Was Goliath of Greek origin? A new international genetic scientific study suggests this may be the case, after concluding that the Philistines, the biblical Israelites' greatest rivals, were descended from people who had come to the Palestine region from the Aegean, Southern Europe and the Mediterranean at the beginning of the Age of Iron. Essentially, genetics seems to confirm the evidence of the archaeological dig, which had led to the theory that the Philistines had migrated from the Aegean, something for which there was no consensus until now.
The first-ever comparative study of modern and ancient DNA from ten people who lived 3,600 to 2,800 years ago in the ancient coastal city of Ashkelon (Askalone), near Israel's southern border with the Gaza Strip, sheds light on the origins of the Philistines, a question particularly charged to date from a scientific point of view, but also with modern political ramifications. Ashkelon was one of the main centers of the Philistines during the Iron Age and the skeletons from which the samples were taken were discovered by Israeli archaeologists in 2016.
The researchers, led by the Israeli-born archaeogeneticist Michal Feldman of the German Max Planck Institute for the Study of Human History in Jena, who made the relevant publication in the journal "Science Advances", found sound genetic evidence that the ancestors of the Philistines migrated to the Middle East from the west and gradually, over the following centuries, their DNA mixed with that of the locals.
The Philistines (one of whom was Goliath who dueled with David, but also Delilah who secretly cut off Samson's hair) got a bad name because the Hebrew Bible names them as the main enemies of the Israelites. The ancient texts do not say much about them, beyond a later reference that they came from "Capthor" (the Bronze Age name for Crete). About a century ago, Egyptologists found references in hieroglyphic texts of the late 12th century BC. that a people (probably identified with the Philistines) traveled from "the islands" and invaded Cyprus and the coasts of present-day southern Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, with Egypt itself as the ultimate goal.
Between 1985-2016 the Leon Levy Mission, a program of the Harvard University Semitic Museum, studied the origins of the Philistines in Ashkelon, one of the five "Philistine" cities, according to the Bible. The expedition, whose director archaeologist Daniel Master participated in the new genetic study, found evidence that in the 12th century B.C. there were significant changes in the life of the region (e.g. a strong presence of Greek-style ceramics), which were attributed to the arrival of the Philistines. But several scholars had so far refused to accept that it was a mass movement of people, but insisted that it was merely a local imitation of foreign (Mycenaean and Aegean) customs, with which they had come into contact through trade and other exchanges.
The new research, which is the culmination of more than 30 years of archaeological and genetic analyses, concluded that the Philistines did indeed arrive en masse in the southern Levant from the West by sea during the transitional phase between the Bronze and Iron Ages (12th century BC). BC), a tumultuous period for the entire eastern Mediterranean, during which many cities were destroyed and empires collapsed.
Feldman said the study points to a southern European origin for the Philistines, possibly linking them to the so-called "Sea Peoples," but she said further genetic analyzes of a larger sample would be needed to more precisely identify the specific Mediterraneans. populations that were ancestors of the Philistines. She herself, according to New Scientist, considers their origin from Greece very likely. The DNA of the Philistines e.g. it shows 25% to 70% similarity with the DNA of ancient skeletons from Crete, while similarities also arise with Iberian and Sardinian people.
However, it is remarkable that within only two centuries of their arrival, the genetic imprint of the Philistines had been so "diluted" by admixture, that it had practically disappeared. Although in the eyes of their enemies the Israelites remained Philistines, in reality their DNA was now Levantine, as almost all traces of Greek had been lost. "Probably all the immigrants that came in, intermarried with the local population, until that foreign ancestry disappeared into the DNA," Feldman said.
"Taking together the genetic and archaeological data, the view is now strengthened that there was migration from the areas we now call Greece and western Turkey," said Christoph Bachuber of the University of Oxford.
SOURCE:APE-ME