A new genetic study has revealed that the modern day population of the Levant migrated from Europe around 12,000 years ago, and not - as originally thought - from Africa with the rest of the Homo Sapiens.
Pierre Zalloua, a geneticist and Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Lebanese American University, led the study.
"We now know that we, in the Levant, migrated through the north around 12,000 years ago, and not directly from Africa," Zalloua said.
The study also revealed that the Levant is one of few population groups in the world that have a distinct genetic signature--a combination of genes that allows geneticists to identify a group. This is because the Ice Age left them in a state of isolation for some 25,000 years.
Communities in the Arabian Peninsula and the Black Sea region also developed distinct genetic signatures.
During the Ice Age, hunter-gatherer tribes were forced to live in restricted areas with habitable conditions. These groups remained disconnected from other societies in the world for thousands of years and then began migrating after the ice melted.
"We plotted our data on a map together with climate and archaeological evidence and it all made sense," he said.
Researchers from New Zealand’s University of Otago, Saint Joseph University in Lebanon, and the technology company IBM worked with Zalloua to collect and study the new genetic data.
You can read the full study in Scientific Reports.