An interdisciplinary team of scientists has concluded that blue-eyed, fair-skinned people inhabited the Levant some 6,500 years ago.
While mapping the genomes of bones from 22 of the 600 skeletons buried in a cave near Pekiin in Israel's north, the scientists said they discovered a genetic mix unlike that of the region's previous and successive settlers.
The findings address the decadeslong argument over the origins of the Late Chalcolithic culture, whose unique and highly artistic relics the scientists said had "led to extensive debate about the origins of the people who made this material culture."
In an article titled "Ancient DNA from Chalcolithic Israel reveals the role of population mixture in cultural transformation" that appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications on Monday, the scientists concluded that some 57% of the ancestry of the community whose skeletons were unearthed in the cave could be from groups related to the local Levant Neolithic, another 26% could be from groups related to the Anatolian Neolithic, and another 17% could be from groups related to the Iran Chalcolithic.
Tel Aviv University researchers Dr. Hila May, Professor Israel Hershkovitz and Dr. Dina Shalem of the Institute for Galilean Archaeology at Kinneret College and the Israel Antiquities Authority, as well as Harvard University's Eadaoin Harney and Professor David Reich took part in the study.
Reich said that "the genetic analysis provided an answer to the central question we set out to address. It showed that the Pekiin people had substantial ancestry from northerners – similar to those living in Iran and Turkey – that was not present in earlier Levantine farmers."
Shalem said the stalactite cave was unique both for the number of people buried inside and the "outstanding" geometrical and anthropomorphic motifs depicted on the ossuaries and jars containing the skeletal remains.
Harney noted the scientists had also found that the Pekiin population experienced "abrupt demographic change" 6,000 years ago.
While the scientists concluded that around half of the genome of the indigenous Chalcolithic people came from ancient Turkey and Iran, they said the artifacts, which were local to Turkey and not Israel, appeared to have been brought to Israel through migration.
The Pekiin burial cave is the largest Late Chalcolithic burial site ever discovered in the Levant. It was discovered by chance in 1995 during roadworks when a tractor caused a portion of the roof of the cave to collapse, unveiling hundreds of ossuaries and a paved and multitiered system of burial platforms.
