model that passes the statistical fit check is published — with a p-value, and a standard error on every proportion.

A reference, not a verdict: every population on this page is a source the model tests your genome against — a well-sampled point in ancient genetic space that a mixture of ancestries can be expressed in terms of. A weight on it means your genome is well described as partly resembling those people; it is never a statement that they, specifically, were your ancestors, and a population that fits well is not the only one that could.

Read how the method works on the qpAdm analysis page, or the definitions in the glossary.

Model it yourself for free

The Ancestrify Lab runs in your browser, with no account. Paste a Global25 row into an admixture calculator that covers the Classical Antiquity era, rank the closest ancient populations in the distance tool, or run f4, qpWave and qpAdm on the public panel in the AdmixTools 2 workbench. These are Global25 fits and exploratory statistics, not the formal qpAdm model of the paid analysis.

Questions

Who were the Corinthian (200 – 100 BC)?
Corinthian is one of the 37 curated source populations in the Classical Antiquity era of the Ancestrify qpAdm analysis: a group of published ancient genomes from one archaeological context, pooled as a single reference the model can test your genome against.
Does Corinthian in my result mean they were my ancestors?
No. A source population is a reference the model tests against, never a statement about who your ancestors were. A coefficient on this source means the ancestry those burials represent helps explain your genome to within statistical noise — similar ancestry composition, not descent from those individuals. Ancestrify never claims a population is your ancestor.
What does a Corinthian percentage in a qpAdm model mean?
qpAdm estimates the mixture proportions that best explain your genome as a combination of the chosen sources, given a fixed set of outgroup (right) populations, and reports a p-value for whether the model is statistically acceptable together with a standard error for every proportion. The percentage is that estimated share, with its uncertainty published beside it.
How do I get a qpAdm model that uses Corinthian?
Order the Ancestrify qpAdm analysis (€29.99, one-time) and upload the raw file you already have from a consumer test. Your genome is merged into the AADR reference panel and modelled across both eras; each era's model is built from that era's source populations, so a model for the Classical Antiquity era draws on Corinthian where it improves the fit.
Can I model Corinthian ancestry for free first?
Yes. The Ancestrify Lab runs Global25 admixture calculators, a nearest-populations distance tool and an AdmixTools 2 workbench in your browser with no account, and several calculators cover the Classical Antiquity era. Those are G25 fits, not formal qpAdm models — the paid analysis is the one with a p-value.

More populations from the Classical Antiquity era

Browse the full directory of source populations, or continue with another population from the same era: