Who were the West Anatolian (0 – 600 AD)?

West Anatolian 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 West Anatolian 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 West Anatolian 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 West Anatolian?

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 West Anatolian where it improves the fit.

Can I model West Anatolian 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.

West Anatolian — ancient DNA source population (qpAdm)

Who they were

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

Period: 0 – 600 AD
Era in the analysis: Classical Antiquity
Region: Western Anatolia, Aegean coast
Role in the model: Source (left) population — a reference qpAdm tests against

Western Anatolia under Rome and early Byzantium was the empire's richest and most urbanised province, its cities — Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Sardis — Greek in language and culture but built on an Anatolian population. Ancient genomes show that population to have been a blend of the Bronze and Iron Age Anatolian lineage with Aegean and Balkan ancestry that arrived through Greek colonisation and imperial mobility, producing a profile intermediate between the plateau and the islands that remained stable into the Byzantine period (Lazaridis et al. 2022; Skourtanioti et al. 2020).

This ancestry is the largest single layer in present-day Turks of the Aegean and Marmara coasts, and the closest ancient reference for the Anatolian Greeks and for Greek communities of the islands nearest the coast; it is also related to the Pontic and Cappadocian Greeks further east. In the model it sits between the Anatolian source, which describes the pre-Hellenistic plateau, and the Aegean source across the sea, with the Eastern Mediterranean source to its south.

In Ancestrify's qpAdm service, West Anatolian 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. For Turkish and Anatolian Greek genomes it usually carries a large weight; read it together with the Anatolian and Aegean sources, since the model may divide one signal among the three.

Y haplogroups J2, G2a, R1b and E-V13, and mtDNA H, K, U3 and HV, are common in these samples. A haplogroup alone is never evidence of a share.

In your report
Encompasses the populations of western Anatolia during the Roman and early Byzantine periods (2nd century BCE–7th century CE), corresponding to the Roman province of Asia and adjacent regions along the Aegean coast. Long-standing Ionian and Aeolian Greek colonial settlement beginning in the early 1st millennium BCE produced a Hellenized cultural layer over indigenous Anatolian populations descended from Bronze Age Hittite and Luwian speakers. Archaeogenomic studies of Roman-period individuals from Anatolia reveal remarkable genetic continuity with earlier Iron Age and Classical inhabitants of the region, with local Anatolian ancestry forming the demographic core throughout successive political regimes. Under Roman rule, cities such as Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, and Miletus thrived as cosmopolitan centers connecting the Aegean, eastern Mediterranean, and inland Anatolia, with limited demographic replacement despite intense administrative and commercial integration. This population forms part of the broader Anatolian genetic continuum that persisted from the Late Bronze Age through the Byzantine period and underlies the ancestry of modern western Turkish and Aegean Greek populations.

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 West Anatolian 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 West Anatolian (0 – 600 AD)?
West Anatolian 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 West Anatolian 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 West Anatolian 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 West Anatolian?
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 West Anatolian where it improves the fit.
Can I model West Anatolian 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.