bronze age sidon {lebanon dna paper}

We actually don't know nothing about Sea Peoples and where they came from. Those Canaanite can't even be a proxy for ancient Phoenicians if they mixed or if they were Sea Peoples.

Nothing? Not! But little, yes! a mix of true pop's searching better lands on one hand (with wives and children in wagons) and mercenaries and pirates on the other lands: Philistins "Peleset"(maybe Pelasgians of meta-Italic origin), Acheans (?) "Ahhiyawa",Hittites, other I-E Anatolians West the Hittites, Sicules ? "Skrs", "Shekelesh", Etruscans (Tyrsoi? "Trs", "Teresh") Sardes "Shardana"..., Arzawa, Dardanians (which ones?) : "Drdny" of N-W Anatolia?, Lukka (Lycians?), Kashka "Keshkesh", Ekwesh, Lybians, all that spred on a long enough period, with mercenaries changing side according to times - very confused - it seems a lot were coming from S-W Anatolia but ... could this be the cause of a neat rising of so called 'Steppe' DNA? Uneasy to say... Not evident, I think.
 
The language of the incoming Iran_Chalco was not Semitic. Semitic is a branch of the Afroasian family (Berber, Coptic, Cushitic) linked to the E haplo and thereafter surely with Levant_Neo. There are a lot of examples of herder peoples getting the language of farmers (Bulgars the Slav, Langobardi the Italian, the Manchu the Chinese and so).
I know what Semitic is a branch of...I just found it amusing that the very same people who insisted for so many years that a pastoral, male dominant, society like that on the steppe would never adopt the language of their West Asian wives have absolutely no problem envisioning such a thing when it's a Near Eastern male dominant, pastoral society. :)
 
The study attributes the introduction of Iran Chalcolithic to the Levant with the expansion of the Akkadian Empire and it's subsequent demise which caused large migrations west. The Sumerian language was dying out in favor of the Semetic Akkadian language through out it's history. They were already speaking a Semetic language before they entered the area of the Levant.

OK. However, a lot of people agree with the hypothesis that the Semitic languages arose in the southern Levant. To what period would that be dated? Would the people in the southern Levant at that time have still carried mostly ydna lineages? When and with whom did the Semitic language get to the Akkadians?

Sorry if I'm being dense, but the Semitic languages aren't something in which I have any expertise, and this seems confusing.

Yes, I think 7% steppe is what they're claiming. As Marko explained, the 11-22% referred to the results from supervised admixture. I'm always somewhat leery of supervised admixture runs. So much depends on the person setting it up, because even if it's being done totally honestly and objectively errors are easily made, imo.
 
7% Steppe ancestry seems a lot more reasonable, still I'm not sure if the Macedonians or Persians could've delivered so much.

Yeah, it'd be quite difficult to imagine that a historical event could have caused such a significant shift. I think one of the reason for this apparent change could be that the authors are comparing samples from a single southern Lebanese site to a synthesized modern cluster. In their f4 analysis they find that additional affinity to the Mal'ta Boy and Swiss Bichon most differentiates Lebanese from Sidon_BA, so the modern cluster might simply reflect pre-existing internal diversity. Perhaps it's as simple decreasing Natufian affinity as you go north.
 
The cities of the Decapolis:
Decapolis.jpeg


Hellenistic cities of the Near East:
The cities of the Decapolis:
Decapolis.jpeg


Hellenistic cities of the Near East:
7359421_orig.jpg



7359421_orig.jpg
 
Yeah, it'd be quite difficult to imagine that a historical event could have caused such a significant shift. I think one of the reason for this apparent change could be that the authors are comparing samples from a single southern Lebanese site to a synthesized modern cluster. In their f4 analysis they find that additional affinity to the Mal'ta Boy and Swiss Bichon most differentiates Lebanese from Sidon_BA, so the modern cluster might simply reflect pre-existing internal diversity. Perhaps it's as simple decreasing Natufian affinity as you go north.
I'm not quite sure I understand, Marko. This sample is from Sidon, which seems to be pretty much in the middle of Lebanon, but at any rate it seems to be very typical of the Bronze Age Levant as a whole.

