Revisiting the Philistines

[Angela]

A new paper maintains they weren't Aegean Islanders, but instead were local Anatolians.

See:
http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/1.802928

This is another one that only ancient dna will settle as far as I'm concerned, or maybe not.

 

[Yetos]

yet the article says this

''That does not mean that the Aegean hypothesis has completely lost steam. Archeologists who last year uncovered the first Philistine cemetery ever found, in ancient Ashkelon, have described the burials there as typically Aegean.read more: http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/1.802928 ''

 

[Angela]

That's right. The author of the article is pointing out that not everyone agrees with the conclusions of the author of this new paper.

 

[Yetos]

That's right. The author of the article is pointing out that not everyone agrees with the conclusions of the author of this new paper.

so we expect to find teeth from early cemetery and search for DNA?

 

[bicicleur 2]

That's right. The author of the article is pointing out that not everyone agrees with the conclusions of the author of this new paper.

neither do I
it is just one of the many theories
you're right, we need DNA

 

[Angela]

so we expect to find teeth from early cemetery and search for DNA?

Well, they've found bodies in the Philistine cemetery. Whether they'll be able to extract dna from them, especially y dna and autosomal dna, which is harder to do, is another story. People think it's possible to get it from every set of ancient remains, but it's not.

Let's suppose that they do. We'd need ancient dna from Aegean Islanders of that time period to see if the Philistines match them better than they do Bronze/Iron Age Anatolia, as one example.

What if those two other ancient people are not that different from one another, although they're a bit different from Levantines of that period? What then?

It's true that there's Aegean pottery at the sites, but pots are not always people, as we've learned over and over again. Now, physical anthropologists have done reconstructions of the Philistines versus the native Levantines, but as with all reconstructions I think the artists' preconceptions or biases have some part to play.

Ancient dna results have been surprising in one way or another, so we'll just have to wait and see, I guess.

 

[Pygmalion]

Some of the closest representation to the Peleset depicted at Medinet habu are to be found in contemporary master pieces of Cypriot art such as ivory seals where Peleset looking soldiers with similar armors and helemets are depicted.

Not to mention Philistine cities employed Mycenean pottery that was the most similar to Cypriot models, and that in the earliest period they used a CyproMinoan like script.

There are many parallels between Cypriots and Philistines, including burials and other features.