Researchers make 'first discovery' of Philistine cemetery

bicicleur 2

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36759340

the DNA of 145 remains is to be studied
I wonder how it will compare to the Canaanite DNA
and what is left of the Filistines today

also note this :

The discovery was kept secret for three years, until the end of the dig, to avoid drawing the attention of ultra-orthodox Jewish protesters, who had previously demonstrated at excavations.
 
Well, the evidence suggests connections with late bronze age Aegean, so I guess we'll all be on the lookout for that good ole steppe/WHG
 
Well, the evidence suggests connections with late bronze age Aegean, so I guess we'll all be on the lookout for that good ole steppe/WHG

yes, but the Minoans were local farmers admixed with Anatolians and the Mycenians had just a bit of steppe on top of that
it will be very interesting to see what those Filistines were like
 
Well, the evidence suggests connections with late bronze age Aegean, so I guess we'll all be on the lookout for that good ole steppe/WHG

People will be on the look out, but they probably wont find much if any, especially if they're from the Aegean.
 
Of the Philistine names in the Bible, Goliath of Gath seems like it's from an IE language.

The Philistines were an aggressive, warmongering people who occupied territory southwest of Israel between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The name “Philistine” comes from the Hebrew word Philistia, and the Greek rendering of the name, palaistinei, gives us the modern name “Palestine.” They may have originated in Caphtor, the Hebrew name for the island of Crete and the whole Aegean region (Amos 9:7; Jeremiah 47:4). For unknown reasons, they migrated from that region to the Mediterranean coast near Gaza. Because of their maritime history, the Philistines are often associated with the “Sea Peoples.”

The Philistines were known for their innovative use of iron, which was superior to the bronze used by the Israelites for weapons and implements. Even as late as the time of Saul (1050 - 1010 B.C), the Israelites were forced to rely on the Philistines to sharpen or repair their iron tools (1 Samuel 13:19-21).

The Philistines were infamous for their production and consumption of alcoholic beverages, especially beer. Ancient Philistine ruins contain numerous breweries and wineries, as well as countless beer mugs and other drinking vessels. Samson’s wedding feast, recorded in the book of Judges, illustrates the Philistine practice of holding week-long drinking parties; the Hebrew word misteh, translated “feast” in Judges 14:10, means “drinking feast.”

The Philistines were assimilated into Canaanite culture. They eventually disappeared from the biblical record and from history altogether, leaving behind the name “Palestine” as a testimony of their existence.



Could they be Minoan refugees? The end result may be that they appear to be Minoans mixed with more Levant the longer they stayed.
 
I think when the bronze age power centers began to destabilize it led to a bunch of small tribes who in some cases struck off in search of plunder. Many of these tribes/people were probably seafaring cultures from the Aegean, which is probably who the sea peoples were. The Philistines were probably a part of this.
 
@Ie3 Young
"For unknown reasons, they migrated from that region to the Mediterranean coast near Gaza. Because of their maritime history, the Philistines are often associated with the “Sea Peoples.”

It seems it's the Egyptian texts (XIII°/XII°C.) which firstly associated the names of the 'Peleset' to the so called 'Sea People'. And later the name 'Peleset' was associated by some linguists to the 'Philistines'.
 
They won't reveal the DNA because it would be too controversial when they discover Philistines were Aegean and not semitic.

Even though the word "Philistine" in the dictionary means:

0911d1019a23b31354bbd9790200cccc.jpg
 
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Damn, how long more we have to wait? Too eager to find out.

For some reason, I would think they're more related to Proto-Thracians who moved to the Aegean. At least they can relate more to this obscure, aggressive, and alcohol loving bunch, together with iron working.
 
For goodness sakes' people, no need to resort to conspiracy theories. They only just got the bones out of the grounds. It'll be a couple of years before we get a paper out of it. Everyone knows they weren't locals, i.e. Semites.

Ed. I take that back. Archaeologists lean toward a non-Semitic origin. The OT writers, however, were of a different opinion if this is correct.