" The PCA shows that Sidon_BA clusters with three individuals from Early Bronze Age Jordan(Jordan_BA) found in a cave above the Neolithic site of ‘Ain Ghazal and probably associated with anEarly Bronze Age village close to the site.13 This suggests that people from the highly differentiatedurban culture on the Levant coast and inland people with different modes of subsistence werenevertheless genetically similar, supporting previous reports that the different cultural groups whoinhabited the Levant during the Bronze Age, such as the Ammonites, Moabites, Israelites andPhoenicians, each achieved their own cultural identities but all shared a common genetic and ethnicroot with Canaanites.15 Lazaridis et al.13 reported that Jordan_BA can be modelled as mixture ofNeolithic Levant (Levant_N) and Chalcolithic Iran (Iran_ChL)."

Also, haven't the modern Turks been modeled as 15-20% steppe? Given that, I don't think 7% steppe sounds outlandish for Lebanon. One thing that pulls these areas away from Europe are the very high levels of "Iranian" call it Neolithic or Chalcolithic or whatever. The other factor for the Levant populations is SSA. In some analyses the Christian Lebanese have up to 4 and 5%, mostly but not all East African, to the best of my recollection.

The Palestinians pull even further away because of yet more SSA. Part of that may be due to the slave trade, but there are also documented migrations of Bedouin tribes into the area during the Muslim period. SSA ancestry is so divergent that it has a big effect in PCAs, on FST etc.

It will be interesting to see how the Samaritans compare to this ancient sample. If they do cluster with the sample, they might do for a "Levant Jewish" proxy until the real thing comes along.

Interesting again how close the Assyrians and the Iraqi and Iranian Jews are to this sample. I never did buy the idea that these "eastern" Jews picked up a lot of foreign ancestry in Iraqi and Iran over the years. I always believed, instead, that they were probably pretty close to the original "real deal". We have a relatively large community of them in a nearby town and I know a few socially. I'm going to let them know about this study. They'll be thrilled.
 
This is another interesting bit:
"When we substituted present-day Near Easterners with a panel of 150present-day populations available in the Human Origins dataset, we found only Sardinians andItalian_North shared significantly more alleles with Sidon_BA compared with the Lebanese (Figure S7).Sardinians are known to have retained a large proportion of ancestry from Early European farmers(EEF) and therefore the increased affinity to Sidon_BA could be related to a shared Neolithic ancestry.We computed f4(Lebanese, Sardinian/Italian_North; Sidon_BA, Levant_N) and found no evidence ofincreased affinity of Sardinians or Italian_North to Sidon_BA after the Neolithic (both Z-scores arepositive)."

If this turns out to be correct, Sikeliot will be in mourning. :) He had already asked for the gedmatch number for this sample so he could continue his campaign. What a disappointment!

Anyway, seriously, we've known from numerous papers that the North Italians have among the highest levels of EN ancestry, so this is not really a surprise. These high levels in them and in other Italians may be screwing up a lot of the analysis of Italian populations. Years ago on 23andme some coastal Mediterraneans of all sorts were showing some percentages of "Italian" and couldn't understand it. I responded that although there might be some ancestry related to Roman colonies in North Africa or the Near East, I thought that Italy harbored some very ancient Neolithic ancestry, more than existed in the modern Middle East, and that the "Italian" percentage might be related to that. It seems I might not have been all that far off.

Now, after a day outdoors and too much barbecue, I'm tired. :) I'll go through the supplement tomorrow.
 
Sorry if I'm being dense, but the Semitic languages aren't something in which I have any expertise, and this seems confusing.

I am no expert on the Semitic languages either so this is just going to be a few layman’s opinions here. Someone else with more knowledge should also answer your questions. I'm sure there are people here with much more knowledge than me about this, especially regarding your questions about their ydna.

However, a lot of people agree with the hypothesis that the Semitic languages arose in the southern Levant. To what period would that be dated?

With the Natufians, right? I’ve seen some people claim this recently, if so then that would make the Semitic languages over 14,000 years old. That would make Afro-Asiatic languages as a whole considerably old as well.

When and with whom did the Semitic language get to the Akkadians?

Well if I remember correctly the beliefs of the non-Semitic speaking Sumerians they thought they had originated from a mountain range in the north, maybe the Zagros or Taurus Mountains(Someone please correct this if it’s not true). The Semitic speaking Akkadians did not appear until later on in the southern region of the Mesopotamian around 3000bc, so the Semitic language either penetrated into Mesopotamia from the Levant or the Arabian Peninsula. The name of the city "Akkad" is thought to be of non Semitic word as well, so it’s not as if they were indigenous either. I’m not at all sure which civilization or culture would be responsible for introducing them to the area, they probably came from the Levant though. As for what ydna they brought or how much they left, I certainly have no idea.

