Who were the Nuragic Sardinian (1800 – 700 BC)?

Nuragic Sardinian is one of the 27 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 Nuragic Sardinian 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 Nuragic Sardinian 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 Nuragic Sardinian?

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 Nuragic Sardinian where it improves the fit.

Can I model Nuragic Sardinian 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.

Nuragic Sardinian — ancient DNA source population (qpAdm)

Who they were

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

Period: 1800 – 700 BC
Era in the analysis: Classical Antiquity
Region: Sardinia
Role in the model: Source (left) population — a reference qpAdm tests against

The Nuragic civilisation built the thousands of stone towers that still mark Sardinia's landscape and flourished through the Bronze and early Iron Ages. Ancient genomes show a population that had barely changed since the island's Neolithic settlement: overwhelmingly Anatolian-farmer ancestry with a small Western hunter-gatherer share, and almost none of the steppe-related ancestry that had transformed the rest of Europe by this time (Marcus et al. 2020; Fernandes et al. 2020). Sardinia is the clearest case of an island sheltering an early European gene pool from later continental turnover.

Present-day Sardinians remain the closest living population to Europe's Neolithic farmers, and Nuragic-related ancestry survives as the island's foundation beneath the Phoenician, Punic, Roman and later layers; it also appears in Corsica and, faintly, along the Tyrrhenian coast. In the model it is the most farmer-rich source in the era, and the closest ancient reference for the deep Mediterranean component in any Italian or western Mediterranean genome.

In Ancestrify's qpAdm service, Nuragic Sardinian 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 the era's cleanest measure of unmixed Neolithic farmer heritage, and it is usually well separated from the steppe-richer Italian and Iberian sources.

Y haplogroups I2a1, G2a and R1b-V88, and mtDNA H, K, J and T2, are typical of these samples. A haplogroup alone is never evidence of a share.

In your report
The Bronze Age Nuragic civilisation of Sardinia (~1800–700 BCE), builders of the roughly 7,000 stone nuraghi — truncated-cone towers of dry-laid basalt that still dot the island — together with the giants' tombs, sacred wells and the bronzetti votive figurines of a rich island culture. Ancient DNA shows a remarkably continuous population dominated by Early European Farmer ancestry, with only a small Western Hunter-Gatherer contribution and very little of the Steppe-derived ancestry that transformed the rest of Bronze Age Europe. That isolation is why modern Sardinians remain the closest living population to Neolithic Europeans, and why the island is the reference point for early farmer ancestry across the Mediterranean.

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 27 curated source populations, and Nuragic Sardinian 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 Nuragic Sardinian (1800 – 700 BC)?
Nuragic Sardinian is one of the 27 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 Nuragic Sardinian 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 Nuragic Sardinian 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 Nuragic Sardinian?
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 Nuragic Sardinian where it improves the fit.
Can I model Nuragic Sardinian 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.