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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...

A piece of history from the long war between Islam and Christendom was recently unearthed: a mass grave of 25 Crusaders who were attacked from behind and/or beheaded in the thirteenth century. According to one report:A team of international archaeologists uncovered the gruesome scene at Sidon Castle on the eastern Mediterranean coast of south Lebanon. Wounds on the remains suggests the soldiers died at the end of swords, maces and arrows, and charring on some bones means they were burned after being dropped into the pit. Other remains show markings on the neck, which likely means these individuals were captured...

A mass grave uncovered in Sidon, Lebanon, has shed new light on the Crusades and on the cruelty of medieval warfare, a new study in the academic journal PLOS ONE has shown. Archaeologists unearthed a large quantity of human bones in the moat of the Saint Louis Castle in South Lebanon. The area was first conquered by the Crusaders after the First Crusade in 1110. Some 150 years later, the Christian city was attacked and largely destroyed by the Mamluks in 1253 and then destroyed even more by the Mongols in 1260. Pursuing the idea of liberating the holy sites...

Their grisly remains show the ugly brutality of the holy wars.Archaeologists digging near a Middle Eastern castle have unearthed two mass graves containing the grisly remains of Christian soldiers vanquished during the medieval Crusades — and some of them could have even been personally buried by a king. The chipped and charred bones of at least 25 young men and teenage boys were found inside the dry moat of the ruins of St. Louis Castle in Sidon, Lebanon. Radiocarbon dating suggests they were among the many Europeans who, between the 11th and the 13th centuries, were spurred by priests and...

Excavations at Tell el-Burak, about five miles south of the Lebanese coastal city of Sidon, have revealed the well-preserved remains of a wine press used from at least the seventh century B.C. It is the earliest wine press ever found in the Phoenician homelands, which roughly corresponded to modern Lebanon. The discovery is featured in a study published Monday in the journal Antiquity. Large numbers of seeds show grapes were brought there from nearby vineyards and crushed by treading feet in a large basin of durable plaster that could hold about 1,200 gallons of raw juice... The wine press was...

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...

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...

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...

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...

In the Wake of the Phoenicians: DNA study reveals a Phoenician-Maltese link The idea is fascinating. Who among us hasn't considered our heritage and wondered if we might be descended from ancient royalty or some prominent historical figure? Led by a long-standing interest in the impact of ancient empires on the modern gene pool, geneticist and National Geographic emerging explorer Spencer Wells, with colleague Pierre Zalloua of the American University of Beirut, expanded on that question two years ago as they embarked on a genetic study of the Phoenicians, a first millennium B.C. sea empire that—over several hundred years—spread across...

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...

Today’s gospel teaches us to pray always and not lose heart. This is a gospel about having tenacity in prayer and, even when the results seem discouraging, continuing to beseech the Lord. It is also a gospel about the Lord’s will to extend the gospel to all the nations and to make the Church truly catholic.Let’s look at this gospel in five stages.STAGE I. TRAVELS - The text says, At that time, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Thus Jesus goes north of Israel into the territory we know today as Lebanon. Now Matthew is not just...

...The newly discovered monumental room is believed to be an extension of the underground Temple of Sidon, which dates back to the Bronze Age. This finding comes as workers prepare the foundations of a new national museum, which will be established beside the archaeological site. Construction of the museum led to urgent excavations at the site last month. Ten years ago, the delegation discovered an underground "holy of holies" room, dating back to 1300 B.C., where ancient residents are believed to have worshipped their gods. The newly discovered room was found adjacent to it, and is thought to be an...

Who Really Discovered America? Did ancient Hebrews reach the shores of the North and South American continents thousands of years before Christopher Columbus? What evidence is there for Hebrew and Israelite occupation of the Western Hemisphere even a thousand years before Christ? Was trans-Atlantic commerce and travel fairly routine in the days of king Solomon of Israel? Read here the intriguing, fascinating saga of the TRUE DISCOVERERS OF AMERICA! William F. Dankenbring A stone in a dry creek bed in New Mexico, discovered by early settlers in the region, is one of the most amazing archaeological discoveries in the Western...

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt said the issue of Hezbollah's arms can only be resolved via the National Dialogue and without resorting to sectarian partisanship, in remarks published Saturday. Commenting on the Sidon sit-in demanding the demilitarization of the resistance party, Jumblatt told An-Nahar: "The defense strategy should be formulated in a stable atmosphere away from tensions and sectarian partisanship." "This issue [Hezbollah's arms] cannot be resolved by blocking roads and disrupting people's lives in Sidon, the south and other areas," he added. On Wednesday, Sheikh Ahmad Assir, a Sidon-based Islamist and critic of Hezbollah's arsenal, blocked the...

The Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal reports that Lebanese security apparatuses and the Lebanese army have recently received reports on intentions to strike at UNIFIL in southern Lebanon.

SIDON: The British Museum's excavation team in Sidon have recently unearthed a new grave containing human skeletal remains belonging to a Canaanite warrior, archeology expert and field supervisor Claude Doumet Serhal told The Daily Star on Monday. According to Serhal, the delegation made the discovery at the "Freres" excavation site near Sidon's crusader castle. "This is the 77th grave that we have discovered at this site since our digging activities has started ten years ago with Lebanese-British financing," she said. According to Serhal, the remains go back to 2000 B.C., with a British archeologist saying the warrior had been buried...

BEIRUT — Lebanese troops shot and killed a suicide bomber near Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp Saturday, a senior military official said. The official said the Palestinian man wearing an explosive belt approached an army checkpoint just outside the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp on the outskirts of the southern city of Sidon. Soldiers manning the army checkpoint saw the young man climb out of a car and throw a hand grenade which failed to explode, the official said. The soldiers warned the man not to move, but he ignored the orders and moved quickly toward them with his hands on...

Deadly firefights in a Palestinian camp in south Lebanon and a bus bombing in the capital opened new fronts for the army on Monday as it battles to crush an Al-Qaeda-inspired militia in a 16-day standoff in the north of the country. Residents were plunged into panic by the gunbattles between the army and Sunni Muslim extremists which first flared late Sunday near Ain al-Helweh, the largest of Lebanon's 12 refugee camps in the southern city of Sidon. Two soldiers and two militants were killed and 11 wounded, a military spokesman said, and dozens of families fled to safety before...

The Ain al-Hilwe Palestinian refugee camp in the Lebanese port city of Sidon has been infiltrated by some 200 al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists who are using it as a base for planning and launching attacks, Lebanese intelligence officials told the London-based Sunday Telegraph. The officials blame the terror group, which calls itself Esbat al-Ansar (League of Warriors), for a rocket attack on the Future TV station in Beirut last Saturday night. The blast devastated the newsroom of the station, which is controlled by Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, but caused no injuries as no one was on duty at the...