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This deals with the results of DNA testing on 73 people from that ancient period.
Quote:
The researchers also studied the relationship of the Canaanites to modern-day populations. While the direct contribution of the Canaanites to modern populations cannot be accurately quantified, the data suggest that a broader Near Eastern component, including populations from the Caucasus and the Zagros Mountains, likely account for more than 50 percent of the ancestry of many Arabic-speaking and Jewish groups living in the region today.
Now that we have DNA analysis available as a research tool, we're seeing some relationships that were not obvious before, but there remains many pitfalls in extrapolating too many conclusions from the new info.
These studies necessarily involve small numbers of specimens/individuals. This article talks about subjects numbering only 73. What if, for instance, they just happened to all have died in an earthquake at the Georgian Embassy to Canaan building? ...I'm being facetious, but you get the idea-- sampling error.
As people migrated outward from Africa, there was probably a good deal of "back migration" also...The Out of Africa movement wasn't a bunch of people packing up everything in their covered wagons and trekking over an eight month, 2000 mile journey... It was more like a young couple moving north a few miles away from their family to homestead an undeveloped hunting ground as populations grew...Multiply that by a few thousand over a few thousand years, and before you know it, Europe is settled....Along the way, maybe some of the young couples' kids moved back south when they inherited the grandparents old estate., so to speak.....Add in the influence of invading armies and trade routes, and it can get complicated.
And now we have DNA evidence to that effect.
BTW- another flaw in the interpretation of this DNA evidence is that, once a successful species' genome is established, very few new mutations are clearly a big advantage over the old gene. Mutating a "C" to a "T," for instance, occurs with some consistent frequency, so, if the new gene doesn't clearly impart a distinct advantage, the reverse mutation-- "T" back to "C" will occur just as often, erasing the new gene. I rarely see authors accounting for that in their research papers....Dog bites man is not news
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