Ancient DNA may reveal origin of the Biblical Philistines

Source: Ancient DNA may reveal origin of the Biblical Philistines

PUBLISHED JULY 3, 2019

The first-ever study of DNA recovered from an ancient Philistine site is providing a unique genetic insight into the origins of some of the most notorious troublemakers of the Old Testament.

The authors of the Hebrew Bible made it clear that the Philistines were not like them: This “uncircumcised” group is described in several passages as coming from the “Land of Caphtor” (modern-day Crete) before taking control of the coastal region of what is now southern Israel and the Gaza Strip. They warred with their Israelite neighbors, even seizing the Ark of the Covenant for a time. Their representatives in the Bible include the giant Goliath, who was felled by the future king David, and Delilah, who robbed the Israelite Samson of his strength by cutting his hair.

Modern archaeologists agree that the Philistines were different from their neighbors: Their arrival on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in the early 12th century B.C. is marked by pottery with close parallels to the ancient Greek world, the use of an Aegean—instead of a Semitic—script, and the consumption of pork.

DNA recovered from 10th-to-9th-century B.C. burials at the Ashkelon cemetery was compared to earlier Philistine infant burials, as well as those of individuals who lived in the area before the Philistines arrived at the beginning of the 12th century B.C.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MELISSA AJA, LEON LEVY EXPEDITION

Many researchers also tie the presence of the Philistines to the exploits of the Sea Peoples, a mysterious confederation of tribes that, according to Egyptian and other historical sources, appears to have wreaked havoc across the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Late Bronze Age in the 13th century and early 12th century B.C.

Now, a study published today in the journal Science Advances, prompted by the unprecedented 2016 discovery of a cemetery at the ancient Philistine city of Ashkelon on the southern coast of Israel, provides an intriguing look into the genetic origins and legacy of the Philistines. The research appears to support their foreign origin, but reveals that the reviled outsiders were soon marrying into the local populations.

The study analyzed DNA from ten sets of human remains recovered from Ashkelon across three different time periods: a Middle/Late Bronze Age burial ground (about 1650-1200 B.C.), which pre-dates the Philistine presence in the area; infant burials from the late 1100s B.C., following the arrival of the Philistines in the early Iron Age; and individuals buried in the Philistine cemetery in the later Iron Age (10th and ninth centuries B.C.)

The four early Iron Age DNA samples, all from infants buried beneath the floors of Philistine houses, include proportionally more “additional European ancestry” in their genetic signatures (roughly 14%) than in the pre-Philistine Bronze Age samples (2% to 9%), according to the researchers. While the origins of this additional “European ancestry” are not conclusive, the most plausible models point to Greece, Crete, Sardinia, and the Iberian peninsula.

Daniel Master, director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon and a co-author of the study, hails the results as “direct evidence” that supports the theory that the Philistines began as migrants from the west who settled in Ashkelon in the 12th century B.C.

“It fits with the Egyptian and other texts that we have, and it fits with the [archaeological material].”

What researchers find even more unusual is that this specific “European blip” disappears quickly and is statistically insignificant in the DNA from study samples recovered from the cemetery at Ashkelon only a few centuries after the infant burials. The later Philistine burials have genetic signatures very similar to local populations who lived in the region before the Philistines showed up.

“We managed to catch this movement of people coming to Ashkelon from southern Europe,” says Michal Feldman, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute and study co-author. “Then it disappears very quickly within 200 years, probably because [the Philistines] intermarried and this kind of genetic signature was diluted within the local population.”

“For more than a century, we have debated the question of where the Philistines came from,” writes archaeologist Eric Cline in an email from his excavation at the Canaanite site of Tel Kabri (Cline was not involved in the current research.) “Now we have the answer: Southern Europe, and probably more specifically mainland Greece, Crete, or Sardinia. This fits with what had seemed the most likely answer previously, especially judging from [the archaeological remains], and so this seems a logical finding.”

Aren Maeir, an archaeologist who directs excavations at the Philistine city of Tell-es-Safi/Gath and who was also not involved in the current research, warns against oversimplifying the story of the Philistines, however, calling the Biblical villians “an ‘entagled’ or ‘transcultural’ group, consisting of peoples of various origins.”

