The genetic evidence from Ashkelon also helps clarify the process of Philistine integration into the broader Levantine world.

Over the centuries, the Aegean genetic component in the population declined, reflecting intermarriage with local Canaanite populations.

The Philistines were not a closed genetic group that maintained strict separation from their neighbors; they integrated, as migrant populations typically do.

This integration is also visible in the material culture.

The early Philistine material culture, strongly marked by Aegean traditions, gradually incorporated more and more Canaanite elements.

By the later Iron Age, Philistine culture was in many ways a hybrid, combining its distinctive Aegean heritage with the broader Canaanite world in which it was embedded.