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Photo: from the study
Skeleton of ancient Canaanite man
Photo: from the study

Research reveals origins and fate of the Canaanites

Scientists make headway in reconstructing and arranging an ancient genome of a Canaanite man, showing that today's Lebanese are their descendents.

Researchers may finally be able to understand where the Canaanite tribes that lived in Israel (and also in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan) in the second millennium BCE came from and what happened to them later, thanks to a recent DNA analysis.

 

 

According to the study, the Canaanite population was never destroyed—but simply emigrated a little north.

 

In addition to the details mentioned in the Bible, today's scientists do not know too much about the ancient population that existed in Israel prior to the arrival of the first Israelites, but this changed recently when scientists succeeded in reconstructing and arranging an ancient genome of a Canaanite man using DNA collected from five different Canaanites who lived in what is now called Lebanon some 4,000 years ago.

 

Skeleton of ancient Canaanite man
Skeleton of ancient Canaanite man

The researchers, who published their analysis last week in the American Journal of Human Genetics, also reconstructed the genome of 99 modern Lebanese to try to determine the connection between the region's ancient settlers and those living there today.

 

 

"About 50% of the Canaanites’ genes came from local farmers who settled the Levant (today's Lebanon) about 10,000 years ago. But the other half was linked to an earlier population identified from skeletons found in Iran," said Marc Haber, a geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, who was one of the authors of the study. "The researchers estimate these Eastern migrants arrived in the Levant and started mixing with locals around 5,000 years ago."

 

 

Haber found that the present-day Lebanese population is largely descended from the ancient Canaanites, inheriting more than 90% of their genes from this ancient source.

 

"For the first time we have genetic evidence of continuity in this area, from the Canaanite population of the Bronze Age to the present," added researcher Claude Doma-Sarhal. "These findings are consistent with the continuity that archaeologists have found."

 


פרסום ראשון: 07.30.17, 17:23
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