“[W]hile I fully agree that there was a significant [foreign] component among the Philistines in the early Iron Age, these foreign components were not of one origin, and, no less important, they mixed with local Levantine populations from the early Iron Age onwards,” Maeir writes in an email.

For Master, what’s most interesting is the fact that—despite the quick genetic assimilation that the Philistines underwent —they remained a distinct cultural group that was clearly identifiable from their neighbors for more than five centuries, until they were conquered by the Babylonians in 604 B.C.

“It’s kind of interesting how you see [the Philistine genetic mix] has changed so quickly,” the archaeologist observed. “Because if you were only relying on the Hebrew texts, you’d think that nobody would want to mix with the Philistines, right?”

The Holocaust in Thessaloniki, Covid 19 Vaccine and Viagra.

History of Sorts

Some people will probably accuse me for using specific words in the title as ‘clickbait’, and to an extend that is true. But anyone who writes a blog, and especially one with an extraordinary story, want readers to click on that link to read that story.

I make no excuse for the use of the title, basically because all the words are linked.

There were an approximate 50,000 Jews in Thessaloniki ,Greece, before World War 2. Only 2000 of them survived.

In the summer of 1942, the persecution of the Jews of Thessaloniki started. All men between the ages of 18 and 45 were conscripted into forced labor, where they stood for hours in the hot summer sun and were beaten and humiliated. The Jewish community was depleted of its wealth and pride. Jews were ordered to wear the yellow Star of David and forced into an enclosed ghetto, called…

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The Best Books About the Apollo Program and Landing on the Moon | Science | Smithsonian Magazine

Source: The Best Books About the Apollo Program and Landing on the Moon | Science | Smithsonian Magazine

The United States space program before and during Apollo, including the first time humankind landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, during Apollo 11, is one of the most written about subjects in history. Much ink has been spilt over the most thrilling moments of the lunar flights, the quality and character of the astronauts, the political forces that sent humanity to the moon, the technical details of spaceflight, and virtually every word and deed of anyone close to the Apollo program and the moon landings. But perhaps the most important and enjoyable Apollo stories are contained in books. Here are some of the best.

Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys

Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys chronicles the height of NASA’s push to land on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Michael Collins, command module pilot for Apollo 11, is not as famous as his crewmates Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who walked on the moon while he orbited above, but Collins writes with an eloquence and a humor that captures both the profundity and sheer awesomeness of flying to the moon. “After 50 years, this remains the best-written astronaut autobiography of all time,” says Michael Neufeld, a senior curator in the space history department of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, where Collins was once the director. “It is an elegant meditation on Collins’ Air Force career and his time as an astronaut, including Apollo 11.”

Apollo: The Race to the Moon

The story of venturing to the moon does not begin with Apollo, Neil Armstrong or even President John F. Kennedy. Before any human could venture nearly a quarter million miles to another world, the spaceflights of the Mercury program took the first Americans to space, and the Gemini program tested many of the technologies necessary for a lunar voyage, such as docking two spacecraft together and crawling out of a spacecraft in nothing but a pressure suit. Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox tells this story primarily through the lens of the NASA managers, scientists and engineers who made the moon landing possible. “Murray and Cox provide a ground-level, engineering view of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs,” Neufeld says. “[Their book] paints a vivid picture of how the leading NASA engineers and managers built the program up from the earliest days of Mercury to the Apollo 17 landing.”

A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

While Apollo: The Race to the Moon tells the story of Apollo through the eyes of NASA leaders, A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin primarily focuses on the experiences of the astronauts. Based on interviews with 23 of the 24 people who flew to the moon, as well as other prominent NASA employees and archival material, A Man on the Moon is one of the most complete and well-researched accounts of the Apollo program. From the exhilaration of a Saturn V rocket launch to the drama of Apollo 13, which was forced to make an emergency flight back to Earth after an oxygen tank exploded more than two days into the mission, Chaikin conveys the thrill and tension of the breakneck race to the lunar surface. “I’ve been there. Chaikin took me back,” said Gene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17 and the last person to have stood on the moon.

First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong

It’s rare—virtually unheard of—to find someone who would claim that Neil Armstrong was not an ideal candidate to be the first man on the moon. An engineer first and foremost, Armstrong was famous for technical knowhow and calm problem-solving prowess, but he was also a private and soft-spoken man. “I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer,” Armstrong said in 2000 to a group of students assembled at MIT’s Stata Center for an engineering course focused on flight.

