Studying Ancient Anthropogenic Impacts on Current Floral Biodiversity in the Southern Levant as reflected by the Philistine Migration

Abstract

Human migrations across geographic boundaries can facilitate the introduction of new husbandry practices and dispersal of plants and animals, resulting in changes in biodiversity. As previously demonstrated, the 12th century BCE Philistine migration–to the southern Levantine littoral, involved the transportation of pigs from Europe, engendering long term genetic displacement of local Near Eastern haplotypes. Building on this, and combining biogeographical methods of Floral List comparisons with archaeological data, we have elucidated the Philistine impact on Southern Levantine floral ecosystems. We demonstrate that previously unexploited local plants were incorporated into the Philistine milieu, and new species were introduced–from Europe, the Aegean, Egypt and Mesopotamia –resulting in the earliest locally cultivated sycamore, cumin, coriander, bay tree and opium poppy. This research has highlighted the impact of past cultures on the formation of floral ecosystems and their long-term effects on contemporary local biological diversity.

Growing up in the Betsileo landscape: Children’s wild edible plants knowledge in Madagascar

“…In the study area, endemic and introduced species were not equally distributed between ecological habitats, but followed an altitudinal gradient with more introduced species in the bottom of the valley, where people live ( Fig 2 ). Indeed, most introduced species have synanthropic behavior and growth abundantly around human settlements [ 81 ] ( Fig 2 ), for which children, mostly living and playing around houses, have daily interactions with introduced species. A complementary explanation to the finding that introduced species were more salient for children than for adults relate to differences in their baselines.…”

Origins and insights into the historic Judean date palm based on genetic analysis of germinated ancient seeds and morphometric studies

“…from Ohalo II site on the Sea of Galilee (21). Recovery of carbonized date seeds from Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age sites (4500 to 2900 BCE) in the Judean desert, Jordan Valley, and Jericho (22,23) and early Iron Age sites in Israel (12th to 11th century BCE) (24) suggest that human exploitation and consumption of dates occurred at this time. However, it is unclear whether these samples, which are relatively few in number and of very small size (22,25,26), are derived from ancient wild populations, as suggested by morphometric studies of modern wild date populations (18) or represent an early stage of the domestication process.…”

Ramesses III and the ‘Sea‐peoples’: Towards a New Philistine Paradigm

“…Typologically, it has been identified as a local imitation of Cypriot pottery traditions (Killebrew , 393–7; , 243–4; , 230; Sherratt , 293, 303–4; , 46–7; , 367–8; Mountjoy ; ; Rutter ), therefore undermining the theory of an Aegean origin for the migration. Consequently, recent studies have stressed the multiple origins of the Philistine migration (Yasur‐Landau ; Ben‐Shlomo ; Maeir et al ; Frumin et al ), instigated perhaps by severe climate changes (Langgut et al . ) and the collapse of the Late Bronze palatial system (Cline ; but see Knapp and Manning 2016).…”

“…It is only during this stage that new plant and animal species (Meiri et al ; Frumin et al . ), as well as new technologies, household activities, and cultic objects, were introduced into the local culture of the southern coastal plain (on the paucity of cultic objects in the Monochrome phase see Yasur‐Landau , 302). These new elements include not only Cypriot (Maeir and Hitchcock ) and Aegean traditions but also other traditions acquired from Egypt (Birney and Doak ; Ben‐Dor Evian ) and the Levant (Gilboa –07; ; see also Ben‐Shlomo ).…”