"The Philistines are famous for their appearance in the Hebrew Bible as the enemies of the Israelites.
However, ancient texts tell little about the Philistine origins other than a later memory that they came from ‘Caphtor,’ a Bronze Age name for Crete (Amos 9:7).
More than a century ago, egyptologists proposed that a group called the Peleset in texts of the late 12th century B.C. were the same as the Biblical Philistines.
The Egyptians claimed that the Peleset traveled from ‘the islands,’ attacking what is today Cyprus and the Turkish and Syrian coasts, finally attempting to invade Egypt. These hieroglyphic inscriptions were the first indication that the search for the origins of the Philistines should be focused in the late 2nd millennium B.C.
“We found substantial changes in ways of life during the 12th century B.C. which we connect to the arrival of the Philistines,” said Professor Daniel Master, an archeologist with the Wheaton Archaeology Museum.
“Many scholars, however, argued that these cultural changes were merely the result of trade or a local imitation of foreign styles and not the result of a substantial movement of people.”
“Our new study represents the culmination of more than 30 years of archaeological work and genetic research, concluding that the advent of the Philistines in the southern Levant involved a movement of people from the west during the Bronze to Iron Age transition.”
The researchers successfully recovered genomic data from the remains of 10 individuals who lived in Ashkelon during the Bronze and Iron Age.
They then compared DNA of the Bronze and Iron Age people of Ashkelon to determine how they were related.
“While our modeling suggests a southern European gene pool as a plausible source, future sampling could identify more precisely the populations introducing the European-related component to Ashkelon.”
In analyzing later Iron Age individuals from Ashkelon, the researchers found that the European related component could no longer be traced.
“Within no more than two centuries, this genetic footprint introduced during the early Iron Age is no longer detectable and seems to be diluted by a local Levantine related gene pool,” said Dr. Choongwon Jeong.
“While, according to ancient texts, the people of Ashkelon in the first millennium B.C.remained ‘Philistines’ to their neighbors, the distinctiveness of their genetic makeup was no longer clear, perhaps due to intermarriage with Levantine groups around them,” Professor Master said."
SciNews
However, ancient texts tell little about the Philistine origins other than a later memory that they came from ‘Caphtor,’ a Bronze Age name for Crete (Amos 9:7).
More than a century ago, egyptologists proposed that a group called the Peleset in texts of the late 12th century B.C. were the same as the Biblical Philistines.
The Egyptians claimed that the Peleset traveled from ‘the islands,’ attacking what is today Cyprus and the Turkish and Syrian coasts, finally attempting to invade Egypt. These hieroglyphic inscriptions were the first indication that the search for the origins of the Philistines should be focused in the late 2nd millennium B.C.
“We found substantial changes in ways of life during the 12th century B.C. which we connect to the arrival of the Philistines,” said Professor Daniel Master, an archeologist with the Wheaton Archaeology Museum.
“Many scholars, however, argued that these cultural changes were merely the result of trade or a local imitation of foreign styles and not the result of a substantial movement of people.”
“Our new study represents the culmination of more than 30 years of archaeological work and genetic research, concluding that the advent of the Philistines in the southern Levant involved a movement of people from the west during the Bronze to Iron Age transition.”
The researchers successfully recovered genomic data from the remains of 10 individuals who lived in Ashkelon during the Bronze and Iron Age.
They then compared DNA of the Bronze and Iron Age people of Ashkelon to determine how they were related.
“While our modeling suggests a southern European gene pool as a plausible source, future sampling could identify more precisely the populations introducing the European-related component to Ashkelon.”
In analyzing later Iron Age individuals from Ashkelon, the researchers found that the European related component could no longer be traced.
“Within no more than two centuries, this genetic footprint introduced during the early Iron Age is no longer detectable and seems to be diluted by a local Levantine related gene pool,” said Dr. Choongwon Jeong.
“While, according to ancient texts, the people of Ashkelon in the first millennium B.C.remained ‘Philistines’ to their neighbors, the distinctiveness of their genetic makeup was no longer clear, perhaps due to intermarriage with Levantine groups around them,” Professor Master said."
SciNews