"The Philistines were an uncircumcised people inhabiting the shore plain between Gezer and Gaza in Southwestern Palestine (see PHILISTIA). The name Palestine itself (Hebrew pelesheth) refers to their country. The word means "migrants," and they came from another country. They are noticed 286 times in the Old Testament, and their country 8 times. The question of their race and origin is of great importance as affecting the genuine character and reliability of the Bible notices. In Genesis 10:14(1 Chronicles 1:12) they are reckoned with other tribes in Mizraim (Egypt) as descendants of Ham, and as cousins of the old inhabitants of Babylonia (Genesis 10:6). They are said to be a branch of the Casluhim--an unknown people--or, according to Septuagint, of the Casmanim, which would mean "shavers of the head"--a custom of the Phoenicians (forbidden to Hebrews as a rule), as known from a picture of the time of Thothmes III in the 16th century BC. They are also connected with the Caphtorim or people of Caphtor, whence indeed they are said to have come (Jeremiah 47:4; Amos 9:7). Caphtor was a "shoreland," but its position is doubtful (see Deuteronomy 2:23); the Caphtorim found an earlier race of Avim living in "enclosures" near Gaza, and destroyed them. In the Septuagint of this passage (and in Amos 9:7) Cappadocia stands for Caphtor (Kaphtor), and other versions have the same reading. Cappadocia was known to the Assyrians as kat-pat-uka (probably an Akkadian term--"land of the Kati"), and the Kati were a people living in Cilicia and Cappadocia, which region had a Semitic population side by side with Mengels (see HITTITES) at least as early as the time of Moses. It is very likely therefore that this reading is correct."


 
I don't see why they would be "Thracians" (Assuming we can even talk about Thracians in 1200 bc), the Philistines brought Mycenean pottery with them, and had a Cypro Minoan-like script, they most likely came from Cyprus and Cilicia, which had a mixed Aegean/Anatolian/Local Cypriot population, since most of Philistine pottery came or imitated Helladic pottery from those regions.
The links between the Aegean and Cyprus date back to the early bronze age with the Minoans giving Cypriots their script, which is similar to linear A but re-elaborated by the locals. We must not think of Cypriots as passive agents since they were among the most powerful bronze age kingdoms.
It is difficult to identify the precise ethnicity of the sea peoples' tribes, since as we can see from the few bronze age shipwrecks found, the ship crews were often mixed (Uluburun, Cape Gelydonia) and coincidentally the late bronze age was a time where many migration movements took place and the first time when Eastern Mediterraneans started trading with Central Mediterranean people on a daily basis.
Among the sea peoples invading the Levant there could have been, along with a majority of Aegean Greeks and Minoans, central Mediterraneans, AKA South Italians from Sicily, Sardinia, Apulia and Calabria, since imported and locally made pottery from those regions was found in Cyprus and the Levant in the layers of the sea peoples' invasions.

Remember that the Philistines were just one of the sea peoples, so while I think the Philistines in particular were Cypriots, as evident from their script, burial tradition, pottery and iconography (helmets and armor), the Ekwesh, Denyen, Lukka, Tursha, Tjekker, Shekelesh, Weshesh and Sherden were different ethnicities coming from many different lands.

The swords used by Sherden mercenaries have recently been compared with those used by the late bronze age Sicilians and South Italians by the archaeologists who are excavating the LBA South Italian sites.
South Italian swords have been often found in the Aegean in association with South Italian pottery and razors, and a Sicilian type sword has been found in the Cypriot wreck of Uluburun (near the Lycian coast), suggesting they were employed as mercenaries since 1350 bc by Aegeans and Eastern Mediterranean kingdoms.
The Naue II swords later found in Cyprus and the Levantine coast around 1300-1200 bc also are closest to the South Italian models.

No Bulgarian/Balkanian bronze age pottery has been found in the Levant to my knowledge, but only in Troy, suggesting that they invaded only Northen Anatolia, while Aegeans and their South Italian allies/mercenaries invaded the Levantine coast and Egypt.

Iconographicaly speaking the motifs in the sea people's ships depicted at Medinet Habu closely resemble the handles in South Italian bronze age pottery.

