When their world began to collapse around 1200 BCE — when the Mycenaean palace system fell, when the trade networks disrupted, when famine and social stress made the old patterns of life impossible — people moved.

Some moved east, into the Levant.

Those are the people who became the Philistines.

Others may have moved in different directions, ending up as the Shardana in Sardinia, the Shekelesh in Sicily, or the various other groups associated with the Sea Peoples.

The specific genetic profile of the Ashkelon Philistines — similar to but not identical with the Mycenaean Greeks of mainland Greece — is consistent with a population that derived partly from the Aegean world and partly from some other source, perhaps the transitional zone of southwestern Anatolia or Cyprus where Aegean and Near Eastern cultures overlapped.

Later genetic studies of Bronze Age and Iron Age populations in the region have added additional nuance.