Modern Jews and Arabs have Canaanites DNA
Canaanites are described in the Bible. In January 2020, ancient DNA that was taken from 93 people was evaluated by a global team of genetic scientists.
These individuals perished at five distinct locations in the Middle East over a period of 1500 years. They were all a part of the Canaanites civilisation, which lasted for almost 4700 years, from 1200 B.C. until the present.
The distance that can mow be determined between these old biblical people and their contemporary descendants, however, amazes the experts. The Biblical characters have been identified in the DNA of current people by geneticists.
Historic Mesopotamia, which extended in an arc from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, included sections of modern-day Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Kuwait. The Canaanites resided in the region between modern day Egypt and Mesopotamia.
The Canaanites also inhabited some of modern day Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria in addition to what is now Israel.
The son of Noah who left the arc, according to the Bible’s Book of Genesis, were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham is also Canaan’s father. According to the biblical narrative, the people who became known as Canaanites are Canaanites descendants.
Yet in a well-known verse from the book of Exodus, the Canaanites’s homeland is described as a pleasant and vast region that is flowing with mil and homey.
Canaanites DNA in May 2020 by collaboration of Carmel’s DNA lab and other teams
The largest study of its sort ever conducted in the Middle East, the findings of this research on Canaanite DNA were released in May 2020. The ability to recover DNA from bone fossils that are so old is a remarkable technical accomplishment.
Before scientists get into the specifics of the connections identified by the experts between ancient and modern people, let’s learn a little bit more about the Canaanites.
What the scientists were able to discover about how Canaanites DNA survives in a group of people who walk the earth today is equally astounding. It is difficult to sort out these ancient people’s exact ancestry.
They are well remembered for having been the inhabitants of “a country flowing with milk and honey” until the ancient Israelites defeated them and drove out of existence.
But a scientific study released today demonstrates that many contemporary Jews and Arabs still carry Canaanite genetic traces.
The research published in Cell also demonstrates how native inhabitants and migrants from the far-off Caucasus Mountains worked together to create the distinctive Canaanite culture that dominated the region between Egypt and Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age, which lasted from roughly 3500 B.C. to 1200 B.C.
The scientists retrieved ancient DNA from the bones of 73 people who were interred at five Canaanite sites dispersed throughout Israel and Jordan over a period of 1500 years.
They also took into account information from an additional 20 people from the four sites that were previously mentioned. People from all places have a great deal of genetic similarities, according to co-author and molecular evolutionist Liran Carmel of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
The Canaanites therefore shared DNA as well as a similar culture while living in far city states and never uniting into an empire. The majority of Arab and Jewish groups in the area owe more than half of their DNA to Canaanites and the peoples who lived in the ancient Near East.
Near East includes much of the modern Levant, Caucasus, and Iran. The researchers also compared the ancient DNA with that of modern populations and discovered this.
A collaboration between Carmel’s ancient DNA lab and other teams
The study, a collaboration between Carmel’s lab, the biologist David Reich’s ancient DNA lab at Harvard University, and other teams, was by far the biggest of its kind in the area.
Its discoveries are the most recent in a string of recent advances in our knowledge of this enigmatic culture which left behind so little written documents.
According to Carmel, the migration “may have entailed many waves during the Bronze Age” and appears to have been more than a single occurrence.
One brother and a sister were from a family that had recently relocated from the northeast and lived in Megiddo, in what is now northern Israel, circa 1500 B.C.
Also, the scientists noticed that people at two coastal locations – Ashkelon in Israel and Sidon in Lebanon- show a little bit greater genetic variety. It’s possible that Mediterranean port cities have more extensive commercial connections than interior villages.
2017 UK geneticist Marc Haber’s study also shows the similarity
An investigation of five Canaanites people from the seaside town of Sidon was co-led in 2017 by Marc Haber, a geneticist at the Sanger Institute of the Wellcome Trust in Hinxton, UK.
The findings demonstrated that Canaanites account for more than 90% of the genetic heritage of contemporary Lebanese. Around 4,500 years ago, the Canaanites started to build villages and cities in between these two powerful civilisation while the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians erected pyramids and ziggurats.
Five centuries later, diplomatic letters record various Canaanite rulers who frequently fought to keep their country apart form Egypt. In a letter to the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, one Babylonian ruler admitted that “the country of Canaan is your realm and its kings are servants.”
The Canaanite country was given to the Israelis by Yahweh following their exodus from Egypt, according to biblical passages that were written several years later.
According to Jewish tradition, the Canaanites were finally victorious, however archaeological findings don’t support this. Instead, it seems that subsequent conquerors like the Philistines, Greeks, and Romans progressively defeated them.
The Canaanites were assumed to have sprung from earlier people that had lived in the area for thousands of years prior and spoke a Semitic language. Yet red-and-black pottery unearthed at Canaanite sites that closely mimics ceramics found in the Caucasus Mountains, about 750 kms to the northwest, has confused archaeologists.
Moreover, historians have highlighted that a large number of Canaanite names originate from Hurrian, a non-Semitic language that was spoken in the Caucasus.
It was unclear if this was the result of long-distance commerce or migration. The new research shows that throughout humanity’s initial period of cities and empires, there were sizable populations travelling around as well as products.
Individuals form Canaan were found to have a combination of native Neolithic and Caucasian migrants’ DNA, who first arrived in the area at the beginning of the Bronze Age.
The biological evidence, according to Johns Hopkins University archaeologist Glen Schwartz, who was not involved in the study, shed vital light on how Canaanites shared a sizable number of genes as well as cultural characteristics.
The number of DNA results, according to Haber from the Wellcome Trust, is especially noteworthy, he added, given the difficulties of obtaining samples from ancient bones that have been buried in such a heated environment that may swiftly damaged genetic material.
Who arrived first?
Politicians from Israel and the Palestinian territories each assert that their populations originated in those areas and that the other group immigrated later.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, declared 2023 that “we are the Canaanites.” This land belong s to the people who lived on it 5,000 years ago.
Benjamin Netanyahu the Israeli prime minister, reportedly claimed that contemporary Palestinians “came from the Arabian peninsula to the Land of Israel hundreds of yers” after the Jews.
Despite significant changes in the regions since the Bronze Age, the new study implies that “the present-day population of the region are to a considerable degree, descended from its ancient occupants,” writes Schwartz.
Nevertheless, Carmel notes that there are indications of later demographic changes. By obtaining DNA from the bones of people who can be recognised as members of the Judean, Moabite, Ammonite, and other sources, Carmel expects to soon add to the discoveries.
Archaeologist Mary Ellen Buck, who authored a book on the Canaanites, says one may investigate Canaanite as opposed to Israelite that these tribes were intimately linked, despite the Bible’s assertion that they are separate and mutually opposed.
Source: Nationalgeographic
