Modern DNA tells a surprising story: the Palestinian Arabs are more genetically connected to the ancient Israelites than the European Jews who displaced them. This is the untold story of how today’s Palestinians can trace their roots back to the Bronze Age Canaanites and to the people who once built the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Historical religious Records: Jews – converted to Christianity – converted to Islam;

The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant

Highlights

•Analysis of genome-wide data for nine sites from the Bronze Age Southern Levant

•Contemporaneous samples from multiple sites are genetically similar

•Migration from the Zagros and/or Caucasus to the Levant between 2500–1000 BCE

•People related to these individuals contributed to all present-day Levantine populations

Summary

We report genome-wide DNA data for 73 individuals from five archaeological sites across the Bronze and Iron Ages Southern Levant. These individuals, who share the “Canaanite” material culture, can be modeled as descending from two sources: (1) earlier local Neolithic populations and (2) populations related to the Chalcolithic Zagros or the Bronze Age Caucasus. The non-local contribution increased over time, as evinced by three outliers who can be modeled as descendants of recent migrants.

We show evidence that different “Canaanite” groups genetically resemble each other more than other populations. We find that Levant-related modern populations typically have substantial ancestry coming from populations related to the Chalcolithic Zagros and the Bronze Age Southern Levant. These groups also harbor ancestry from sources we cannot fully model with the available data, highlighting the critical role of post-Bronze-Age migrations into the region over the past 3,000 years.

Full Article – https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30487-6

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