Damn, how long more we have to wait? Too eager to find out.
For some reason, I would think they're more related to Proto-Thracians who moved to the Aegean. At least they can relate more to this obscure, aggressive, and alcohol loving bunch, together with iron working.


Iron workers?

Iron working was practiced in the Near since 2,000 bc, especially in Anatolia, but only on a small scale, for really small blades and tiny objects like bracelets, Philistines didn't bring it with them, the sea peoples used bronze swords, iron working was already present in the Near East, and while the Philistines were among the first to mass produce iron, that happened when they were already settled in the Levant, and around the same time, or probably after the Phoenicians and other Levantine peoples did it.
They didn't have a prerogative, they mass produced it because other Levantine people started doing it too, not because they were already doing it before they settled in Palestine.
And by the way, the people who lived in the Balkans during the bronze age
(who had nothing to do with the Philistines) didn't mass produce iron, they didn't even produce it on a small scale like Near Easterners did, to my knowledge.

Iron working was spread from East to West, not the other way around, there is evidence for Cypriots teaching local Central Mediterraneans how to smelt iron in the late bronze age.

@Ie3 Young
"For unknown reasons, they migrated from that region to the Mediterranean coast near Gaza. Because of their maritime history, the Philistines are often associated with the “Sea Peoples.”

It seems it's the Egyptian texts (XIII°/XII°C.) which firstly associated the names of the 'Peleset' to the so called 'Sea People'. And later the name 'Peleset' was associated by some linguists to the 'Philistines'.


To be precise, the Peleset were mentioned several times by the Egyptians as an invading population, allied with many other tribes, some of those tribes (Ekwesh, Sherden, Shekelesh, Weshesh, Teresh) were given the
epithet "of the sea" E.G: Ekwesh of the sea, Sherden of the sea, etc...

The Peleset in particular were not given this epithet, they were just listed as invading foreigners from the "north" along with these other peoples such as the Ekwesh, they allied with the Libu (Libyans) too in some occasions, they were very ethnically diverse groups of marauders from all over the Eastern (and probably central as well) Mediterranean coastline, the Philistines were just one of many other tribes hostile to the Egyptians.

They were never collectively known as "the sea peoples", they were known generally as "foreigners from the North/ countries from all over the North), the name of sea peoples was given by archaeologists because of the ephithets some of them were given.
 
I don't see why they would be "Thracians" (Assuming we can even talk about Thracians in 1200 bc), the Philistines brought Mycenean pottery with them, and had a Cypro Minoan-like script, they most likely came from Cyprus and Cilicia, which had a mixed Aegean/Anatolian/Local Cypriot population, since most of Philistine pottery came or imitated Helladic pottery from those regions.
The links between the Aegean and Cyprus date back to the early bronze age with the Minoans giving Cypriots their script, which is similar to linear A but re-elaborated by the locals. We must not think of Cypriots as passive agents since they were among the most powerful bronze age kingdoms.
It is difficult to identify the precise ethnicity of the sea peoples' tribes, since as we can see from the few bronze age shipwrecks found, the ship crews were often mixed (Uluburun, Cape Gelydonia) and coincidentally the late bronze age was a time where many migration movements took place and the first time when Eastern Mediterraneans started trading with Central Mediterranean people on a daily basis.
Among the sea peoples invading the Levant there could have been, along with a majority of Aegean Greeks and Minoans, central Mediterraneans, AKA South Italians from Sicily, Sardinia, Apulia and Calabria, since imported and locally made pottery from those regions was found in Cyprus and the Levant in the layers of the sea peoples' invasions.

Remember that the Philistines were just one of the sea peoples, so while I think the Philistines in particular were Cypriots, as evident from their script, burial tradition, pottery and iconography (helmets and armor), the Ekwesh, Denyen, Lukka, Tursha, Tjekker, Shekelesh, Weshesh and Sherden were different ethnicities coming from many different lands.

The swords used by Sherden mercenaries have recently been compared with those used by the late bronze age Sicilians and South Italians by the archaeologists who are excavating the LBA South Italian sites.
South Italian swords have been often found in the Aegean in association with South Italian pottery and razors, and a Sicilian type sword has been found in the Cypriot wreck of Uluburun (near the Lycian coast), suggesting they were employed as mercenaries since 1350 bc by Aegeans and Eastern Mediterranean kingdoms.
The Naue II swords later found in Cyprus and the Levantine coast around 1300-1200 bc also are closest to the South Italian models.


