The Ancient Israelites: A Mediterranean People

A new article published in Nature Communications by Marta Costa suggests that the Ashkenazi Jewish community has "substantial" European roots and is not just of Middle Eastern origin.

The discussion of Costa's conclusions is at times heated due to the controversial nature of the subject. But with all this talk about the genetic analysis of the European roots of the Ashkenazi Jewish community we find ourselves asking again: Who were the ancient Israelites?

Before geneticists began to analyze modern and ancient populations archaeologists and anthropologists were researching these question. The findings of archaeologists for the last century have indicated the Israelites were a Mediterranean people living on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, the Israelites were distinctly similar to ancient North Africans.

The culture that immediately preceded the Israelites in the region of ancient Israel is known as the Canaanite civilization. It reached its peak during the Middle Bronze Age (circa 2000 BCE – 1550 BCE) in the Southern Levant. At this time a socio-political network of city-states ruled over the region resulting in a flourishing civilization that disseminated its cultural artifacts throughout the Fertile Crescent, reaching south to Egypt (Tel el-Dab’a/Avaris), north into Syria, and into Mesopotamia. Analysis of excavated human skeletal remains associated with the Canaanite civilization from Middle Bronze Age sites yielded an interesting result. They found that there was a distinctive skull morphology that indicated a migration of foreign populations who had settled in this region “carrying a morphology more common in the northern parts of the Levant.” These new arrivals were distinctly West Asian.

In contrast, excavated human remains found in Israel during the Iron Age – the time of the Israelite settlement and the biblical Kingdoms of Judah and Israel - exhibit features commonly associated with Mediterranean populations, “i.e. long and narrow skulls of the Mediterranean type common both in Israel and Egypt.”  Earlier analysis of the skull morphology of 1,500 skeletons found at the city of Lachish, a royal city of the Kingdom of Judah second only to Jerusalem herself, indicated the same, that the inhabitants of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were most similar to ancient Egyptians. Based on this data the biblical ancestors of the Jewish people today were a southern Mediterranean people very similar to Egyptians. The Israelites were distinctly North African.

Future research into this question is needed. As ancient skeletal remains are tested for DNA in the coming years our understanding of who the ancient Israelites were in terms of ethnic make-up and composition will become clearer. For now, there still remains some mystery.

Sources:

• Arensburg. 1997. Hazor V: An Account of the Fifth Season of Excavation, 1968. Amnon Ben-Tor, Ruhama Bonfil (editors). Jerusalem.
• Costa, et al. "A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages." Nature Communications, vol.4 no. 2543, 11 July 2013. 
• Tufnel. 1953. Lachish III: The Iron Age. London.
• Ussishkin. 2004. Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973-1994). Tel Aviv.