Middle Eastern Ancestry From Raw DNA: Levant, Arabia, Anatolia, Caucasus, North Africa
A free, independent Middle East breakdown from your raw file: the Levant, Arabia, Anatolia and Iran, the Caucasus and North Africa, with the reference groups behind each region named, and how to read the result.
No DNA test yet?
The HealthOS DNA Kit reads your maternal line, your paternal (Y) line if you have a Y chromosome, your ancestry across 15 regions and the ancient peoples you sit closest to. Spit in a tube at home; the lab is in Germany and the raw file is yours.
See the DNA kitYou can get a free, independent Middle Eastern ancestry breakdown from your raw DNA file at healthosx.com/dna. It splits the region into the Levant, Arabia, Anatolia and Iran, the Caucasus, and North Africa, names the reference groups behind each one, and lists the present-day populations you're closest to, from Palestinian and Druze to Saudi, Bedouin, Emirati, Kurdish and Moroccan.
Why a second opinion helps here
Middle Eastern results are among the least stable in consumer DNA. The populations are genetically close, reference samples are thinner than for Europe, and companies rarely say which groups define each region. So the same person can be mostly "Levant" at one company and split between Levant, Anatolia and Arabia at another, and results can shift when a company updates its model.
A breakdown against a panel whose groups are named lets you see why you got the result you got, and which parts of it hold up across tools.
The five regions, and who defines them
The analysis is supervised: each region is pinned to present-day reference groups from the Allen Ancient DNA Resource before fitting.
- Levant: Palestinian, Druze, Syrian, Lebanese (Muslim, Christian and unlabelled), Jordanian, Assyrian
- Arabia: Bedouin, Saudi, Emirati, Yemeni (highlands, north-west and Hadramawt)
- Anatolia and Iran: Turkish (two groups), Iranian (two groups), Bandari, Kurdish
- Caucasus: Georgian, Armenian, Abkhaz, Chechen, Ingush, Lezgin and ten more North Caucasus peoples
- North Africa: Egyptian, Mozabite Berber, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Sahrawi, Libyan
The closest-populations ranking uses a wider list of 298 groups that adds Cypriot, Somali, Makrani, Yemeni and several Jewish groups, among others.
| Region | Reference groups |
|---|---|
| Levant | Palestinian, Druze, Syrian, Lebanese (Muslim, Christian and unlabelled), Jordanian, Assyrian |
| Arabia | Bedouin, Saudi, Emirati, Yemeni (highlands, north-west and Hadramawt) |
| North Africa | Egyptian, Mozabite Berber, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Sahrawi, Libyan |
| Anatolia & Iran | Turkish (two groups), Iranian (two groups), Bandari, Kurdish |
| Caucasus | Georgian, Armenian, Abkhaz, Chechen, Ingush, Circassian, Adyghe, Kabardian, Ossetian, Avar and six more |
| Southern Europe | Sardinian, Italian (north, centre, south, Tuscany), Sicilian, Greek, Spanish, Maltese, Albanian, Bulgarian |
| Western Europe | French, Basque, English, British, Orcadian, Icelandic, Norwegian, north-west European |
| North-East Europe | Russian, Ukrainian (two groups), Belarusian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Finnish, Mordvin |
| South & Central Asia | Baloch, Brahui, Pashtun, Kalash, Burusho, Sindhi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Telugu, Sri Lankan Tamil and four more |
| East Asia | Han Chinese (three groups), Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, Dai and ten more |
| Southeast Asia | Vietnamese, Cambodian, Khmer, Thai, Lao, Burmese, Malay, Dusun, Murut, Kankanaey |
| Siberia | Sakha (Yakut), Nganasan, Evenk, Even, Chukchi, Koryak, Yukaghir and five more |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | Yoruba, Esan, Mandinka, Mende, Gambian, Luhya, Luo, Mbuti, BaAka, Ju|’hoan, Chewa, Tumbuka, Yao |
| Americas | Karitiana, Suruí, Maya, Akimel O’odham (Pima), Mixe, Zapotec, Mixtec |
| Oceania | Papuan, Nasioi, Aboriginal Australian |
Reference individuals come from the Allen Ancient DNA Resource (Human Origins), up to 20 per group, 157 groups in all (panel of 2026-09-24). The model is supervised: each person is assigned to a region before the fit, so a number labelled “Levant” is Levant by construction.
