Continuity and admixture in the last five millennia of Levantine history from ancient Canaanite and present-day Lebanese genome sequences

Abstract

During the Bronze Age in the Levant, around 3-4 kya, a distinctive culture emerged as a Semiticspeaking people known as the Canaanites. The Canaanites inhabited an area bounded by Anatolia to the north, Mesopotamia to the East, and Egypt to the south, with access to Cyprus and the Aegean through the Mediterranean. Thus the Canaanites were at the centre of emerging Bronze Age civilizations and became politically and culturally influential.15 They were later known to the ancient Greeks as the Phoenicians who, 2.3-3.5 kya, colonized territories throughout the Mediterranean reaching as far as the Iberian Peninsula.16 However, for uncertain reasons, but perhaps related to the use of papyrus instead of clay for documentation, few textual records have survived from the Canaanites themselves and most of their history known today has been reconstructed from ancient Egyptian and Greek records, the Hebrew Bible and archaeological excavations.15 Many uncertainties still surround the origin of the Canaanites: Ancient Greek historians believed their homeland was located in the region of the Persian Gulf.16; 17 However, modern researchers tend to reject this hypothesis because of archaeological and historical evidence of population continuity through successive millennia in the Levant. The Canaanite culture is alternatively thought to have developed from local Chalcolithic people who were themselves derived from people who settled in farming villages in the 9-10 kya during the Neolithic period.15 Uncertainties also surround the fate of the Canaanites: the Bible reports the destruction of the Canaanite cities and the annihilation of its people; if true, the Canaanites could not have directly contributed genetically to present-day populations.