Philistines were European Sea Peoples

I've been gone for about a week and a half, and I'm so busy catching up from being gone that I'm not really up to posting something really substantive yet.  But, here's an interesting abstract recently posted, with the paper no doubt soon to follow.  Thanks to Davidski of Eurogenes for the heads-up.

The ancient Mediterranean port-city of Ashkelon, identified as "Philistine" during the Iron Age, underwent a dramatic cultural change between the Late Bronze- and the early Iron- Age. It has been long debated whether this change was driven by a substantial movement of people, possibly linked to a larger migration of the so-called "Sea Peoples". Here, we report genome-wide data of ten Bronze- and Iron- Age individuals from Ashkelon. We find that the early Iron Age population was genetically distinct due to a European related admixture. Interestingly, this genetic signal is no longer detectible in the later Iron Age population. Our results support that a migration event occurred during the Bronze- to Iron- Age transition in Ashkelon but did not leave a long-lasting genetic signature.

Probably much less surprising than the Greek-European genetic admixture in the Philistine cities is the fact that no trace of it can be found later in the Iron Age.  Where did the Greek-Philistines go?  (Of course, with the number of samples, they can't say for sure that it went anywhere; they may just not have sampled enough later Iron Age individuals to have captured something that was, in fact, actually there had they sampled more.) They either all left or were killed off without any trace of their admixture popping up in later generations.  Samson must have been more thorough than we give him credit for.  Anyway, I'm curious about the details.

Anyway, there's some DNA evidence that I'd like to see that is curiously slow in coming out; maybe for modern day political and cultural and social considerations.  Why do we still know very little about the Tarim Basin mummies and their relations to both Afanasevo and Andronovo cultures?  We can predict, probably pretty confidently, that an earlier wave of Yamnaya/Afanasevo people came into the area, to be later joined by Andronovo/Scythian groups.  In fact, given the linguistic situation that later appears, where Tocharian texts exist here and here alone, but Prakrits and Saka and Sogdian are also very well attested, nothing else is really very feasible.  Still, it's a bit frustrating to not have that confirmed, and there's a lot more about the details of the two macro-groups and their penetration of the general area that are unknown and would be nice to know, not to mention the timing and extent of their admixture with more localized Siberian/proto-Mongolian or Turkic population elements.

I'm also surprised and disappointed that we still don't know anything officially about the participants in the battle of Tollense, which seem to represent two distinct populations, equipped very differently.  There's probably modern day ethnic ego to bear on this question.  Poles and Germans have been unhappy with the situation in that general area for centuries.  (For what it's worth, I think what was done to the Germans following the World Wars and the ethnic cleansing of their population from much of Prussia and the Sudetenland, not to mention Russia, is inexcusable in the extreme.  That said, it'll happen to peoples again who allow themselves to get into a position where it becomes inevitable.  *cough, cough America cough cough.*)  But regardless, it'd be nice to know what's going on.  My guess is that one group represents the Nordic Bronze Age, and the other is an early Balto-Slavic group, which will probably cluster close to Old Prussians.  The Poles won't be happy either way, although it's hardly a secret that they were later arrivals than the Balts who were there first, and it'll also not be a really big surprise to discover that the Nordic Bronze Age extended all the way to modern day Estonia—I think most people who actually know anything about the NBA already know that anyway.  Of course, if that's the case, what does that mean exactly?  That ethnic Germanic Parent Language-speaking peoples related to the later emergent Germanic peoples may have been wider spread earlier on, to be compressed later by the spread of Slavs and Celts, and then to explode later again during the Migration period over, to some extent, territory that their ancestors already controlled culturally?  People are often way too hesitant to give Germanic claims any merit whatsoever.