A new genetic study reveals that today's Lebanese people are actually descendants of the ancient and Biblical Canaanites.
The study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, used the DNA from five peopel buried in the ancient city of Sidon 3,700 years ago and sequenced their entire genomes to get a match.
The Israel National News reported that the study found out that the Canaanites' genetic material is 93% similar to the genetic material of 99 modern Lebanese people. The discovery is astonishing considering that the region was conquered several times and had been the home of various groups.
The other 7% of today's Lebanese DNA traces back to the eastern Steppe people from today's Russia.
The study also found out that the Bronze Age inhabitants of Sidon, a major Canaanite city-state in Lebanon, have the genetic profile similar to the people living 300 to 800 years earlier in today's Jordan.
The authors have noted that the evidence supports the idea that different Levantine cultural groups have a common genetic background and the genetic mixing of the Levantine and Iranian nations happened soetime between 6,600 to 3,550 years ago.
Archaeologists have been working at Sidon for the past 19 years to learn more about the ancient city that remains inhabited today. At the present time, 106 Canaanite burials were located, with children buried in jars whil eadults were buried in the sand.
Researcher Dr. Marc Haber of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute said: 'The present-day Lebanese are likely to be direct descendants of the Canaanites, but they have in addition a small proportion of Eurasian ancestry that may have arrived via conquests by distant populations such as the Assyrians, Persians, or Macedonians.'
He also said that he was 'pleasantly surprised' that they had been able to analyse DNA from 4,000 year old human remains buried in a hot and humid climate considering the conditions the DNA was put in.
Co-author Dr Claude Doumet-Serhal, the director of the Sidon excavation said: 'For the first time we have genetic evidence for substantial continuity in the region, from the Bronze Age Canaanite population through to the present day.
'These results agree with the continuity seen by archaeologists. Collaborations between archaeologists and geneticists greatly enrich both fields of study and can answer questions about ancestry in ways that experts in neither field can answer alone.
'When Lebanon was founded in 1929, the Christians said, "We are Phoenician." The Muslims didn't accept that and they said, "No, we are Arab."'