No Bulgarian/Balkanian bronze age pottery has been found in the Levant to my knowledge, but only in Troy, suggesting that they invaded only Northen Anatolia, while Aegeans and their South Italian allies/mercenaries invaded the Levantine coast and Egypt.

Iconographicaly speaking the motifs in the sea people's ships depicted at Medinet Habu closely resemble the handles in South Italian bronze age pottery.



Iron workers?

Iron working was practiced in the Near since 2,000 bc, especially in Anatolia, but only on a small scale, for really small blades and tiny objects like bracelets, Philistines didn't bring it with them, the sea peoples used bronze swords, iron working was already present in the Near East, and while the Philistines were among the first to mass produce iron, that happened when they were already settled in the Levant, and around the same time, or probably after the Phoenicians and other Levantine peoples did it.
They didn't have a prerogative, they mass produced it because other Levantine people started doing it too, not because they were already doing it before they settled in Palestine.
And by the way, the people who lived in the Balkans during the bronze age
(who had nothing to do with the Philistines) didn't mass produce iron, they didn't even produce it on a small scale like Near Easterners did, to my knowledge.

Iron working was spread from East to West, not the other way around, there is evidence for Cypriots teaching local Central Mediterraneans how to smelt iron in the late bronze age.



To be precise, the Peleset were mentioned several times by the Egyptians as an invading population, allied with many other tribes, some of those tribes (Ekwesh, Sherden, Shekelesh, Weshesh, Teresh) were given the
epithet "of the sea" E.G: Ekwesh of the sea, Sherden of the sea, etc...

The Peleset in particular were not given this epithet, they were just listed as invading foreigners from the "north" along with these other peoples such as the Ekwesh, they allied with the Libu (Libyans) too in some occasions, they were very ethnically diverse groups of marauders from all over the Eastern (and probably central as well) Mediterranean coastline, the Philistines were just one of many other tribes hostile to the Egyptians.

They were never collectively known as "the sea peoples", they were known generally as "foreigners from the North/ countries from all over the North), the name of sea peoples was given by archaeologists because of the ephithets some of them were given.

This is some very interesting stuff, Pygmalion. Could you please add some citations, because I'd like to read up more on some of these subjects, such as the ones I've highlighted.
 


Iron workers?

Iron working was practiced in the Near since 2,000 bc, especially in Anatolia, but only on a small scale, for really small blades and tiny objects like bracelets, Philistines didn't bring it with them, the sea peoples used bronze swords, iron working was already present in the Near East, and while the Philistines were among the first to mass produce iron, that happened when they were already settled in the Levant, and around the same time, or probably after the Phoenicians and other Levantine peoples did it.
They didn't have a prerogative, they mass produced it because other Levantine people started doing it too, not because they were already doing it before they settled in Palestine.
And by the way, the people who lived in the Balkans during the bronze age
(who had nothing to do with the Philistines) didn't mass produce iron, they didn't even produce it on a small scale like Near Easterners did, to my knowledge.

Iron working was spread from East to West, not the other way around, there is evidence for Cypriots teaching local Central Mediterraneans how to smelt iron in the late bronze age.


iron was not better than bronze, certainly not the iron produced during the iron ages
the succes of iron was the abundance of iron ores, facilitating mass production
the iron made in 2000 BC has nothing to do with that as it was not made from iron ore but from meteorite which is very rare, even more than copper or tin
the new technology was the know how to extract the iron from the ores to obtain a more or less decent quality of iron
the existence of meteorite in Anatolia is no proof that this new technology was developped there
my guess would be central Asia, indeed east to west - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaz_culture
the time of the sea peoples is before the iron age
 

To be precise, the Peleset were mentioned several times by the Egyptians as an invading population, allied with many other tribes, some of those tribes (Ekwesh, Sherden, Shekelesh, Weshesh, Teresh) were given the
epithet "of the sea" E.G: Ekwesh of the sea, Sherden of the sea, etc...