In First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, James R. Hansen reveals the personal side of the most famous astronaut in the world. Based on over 50 hours of interviews with Armstrong himself, as well as discussions with his family and private documents, Hansen tells the incredible story of Armstrong’s life and work. From combat missions over North Korea as a Navy pilot, to experimental flights in the X-15 rocket plane (still the fastest manned aircraft to ever fly), to the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit (and the emergency that sent his spacecraft into a dangerous spin), Armstrong’s life—and the personal sacrifices he made—would make for a thrilling tale even if he hadn’t been the first person to walk on the moon.

“For biographies of astronauts written by others, First Man is the gold standard,” Neufeld says. “Hansen combines rigorous scholarly research with a fluid and interesting writing style.”

Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond

While the astronauts flew in space, Mission Control closely monitored from the ground. Coordinating with radio stations in California, Spain and Australia to provide 24-hour communications and telemetry data during the Apollo missions, “Houston”—as the astronauts called Mission Control—is almost as famous as any of the people who flew to the moon, and Gene Kranz was one of the most influential people in that room.

In his memoir, Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond, Kranz describes his role during many of the most famous spaceflights in history. Chris Kraft, NASA’s first lead flight director, assigned Kranz a job as a Mission Control procedures officer, and Kranz assisted with the first launches of Alan Shepard (the first American in space) and John Glenn (the first American to orbit the Earth). During the Gemini program, as the space race was kicking in to full swing, Kraft came to rely on Kranz as a flight director, and during Gemini 4, “He just said, ‘You’re in charge,’ and walked out.”

Kranz later took over as lead flight director, a role he maintained through Apollo 11 as Armstrong and Aldrin touched down on the moon. He was also the lead flight director for Apollo 13, guiding the crippled spacecraft back to Earth safely after an oxygen tank exploded during the flight to the moon, forcing the crew to swing around the moon and return to Earth without a lunar landing. During these moments and more, as the astronauts made history and escaped disaster, Kranz was in charge of Mission Control on the ground.

Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War

Wernher von Braun was undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in the history of aerospace engineering and rocketry. He not only led the team of thousands of engineers that built the Saturn V moon rocket for Apollo—the largest and most powerful rocket in the world, before or since—but he was also a chief designer of the V-2, the world’s first long-range ballistic missile and the design inspiration for virtually every liquid-fueled rocket since.

But von Braun is also infamous for his time with the Nazi Party. The gifted engineer spent his early career building V-2s for the German military, which the Nazis used to bombard England and Belgium. Forced concentration camp labor was also used to construct V-2s in brutally horrific conditions, something that von Braun was aware of.

After his capture by Allied forces, von Braun was moved to the United States along with more than 1,500 other German engineers and scientists as part of Operation Paperclip. He was sent to the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Alabama to build missiles, and he ultimately became not only the director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, but also a major advocate for a crewed mission to the moon and a well-known public figure.

For much of his life in the U.S., von Braun’s history with the Nazis was downplayed or ignored. His life’s story is a difficult one to tell, not only because of the moral considerations at play, but also because any biographer would need to refer to both U.S. and German sources to chronicle von Braun’s life before, during and after World War II. Michael Neufeld’s Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War is the most complete and authoritative von Braun biography to date, avoiding both glorification and vilification as it examines one of the most prominent figures in the history of spaceflight.

We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program

In the 1960s, as the Civil Rights Movement chipped away at the oppression and injustice of segregation and Jim Crow, NASA, like many institutions, struggled with diversity as well. Many African-American leaders considered the space program to be a misguided use of national resources as black communities around the country struggled for economic equality.

However, just as the federal government became a tool to enforce Civil Rights legislation, NASA, a federal agency itself, also saw some signs of progress. We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program by Richard Paul and Steven Moss chronicles the lives and work of ten of the first black scientists and engineers to work for NASA.

One of the most prominent figures, scientist and mathematician Clyde Foster, worked under von Braun at Redstone Arsenal and then at Marshall Space Flight Center, calculating trajectories for rocket flights. Foster went on to convince von Braun to support establishing a computer science program at Alabama A&M University, a historically black college, and then became the director of the Equal Employment Opportunity office at Marshall where he helped hundreds of African-Americans gain jobs at NASA.