What results typically look like, and how to read them
The Middle East has had thousands of years of trade, migration and conquest, and your result will show it.
- Levantine people often show mostly Levant with Arabia, Anatolia and Caucasus shares. The Levant sits genetically between them.
- Gulf and Peninsular people often show a large Arabia share, often with some Anatolia and Iran, and sometimes East African or South Asian components that match known trade routes.
- Iraqi, Kurdish and Iranian people often split between Anatolia and Iran, the Levant and the Caucasus.
- Egyptian and Maghrebi people show North Africa with Levant and Arabia shares, and often some Sub-Saharan African.
Neighbouring regions trade percentages easily. The honest reading is at the level of "mostly Levant with Anatolian influence", not "exactly 37.4%".
What it can't tell you
- Your tribe, family or village. Autosomal ancestry describes populations. For paternal lineage, see what Y-DNA can and can't say about Arab tribal lineage.
- Religion or ethnicity. Lebanese Christians and Muslims, for example, overlap heavily genetically.
- Anything medical. For that, the same /dna report reads the variants that matter most in the region: G6PD deficiency, the Arabian lactase-persistence allele (not only the European one), and lipoprotein(a).
Your father's and mother's lines
The breakdown above mixes all your ancestors together. Two lines can be read on their own: your paternal line (Y-DNA, if you have a Y chromosome) and your maternal line (mtDNA). Each haplogroup says where that one line is common today. It doesn't name a tribe or a family.
Find your paternal and maternal line from your 23andMe or AncestryDNA file, free, in your browser: healthosx.com/dna/haplogroup. Nothing is uploaded and there's no account. Or open the sample report first: its paternal line is J-P58 and its maternal line H1.
Choosing a file. The report is read on your own device.
The short version: what is worth acting on, first.
How to run it
- 1.Download your raw data (23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, or a whole-genome VCF).
- 2.Choose it at healthosx.com/dna. The health and trait report runs in your browser, and the full report opens with a free account (an email code).
- 3.Unlock the ancestry analysis after agreeing to it. Only the markers it needs are sent, and they're kept with your result until you delete them. It takes a minute or two.
- 4.Your paternal and maternal lines are in the same report. For just those two, the haplogroup finder needs no account.
The page is also in Arabic.
See your Middle East in five regions, not one: healthosx.com/dna
Just your paternal and maternal line? The free haplogroup finder reads them in your browser.
Common questions
- How do I get an Arab ancestry breakdown (Levant, Arabia) from my raw DNA data?
- Choose your raw file (23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA or a whole-genome VCF) at healthosx.com/dna and run ancestry. The Levant, Arabia, Anatolia and Iran, the Caucasus and North Africa are separate regions rather than one "Middle East" bucket, each pinned to named reference groups, and it also ranks the present-day populations you’re closest to. It is free. The ancestry step sends a list of markers from your file, not the file itself, and only with your consent.
- Why do DNA companies give me different Middle Eastern results?
- The populations are genetically close, reference samples are thinner than for Europe, and companies rarely say which groups define each region. So the same person can be mostly Levant at one company and split between Levant, Anatolia and Arabia at another. Read it at the level of "mostly Levant with Anatolian influence", not exact percentages.
- Can a DNA test tell which Arab tribe I come from?
- No. A tribe is a family history, and lineage is established by family records and Sharia, not by a test. Autosomal ancestry describes populations, not a tribe, family or village. A Y-DNA haplogroup follows one paternal line: even deep Y testing can only show that two men share a paternal ancestor and roughly when, and many tribes share one branch while one tribe carries several. You can find your paternal and maternal line free, in your browser, at healthosx.com/dna/haplogroup.
No raw DNA file yet?
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