Research published in 2022 by Harney and colleagues expanded the Levantine dataset significantly, including many more individuals from throughout the Late Bronze and Iron Age periods.

The broader picture that emerges is of a Levant that was always genetically diverse, with different population profiles at different sites and in different periods.

The Sea Peoples’ migrations — or at least the Philistine component of those migrations — appear in the genetic record as a real and detectable event: a significant influx of Aegean-related ancestry into the southern Levantine coast around 1200 BCE, followed by a period of integration in which that ancestry gradually blended with the existing Canaanite genetic background.

The Other Sea Peoples: What We Know And Don’t Know