Scholars say Philistine genes help solve biblical mystery

[Elderberry]

WPRI 7/3/2019

JERUSALEM (AP) — Goliath the Greek? Human remains from an ancient cemetery in southern Israel have yielded precious bits of DNA that a new study says help prove the European origin of the Philistines — the enigmatic nemeses of the biblical Israelites.

The Philistines mostly resided in five cities along the southern coast of what is today Israel and the Gaza Strip during the early Iron Age, around 3,000 years ago. In the Bible, David fought the Philistine giant Goliath in a duel, and Samson slew a thousand of their warriors with the jawbone of an ass.

Many archaeologists have proposed they migrated to the coast of the ancient Near East during a period of upheaval at the end of the Late Bronze Age, around 1200 B.C.

The Philistines emerged as other societies around the eastern Mediterranean collapsed, possibly because of a cataclysmic intersection of climate change and man-made disasters. Philistine ceramics bear similarities to styles found in the Aegean, but concrete evidence of their geographic origins has remained elusive.

Now, a study of genetic material extracted from skeletons unearthed in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon in 2013 has found a DNA link. It connects the Philistines to populations in southern Europe during the Bronze Age.

The study, spearheaded by researchers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute and Wheaton College in Illinois, was published Wednesday in the research journal Science Advances.

More: https://www.wpri.com/news/us-and-world/scholars-say-philistine-genes-help-solve-biblical-mystery/

[Sanguine]

Nice story.

[Elderberry]

My PC died and I'm posting from my phone. 

[Sanguine]

My PC died and I'm posting from my phone. 

Oh, no!

[roamer_1]

This is not a new thought.
Legend already has it so - and there has always been an argument that the Philistines were the 'Sea People' mentioned in documents from Egypt and points north.

And across multiple incursions - there is evidence that Sodom and Gomorrah were likely foreigners too... And of the same stock.

But I don't know if DNA pointing to a southern European stock is altogether true - these 'sea people' were raiding the Mediterranean for centuries, and spreading their DNA along with that. The Egyptians say in fact, that it was the Greeks that finally defeated them.