Before you mentioned how you were confused how a male dominant pastoral culture could adopt the language of another culture. When you mentioned this I thought you were referring to the migration of CHG like ancestry to the Levant that the paper referred to. Of course that doesn't make sense since this CHG population would already have been Semitic speaking(If like the paper suggests it came from the Akkadian Empire). If you are now then wondering how the Semitic Akkadians came to dominate the Sumerians it's clear it was through military conquest. It was warfare between similar urban groups, not a group of pastoralist men being wooed by the language of a group of foreign women they encountered.
 
This is another interesting bit:
"When we substituted present-day Near Easterners with a panel of 150present-day populations available in the Human Origins dataset, we found only Sardinians andItalian_North shared significantly more alleles with Sidon_BA compared with the Lebanese (Figure S7).Sardinians are known to have retained a large proportion of ancestry from Early European farmers(EEF) and therefore the increased affinity to Sidon_BA could be related to a shared Neolithic ancestry.We computed f4(Lebanese, Sardinian/Italian_North; Sidon_BA, Levant_N) and found no evidence ofincreased affinity of Sardinians or Italian_North to Sidon_BA after the Neolithic (both Z-scores arepositive)."

If this turns out to be correct, Sikeliot will be in mourning. :) He had already asked for the gedmatch number for this sample so he could continue his campaign. What a disappointment!

Anyway, seriously, we've known from numerous papers that the North Italians have among the highest levels of EN ancestry, so this is not really a surprise. These high levels in them and in other Italians may be screwing up a lot of the analysis of Italian populations. Years ago on 23andme some coastal Mediterraneans of all sorts were showing some percentages of "Italian" and couldn't understand it. I responded that although there might be some ancestry related to Roman colonies in North Africa or the Near East, I thought that Italy harbored some very ancient Neolithic ancestry, more than existed in the modern Middle East, and that the "Italian" percentage might be related to that. It seems I might not have been all that far off.

Now, after a day outdoors and too much barbecue, I'm tired. :) I'll go through the supplement tomorrow.
Hey wait, does this mean that north Italins are more related to Sidon ba than Lebanese? Because the paper said that Lebanese are like 93 percent Sidon or something.

And barbecue sucks unless its chicken smothered in sauce with macaroni salad.

Go Eupedia this site rules like other things that rule

Actually, even better would be buffalo wings dipped in blue cheese and tortellini stuffed with mozzarella....rigatoni in cheddar or Mac salad works for me. that's my ideal meal. Keep the blue cheese flowing!! Yeah!

Sorry for being off topic
 
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Go Eupedia this site rules

I agree, it is indeed a good place to freely exchange ideas. (sorry for the off-topic though)
 
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I agree, it is indeed a good place to freely exchange ideas. (sorry for the off-topic though)

Not to worry! I agree, any place that allows us to freely exchange ideas is a place for us!
 
The study attributes the introduction of Iran Chalcolithic to the Levant with the expansion of the Akkadian Empire and it's subsequent demise which caused large migrations west. The Sumerian language was dying out in favor of the Semetic Akkadian language through out it's history. They were already speaking a Semetic language before they entered the area of the Levant.

this gif shows another interpretation fro the DNA published in the paper

Amorites_2600-1700_BCE.gif


the first pic shows the first arrival of haplo J herders from the Taurus Mts or beyond into Semitic territory where they would have switched language
 
A very confusing paper I must say. Especially, finding so much steppe in modern Lebanese. We know genomes of modern Near Easterners, and nothing like this was discovered till now?!!! Something is fishy with this picture. Unless, they have tested a special group of Lebanese.
To get to 20% of steppe in modern Lebanese people, we would need to replace almost half of the population with pure Steppe. And what would be the pure source of pure Steppe in Iron Age or later?!!!

On other hand 7% of Steppe arriving in Bronze Age makes sense. We had huge Steppe admixture in BA Armenians, up to 30% or so. We also see the rise of Steppe in IA Iran or Medieval, about 5-10% (I don't have BA Iran to compare though).

