{"id":62209,"date":"2021-07-31T16:00:45","date_gmt":"2021-07-31T20:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblicalarchaeology.org\/?p=62209"},"modified":"2022-01-31T11:00:03","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T16:00:03","slug":"illuminating-the-philistines-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblicalarchaeology.org\/daily\/people-cultures-in-the-bible\/illuminating-the-philistines-origins\/","title":{"rendered":"Illuminating the Philistines’ Origins"},"content":{"rendered":"

The bones don\u2019t lie: The Philistines had European ancestry. A 2019 study published in Science Advances<\/em> analyzes DNA extracted from ten people buried during the second and first millennia B.C.E. at the site of Ashkelon on the Mediterranean Sea. It shows that the inhabitants of Ashkelon during the Iron Age I (c. 1200\u20131000 B.C.E.)\u2014the Philistines\u2014had DNA with a significantly larger amount of European ancestry than the site\u2019s earlier and later inhabitants.<\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/a>

Rachel Kalisher, a member of the Leon Levy Expedition\u2019s physical anthropology team, documents a tenth\u2013ninth-century B.C.E. burial in Ashkelon\u2019s Philistine cemetery. Photo: \u00a9Melissa Aja\/Leon Levy Expedition<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

The Hebrew Bible claims that the Philistines came from Caphtor and displaced the earlier inhabitants of the land (see, e.g., Deuteronomy 2:23; Jeremiah 47:4; Amos 9:7). The location of Caphtor and whether the Philistines did indeed come from it have long been debated. Most scholars connect the Philistines to the Sea Peoples movement, a migration of peoples from the \u201cislands\u201d (according to an inscription by Ramses III at Medinet Habu) to the Levant around 1200 B.C.E., at the end of the Late Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age I. Ancient texts and inscriptions record this migration, often describing it as an invasion.<\/p>\n

Many scholars think the \u201cislands\u201d\u2014and Caphtor\u2014refer to Crete or another location in the Aegean world, but some suggest locations as far away as Italy or as near as Cyprus or Cilicia (the southeastern coast of modern Turkey). Some think the Sea Peoples were not a homogenous group, but composed of various eastern Mediterranean peoples or perhaps bands of pirates. Others reject the notion that the Philistines migrated to the Levant. They think that the Philistines were indigenous to the Levant and that the new culture appearing in Philistia during the Iron Age I resulted from new ideas and knowledge that had either spread from other cultures or developed internally.<\/p>\n

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The Hebrew Bible and other ancient texts identify Ashkelon as a major Philistine city, along with the cities of Gaza, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath (see, e.g., Joshua 13:2\u20133). Philistia\u2019s heartland includes these five cities and their vicinities, but its hinterland extended much farther. All of the major Philistine cities have been excavated\u2014or are currently being excavated, such as Tell es-Safi\/Gath, whose excavations are led by Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University. The archaeological remains from the major Philistine sites show that beginning in the Iron Age I, the inhabitants of these sites exhibited a recognizable, distinct culture. Their architecture, pottery, jewelry, tools, and weapons looked different from those of their neighbors and of the sites\u2019 predecessors\u2014and similar to those from the Aegean world.<\/p>\n

The Leon Levy Expedition excavated Ashkelon from 1985\u20132016. Directed by the late Lawrence Stager of Harvard University and Daniel Master of Wheaton College, the expedition uncovered archaeological remains that spanned six millennia\u2014from the Chalcolithic period (c. 4000 B.C.E.) all the way to the time of the Crusaders and Mamluks (1270 C.E.). During the course of their excavations, the archaeologists uncovered numerous burials, including a large Philistine cemetery<\/a>, which dates from the tenth to ninth centuries B.C.E. The discovery and excavation of this cemetery allowed the team to extract the necessary DNA to analyze Ashkelon\u2019s population from the Iron Age II.<\/p>\n

The authors of the Science Advances<\/em> article\u2014Michael Feldman, Daniel Master, Raffaela A. Bianco, Marta Burri, Philipp W. Stockhammer, Alissa Mittnik, Adam J. Aja, Choongwon Jeong, and Johannes Krause\u2014compared the DNA of ten individuals from three different time periods at Ashkelon: the Bronze Age, the Iron Age I, and the Iron Age II. Archaeologists uncovered the three Bronze Age individuals from tombs; two of these individuals were dated by radiocarbon to 1746\u20131643 and 1622\u20131522 cal B.C.E., which aligns with the Middle Bronze Age II\u2013Late Bronze Age. The four individuals from the Iron Age I were infants buried in jars under the floors of 12th-century B.C.E. houses. The three Iron Age II individuals came from the tenth\u2013ninth-century B.C.E. Philistine cemetery.<\/p>\n

The results show that the Bronze Age people of Ashkelon had heritage that derived from the Stone Age inhabitants of the Levant and populations that originated in Anatolia and Iran. The authors refer to this as the \u201clocal Levantine gene pool.\u201d Although the ancestry of the early Iron Age infants is also primarily \u201clocal Levantine,\u201d it had an admixture of European genes. By the time of the Iron Age II, the ancestry of the people at Ashkelon once again returned to the \u201clocal Levantine gene pool\u201d\u2014the European gene pool no longer being pronounced.<\/p>\n

The influx of European heritage in the people of Ashkelon from the Iron Age I supports the theory that the Philistines came from the Aegean world and migrated to the Levant. In fact, of all the models created to explain the heritage of the early Iron Age infants, the model combining the local Levantine gene pool with a southern European gene pool, such as from Crete or Iberia, works the best.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the European ancestry disappears after a couple generations. By the tenth and ninth centuries B.C.E., the people group still called Philistines no longer show significant European ancestry. By that time they had likely intermarried with the local population.<\/p>\n

Extracting and studying ancient DNA opens new doors for the field of archaeology. Daniel Master tells Bible History Daily<\/em>, \u201cThe study of the DNA has the potential to transform our understanding of the past, but it is critically important that it be combined with the careful study of archaeological remains and ancient texts. This genetic information adds to the story of the Philistines, but it is only one chapter in a story that scholars have been writing for more than a century.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\t

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