Apollo’s Legacy: Perspectives on the Moon Landings

Fifty years after the moon landing, historians and space enthusiasts can start to gain a new perspective on the legacy of the Apollo program—like the astronauts looking back at Earth from the moon and seeing it for the first time as a small, beautiful and delicate world. In

In Apollo’s Legacy: Perspectives on the Moon Landings, Roger Launius, a former chief historian at NASA and senior official at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, examines the wide range of reactions to the Apollo program throughout the years. Depending on who you ask, the Apollo program was an example of American exceptionalism and prowess, or a waste of national resources that could have been used to help solve earthly problems. Some say the scientific and technological advances of Apollo were well worth the effort, while others deny the moon landing ever took place at all. Apollo’s Legacy combines perspectives about the moon landings with important moments in the space program’s history to tell a fresh story about one of the most covered events in history.

Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth

“We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” So said Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders after flying some 240,000 miles to orbit the moon for the first time in history. Anders also took the now-iconic Earthrise image as he and his crewmates circled the moon and watched the Earth appear to rise over the horizon.

Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth by Robert Poole, a former editor at Smithsonian, explores the significance of this photo and other images of Earth taken from space. Filled with beautiful pictures and stories from missions to the moon, the book delves into the impact of the Apollo program on everything from environmentalism to religion to science. “Poole’s story is one of ancient and academic ideas of the moon and the Earth, and how astronaut photographs like Earthrise from Apollo 8 became a primary means by which people would fulfill dreams of lunar travel and come to realize the scientific reality of the Earth-moon system,” says Jennifer Levasseur, a curator in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s space history department.

John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon

During a meeting with NASA administrator James Webb and other officials in 1962, President Kennedy told them in no uncertain terms that the priority for NASA was beating the Russians to the moon. “Otherwise, we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money, because I’m not that interested in space.” It may be difficult to reconcile this statement with the same person who, just a couple months earlier, had proclaimed at Rice University: “The moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”

But the truth is that Kennedy’s relationship with the U.S. space program was complicated, as John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon by John M. Logsdon reveals. His decision to throw his support behind NASA was, in many ways, a political move rather than authentic enthusiasm for space exploration or science. “Logsdon is the leading scholar of presidential decision-making about NASA and the civil space program,” Neufeld says. “This book is his definitive statement as to how and why Kennedy made his Apollo decision.”

Apollo in the Age of Aquarius

Regardless of whether one considers the Apollo program a worthy endeavor, its impact on several spheres of politics and culture is undeniable, from environmentalism to civil rights to antiwar movements. As Apollo in the Age of Aquarius by Neil M. Maher reveals, leaving Earth orbit for the first time—and still the only time—had a profound effect on how millions of people viewed the planet. As far as we know, we are alone in the universe—at least incredibly isolated from any other life—and for many, this reality came into stark view thanks to Apollo. “Maher’s story is of the environmental movement’s relationship to the exploration of space,” Levasseur says. “He shows how astronaut photographs and NASA’s human spaceflight program came to serve as motivations for greater involvement in protecting Earth’s environment, the iconic images captured by astronauts serving as symbols for the political and social movements of the last few decades.”

Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight

The Apollo program came during a formative time in technological advancement, as rockets that could launch payloads into orbit had only been developed a little over a decade earlier, and computers were generally still the size of entire rooms (and much less powerful than a modern smartphone). Nevertheless, the Apollo Guidance Computer was crucial to navigating to the moon and landing (even though in each of the six landings, the astronauts took manual control for the final descent and touchdown).

Digital Apollo by David A. Mindell examines the relationship between humans and computers during Apollo, and how that relationship shaped future technology. For example, the race to the moon influenced the development of fly-by-wire aircraft—or aircraft that use an electronic interface and flight control computers. “Digital Apollo reveals, for the first time, the details of how digital computers worked in tandem with the crews of the Apollo missions to land safely on the moon and return to Earth,” says It describes not only the role of the computers in navigating the spacecraft, but also the pioneering use of the computers as real-time digital controllers—a first in aerospace.”