Canaanite genomes (Haber et al. 2017 preprint)

[Petalpusher]

Abstract: The Canaanites inhabited the Levant region during the Bronze Age and established a culture which became influential in the Near East and beyond. However, the Canaanites, unlike most other ancient Near Easterners of this period, left few surviving textual records and thus their origin and relationship to ancient and present-day populations remain unclear. In this study, we sequenced five whole-genomes from ~3,700-year-old individuals from the city of Sidon, a major Canaanite city-state on the Eastern Mediterranean coast. We also sequenced the genomes of 99 individuals from present-day Lebanon to catalogue modern Levantine genetic diversity. We find that a Bronze Age Canaanite-related ancestry was widespread in the region, shared among urban populations inhabiting the coast (Sidon) and inland populations (Jordan) who likely lived in farming societies or were pastoral nomads. This Canaanite-related ancestry derived from mixture between local Neolithic populations and eastern migrants genetically related to Chalcolithic Iranians. We estimate, using linkage-disequilibrium decay patterns, that admixture occurred 6,600-3,550 years ago, coinciding with massive population movements in the mid-Holocene triggered by aridification ~4,200 years ago. 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. In addition, we find Eurasian ancestry in the Lebanese not present in Bronze Age or earlier Levantines. We estimate this Eurasian ancestry arrived in the Levant around 3,750-2,170 years ago during a period of successive conquests by distant populations such as the Persians and Macedonians.

...

However, the present-day Lebanese, in addition to their Levant_N and Iranian ancestry, have a component (11-22%) related to EHG and Steppe populations not found in Bronze Age populations (Figure 3A). We confirm the presence of this ancestry in the Lebanese by testing f4(Sidon_BA, Lebanese; Ancient Eurasian, Chimpanzee) and find that Eurasian hunter-gatherers and Steppe populations share more alleles with the Lebanese than with Sidon_BA (Figure 3B). We next tested a model of the present-day Lebanese as a mixture of Sidon_BA and any other ancient Eurasian population using qpAdm. We found that the Lebanese can be best modelled as Sidon_BA 93±1.6% and a Steppe Bronze Age population 7±1.6% (Figure 3C; Table S6).

https://i.imgur.com/NEQVho4.png

https://i.imgur.com/PwRGAos.png



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http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/05/26/142448.full.pdf

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/suppl/2017/05/26/142448.DC1/142448-1.pdf

[Rethel]

More interesting would be hgs.
Btw, Canaan is very difficult place, becasue there since
the deepest antiquity were wandering hordes of different people.
Some Canaanites even abandoned that land long before Israelites came.

And sidon is the one of the worst places for canaanitish research, becasue it was a city
like presend day London or New York, where people were mixing like in one big melting pot,
from every corners of the Middle East and Medditerrenian - it was one of the biggest and
most important city ports, if not the topest one during some long centuries.



This Canaanite-related ancestry derived from mixture between local Neolithic populations and eastern migrants genetically related to Chalcolithic Iranians.

I was wandering once, if Canaanites were not Gmen...

[Petalpusher]

Their haplo are J1 and J2 (rest are females, K/R/H). There s no reason for them to be G, they have little to no Anatolian neo, they are mostly a Levant and Iran blend


the two Sidon_BA males carried the Y-chromosome haplogroups39 J-P58 (J1a2b) and JM12
(J2b) (Table 1 and S4; Figure S9), both common male lineages in the Near East today.

[Sikeliot]

I hope we get this sample via GEDmatch, as I feel like there would be affinity to Ashkenazim, Sicilians, and Maltese.