Last fall PBS aired a special, Quest for the Phoenicians, with Spencer Wells. Via this page I find that one of Wells’ most interesting discoveries is that the island of Malta seems to exhibit a high frequency of haplotypes which suggest a Levantine origin within the past few thousand years. If you watch this video (control-f “from geneticist Spencer Wells”), note that Wells excludes an Islamic or “Neolithic farming” source for these haplotypes, so by a process of exclusion the Phoenicians seem the most plausible candidates. Seeing that Malta is a small and somewhat isolated island, it should be no great surprise that the frequency of Levantine Y lineages might be higher here than around ancient Carthage in modern Tunisia, which likely had a far larger native substrate and was subject to continuous genetic exchange with the hinterland for thousands of years after Cato’s work was done.
Now, someone might want to tell this guy about the origins of his adopted co-nationals.
Posted by razib at 01:27 AM