Phillistines, Biblical Enemies of the Israelites, Were European, DNA Reveals.

Pedro_P

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▼ The ancient Philistines — famous for their appearances in the Hebrew Bible, including the story of David and the giant Philistine Goliath — weren't local to what is now modern-day Israel. Instead, this enigmatic group descended from a group of seafaring Europeans, a new study of ancient DNA finds.
After analyzing the ancient DNA of 10 individuals buried at a Philistine archaeological site, an international team of researchers found that the Philistinesdescended from people in Greece, Sardinia or even Iberia (present-day Spain and Portugal). These ancestors migrated across the Mediterranean during the late Bronze Age or early Iron age, about 3,000 years ago.
But this European genetic signal was short-lived. Once the Philistines arrived in the southern Levant, an area encompassing the eastern Mediterranean, they intermarried with the locals. "Within no more than two centuries, this genetic footprint introduced during the early Iron Age is no longer detectable and seems to be diluted by a local Levantine-related gene pool," study co-researcher Choongwon Jeong, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, said in a statement.
Philistine mystery
Historians and archaeologists have spent decades trying to decipher the Philistines' origins. In addition to mentions in the Hebrew Bible (the story of Samson and the Philistine Delilah also mentions the group), the Philistines also appear in texts left behind by the ancient Egyptians. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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