Herodotus in his Histories mentions that king Minos was the first to sail around the known world, so that bit of info was not just known only to Thucydides.
Great piece! My ancestry is 100% Peloponnesian with all 4 grandparents born on the peninsula before 1890 so I’m about as mainland as you’ll get. When I run my raw autosomal data on various ancient G25 calcs or compose my own I typically get around 60% Anatolian Barcin, 34% Steppe, 1% WHG (which makes sense) and minor elements that vary but typically something like CHG, Armenia EBA, Iran Neolithic or Levantine PPNB. I’m guessing these additional components came from the second wave of farmers that made it to mainland Greece.
What are you referencing with your indication that what is now Croatia avoided the WHG resurgence/EEF genocide? It is now an area with pretty high WHG patrilineal ancestry, right?
"We were able to model Croatia_North-East_MN as a mixture of 2.4 ± 1% WHG and 97.6 ± 1% Anatolia_N, and even a 100% Anatolia_N model fits the data (p = 0.11), which is congruent with previous studies that show very low WHG introgression in the Balkans and Hungarian Neolithic3,31 (Fig. 3a, Supplementary Fig. S4, Supplementary Table S4). Using Iron Gates hunter-gatherers (Iron_Gates_HG) instead of WHG produced very similar results (Supplementary Table S4). Using DATES (Methods), we estimated the timing of this admixture to between 19 and 42 generations before the contextual date of the samples (Supplementary Fig. S5, Supplementary Table S5, Methods), corresponding to the Early Neolithic. This further supports population continuity during the Middle Neolithic..."
Super read. I always suspected that the Philistines must have made their way from Mycenae by way of Crete due to the monopoly of ironmongering cited in the Bible. The David and Goliath story always struck me as a story of a native tribe with poorer Bronze weapons defeating a technically superior behemoth.
I read that the Philistines were from southern Europe and migrated into the Levant, but eventually they intermarried into the local population and stopped being a distinctive people.
I read that too. The theories I read were that they came from Anatolia, the Danube lands, and Mycenae for different reasons: burial methods, pottery, and so on. I kind of guessed Mycenae is most likely because of their ironmongering skills. The weakness of the theory is that the early Philistinewear was inferior to late Mycenaen pottery. But a long enough stopover in Crete might explain the loss of skill, especially if survival had been difficult.
I don't know about what happened to them as a people. I know that in modern Israel, there are many Samaritans (who still practise an early version of Judaism or proto-Judaism) who were left over from the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians but I don't think I've heard much about the Philistine population. Some Palestinians confuse the Roman name, Palestina (named after the road that linked Alexandria to Gaza) with ancestry but one can't take it seriously. One can hardly descend from the Philistines and Ishmael at the same time.
Brilliant piece. Nemets is a pioneer.
Very interesting article, thanks!
Herodotus in his Histories mentions that king Minos was the first to sail around the known world, so that bit of info was not just known only to Thucydides.
I will read
Great piece! My ancestry is 100% Peloponnesian with all 4 grandparents born on the peninsula before 1890 so I’m about as mainland as you’ll get. When I run my raw autosomal data on various ancient G25 calcs or compose my own I typically get around 60% Anatolian Barcin, 34% Steppe, 1% WHG (which makes sense) and minor elements that vary but typically something like CHG, Armenia EBA, Iran Neolithic or Levantine PPNB. I’m guessing these additional components came from the second wave of farmers that made it to mainland Greece.
What are you referencing with your indication that what is now Croatia avoided the WHG resurgence/EEF genocide? It is now an area with pretty high WHG patrilineal ancestry, right?
that came later - after the Indo-European Invasion. See this paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94932-9.
"We were able to model Croatia_North-East_MN as a mixture of 2.4 ± 1% WHG and 97.6 ± 1% Anatolia_N, and even a 100% Anatolia_N model fits the data (p = 0.11), which is congruent with previous studies that show very low WHG introgression in the Balkans and Hungarian Neolithic3,31 (Fig. 3a, Supplementary Fig. S4, Supplementary Table S4). Using Iron Gates hunter-gatherers (Iron_Gates_HG) instead of WHG produced very similar results (Supplementary Table S4). Using DATES (Methods), we estimated the timing of this admixture to between 19 and 42 generations before the contextual date of the samples (Supplementary Fig. S5, Supplementary Table S5, Methods), corresponding to the Early Neolithic. This further supports population continuity during the Middle Neolithic..."
That was a good read which clarified some issues for me. Thank you.
very interesting article and very well written.
Super read. I always suspected that the Philistines must have made their way from Mycenae by way of Crete due to the monopoly of ironmongering cited in the Bible. The David and Goliath story always struck me as a story of a native tribe with poorer Bronze weapons defeating a technically superior behemoth.
I read that the Philistines were from southern Europe and migrated into the Levant, but eventually they intermarried into the local population and stopped being a distinctive people.
I read that too. The theories I read were that they came from Anatolia, the Danube lands, and Mycenae for different reasons: burial methods, pottery, and so on. I kind of guessed Mycenae is most likely because of their ironmongering skills. The weakness of the theory is that the early Philistinewear was inferior to late Mycenaen pottery. But a long enough stopover in Crete might explain the loss of skill, especially if survival had been difficult.
I don't know about what happened to them as a people. I know that in modern Israel, there are many Samaritans (who still practise an early version of Judaism or proto-Judaism) who were left over from the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians but I don't think I've heard much about the Philistine population. Some Palestinians confuse the Roman name, Palestina (named after the road that linked Alexandria to Gaza) with ancestry but one can't take it seriously. One can hardly descend from the Philistines and Ishmael at the same time.
Nemets!
Really interesting!
Fantastic read. Keep on keeping on.
"The Mycenaean Greeks invaded Sicily"
-You mean Crete, and it was in the fifteenth century BC....................
No, they invaded Sicily too
They did, but was Sicily their first conquest?
from the dates it looks like it