Post by archaeologist on Sept 2, 2024 21:59:08 GMT -5
Some quotes from an article in the Israeli magazine Haaretz about the discovery of aDNA in an ancient Israelite tomb. There will be a coming study with more details.
In First, Archaeologists Extract DNA of Ancient Israelites
A rare First Temple-period family burial opens the door to genetic studies on the true origin of the ancient Israelites - and their links to modern Jewish populations
For the first time, ancient DNA has been recovered from the bodies of ancient Israelites living in the First Temple period, Haaretz has learned.
This achievement, a Holy Grail in the study of lost civilizations, was enabled following the discovery near Jerusalem of a rare family tomb dating to the Iron Age.
So far the collaboration of archaeologists and geneticists has been able to extract genetic material from two individuals, producing partial information, which is a tiny sample indeed. But it promises to pave the way for further research on longstanding questions about the origins of the ancient Israelites, their links to earlier populations living in the Levant, as well as to modern-day Jewish people.
Preliminary results from the excavation and the DNA study were expected to be presented at a conference about new archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem and its environs on Wednesday, and Haaretz has obtained an advance copy of the researchers’ paper. The conference has since been delayed due to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza.
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The highlight of the very partial results is that the Y chromosome in the man belongs to the J2 haplogroup, a group of closely-related DNA sequences that is believed to have originated in the Caucasus or Eastern Anatolia, a vast area including modern-day eastern Turkey, northwest Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and southern Russia.
This is important because, as mentioned, researchers have already mapped the DNA of ancient Canaanites, showing that they had a strong ancestral connection to modern-day Jewish and Arab populations. That research, published in Cell in 2020, also showed that the Canaanites in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (before the emergence of the Israelite identity) descended from a mix of Neolithic inhabitants of the Levant and a group that immigrated from the Caucasus or Eastern Anatolia.
This migration was already in motion in the Early Bronze Age, around 2900-2500 B.C.E., and is also visible archaeologically, with pottery from this period exhibiting strong influences from Anatolia and the Caucasus. It continued in the Middle Bronze Age, as seen in the study of ancient DNA of individuals from Megiddo and other places, and is evident in the mention in historical texts of Canaanite officials in the Late Bronze Age, with names that are not Semitic and originate in the northeastern Middle East, Finkelstein says.
While it’s too early to draw conclusions based on limited data from a single Israelite sample, it is of note that the First Temple-period individual from Kiryat Yearim still carried the same genetic variations that the Canaanites displayed centuries earlier and which they in turn had inherited from the Caucasian newcomers.
“As limited as it is, we cannot ignore this piece of evidence, that there is a connection between the genetic background of this person at Kiryat Yearim in the first millennium B.C.E. and the Canaanites in the second millennium B.C.E.,” Finkelstein says. “It’s not a complete surprise because we have evidence from other lines of inquiry, but it is another, small piece of evidence showing that the genetic pool is the same. Of course, at this time we cannot say if this is representative of the entire population.”
If researchers gather more data confirming that most Israelites indeed shared this ancestry with the Canaanites, it would support something that experts have strongly suspected for a while, that in fact the ancient Hebrews descended from the Canaanites.
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As for the mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the maternal side, the two individuals at Kiryat Yearim displayed two different haplogroups. One, T1a, is a very ancient ancestral haplogroup, with similar counterparts already found in individuals living in Jordan some 10,000 years ago and in southeastern Europe around 7,000 years ago, says Shaus. In later samples it is found in Iran and in those Canaanites sampled in Israel, as well as all the way to the Baltic and Ural Mountains.
This suggests that this haplogroup’s initial source may have been somewhere in Neolithic Anatolia or the Levant, and slowly spread with early farming, Shaus says.
The second mitochondrial haplogroup, called H87, hasn’t been previously detected in ancient DNA samples but is found in modern-day Basques, Tunisian Arabs, and Iraqis. This may point to an origin in the Mediterranean or the Near East, perhaps in the Arabian peninsula, he says. If so, this particular haplogroup may have spread with nomadic populations, Shaus concludes. In other words, the samples from two ancient Israelites hint at ancestry from peoples in both Anatolia and Arabia.
