A week ago I connected the origins of Islam to genetics. By coincidence, an ancient DNA paper came out yesterday which speaks to particular historical points in the Hebrew Bible.
Ancient DNA sheds light on the genetic origins of early Iron Age Philistines:
The ancient Mediterranean port city of Ashkelon, identified as “Philistine” during the Iron Age, underwent a marked cultural change between the Late Bronze and the early Iron Age. It has been long debated whether this change was driven by a substantial movement of people, possibly linked to a larger migration of the so-called “Sea Peoples.” Here, we report genome-wide data of 10 Bronze and Iron Age individuals from Ashkelon. We find that the early Iron Age population was genetically distinct due to a European-related admixture. This genetic signal is no longer detectible in the later Iron Age population. Our results support that a migration event occurred during the Bronze to Iron Age transition in Ashkelon but did not leave a long-lasting genetic signature.
The most likely scenario has long been that the Biblical Philistines were a composition population, made of Aegean folk who mixed with the local Canaanite substrate. These results confirm that.
That might seem revolutionary, but anyone who reads about the history of the Bible knows that all likely or plausible points are contested. Establishing that the Philistines were indeed associated with the migration of Aegean “Sea Peoples” though a genetic connection between them and Southern Europeans at least narrows the window of argumentation.
A bigger issue is one mooted by many Biblical scholars: what were the origins of the Israelites? The standard narrative implies they were exogenous, with Abraham being from Ur (southern Mesopotamia), with a sojourn in Egypt. But most non-fundamentalist scholars believe that the Hebrews emerged organically out of the Canaanites. The relevance of genetics is clear then: at some point in the near future the origins of the people of Judaea will become more clear. My bet is that it does turn out that they’re mostly Canaanite, though I wouldn’t be surprised by some exogenous signal, as one sees with the Philistines, who by the time of genotyping seems to have been heavily Levantine, and eventually were likely absorbed..
Since the birth of Syro-Palestinian archaeology as a field, people have obsessed over the material cultural and demographic changes accompanying each major wave of destruction and resettlement from the EB collapse (associated with the 4.2 kiloyear event) to the Assyrian and Babylonian deportations.
Even though people all are already beginning to piece together hints about these transitions from the subtle differences among extant Bronze and Iron Age Levantine genomes, it seems like the standard Levantine mix, as best proxied by Samaritans and Lebanese Christians (maybe Palestinian Christians too?) was pretty much set by the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE.
The bigger story’s been developing since 2016—the great mixing of the prehistoric Near East’s 3 main populations, in ways that could never have been predicted without genomic analysis. By the Bronze Age, people in the Levant (let’s call them Canaanites) are only partly descended from Neolithic Levantines, in turn only partly descended from Natufians. By the end of this process, the Levant and its fringe were Semitic-speaking and dominated by Haplogroup J. How these phenomena fit together remains unresolved.
Any change in the genetics of the inland southern Levant from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age will be a drop in the bucket by comparison.
Building on what Ben-Canaan said…
My theory is that Late Iron Age Israelite are a mixture of several populations who fused together to identify as the ancient Israelites.
We have the Neolithic (Y-DNA haplogroup E), Chalcolithic (haplogroup T) and late Bronze Age (haplogroup J). It is possible that in the late Bronze Age they lived together in ethnic “patches” similar to what we see in the northern Levant today.
http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/images/maps/Lebanon_Ethnic_lg.png
Let’s also assume that the latest arrivals — the Js became the dominant group after a few skirmishes with the locals. If we want to get whimsical, we can theorize that the 12 tribes were the names of the Bronze age peoples.
Something united these loose patches into a religious and political unit. The arrival of the Sea People could serve this purpose. The resistance to the new arrivals may have given these group the incentive to fight together and to adopt a shared historical narrative.
Anyway, that’s my theory.
Also, another Reich paper is out today:
“Ancient DNA reveals a multistep spread of the first herders into sub-Saharan Africa”
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/eaaw6275/
@Eric K
I’m agnostic about your above model; it’s possible that the Levantine population was already relatively homogenized by then. With the exception of some elite names, this definitely seems to be the case linguistically (and the current collection of Bronze Age genomes from Sidon to Ashkelon implies it too).
I do agree that Israelites probably inherited and amalgamated a bevy of different Canaanite (and maybe non-Canaanite) local memories and origin stories into the narrative we’re now familiar with.
As for—
“The arrival of the Sea People could serve this purpose. The resistance to the new arrivals may have given these group the incentive to fight together and to adopt a shared historical narrative.”
I think this is probably the single earliest near-consensus theme in the Israelite ethnogenesis. Some aspects of material culture—like the pork taboo—seem to be cases of the Iron I highland Canaanites defining themselves against the newcomers. Others, like the process of urbanization and centralization that began in the 11th century BCE, are consistent with ratcheting up of political organization in response to a common threat from the lowlands.
@ben-canaan
I think, sir, that our dispute is only to the scale of homogeneity. If look at present day Lebanon — the various groups are relatively homogeneous genetically and speak the same language, yet believe themselves separate and have intermittent conflicts.
On the archaeological pork-taboo — this is very interesting. Can you recommend any papers / reading material on this?
Thank you
Somehow 14% Mesolithic European/WHG wasn’t what I was expecting for the early Philistines. Am I misunderstanding something?
ryan, european back-migration. why u surprised?
@Ryan, bear in mind they’re using ADMIXTURE models where Anatolia Neolithic comes out WHG+Levant farmer and EHG as WHG+(others).
This isn’t *real* WHG of the sort picked up in Europe by Early and Middle Neolithic and passed on to later populations, just a signal.
The samples of IA1 (the “Philistines”) are of four infants themselves are variable; one is genomically similar to Mycenaean samples, one to Anatolians of the time, one is pretty much the same as people who came before, and finally one actually looks possibly admixed between the Aegean/Anatolian with local population.
Thanks. That helps make more sense of it. I had sort of assumed 14% WHG literally, coming from the portion of the ancestry that was not local, which was itself less than 50%, which made it seem like the source population was 1/3rd WHG; had me thinking it was some sort of relict group with high WHG ancestry.
The original Israelite population, arriving from Egypt or forming organically out of the Caananite population, was small, probably around 20,000 people, and a minority in Canaan when they arrived/started. So it is very probable that by the time of the Israelite kingdoms they had culturally absorbed the Caananite population around them, and it is very strongly suggested by the biblical text itself. So we really need to find DNA from people during the “Judges” period and be sure that they are Israelites, to have a real answer.
“…But most non-fundamentalist scholars believe that the Hebrews emerged organically out of the Canaanites…”
Harold Bloom’s `Book of J’ attempts to reconstruct an urtext of Hebrew history, and is very interesting from an anthropological viewpoint: he argues (roughly) that it is basically family stories, told from a female viewpoint, first written down soon after David (perhaps even by Bathsheba the Hittite…). It is said (cf Robertson Smith) that Sarah is older than Israel…
“The original Israelite population, arriving from Egypt or forming organically out of the Caananite population, was small, probably around 20,000 people, and a minority in Canaan when they arrived/started.”
There’s no historical basis for assuming such a population existed. If anything suspect the closest thing to an “original Israelite population” was a clan or group of clans in the highlands of Samaria at the end of the Late Bronze Age.
Saying that there is no historical basis is a bit far fetched. Depends also what you call this original or proto-Israelite group. That there was a population of around 20,000 (the most common estimate I saw but there are others) in the highlands that can be identified as the ancestors of the Israelites by the 11-12th century is relatively mainstream, the debate is about the origin of these people: Canaanites or fleeing from Egypt or a mix of both.