The Peleset in particular were not given this epithet, they were just listed as invading foreigners from the "north" along with these other peoples such as the Ekwesh, they allied with the Libu (Libyans) too in some occasions, they were very ethnically diverse groups of marauders from all over the Eastern (and probably central as well) Mediterranean coastline, the Philistines were just one of many other tribes hostile to the Egyptians.

They were never collectively known as "the sea peoples", they were known generally as "foreigners from the North/ countries from all over the North), the name of sea peoples was given by archaeologists because of the ephithets some of them were given.

THanks for precisions. I was not arguing about the " Sea People " name givers, but the apparent links between "foreigners of the North" and some genuine "Sea People" tribes in Egypt history gave later way to the association. linguistically it seems sensible to link 'sherden' to Sardinia, 'Sekeles' to Sicilia, Teresh to Tyrrhenian Tyrsenian Etruscans, so Central Mediterraneans what could make sense, and surely good sailors; some French scholar was trying to link Peleset and Phillistins to Greece Pelasgians (through some deformations or false association?) and supposed a pan-Italic language there in some places; only supposition.
 
Iron or ferrous metallurgy, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrous_metallurgy

"The place and time for the discovery of iron smelting is not known, partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing metal extracted from nickel-containing ores from hot-worked meteoritic iron.[2] The archaeological evidence seems to point to the Middle East area, during the Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. However, iron artifacts remained a rarity until the 12th century BC."

"
One of the earliest smelted iron artifacts, a dagger with an iron blade found in a Hattic tomb in Anatolia, dated from 2500 BC.[12] About 1500 BC, increasing numbers of non-meteoritic, smelted iron objects appeared in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Egypt.[2] Nineteen iron objects were found in the tomb of Egyptian ruler Tutankhamun, died in 1323 BC, including an iron dagger with a golden hilt, an Eye of Horus, the mummy's head-stand and sixteen models of an artisan's tools.[13] An Ancient Egyptian sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah as well as a battle axe with an iron blade and gold-decorated bronze shaft were both found in the excavation of Ugarit.[12]Although iron objects dating from the Bronze Age have been found across the Eastern Mediterranean, bronzework appears to have greatly predominated during this period.[14] By the 12th century BC, iron smelting and forging, of weapons and tools, was common from Sub-Saharan Africa through India. As the technology spread, iron came to replace bronze as the dominant metal used for tools and weapons across the Eastern Mediterranean (the Levant, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, Anatolia, and Egypt).[9]"

2000px-Metal_production_in_Ancient_Middle_East.svg.png
Ferrous_metallurgy
Ferrous_metallurgy
Ferrous_metallurgy
 
Saw some DNA land/ftdna results for sephardics (on antheogenica) and a lot of them who don't score a lot of the Jewish components (Sephardic/Ashkenazi) are scoring high middle eastern and Southern European (Balkan or southeast Europe in ftdna and med islander+Balkan/Italian in DNA land). I'm sure the groups mentioned in Pygmalions post contributed the most to the European side of Jews who ended up in Europe, let's see what we get after analyzing these genomes. Maybe there will be significant ibd between European Jews and the Mediterranean groups that interacted with the levant.
 
This is some very interesting stuff, Pygmalion. Could you please add some citations, because I'd like to read up more on some of these subjects, such as the ones I've highlighted.

Sure!

Here's some of the studies that talk about the finds of South Italian pottery and those of Italian weapons in the Levant and the Aegean, and the link between Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean in the LBA:

http://www.academia.edu/225687/M._M...diterranean_Aegean_Archaeology_8_2008_111_136

http://www.raco.cat/index.php/CuadernosArqueologia/article/viewFile/276368/392932

https://books.google.it/books?id=F_...age&q=mont'e prama pyla kokkinokremos&f=false

http://honorfrostfoundation.org/up-...-mediterranean-linda-hulin-and-s-german-2016/

http://dspace.unive.it/handle/10579/4297

https://www.academia.edu/16412583/T...gy_and_History_in_the_Lebanon_26_2007_212-233
 

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