Identifying genetic traces of historical expansions: Phoenician footprints in the Mediterranean.

ABSTRACT: The Phoenicians were the dominant traders in the Mediterranean Sea two thousand to three thousand years ago and expanded from their homeland in the Levant to establish colonies and trading posts throughout the Mediterranean, but then they disappeared from history. We wished to identify their male genetic traces in modern populations. Therefore, we chose Phoenician-influenced sites on the basis of well-documented historical records and collected new Y-chromosomal data from 1330 men from six such sites, as well as comparative data from the literature. We then developed an analytical strategy to distinguish between lineages specifically associated with the Phoenicians and those spread by geographically similar but historically distinct events, such as the Neolithic, Greek, and Jewish expansio

SUBMITTER: Zalloua PA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2668035 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature