Angela
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If you look at an ancient map of the Philistines and Judea, Ashkelon is surrounded by Judea. Maybe those Levantine Philistines samples are not Jewish but where did they come from? Either Judea or the northern kingdom of Israel. So basically they would be identical to Jews of that period.
My thinking is there were two possibilities for Jews to obtain South Euro admixture in the Levant, the first would be through the Philistines. This would affect the south Levant only and not Lebanon. But this paper says this is not it the case.
The second is by Alexander the great and the later Greeks after the 4th century BC. But wouldn't that affect Lebanon and western Jordan as well? We are not seeing Greek admixture in Lebanon so it is unlikely that it did for the Jews.
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I've been thinking about your post.
I had always thought it was a distinct possibility that during the Hellenistic period there was some admixture with the inhabitants of the "Greek" towns; perhaps in the taking of "Greek" wives, for example. That a Judean male would convert is much less plausible, imo. Part of Greek and Roman culture was going to the baths and walking around completely naked. The Jews were circumcised, and the Greeks and Romans considered it an abomination. I doubt they had surgery then to "correct" it. However, you're right: why don't the Lebanese, for, example, or the inland Syrians show this "European" signal?
That's why I always thought that if it did enter western Jewry before the Roman Empire period, it might have been the Philistines.
Now, the authors are basing their conclusion (that there was no lasting "European" impact on Jewish genetics from the Philistines) on the fact that the percentage went down from Iron Age I to Iron age too.
I think we have to remember, however, that they tested way over a hundred samples from that cemetery, and could only get dna from ten of them. So, we may be getting a slightly skewed view. Or, the situation may have been different elsewhere, in one of the other cities. I don't care either way, but I think it's a possibility.
There are a few signs of the Philistines in northern Israel, but it's likely just from mercenaries. Plus, the ten northern tribes were carted off by the Assyrians, and disappeared from history.
"In the western part of the Jezreel Valley, 23 of the 26 Iron Age I sites (12th to 10th centuries BCE) yielded typical Philistine pottery. These sites include Tel Megiddo, Tel Yokneam, Tel Qiri, Afula, Tel Qashish, Be'er Tiveon, Hurvat Hazin, Tel Risim, Tel Re'ala, Hurvat Tzror, Tel Sham, Midrakh Oz and Tel Zariq. Scholars have attributed the presence of Philistine pottery in northern Israel to their role as mercenaries for the Egyptians during their military administration of the land in the 12th century BCE. This presence may also indicate further expansion of the Philistines to the valley during the 11th century BCE, or their trade with the Israelites. There are biblical references to Philistines in the valley during the times of the judges. The quantity of Philistine pottery within these sites are still quite small, which means that even if the Philistines did settle the valley they were a minority that blended within the Canaanite population during the 12th century BCE. The Philistines seem to have been present in the southern valley during the 11th century, which may relate to the biblical account of their victory at the Battle of Gilboa.[55]"
Given some of the following it's perhaps not unusual that we are finding mixed "Southern European" like and Levantine like samples.
"The Torah does not record the Philistines as one of the nations to be displaced from Canaan. In Genesis 15:18-21 the Philistines are absent from the ten nations Abraham's descendants will displace as well as being absent from the list of nations Moses tells the people they will conquer (Deut 7:1, 20:17). God also directed the Israelites away from the Philistines upon their Exodus from Egypt according to Exodus 13:17. In Genesis 21:22-27, Abraham agrees to a covenant of kindness with Abimelech, the Philistine king, and his descendants. Abraham's son Isaacdeals with the Philistine king similarly, by concluding a treaty with them in chapter 26 (Genesis 26:28-29).
Judges 13:1 tells that the Philistines dominated the Israelites in the times of Samson, who fought and killed over a thousand (e.g. Judges 15). According to 1 Samuel 5-6 they even captured the Ark of the Covenant for a few months.
A few biblical texts, such as the Ark Narrative and stories reflecting the importance of Gath, seem to portray Late Iron I and Early Iron II memories.[47]They are mentioned more than 250 times, the majority in the Deuteronomistic history, and are depicted as among the arch-enemies of the Israelites, a serious and recurring threat before being subdued by David.[citation needed]
The Bible paints the Philistines as the main enemy of the Israelites (prior to the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire between the 10th century BC and late 7th century BC) with a state of almost perpetual war between the two. The Philistine cities lost their independence to Assyria, and revolts in the following years were all crushed. They were subsequently absorbed into the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Achaemenid Empire, and disappeared as a distinct ethnic group by the late 5th century BC.[48"
In terms of the genetic identity of these particular "Sea Peoples" before their admixture in the various lands they conquered, this is what the authors have to say:
"The best supported one (χ2P = 0.675) infers that ASH_IA1 derivesaround 43% of ancestry from the Greek Bronze Age “Crete_Odigitria_BA” (43.1 ±19.2%) and the rest from the ASH_LBA population. ASH_IA1 could also be modeledwith either the modern “Sardinian” (35.2 ± 17.4%; χ2P = 0.070), the Bronze Age “Iberia_BA” (21.8± 21.1%; χ2P = 0.205), or the Bronze Age “Steppe_MLBA”(15.7 ± 9.1%; χ2P = 0.050) as the second source populationto ASH_LBA. To check whether these results are due to the low coverage ofASH_LBA, we repeated this analysis, but this time, we modeled ASH_IA1 as athree-way mixture of each of the candidate populations, Levant_ChL andIran_ChL. The two latter populations have higher genome coverage and can modelASH_LBA well in combination (table S3). In this analysis, only the modelsincluding “Sardinian,” “Crete_Odigitria_BA,” or “Iberia_BA” as the candidatepopulation provided a good fit (χ2P = 0.715, 49.3 ± 8.5%; χ2P = 0.972, 38.0 ± 22.0%; and χ2P = 0.964, 25.8 ± 9.3%, respectively). Wenote that, because of geographical and temporal sampling gaps, populations thatpotentially contributed the “European-related” admixture in ASH_IA1 could bemissing from the dataset. Therefore, better proxies might be found in thefuture when more data is available. Nonetheless, the tested candidatepopulations from Anatolia, Egypt, and the Levant that did not producewell-fitting models can be excluded as potential sources of the admixtureobserved in ASH_IA1."
I reviewed my books on the Sea Peoples, and there is no mention anywhere of an origin in Iberia for them. However, the Sardinians have often been associated with the Sea Peoples (the Sherden), and so have the people of Crete. The other possibility, and this is highly speculative, is that after Northern Italian like peoples pushed south down the boot of Italy, they might have gone on to Greece as mercenaries, perhaps, unfortunately, having something to do with the end of the palatial civilization. There are certainly numerous artifacts from the Italy of that time in both Greece and the Near East.
We have a dedicated thread to that topic.