r/illustrativeDNA

I am a Christian from Southern Syria, and have Lebanese Christian ancestry from my mother’s side. My grandfather is from Zahle, Lebanon. I am confused about my results as the Levantine calculator seems to show a greater distance. it’s not just all above 2.0 but also almost entirely 2.6.

The global calculator has less of a distance and seems like I am mixed. Also it says my closest population is Palestinian Christian at 2.7 distance and even my G25 coordinates from Davidski say my closest population are Lebanese Christians at 2.6 distance.

My hunter/farmer breakdown is 51% Anatolian which is usually too high for Jordanian or Palestinian Christians and my Natufian seems to be in between Nothern and Southern Levantine Christians. My Zagros is probably eating up my CHG.

I’m just very confused, can someone help please? Even my unsupervised analysis is very far in distance

Hello! This my result, I don't know if is it quiet standard comparing to other Tunisians. My result shows a high distance with north africain, including Tunisians. Could you infer my true origins?

Hey friends! I've been a lurker for a long time and haven't posted because half of the sub is posts from Ashkenazi. Figured I'd share my results for fun, I think even if they are typical there is some interesting stuff to unpack. This has probably all been said before but I felt it was finally time to share! I'll include my super unprofessional analysis and what I observed since getting the results, and a brief background on my family. Sorry in advance for the long post, it's been 'brewing! 😂

My family is Ashkenazi Jewish as far as we can trace, originating mostly in modern Belarus, Ukraine, and Hungary. Pretty split between Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) and Galicianers (Jews from historic Galicia, now southern Poland and Ukraine). My family have always referred to themselves as "Russian Jews". Being the "family tree guy" in the family I never took that claim at face value. Many came from the then Russian Empire but none from the modern borders of the Russian Federation.

Phenotypically we are all over the place which is common for AJs. My paternal side is very Hellenic/Italian/Levantine or even Persian-passing, to the point my Dad has had people approach him speaking Farsi before. Very olive skin and thick, dark hair. My maternal side looks much more mixed-european and could probably pass all over Southern and Central Europe. Typically fairer skin, lighter brown hair and even some redheads, nobody is "stereotypically Jewish" looking. Ironically, my Kohen/Levi lineage is on my maternal side: My Maternal Grandfather was a Kohen but per our rules that was not passed to me since it goes through the father. I'm not ready to post myself, but I'm very much a 50/50 mix of how my parents look, which I guess makes sense 😄

Ancestry: The 1% Nordic was Norwegian for years and updated to Denmark maybe a year ago.

Illustrative:

AHG is as expected, EHG and Natufian are quite lower than expected, and Zagros and CHG are higher than expected. I know these % have lots of crossover, and with Jews coming from bottlenecks we have some unique markers that are tough to place. All AJs seem to have a tiny bit of Yellow River which is fascinating, maybe Silk Road?

- Bronze Age is pretty typical from what I've seen on here. Iron Age has 38.8% Phonecian and 30% Italian/Etruscan is totally fascinating to me. Even with all the admixture (based on the other calculators) those 2 tell quite the story. Colchian was pretty interesting to me, as well as some of the trace populations there.

- Late Antiquity also was fascinating: 45% Roman Levant and 40% Roman Italy plus 14% Germanic... that's pretty well-rounded Roman 😄

- The Middle Ages attempt to categorize my non-AJ admixture is interesting, I think 7.4% Insular Celt is highly unlikely and just a misread of Gaulish or something similar. Slavic is way lower than expected makes me believe the majority of admixture was before the move to Eastern Europe, or possibly "on the way".

In terms of closest populations, I think it's interesting I'm shifted more to Greek and Southern Italian than their reference population for Ashkenazi. It's particularly interesting how close I am to Anatolia, which is geographically in between Southern Europe and the Levant. Not sure if that's just the "average" of everything put together for me, or if there is genuine shared ancestry with Anatolian populations.

Love to hear any analysis, thoughts, or just say what's up✌️

I wonder if it appears this way because of my Slavic admixture, but Thracians were also pre-Slavic Bulgarians, so it doesn’t really make sense.

1. Maternal & Paternal Haplogroups E-M123 & L2a1
2. Tribe: Kawahla Kamalab - more specifically Shanabla Al Gezira (not to be confused with Shanabla Kordofan)
3. Located in: Nayel, Al-Kabur, Al-Musallamiyah, Arbagi, Fiteis, Abderahman, Algoz, Al Nedeyana, Madani, Wad Biliya, Al Marabi3a, Tanoub, Wad Hussein, Al Mahas, Al-Sa3dab etc.
4. Common family names: Al-Nuwayri, Shamboul, Masaad.

A little background: My family is from the Kamalab branch of the Kawahla Tribe in central Sudan, mainly around Wad Madani, Nayel, Musallamiyah, and Arbagi. According to tribal genealogy, the Kawahla trace their lineage back to Kahil bin Amer and ultimately to Al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, one of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions and a member of Quraysh. The tribe migrated from Arabia into Egypt and later Sudan during the early Islamic period, where they mixed with local Nubian and Arab populations and became one of the major Arab confederations in Sudan. The Kamalab (“sons of Kamal”) emerged as a respected Kawahla sub-clan known for leadership, scholarship, and governance in Gezira and the White Nile regions. Oral histories also mention a massacre of the Kamalab by a Ja’aliyyin leader in the 1700s, after which the lineage was rebuilt through a surviving child named ʿUrwa. Later, Sheikh Shamboul, a Kamalab figure, established the Shanabla of Gezira (not to be confused with the Shanabla of Kordofan), whose descendants settled around Nayel and Wad Madani. During the Mahdist wars, Madani wad Shamboul fought with Hicks Pasha’s forces and died at the Battle of Shaykan in 1883. Under British rule, Nazir Masaad from the Kamalab became a prominent tribal leader in Musallamiyah. Today, many Kamalab and Shanabla families still maintain strong roots in Gezira, while also preserving a mixed Sudanese Arab and Nubian identity shaped by centuries of migration, intermarriage, and Sudanese history.

Results+ Haplogroup+ Threeway+ pic

So my mother is 1/2 from Berlin 1/2 from Akşehir(Konya) my Father is from Halfetı Şanlıurfa our village is a Barak Turkmen settlement. Our Tribe is said to migrated later on at the end of the 14th century from Khorasan to Anatolia. Genetically it looks like a Scythian Anatolian mix kinda because i have so less east asian admixture probably. If someone Can teach me more i'm more than happy. And please no racism or Fat shaming 😅❤️

Grandma is Moroccan Jew with distant non Jewish chleuh origins
Grandpa Romanian Jew
Grandma is half Belarusian Jew half Chuvash
Grandpa is half Belarusian Slav quarter Cossack quarter Tatar

Croat from Lika, Moslavina, Turopolje. Comments?

My background is majority Irish. My maternal great-grandparents immigrated from Donegal to Philly in the late 1920s.

The first is using the global calculator, and the second is using the Ireland & Great Britain calculator. Which do you think is the most accurate calculator given my background?

It’s interesting that the global calculator picked up on the small percentage of Baltic I received on prior Ancestry results, and the Ireland and Great Britain picked up on some Finnish that was seen in my “hacked” Ancestry results.

I think the Zagrosian Neolithic is inflated simply because IllustrativeDNA doesn't calculate the pure WHG separately from the Neolithic, removing percentages from the Yamnaya Steppe. Meanwhile, the 2.8% "Iberomarusian" would be nothing more than the Natufian of the Chalcolithic period around 4000 BC, which translates to 1.2% as additional post-Neolithic Levantine Natufian.