I think it's not necessary to assume that the Steppe/EHG admixture came in relatively pure form to the Levant. If it arrives after the Bronze Age, the newcomers would have been admixed with non-Steppe populations. Likewise, it is not compulsory to believe that the Neolithic Levant and Chalcolithic Iran admixture of Bronze Age Levant is the same as the one found in modern Lebanese. Most people assume that modern populations inevitably inherit a big share of the DNA of previous inhabitants to the region. But that is not necessarily the case. If there are been a population in Iran or Mesopotamia that carried a similar mix of Neolithic Levant and Chalcolithic Iran, but also with Steppe/EHG, and that population replaced almost completely the BA Levant population during the Bronze Age, it would be invisible using those simple admixtures.

Also I don't like how they displayed source populations in chart A on page 13. They see no difference between Iran Neolithic and Chalcolithic , or Levant and Anatolian Neolithic for that matter. They don't show Iranian Ch/N in Steppe admixture, but they should. Otherwise how can they recognize if Iran Chalcolithic came to Lebanon directly from Iran or from Steppe? Possibly this is their confusion about Steppe admixture in modern Lebanese.

That's also how I feel. That paper is rather sloppy in its use of admixtures. Not even differentiations. If they don't even bother distinguishing Chalcolithic Iran from Neolithic Iran, or Neolithic Levant from Neolithic Anatolia, how could they ever know if the the population of modern Lebanon is really descended mostly from that of Bronze Age Lebanon? It could be that half or more of the green and orange admixture they reported in modern Lebanese came during the Iron Age (Sea Peoples, Greeks, Romans), or even during the Middle Ages with European crusaders. That would explain why there was such a strong rise in blue EHG/Steppe admixture. On the other hand it doesn't explain the complete lack of pink WHG admixture. So it's more likely that another population, perhaps from LBA or Iron Age Iran, already possessed a blend of blue, green and orange (without any pink), and replaced a big part of the earlier BA population in the Levant. It could have been the Persians, for instance.

It would be interesting to run both BA and modern Lebanese genomes in various calculators to compare them with modern populations and see where that European component in modern Lebanese came from.
 
Angela said:
Despite claims by some people commenting on this paper, none of the experts are quite sure who the Sea Peoples were, much less their precise origin.

Invasions of the Sea Peoples in the Mediterranean world was just the last phase of population movements triggered by climate change, which started somewhere throughout Central-Northern (Germany or Bohemia) and Eastern (Ukraine, Black Sea Steppe) Europe. That coincided in time with the expansion of Urnfield cultures and the invention of European Bronze Age sword (for example Reutlingen type swords), as well as with the depopulation of Ukrainian Steppe. Large Bronze Age battle (ca. 4,000 warriors) discovered at the Tollense river in Western Pomerania, was likely part of the early phases of those turbulent events. The beginning of those events (which can be traced by archaeology) was in Northern and Eastern Europe, while their final episodes (the only ones mentioned in written sources) took place in Egypt, Anatolia and in the Levant.

It is reasonable to assume that the Sea Peoples had a lot of European HG admixtures.
 
I'm not quite sure I understand, Marko. This sample is from Sidon, which seems to be pretty much in the middle of Lebanon, but at any rate it seems to be very typical of the Bronze Age Levant as a whole.

I think this begs the question what makes the steppe distinctive and why the authors would try to tease out steppe ancestry in Lebanon in the first place.

In their f4-model MA1 and Swiss HG stick out as a source of admixture post-dating the Bronze Age. A similar trend was detected by Lazaridis whereby Swiss Bichon affinity becomes elevated in Jordan_ BA as compared to Natufian. IMHO, rather than some exotic admixture this signifies that there was a gradual resurgence of the WHG-like substratum following Natufian. The same thing that happened in the European Late Neolithic.
 
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Invasions of the Sea Peoples in the Mediterranean world was just the last phase of population movements triggered by climate change, which started somewhere throughout Central-Northern (Germany or Bohemia) and Eastern (Ukraine, Black Sea Steppe) Europe. That coincided in time with the expansion of Urnfield cultures and the invention of European Bronze Age sword (for example Reutlingen type swords), as well as with the depopulation of Ukrainian Steppe. Large Bronze Age battle (ca. 4,000 warriors) discovered at the Tollense river in Western Pomerania, was likely part of the early phases of those turbulent events. The beginning of those events (which can be traced by archaeology) was in Northern and Eastern Europe, while their final episodes (the only ones mentioned in written sources) took place in Egypt, Anatolia and in the Levant.

