What Happened to the Canaanites?
DNA study links ancient Canaanites to their modern descendants
What happened to the Canaanites? DNA sequencing was conducted on five skeletons from Canaanite Sidon, including this one. The results indicate that there is a “genetic continuity” between the Canaanites at Sidon and the modern Lebanese. Photo: Courtesy of Claude Doumet-Serhal.
What happened to the Canaanites? Researchers conducted DNA sequencing on ancient Canaanite skeletons and have determined where the Canaanites’ descendants can be found today.
The Canaanites were a Semitic-speaking cultural group that lived in Canaan (comprising Lebanon, southern Syria, Israel and Transjordan) beginning in the second millennium B.C.E. and wielded influence throughout the Mediterranean.
In the Hebrew Bible, the Canaanites are described as inhabitants of Canaan before the arrival of the Israelites (e.g., Genesis 15:18–21, Exodus 13:11). Little of the Canaanites’ textual records remain, perhaps because they used papyrus instead of the more durable clay for writing. Much of the Canaanites’ history is reconstructed through the writings of contemporary peoples in addition to archaeological examinations of the material record.
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Marc Haber, Claude Doumet-Serhal, Christiana Scheib and a team of 13 other scientists recently published their DNA findings in The American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG). The researchers sequenced the genomes of five individuals who were buried in the Canaanite city of Sidon in Lebanon around 1700 B.C.E. as well as the genomes of 99 individuals from Lebanon today.
The results of their study demonstrated a connection: “We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age,” wrote the researchers in AJHG.
A painted limestone figurine of a human-ram deity from Canaanite Sidon appears on the cover of the July/August 2017 issue of BAR. Photo: Courtesy of Claude Doumet-Serhal.
In the July/August 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Claude Doumet-Serhal provides a glimpse of Canaanite Sidon in the Middle Bronze Age:
At the dawn of the second millennium B.C.E., the site was covered by a thick layer of deliberately cleaned sand between 3 and 4.6 feet deep, brought from the nearby seashore. This “purifying” activity must have taken weeks of hard labor. At this point Sidon became a burial site. To date, 142 burials have been found in this sand and in subsequent layers on top of it dating until around 1500 B.C.E. A funerary feasting tradition took place at the time of burial. High-ranking individuals were buried with objects indicating their power, rank and reputation, such as a Minoan cup (1984–1859 B.C.E.) from Phaistos, Crete, which was found inverted, as was the common Aegean practice.
The DNA study conducted on the skeletons from Sidon is part of the researchers’ larger effort to understand population histories in the Levant.
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“Many of our inferences rely on the limited number of ancient samples available, and we are only just beginning to reconstruct a genetic history of the Levant or the Near East as thoroughly as that of Europeans who, in comparison, have been extensively sampled,” the researchers wrote in AJHG.
Related reading in Bible History Daily
Hazor Excavations’ Amnon Ben-Tor Reveals Who Conquered Biblical Canaanites
Canaanite Worship? 3,400-Year-Old Figurine Found at Tel Rehov
This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on August 9, 2017.
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The DNA analysis suggests that it is the modern-day Lebanese population that can trace its origins back to the Canaanites. That said, the author’s theory would therefore negate the claims made by the so called political “Palestinians”. Perhaps science trumps false claims!
It would be very interesting to know whether the DNA of the Arabs of Gaza, Judea and Samaria have any relationship to the historic “natives” of those areas such as the Jews.
We need to think logically. This study shows a connection between some ancient Canaanites and some modern Lebanese. Does such a connection prove that a neighboring people, the Palestinians, have no familial relationship with the Canaanites? Of course not. We have to be careful not to let our preconceived opinions interfere with our understanding of science.
Since Sidon is in Lebanon, one would have to wonder what the DNA is compared to Phoenicians, also a Semitic people. We know that the Jews had friendly relations with Phoenicia and that biblical borders certainly didn’t extend into what is now Lebanon. I believe the authors may have brought the Bible into this report just to get publicity.
How are Canaanites connected to Africans?
The few Canaanites who survived Joshua assimilated into Israelite society. Today’s Palestinians are descendants of the Ottomans who were Turkish and controlled the area from 1299 to 1923 when British rule took over. this is well documented history.
To S: Israel is the only democratic country that one can walk to from Africa. There is a current constant flow of Africans escaping to Israel today. Also, African connections include the 400 years in Egypt ( North Africa), where they went to escape drought in Canaan, and were eventually enslaved. Another connection to Africa is the story that Moses first went south and his first wife was African. Thirdly there is the Soloman and Queen of Sheba connection, she returned to Ethiopia with Solomon’s child in her belly, and that child was the first king of Ethiopia.
Genetics shows that the closest group to Middle Eastern Jews are Palestinians…..
They’re all descendants from the Canaanites.
Blood Brothers: Palestinians and Jews Share Genetic Roots
Jews break down into three genetic groups, all of which have Middle Eastern origins – which are shared with the Palestinians and Druze.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/science/1.681385
How does that relate to the non-Middle Eastern Jews the Rothshilds shipped in to colonize the area starting in the 1800s?
The traditional history regarding the origins of the Phoenicians as recorded by Herodotus and by Arab historians is that they were descended from people who migrated from the eastern part of the Arabian peninsula. The modern Arab population of the Levant also originates from the Arabian peninsula. So yes they do indeed derive from a “Canaanite-related population” this is the known history. To conclude they this means that they are direct descendants of the Canaanites is disingenuous.
Unfortunately the media’s reaction to this genetic study has been to give the misleading impression that when the Israelites “invaded” Canaan, the Canaanites escaped Israelite “genocide” , and fled to Lebanon, and that the modern Lebanese are the descendants of those Canaanite refugees.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and it’s a pity the results of this important study have been twisted by the media.
First, the Canaanite samples were taken from ancient graves in Sidon, which makes them PHOENICIAN, i.e. the northern Canaanites who were native to Phoenicia, in present-day Lebanon.
Second, as the authors note in the study, they used Lebanese CHRISTIAN DNA samples to represent modern Lebanese population, since they had found this group to be more genetically isolated than other Lebanese groups.
Third, and in perhaps most critically to the field of Biblical archeology, the authors made the following observation:
” PCA shows that Sidon_BA clusters with three individuals from Early Bronze Age Jordan (Jordan_BA) found in a cave above the Neolithic site of ‘Ain Ghazal and probably associated with an Early Bronze Age village close to the site. This suggests that people from the highly differentiated urban culture on the Levant coast and inland people with different modes of subsistence were nevertheless genetically similar, supporting previous reports that the different cultural groups who inhabited the Levant during the Bronze Age, such as the Ammonites, Moabites, Israelites, and Phoenicians, each achieved their own cultural identities but all shared a common genetic and ethnic root with the Canaanites.”