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.
How was it different? Mr. Wilford is getting on in years I know, but shouldn't an editor have picked up this sentence laying out there without an explanantion?
“All we had to guide us was history: we knew where they had and hadn’t settled.”
The politically-correct version of history, that is.
I agree — everyone’s at least a cousin, so what he’s writing doesn’t make a lot of sense. Obviously, nearly everyone (if not everyone) in former Phoenician areas are descended from the Phoenicians, by virtue of the fact that they were a going concern so long ago. Just because some particular Y-marker isn’t there doesn’t mean the rest of the chromosome pairs haven’t dropped through. And even if they haven’t (i.e., let’s get at the limitation of such studies), they are still ancestors.
No wonder so many people are under the spell of Obama...