It is reasonable to assume that the Sea Peoples had a lot of European HG admixtures.

Nordic Sea Peoples :rolleyes:
 
Invasions of the Sea Peoples in the Mediterranean world was just the last phase of population movements triggered by climate change, which started somewhere throughout Central-Northern (Germany or Bohemia) and Eastern (Ukraine, Black Sea Steppe) Europe. That coincided in time with the expansion of Urnfield cultures and the invention of European Bronze Age sword (for example Reutlingen type swords), as well as with the depopulation of Ukrainian Steppe. Large Bronze Age battle (ca. 4,000 warriors) discovered at the Tollense river in Western Pomerania, was likely part of the early phases of those turbulent events. The beginning of those events (which can be traced by archaeology) was in Northern and Eastern Europe, while their final episodes (the only ones mentioned in written sources) took place in Egypt, Anatolia and in the Levant.

It is reasonable to assume that the Sea Peoples had a lot of European HG admixtures.

I agree with that, even geography is quite clear:

View attachment 8737

The focus was in the Balkans: Dorians got the Mycaeneans, Phrygians got Hittites, Ekwesh (Achaeans) were also one of the Sea Peoples, Lukka (Lycia) could get her name from a Sea People or to be more old, Sea Peoples atrtacked Egypt and Levant from the islands (Crete, Cyprus), Peleset stablished in Palestine, the same for Shekelesh in Sicily, Shardana in Sardinia, Teresh in Etruria (leaving Pelasgian / Lemnian in the Aegean)... even a Semitic people, the Arameans, profited the havoc created by the Sea Peoples to rule over the Levant.

And the map of the 4rth genetic component of Europeans I think it was related to these peoples already.

View attachment 8738
 
I am no expert on the Semitic languages either so this is just going to be a few layman’s opinions here. Someone else with more knowledge should also answer your questions. I'm sure there are people here with much more knowledge than me about this, especially regarding your questions about their ydna.



With the Natufians, right? I’ve seen some people claim this recently, if so then that would make the Semitic languages over 14,000 years old. That would make Afro-Asiatic languages as a whole considerably old as well.



Well if I remember correctly the beliefs of the non-Semitic speaking Sumerians they thought they had originated from a mountain range in the north, maybe the Zagros or Taurus Mountains(Someone please correct this if it’s not true). The Semitic speaking Akkadians did not appear until later on in the southern region of the Mesopotamian around 3000bc, so the Semitic language either penetrated into Mesopotamia from the Levant or the Arabian Peninsula. The name of the city "Akkad" is thought to be of non Semitic word as well, so it’s not as if they were indigenous either. I’m not at all sure which civilization or culture would be responsible for introducing them to the area, they probably came from the Levant though. As for what ydna they brought or how much they left, I certainly have no idea.

Before you mentioned how you were confused how a male dominant pastoral culture could adopt the language of another culture. When you mentioned this I thought you were referring to the migration of CHG like ancestry to the Levant that the paper referred to. Of course that doesn't make sense since this CHG population would already have been Semitic speaking(If like the paper suggests it came from the Akkadian Empire). If you are now then wondering how the Semitic Akkadians came to dominate the Sumerians it's clear it was through military conquest. It was warfare between similar urban groups, not a group of pastoralist men being wooed by the language of a group of foreign women they encountered.

Thanks, Promenade. I also hope a linguist pops in to help us out. :)
 
this gif shows another interpretation fro the DNA published in the paper

Amorites_2600-1700_BCE.gif


the first pic shows the first arrival of haplo J herders from the Taurus Mts or beyond into Semitic territory where they would have switched language
Thanks, Bicicleur, except how do I get the slides to stop?! :) That brings me back to my original point, though. Why would a pastoral, patriarchal culture, which arrived in numbers large enough to eventually account for half of the ancestry of the area, something comparable to the effect of the steppe migrations in northern Europe, have adopted the language of a subject people?

The prior scenario doesn't quite work for me, either, as I pointed out above. If Semitic arose in the southern Levant, the Akkadians may have brought Iran Ch. with them along with the J lineages, but they didn't bring Semitic languages with them, since they were already there.

Of course, if Semitic arose somewhere north of the southern Levant there's no problem, but that would set up howls among linguists, I imagine.
 

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