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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>October 31, 2008<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<h1 style='margin-top:2.25pt'><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>Phoenicians Left Deep Genetic Mark, Study Shows<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>By<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/john_noble_wilford/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More Articles by John Noble Wilford"><span style='color:#000066'>JOHN
NOBLE WILFORD</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>The Phoenicians, enigmatic people from the eastern shores of the
Mediterranean, stamped their mark on maritime history, and now research has
revealed that they also left a lasting genetic imprint.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>Scientists reported Thursday that as many as 1 in 17 men living
today on the coasts of North Africa and southern Europe may have a Phoenician
direct male-line ancestor.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>These men were found to retain identifiable genetic signatures
from the nearly 1,000 years the Phoenicians were a dominant seafaring
commercial power in the Mediterranean basin, until their conquest by Rome in
the 2nd century B.C.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>The Phoenicians who founded Carthage, a great city that rivaled
Rome. They introduced the alphabet to writing systems, exported cedars of
Lebanon for shipbuilding and marketed the regal purple dye made from the murex
shell. The name Phoenica, for their base in what is present-day Lebanon and
southern Syria, means “land of purple.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>Then the Phoenicians, their fortunes in sharp decline after defeat
in the Punic Wars, disappeared as a distinct culture. The monumental ruins of
Carthage, at modern Tunis, are about the only visible reminders of their former
greatness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>The scientists who conducted the new research said this was the
first application of a new analytic method for detecting especially subtle
genetic influences of historical population migrations. Such investigations,
supplementing the traditional stones-and-bones work of archaeology, are
contributing to a deeper understanding of human mobility over time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>The study was directed by the</span><span
class=apple-converted-space><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'> </span></span><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:
"Georgia","serif";color:black'><a
href="http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/"
title="The Web site of the Genographic Project."><span style='color:#000066'>Genographic
Project</span></a>, a partnership of the</span><span
class=apple-converted-space><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'> </span></span><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:
"Georgia","serif";color:black'><a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_geographic_society/index.html?inline=nyt-org"
title="More articles about National Geographic Society"><span style='color:
#000066'>National Geographic Society</span></a></span><span
class=apple-converted-space><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'> </span></span><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:
"Georgia","serif";color:black'>and IBM Corporation, with additional support
from the Waitt Family Foundation. The international team described the findings
in the current American Journal of Human Genetics.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>“When we started, we knew nothing about the genetics of the
Phoenicians,” Chris Tyler-Smith, a geneticist at the Wellcome Trust
Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England, said in an announcement. “All we
had to guide us was history: we knew where they had and hadn’t
settled.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>It proved to be enough, Dr. Tyler-Smith and Spencer Wells, a
geneticist who directs the Genographic Project, said in telephone interviews.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>Samples of the male Y-chromosome were collected from 1,330 men now
living at six sites known to have been settled in antiquity as colonies and
trading outposts of the Phoenicians. The sites were in Cyprus, Malta, Morocco,
the West Bank, , Syria and Tunisia.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>Each participant, whose inner cheek was swabbed for the samples,
had at least three generations of indigenous ancestry at the site. To this was
added data already available from Lebanon and previously published chromosome
findings from nearly 6,000 men at 56 sites throughout the Mediterranean region.
The data were then compared with similar research from neighboring communities
having no link to Phoenician settlers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>From the research emerged a distinctive Phoenician genetic
signature, in contrast to genetic traces spread by other migrations, like those
of late Stone-Age farmers, Greek colonists and the Jewish Diaspora. The
scientists thus concluded that, for example, one boy in each school class from
Cyprus to Tunis may be a descendant of Phoenician traders.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>“We were lucky in one respect,” Pierre A. Zalloua, a
geneticist at Lebanese American University in Beirut who was a principal author
of the journal report, said in an interview. “So many Phoenician
settlement sites were geographically close to non-Phoenician sites, making it
easier to distinguish differences in genetic patterns.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>In the journal article, the researchers wrote that the work
“underscores the effectiveness of Y-chromosomal variability” in
tracing human migrations. “Our methodology,” they concluded,
“can be applied to any historically documented expansion in which contact
and noncontact sites can be identified.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>Dr. Zalloua said that with further research it might be possible
to refine genetic patterns to reveal phases of the Phoenician expansion over
time — “first to Cyprus, then Malta and Africa, all the way to
Spain.” Perhaps, he added, the genes may hold clues to which Phoenician
cities — Byblos, Tyre or Sidon — settled certain colonies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style='line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";
color:black'>Dr. Wells, a specialist in applying genetics to migration studies
who is also an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society,
suggested that similar projects in the future could investigate the genetic
imprint from the Celtic expansion across the European continent, the Inca
through South America, Alexander’s march through central and south Asia
and multicultural traffic on the Silk Road.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span class=apple-style-span><span style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;background:#E5E5E5'><span
style='font-size:7.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:black'><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html"><span
style='color:#000066'>Copyright 2008</span></a><span
class=apple-converted-space> </span><a href="http://www.nytco.com/"><span
style='color:#000066'>The New York Times Company</span></a></span><span
style='font-size:7.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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