Ever wondered how genetically similar modern Italians are to ancient Romans? Or whether your ancestry group is closer to Bronze Age farmers or Paleolithic hunter-gatherers? These questions pop up constantly in genetics discussions, but getting answers means piecing together scattered data from academic papers and social media posts-one comparison at a time.
Genetic distance is one of the simplest ways to see how populations relate. But until now, exploring it across thousands of modern and ancient groups has been clunky, slow, and very far from interactive.
I built Population Genetic Distance Explorer - Ancients version, a web app that makes it fast and intuitive. This is like the other app -
Population Genetic Distance Explorer - but including ancient genomes.
What you can do with it
🔍 Compare any ancient and modern population side by side and get their Hudson Fst (a robust measure of genetic distance where 0 = identical populations and higher values = greater genetic separation) instantly.
📊 Browse top distances in your chosen range and export results in one click.
🧮 See summaries: mean, max, and min Fst per group.
🎨 Visualize with heatmaps: modern populations on rows, ancients on columns.
🧩 Custom mini-matrices: select up to 5 populations (any mix) and view their distance matrix.
🎲 Surprise me buttons: jump to random “high differentiation” or “low differentiation” pairs.
What is new about this app
Population genetics is about patterns, and patterns come alive when you can explore them interactively. Instead of waiting hours for computations or digging through static tables, you can now move quickly between groups, see differences at a glance, and discover connections you didn’t expect.
Sneak peek
Here are a few screenshots from the app in action:
1. Distance between one modern and one ancient group
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2. Heatmap of Ancient ↔ Modern Fst values
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3. Custom Matrix with multiple populations
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A free version with 10 ancient and 10 modern populations is available at this link.
The full version, with 500+ ancient populations, will be made available to paid subscribers next week!