I’m a Jewish mutt 🐕 I’m about 2/3 Ashkenazi. My mom is 100% Ashkenazi. My dad’s mom is 3/4 Ashkenazi and 1/4 Sephardic. And my dad’s dad was half Sephardic and half Mizrahi. So glad they finally added Mizrahi as a category!

Hi!
Would you guys recommend Ancestral Genome or Illustrative DNA?

1st photo is the old results. 2nd is from recent update.

A tiny increase from my previous 2025 results, which was 27%.

2 plausible admixture models for East Mediterranean Jewish populations, including Ashkenazi Jews (AJs), Sephardic Jews, and North African Jews, alongside several control populations.

To reduce individual variation and noise, I grouped each Jewish cluster using sample-size-weighted G25 averages.

Control populations and expectations

I included seven control populations to examine whether the models produce historically and genetically plausible patterns:

1. Sicilians (Messina): Representing a southern Italian population with a relatively strong Levantine shift and limited Northern European-related ancestry.
2. Tuscans: Expected to show little or no Levantine-related ancestry in this particular model, alongside higher Italic and Northern European-related components.
3. Samaritans: Expected to show predominantly Southern Levantine ancestry, given their strong southern genetic shift and relative genetic isolation, which may have preserved aspects of earlier Southern Levantine population structure.
4. Palestinian Christians: Expected to show substantial Southern Levantine ancestry alongside a relatively larger Roman-period Northern Levantine component, potentially reflecting continued population interactions during the Roman and Byzantine periods.
5. Lebanese Christians: Being relatively more northern-shifted, they are expected to show higher Northern Levantine, Iranian Plateau-related, and Roman-period components, potentially reflecting historical interactions with northern Levantine and Syro-Mesopotamian populations.
6. Syrian Jews: Potentially reflecting a mixture of older Arabic-speaking Jewish communities (Musta'arabim) and Sephardic-related ancestry, while remaining genetically close to other Levantine populations.
7. Druze: Expected to show a relatively higher Iranian Plateau-related component compared to Palestinian Levantines, potentially reflecting ancestry shared with Syro-Mesopotamian populations. Syrian Jews and Druze are also genetically close in G25 space.

The difference between the two models?

The main difference is the inclusion of a seemingly Nabataean-related ancient sample within the Southern Levantine source group in Model 2.

This sample exhibits a predominantly Levantine genetic profile, rather than a profile entirely distinct from the populations of the Southern Levant. My hypothesis is that similar ancestry may have been present among several ancient populations of the region, including Nabataeans, Edomites, Idumaeans, and Qedarites. We still lack samples though to prove that.

The reasoning behind including this sample comes from earlier modeling of Southern Levantine minorities. In previous tests, adding it substantially improved the fits for Samaritans. Also, without it, the models often assigned them Iranian Plateau-related ancestry, which largely disappeared once the sample was introduced. Palestinian Christians and Jordanian Christians also appeared to benefit from its inclusion.

I therefore decided to test whether the same source would improve the models for Jewish populations.

Interestingly, the Jewish groups also showed preference in including the Nabataean sample.

One possible historical explanation worth exploring is the incorporation of Idumaean populations into Jewish communities during the Hasmonean period. If ancestry resembling this Nabataean-related sample was also present among Idumaeans (who are Edomites that mixed with ancient Arab populations, including Qedarites and Nabataeans), their incorporation could potentially have contributed to the genetic profiles of later Jewish populations.

Last note:

The Jewish populations were grouped into broader clusters using weighted averages to reduce individual-level noise and make the general patterns easier to compare.

These are population averages, not representations of every individual. Ancestry proportions can vary considerably within each group.

Ancestry’s most recent update. One Jewish grandparent. Think it’s fairly accurate.

I know 3% isn't much but I am curious how this part of my ancestry might have come to be. My father is from Bolivia and his grandfather is from Spain. I know it's not my mom's side of the family because she's as White-German as you can get and according to her DNA test she has no Jewish ancestry.

Iranian Jewish models with modern populations. I'm not sure what Assyrian or Mesopotamian Jew is.

Hi everyone! My father was born in Israel, but I don’t have any contact with him or his family, so I know virtually nothing about that side of my background. All I know is that he’s Israeli and Jewish. My ancestry results show a significant amount of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, and I’m hoping someone here might be able to help me understand them a little bette, especially the North African Sephardic side as there is less detail. Unfortunately, I have no way of finding out more through him. I’d really love to understand where my paternal family might have originally come from. I know DNA results can only tell us so much, but I was wondering if anyone recognises this particular combination of ancestry or could offer any insight into what it might suggest about my family origins. Any help would be really appreciated!

Hello everyone! I'm Ukrainian and I recently took a haplogroup test. I got this result L-FT222419 and was wondering: what are the chances that this haplogroup is connected to Karaites or Krymchaks? By the way, on my mother's side, I also have distant Ashkenazi roots :) Thanks in advance for the information!

My mother is Brazilian of Moroccan Jewish ancestry from both sides and my father is Brazilian with one known Portuguese ancestor (his grandfather went to Brazil from Ovar, in Portugal), but the rest is unknown. I was surprised with these results, because I was expecting a lot more Portuguese to show up. The African and Native were expected because it's very common for Brazilians to have at least a distant ancestor from these populations. The Egyptian part also surprised me, but that probably comes from my mother, as does the Tunisian and Ashkenazi percentages.

The weirdest part of my results was the Ancient Origins breakdown. I have selected Global because the genetic fit is better and because of my mixed ancestry. At first it shows Greek at the top, then Roman Italian. I thought "fine, it's still close enough to the Mediterranean zone", but then French becomes the top in the Middle Ages? Did somebody get similar results? Can somebody explain this to me?

When I compare myself to modern populations in Europe it shows that I'm closer to Greeks and Ashkenazi Jews, not French.

Another thing that was strange and a bit disappointing was that the notable individuals that are "closer" to me genetically are actually really distant, with a genetic fit above 6.000. Is this because they don't have a large amount of historical samples to compare or am I too uncommon?

I don’t have screenshots from the old results, but they were 100% various ashkenazi.