Ancient DNA evidence from Mycenaean sites has confirmed that the Bronze Age Mycenaeans were genetically similar to modern Greeks and to other Aegean and southeastern European populations — they had the kind of mixed ancestry typical of the region.

This is consistent with the broader picture of Aegean connectivity during the Bronze Age.

The genetic evidence supports a model in which the people who became the Sea Peoples were, in significant part, the refugees and migrants of a collapsing Aegean and Anatolian world — people who were already experiencing the crisis before they appear in the Egyptian records as “peoples of the sea.” They were not simply external destroyers of the Bronze Age world; they were partly victims of that world’s collapse who then contributed to its continuation in other regions.

What Medinet Habu’s Reliefs Don’t Tell Us