Much more data and research are needed
A rare First Temple-period family burial opens the door to genetic studies on the true origin of the ancient Israelites - and their links to modern Jewish populations
For the first time, ancient DNA has been recovered from the bodies of ancient Israelites living in the First Temple period, Haaretz has learned.
This achievement, a Holy Grail in the study of lost civilizations, was enabled following the discovery near Jerusalem of a rare family tomb dating to the Iron Age.
So far the collaboration of archaeologists and geneticists has been able to extract genetic material from two individuals, producing partial information, which is a tiny sample indeed. But it promises to pave the way for further research on longstanding questions about the origins of the ancient Israelites, their links to earlier populations living in the Levant, as well as to modern-day Jewish people.
Preliminary results from the excavation and the DNA study were expected to be presented at a conference about new archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem and its environs on Wednesday, and Haaretz has obtained an advance copy of the researchers’ paper. The conference has since been delayed due to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza.
-------------------
The highlight of the very partial results is that the Y chromosome in the man belongs to the J2 haplogroup, a group of closely-related DNA sequences that is believed to have originated in the Caucasus or Eastern Anatolia, a vast area including modern-day eastern Turkey, northwest Iran, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and southern Russia.
This is important because, as mentioned, researchers have already mapped the DNA of ancient Canaanites, showing that they had a strong ancestral connection to modern-day Jewish and Arab populations. That research, published in Cell in 2020, also showed that the Canaanites in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (before the emergence of the Israelite identity) descended from a mix of Neolithic inhabitants of the Levant and a group that immigrated from the Caucasus or Eastern Anatolia.
This migration was already in motion in the Early Bronze Age, around 2900-2500 B.C.E., and is also visible archaeologically, with pottery from this period exhibiting strong influences from Anatolia and the Caucasus. It continued in the Middle Bronze Age, as seen in the study of ancient DNA of individuals from Megiddo and other places, and is evident in the mention in historical texts of Canaanite officials in the Late Bronze Age, with names that are not Semitic and originate in the northeastern Middle East, Finkelstein says.
While it’s too early to draw conclusions based on limited data from a single Israelite sample, it is of note that the First Temple-period individual from Kiryat Yearim still carried the same genetic variations that the Canaanites displayed centuries earlier and which they in turn had inherited from the Caucasian newcomers.
“As limited as it is, we cannot ignore this piece of evidence, that there is a connection between the genetic background of this person at Kiryat Yearim in the first millennium B.C.E. and the Canaanites in the second millennium B.C.E.,” Finkelstein says. “It’s not a complete surprise because we have evidence from other lines of inquiry, but it is another, small piece of evidence showing that the genetic pool is the same. Of course, at this time we cannot say if this is representative of the entire population.”
If researchers gather more data confirming that most Israelites indeed shared this ancestry with the Canaanites, it would support something that experts have strongly suspected for a while, that in fact the ancient Hebrews descended from the Canaanites.
-----------
As for the mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the maternal side, the two individuals at Kiryat Yearim displayed two different haplogroups. One, T1a, is a very ancient ancestral haplogroup, with similar counterparts already found in individuals living in Jordan some 10,000 years ago and in southeastern Europe around 7,000 years ago, says Shaus. In later samples it is found in Iran and in those Canaanites sampled in Israel, as well as all the way to the Baltic and Ural Mountains.
This suggests that this haplogroup’s initial source may have been somewhere in Neolithic Anatolia or the Levant, and slowly spread with early farming, Shaus says.
The second mitochondrial haplogroup, called H87, hasn’t been previously detected in ancient DNA samples but is found in modern-day Basques, Tunisian Arabs, and Iraqis. This may point to an origin in the Mediterranean or the Near East, perhaps in the Arabian peninsula, he says. If so, this particular haplogroup may have spread with nomadic populations, Shaus concludes. In other words, the samples from two ancient Israelites hint at ancestry from peoples in both Anatolia and Arabia.
Much more data and research are needed
In First, Archaeologists Extract DNA of Ancient Israelites