Genetic study proves Israel's wild boars originated in Europe

Wild boars look more or less the same in Israel as they do anywhere else: stalky and hairy with big heads, long snouts, and beady eyes. So scientists had no reason to suspect Israeli wild boars were any different than their brothers and sisters roaming the Middle East, from Egypt to Iran... unlike the Near Eastern wild boars in surrounding countries, Israel's wild boars originated in Europe. After a genetic and archaeological analysis, the researchers suggest the wild boars living in Israel are descendants of domesticated pigs brought to Israel starting almost 3,000 years ago by the Philistines and other seafaring raiders...

Pig bones have been found in abundance at Philistine archaeological sites along Israel's southern coastal plane dating from the beginning of the Iron Age, around 1150 to 950 BCE. But pig bones are rare or absent at Iron Age sites in other parts of the country, including in the central hills, where Ancient Israel is thought to have emerged... Because there is not much difference in the size and the shape between European and Near Eastern pigs, the researchers had to use DNA testing to identify the origins of the animals.

Genetics researchers divide the pigs of the world into three main groups: European, Far Eastern, and Near Eastern. To the researchers' surprise, each of the 25 modern-day wild boars they analyzed from Israel share a European genetic signature, whereas modern-day boars from nearby countries, like Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Armenia, Iraq, and Iran, have a Near Eastern genetic signature. The researchers conclude that European pigs arrived in Israel at some point and overtook the local pig population.

http://www.varchive.org/ce/theses.htm

26. The cataclysm which caused a migration of peoples brought the Philistines from Cyprus to the shores of Palestine. They intermarried with the Amalekites and produced a hybrid nation.

27. The Manethonian tradition about the later Hyksos Dynasty of a “Hellenic” origin reflects the period when the Philistine element became rather dominant in the Amalekite Empire.

http://www.varchive.org/schorr/pottery.htm

The Levant did receive quite a bit of LH III pottery, and made its own imitation of LH III C shapes and decoration (the so-called Philistine ware);25 it did send Oriental products (including the alphabet) to Greece in the ninth-seventh centuries; and it did inspire, some of the decoration found on seventh-century Greek pottery. Between the Mycenaean Age and the ninth century, when Greece was undergoing a Dark Age, literary sources give a much brighter picture for Phoenicia. A Twenty-first Dynasty document from Egypt, which the accepted scheme places in the eleventh century,26 indicates a very strong position for contemporary Lebanon; the Bible portrays tenth-century Phoenicia as an independent land, from which Kings David and Solomon purchased lumber and hired seafarers, stone masons, carpenters and a master craftsman. 27 Phoenicia therefore seemed an ideal place to foster LH III pottery until the seventh century.

The facts are that the Levant did not export painted pottery to seventh-century Greece; LH III shapes and decoration made only a very small impact on the Levantine ceramic industry as a whole} and even in Philistia, LH III C-type pottery did not last as long as it did in Greece itself—none of which helps the survival theory for the Levant any more than at all the other places suggested over the last century. Bothered by those facts some scholars, who still favor the theory, propose that Near Eastern metalwork, ivory carvings and decorated fabrics kept the designs (if not the pot shapes) alive over those centuries.28 For continuity of decorative ivories and metalware the situation in the Levant presents as big an obstacle as in Greece (and as big a source of consternation), since there is no evidence of either product from ca. 1200 to 900 B.C.

http://www.varchive.org/tac/ashdod.htm

Without Egyptian help, the outcome was not long in doubt—the Assyrian king looted the rebellious city, along with other towns on the Philistine coast. Yamani “fled into the territory of Musru [Egypt] which belongs (now) to Ethiopia.”(3)

http://www.varchive.org/ce/bethshan.htm

When Saul fell in the war with the Philistines his body was carried to Beth-Shan and hung on the city wall. The city was an administrative center in the days of Solomon.(2) Scythians occupied it in the days of Manasseh (Menashe) or Josiah. Whereas other sites excavated in Palestine presented chronological difficulties, it was expected that a site like Beth-Shan, occupied through all the periods of biblical history, would disclose a well-defined archaeological succession if the excavations were scrupulously executed as to stratification. This condition was also fulfilled. [more on the page]

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