[LCM Articles] NYTimes: Phoenicians Left Deep Genetic Mark, Study Shows

[Loai Naamani]

October 31, 2008


Phoenicians Left Deep Genetic Mark, Study Shows


By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/john_noble_wil
ford/index.html?inline=nyt-per> JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

The study was directed by the
<http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/> Genographic Project, a
partnership of the
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nationa
l_geographic_society/index.html?inline=nyt-org> National Geographic Society
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.

"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."

It proved to be enough, Dr. Tyler-Smith and Spencer Wells, a geneticist who
directs the Genographic Project, said in telephone interviews.

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.

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.

>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.

"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."

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."

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.

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.

 

 <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> Copyright
2008  <http://www.nytco.com/> The New York Times Company

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