Hayadan > The Philistines brought with them the vine, various spices and the opium poppy

The Philistines brought with them the vine, various spices and the opium poppy

New findings in a joint study by archaeologists and botanists show that the Philistine culture had a long-term effect on the biological diversity of plants in Israel. The research may help ecologists manage invasive plants

The distribution of vegetation in Iron Age Philistine sites. The size of the circles reflects the total number of plant species identified at Iron Age sites. The red color indicates that they appeared only in Philistine sites from the Iron Age. The green color indicates that they only appeared on the sites of non-Philistine peoples from that period. The blue color indicates that both types of vegetation existed on the site at the same time. MAP PRODUCED BY M. FRUMIN USING ARCGIS FOR DESKTOP (ARCMAP 10.1), ESRI.

One of the most pressing issues in the field of biological conservation is "biology of invasive species". Because of the unprecedented scale of contact between people and cultures in today's global village, some types of animals and plants are spreading rapidly around the world, often causing enormous damage to native species.
Recent studies have shown that invasive species had a great impact not only in our time but also in ancient times. In a study published on August 25 in the journal Scientific Reports by archaeologists from the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archeology at Bar-Ilan University, Sue Fromin, Prof. Ehud Weiss and Prof. Aren Meir, and Dr. Liora Kolska Horowitz from the Hebrew University describe the bioarchaeological remains of the researchers The Philistine culture during the Iron Age (from the 12th century BC to the seventh century BC). The team prepared a database of the remains of plants discovered in titles from the Bronze and Iron Ages in the southern Levant, both in Philistine sites and in the sites of the original inhabitants of the area.

The analysis of the database led the researchers to the conclusion that the Philistines brought to Israel not only themselves but also their plants.
The species brought and cultivated by the Philistines had not been seen in Israel before. Among other things, edible parts of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) originating in Western Europe, the sycamore tree (Ficus sycomorus), which is known to be cultivated in the eastern Mediterranean, especially in Egypt, and whose presence in Israel as a local crop began in the Iron Age through the presence of its fruits, were discovered at the sites. And finally - cumin (Cuminum cyminum), which also originates in the eastern Mediterranean. Sue Fromin, PhD student of Prof. Ehud Weiss in the Archeology Laboratory, Bar Ilan University explains that "the edible parts of these plants - the opium poppy, cinnamon and cumin were not identified in the archaeological records of Israel before the Iron Age, the period when the Philistines first appeared in the area. None of these plants grows wild in Israel today. They grow exclusively as cultivated plants."
In addition to transferring the exotic plants from other areas, the Philistines were the first to use more than 79 species of plants that adapted to life alongside humans that were available in Israel, such as the garden sedge https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A8%D7%92%D7 %9C%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%92%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%94 , wild beets, saltpetre, the drunkenness plant, and the wine vine. These plant species were not found in sites dating to earlier periods, or in Iron Age sites belonging to non-Philistine cultures - Canaanites, Israelites, Jews and Phoenicians. The "partial revolution" that accompanied the Philistine culture was reflected in a different agrarian regime and the nature of the diet between them and everything else.
The fact that these three exotic plants brought by the Philistines originated in different areas fits well with the geographically dispersed origin of this people. The Philistines - referred to in the Bible and other sources as "the Sea Peoples or Sea Gentiles" were a multicultural group that combined people from the Aegean Sea, Turkey, Cyprus and other areas in the Eastern Mediterranean and settled in the southern part of the coastal plain in Israel at the beginning of the Iron Age (12th century BCE ) and integrated with the Canaanites and other local populations, until they finally disappeared at the end of the Iron Age (around 600 BC).

The findings of the study indicate that during the 600 years of the Philistine culture's presence in Israel, they left behind a biological heritage in the form of a variety of plants that are still cultivated in Israel, including cinnamon, cumin, coriander, noble oak and opium poppy.

The Philistines also left their mark on the local fauna. In a previous study that was also published in Scientific Reports with the participation of two of the authors of the current article (Meir and Kolsa-Horowitz) the extraction of DNA from ancient pig bones from Philistine and non-Philistine sites in Israel is described, and they discovered that European pigs were brought by the Philistines to Israel and slowly exterminated the original pig population through Reciprocal hybrids. As a result, the wild boar growing in the wild in Israel today bears European characteristics and not local like its neighbors - the wild boars of the Near East.

The two studies show that examining the ancient bioarchaeological records is a field that has the potential to help us understand the long-term mechanisms that contributed to the current diversity of plants and animals. This information may help ecologists studying the present address the pressing issue of species invasion.

For the announcement of the researchers on the Eurekalert website

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