The Sea Peoples: The Ancient Mystery That Stumped Historians For Centuries — And What Modern Science Finally Revealed About Who They Really Were

The Broader Genetic Legacy: What Happened After

The genetic legacy of the Sea Peoples extends beyond the individual populations they founded.

The broader disruption of the Bronze Age Collapse and the subsequent population movements of the Iron Age reshaped the genetic landscape of the Mediterranean in ways that we are still characterizing through ancient DNA research.

One of the most important processes was the Phoenician expansion of the first millennium BCE.

The Phoenicians — the Canaanite cities of the Levantine coast, particularly Tyre and Sidon, which survived the Bronze Age Collapse in reduced but continuing form — became the great maritime traders of the early Iron Age.