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Only around 5% of the world’s population have hazel eyes. Yet a 2009 study found that 55.2% of their Spanish cohort had hazel-green eyes. This eye color is also more common in Portugal than the global average. But why is there such a concentration of hazel eyes in the Iberian peninsula compared to most other parts of the world? And is the evolution of hazel eyes connected to the genetic history of Iberia? Now there are a two main types of hazel eyes. Iberian DNA and the Evolution of Hazel Eyes... | 15:00 Celtic History Decoded | 48.5K subscribers |...

Spanish archaeologists have successfully removed a 2,600-year-old shipwreck from waters off the country's southeastern coast...It was discovered in 1994 off the coast of Murcia in southeastern Spain, near the town of Mazarrón, according to Spain's Ministry of Culture.Now called the Mazarrón II, this shipwreck was one of two located in that same general area. The first, called Mazarrón I, was initially located in 1993, lifted from the water in June 1995, and put on display at Spain's National Museum of Underwater Archaeology in 2005 after undergoing years of conservation treatments, the museum said.Mazarrón II is of particular interest to archaeologists...

My discussion with Danny Jones on the Danny Jones Podcast about the archaeological evidence behind the Phoenicians discovering the Americas 2,000 years before Columbus!Did Phoenicians Discover America 2,000 years before Columbus? [9:11]Luke Caverns | 56.2K subscribers | 9,215 views | November 11, 2023

The discovery consists of three burial chambers, each accessed through a central shaft, characteristic of Punic and Roman period tombs. Remarkably, the entrance to each chamber was sealed with original slabs, and the contents inside included human remains and grave goods... The human remains and artefacts have since been carefully transferred to the SCH laboratory for further analysis.The findings, which include skeletal remains, cremation urns, and other funerary artefacts, provide a valuable insight into the ancient community that once inhabited the region.Preliminary analysis indicates a Punic timeline, although some artefacts suggest an extended period of use into the early Roman...

Underwater archaeologists from the Soprintendenza del Mare Regione Siciliana, RPM Nautical Foundation, and the Society for the Documentation of Submerged Sites (SDSS), has recovered two more bronze warship rams at the site of the Battle of the Egadi Islands, a pivotal naval engagement during the First Punic War, that led to the victory of Rome over Carthage.The Battle of the Egadi Islands, also called the Battle of the Aegates, was a naval battle fought on the 10 March 241 BC off the western coast of the island of Sicily.Ancient authors recount the size and scale of the battle, which saw...

After two years of underwater searches around the islands, which lie west of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, experts last year found a bronze helmet and some amphorae from about 241 BC, the date of the decisive Roman victory over the Carthage fleet. At around the same time, a team of Italy's famed art police busted a collector who had a ship's bronze battering ram from the same period on display in his home. It turned out the relic had been illegally looted using nets from the same area... The Battle of the Aegates Islands was the final naval battle...

There was a spate of headlines last week claiming that new scientific discoveries disproved the historical narrative of the Bible. Headlines included, "DNA vs the Bible: Israelites did not wipe out the Canaanites" and "Study disproves the Bible's suggestion that the ancient Canaanites were wiped out." The problem is that the reverse is actually true: The discoveries confirm what the Scriptures explicitly state.Not surprisingly, these headlines didn't come from obscure, Bible-bashing websites. Instead, they came from Cosmos Magazine, Yahoo.com, New Scientist (claiming that the discovery helped unravel the "true fate" of the Canaanites), and others. As stated in the New York...

The new samples come from Sidon, a coastal city in Lebanon. Marc Haber, a geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, U.K., extracted enough DNA from the ancient skeletons to sequence the whole genomes of five Canaanite individuals, all around 3700 years old. Haber’s first mission was to figure out who the Canaanites were, genetically speaking. Ancient Greek sources suggested they had migrated to the Levant from the East. To test that, Haber and colleagues compared the Canaanite genomes to those of other ancient populations in Eurasia. It turned out the Greeks were half right: About 50% of...

DNA research is shining new light on the Biblical Canaanite civilization, which existed thousands of years ago in the Middle East. The ancient civilization, which created the first alphabet and is mentioned frequently in the Bible, has long fascinated historians. LiveScience reports that, because the Canaanites kept their records on papyrus, rather than clay, relatively little is known about them. Now, however, scientists have found a genetic ‘trail’ back to the Canaanites’ ancient world. By sequencing the genomes of five Canaanites that lived 4,000 years ago with genomes from 99 people living in modern day Lebanon, researchers identified a strong...

Last week, the American Journal of Human Genetics published a study connecting the DNA of ancient Canaanites to modern-day people in Lebanon. Various news outlets immediately reported that this study proved the Bible wrong, when nothing could be further from the truth. Evolution News' David Klinghoffer compiled a helpful series of headlines: “Study disproves the Bible’s suggestion that the ancient Canaanites were wiped out” (The Telegraph) “Bible says Canaanites were wiped out by Israelites but scientists just found their descendants living in Lebanon” (The Independent) “Bronze Age DNA disproves the Bible’s claim that the Canaanites were wiped out: Study says...

Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations Security Council that PA residents are the direct descendants of the Canaanites, claiming that ‘Palestine’ made significant contributions to humanity prior to the 1917 Balfour Declaration. During his address at the UN Security Council in which he called on the international community to hold a Middle East peace conference, with the goal of launching multilateral negotiations, Abbas claimed that the Arab residents of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza were in fact descended from the ancient Canaanites. "We are the descendants of the Canaanites who lived in the land of Palestine 5,000 years...

In 1844, when the Ottoman Empire still controlled the Holy Land, a census was conducted, which revealed that Jews constituted a majority of the population of Jerusalem. Where were the "Palestinians"? Where were the Canaanites? The census count reported the presence of three groups in the city: Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Canaanites were apparently not present. But suddenly, inexplicably, all Palestinians were spontaneously transformed into Canaanites in 2019, just as quickly as all Jordanian and Egyptian Arabs in Israel were spontaneously transformed into Palestinians in 1967. It took nothing more than the word of Yasser Arafat to create Palestinians out...

After examining the DNA of 93 bodies recovered from archaeological sites around the southern Levant, the land of Canaan in the Bible, researchers have concluded that modern populations of the region are descendants of the ancient Canaanites. Most modern Jewish groups and the Arabic-speaking groups from the region show at least half of their ancestry as Canaanite. In the study, published in Cell, the researchers explain that they used existing DNA analysis of 20 individuals, from sites in Israel and Lebanon, and then added 73 more, taking DNA from the bones of individuals found at Tel Megiddo, Tel Abel Beth...

The Near East is often described as the cradle of civilisation. The Bronze Age Canaanites, later known as the Phoenicians, introduced many aspects of society that we know today.. However, historical records of the Canaanites are limited. They were mentioned in ancient Greek and Egyptian texts, and the Bible which reports widespread destruction of Canaanite settlements and annihilation of the communities.... In the first study of its kind, an international team of scientists have uncovered the genetics of the Canaanite people and a firm link with people living in Lebanon today. The team discovered that more than 90 per cent...

...The new study supports the results of an earlier chemical analysis of the soldiers' teeth. Published last year... the paper found that roughly two-thirds of soldiers who died during the 480 battle were not of Greek origin and that one-fourth of troops who died in 409 were not local to the area...That’s likely because paying soldiers to fight did not fit the prevailing narrative of "heroic Greek armies of citizens and the armored spearmen known as hoplites" rising up to defend Himera that Greek writers wanted to portray, study co-author David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University, tells the New...

Archaeologists working at the ancient Greek city of Himera in northern Sicily have uncovered what they now believe to be the largest Greek necropolis on the island... Hundreds of graves have already been uncovered but archaeologists believe there are thousands more waiting to be found in the burial ground of the city, which rose to prominence more than 2,500 years ago. "The necropolis is of an extraordinary beauty and notable dimensions," Sicily's regional councillor for culture, Antonello Antinoro, said Tuesday. "Preliminary estimates indicate the presence of around 10,000 tombs, which gives the site a good claim to being one...

This documentary rewrites the history of South America: Did Roman slaves escape to the "New World" 2000 years ago?In 146 B.C., Rome attacked Carthage. The fate of the survivors: they became Roman slaves. This thrilling South America centric documentary poses a thought-provoking question: Could some of these Carthaginian refugees have fled their Roman captors, journeying across the Atlantic to seek refuge in the untamed landscapes of South America?Unveiling for the first time, compelling evidence that sheds new light on this hypothesis, our documentary delves into fresh archaeological findings in the lush Amazon, employs cutting-edge genetic analyses of South Americas contemporary...

The Phoenicians were, for a long time, significant rivals to the Greeks in dominating Mediterranean trade. Interestingly, they shared quite a few similarities to the ancient Greeks. But what do we actually know about them? Did a place called Phoenicia even really exist? Where Did The Phoenicians Live? The homeland of the Phoenicians was in the Levant. Originally, they lived in the entire region where Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon now are. Their northern border was marked by ancient Syria. Their homeland was called Phoenicia. Some of the major Phoenician cities in this area were Byblos, Tyre, Sidon and Arwad. However,...

History books tell us that Portuguese navigators found the Azores islands uninhabited in the middle of the Atlantic during the early 1400s. But some intriguing constructions suggest that people occupied this area long before.So, who was this civilisation, and why did they leave?Was the Azores home to an ancient civilisation? | Next Stop Stories | BBC Reel | October 28, 2022

Researchers have discovered evidence to support the idea that Vikings settled on the Azores several hundred years before the Portuguese arrived in 1427. Evidence from animal remains has led ecologist Pedro Raposeiro and his team, of the University of the Azores, to believe the Vikings were there first.... ...Evolutionary biologist Dr Jeremy Searle of Cornell University has supported the conclusions by Mr Raposeiro. He has also argued that Vikings made it to the Azores - but his work is based on the mouse as his biological source....