Jan + Reilly — both of you are correct that the Philistines had a clearly proto-Greek core but were an “amalgam” of the various “Sea peoples” — While the core elite or cultural instigators carried an Aegean genetic footprint, they traveled and raided alongside people from western Anatolia, Cyprus, and various Mediterranean islands. After analyzing the ancient DNA of 10 individuals buried at a Philistine archaeological site, an international team of researchers found that the Philistines descended from people in Greece, Sardinia or even Iberia (present-day Spain and Portugal). These ancestors migrated across the Mediterranean during the late Bronze Age or early Iron age, about 3,000 years ago. From a 2019 Ashkelon DNA study found that early Iron Age Philistine skeletons possessed roughly 25% to 70% European-related ancestry (best matching Greece, Crete, Sardinia, or Iberia). However, the population was highly heterogeneous from the very beginning. Within just two generations, that European genetic signature completely washed out. They heavily intermarried with the local Levantine/Canaanite population, culturally melting into their new home
We have no surviving blocks of text in the original Philistine language, as they rapidly adopted the local Canaanite (Semitic) language and script within a couple of centuries. However, trace remnants point to an Indo-European framework that was likely non-Greek or a mix of Aegean and Anatolian tongues - A significant portion of Philistine loanwords and titles point directly to Luwian, an Indo-European language spoken in western and southern Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The Philistines did not have kings; they were ruled by five lords called seren. Linguists used to link this to the Greek word tyrannos (tyrant), but modern consensus heavily leans toward it being a direct borrowing of the Luwian royal title tarwanis.
The “Philistines” melted into the Canaanite population pretty quickly - like the originally Germanic “Rus” melted into the East Slavic population. The descendants of those Philistines are found among all Levantine populations - including people who are Jews, Samaritans, Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs, Druze, etc. etc.
Interesting! Thank you
They didn't exist per se; the idea that a mighty storm of unknown belligerents arose from out of nowhere and everywhere, destroyed the Bronze Age polities, and left no writing, no burials, no characteristic weapons, no structures, and oddest of all, no ships (on the sea floor of course) is absurd. They are a result of the conventional pseudochronology of New Kingdom Egypt. The Peleset weren't the Philistines, they were the Persians, even the headware matches in the surviving bas reliefs (Egypt and Persia).