Lebanese direct descendants of biblical Canaanites: study

dailystar.com.lb - BEIRUT: Modern Lebanese people are directly linked to the biblical Canaanites, according to a study from scientists at the Lebanese American University and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute that was published Thursday. “This is the first time we used ancient DNA dating to about 3,800 years ago to confirm that there is a continuity of people living in Lebanon and in the Levant in general,” co-author Pierre Zalloua told The Daily Star.

“The archaeological remains directly support what we have previously been saying,” the LAU dean of graduate studies and research added.

Published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, the study concluded that the Lebanese are direct descendants of the Bronze Age Canaanite population. The Biblical people would later be known as Phoenicians, made famous by their technological advancements, including one of the world’s first alphabets.

The discovery linking the ancient Canaanites with the modern Lebanese was made after DNA samples were extracted from human remains found in Lebanon’s southern city of Sidon.

Zalloua, who has been involved in the research for over a decade, told The Daily Star that he had collected a hundred samples “across the Lebanese community,” to compare the ancient and modern genomes.

The LAU professor confirmed that links to the Bronze Age Canaanites were not specific to a particular area of Lebanon or sect, but rather spanning across the country and region.

“We sampled different cultural and religious backgrounds to have a mix that is a good representation of the entire Lebanese population,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of people in Lebanon are shown to have one common origin.”

“What we find in our study is that 90 percent of the ancestries you find in modern-day Lebanese derive from this [Canaanite] population,” lead author Marc Haber from the WTSI told The Daily Star.

“When I say 90 percent ancestry though, it does not mean 90 percent of Lebanese are descendants of Canaanites,” he explained. “Rather, 90 percent of almost every Lebanese person’s genome is derived from this Bronze Age population.”

The ancient DNA samples used in the study were taken from 160 burials discovered over the preceding 19 years in an excavation site in Sidon.

“It was the petrous bone that gave such magnificent results,” Zalloua said. “The bone located above the cheek. It’s a very robust bone that is very rich in cells and not porous at all, so it preserves DNA much better than other parts of the body,” he added.

According to a WTSI media release, Haber commented that the successful extraction of DNA from ancient remains was lucky in Lebanon’s climate.

“It was a pleasant surprise to be able to extract and analyze DNA from 4,000-year-old human remains found in a hot environment, which is not known for preserving DNA well,” he said.

Chris Tyler-Smith, a geneticist and an author of the paper, added that the results were essential in uncovering the history of the extinct population.

“Genetic studies using ancient DNA can expand our understanding of history, and answer questions about the likely origins and descendants of enigmatic populations like the Canaanites, who left few written records themselves,” he said in the WTSI media release. “Now we would like to investigate the earlier and later genetic history of the Near East, and how it relates to the surrounding regions.” (ontinueReading