Sharing Phoenician DNA

Mary Harrsch who blogs at Passionate about History is the IT director at the College of Education at the University of Oregon. She is constantly exploring ways to use technology to enhance the learning environment particularly in the study of ancient history. In this entry she she discusses how one third of the Maltese population shares Phoenician DNA:

A Lebanese genetic scientist who has been following the genetic footprint of the ancient Phoenician civilisation across the Mediterranean for the last five years has found that close to one-third of modern-day Maltese share a genetic link with the ancient Phoenicians. Thirty per cent of DNA samples taken from Malta have been found to share a common and ancient genetic marker, known as the J2 haplogroup, with the Phoenician civilisation, which had colonised Malta for much of the first millennium BC.

Research carried out by Lebanese geneticist Dr Pierre Zalloua has shown that while a relatively high degree of Spaniards and Tunisians also share the marker, the Maltese population had a predominantly high proportion. The research project, funded by a $1 million grant from National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration, issued its preliminary results in October 2004 and was famously the subject of a National Geographic Magazine focus that year.

The project, led by Dr Zalloua and research partner National Geographic Emerging Explorer Spencer Wells, has been under way for some five years. The Phoenicians, who occupied the narrow coastal strip in the Levant today known as Lebanon, created the first trade routes circumnavigating the Mediterranean, and colonised Malta and Gozo – naming them “Melita” and “Gaulos” respectively. The genetic marker identifying individuals as descendants of the ancient Levantines has also been found in Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian samples – in and near the Phoenician homeland – as well as in other areas colonised by the Phoenicians such as the Iberian Peninsula and Tunisia...