Where are the foreigners of the first international era?

IMAGE: Aerial view of Alalakh in the area of Amuq (Turkey). view more Credit: Murat Akar, Tell Atchana Excavations The Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean has long been considered by scholars to have been the 'first international era', especially the period from 1600-1200 BC, when powerful empires from Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Egypt established vast networks of client-dependent kingdoms. in the Near East. These empires fought, traded, and corresponded with one another, and the ancient texts of the period reveal rich economic and social networks that enabled the movement of people and goods. A new study conducted by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, geneticists and isotope experts and published in PLOS ONE, investigated the movement of people in this period in a single regional center, a Bronze Age city-state called Alalakh in present-day southeastern Turkey. Their results show that most of those buried in Alalakh had grown up in the country and are descended from people living in the region. The aim of the team was to see if the high levels of interregional connectivity evidenced by the architecture, texts and artifacts found at the site during the 20 years of excavation, sponsored by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, could be discovered among the population. buried in the city. To do this, they perform strong isotope and oxygen analyzes on tooth enamel, which can detect whether an individual has grown locally in Alalakh or moved there only during adulthood. Genetic data on the other hand can be used to determine where a person's last ancestors came from. Isotope analysis identified several non-local individuals. However, their DNA showed an origin that was local to Alalakh and neighboring regions. "There are two possible explanations for our findings," said co-author Stefanie Eisenmann of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. "Either these individuals are short-distance migrants from the region or returning migrants, people whose parents or grandparents originally came from Alalakh." Only one sampled individual, an adult female, was not part of the local gene pool, rather than indicating descent that more closely matched the groups in Central Asia. However, her isotopic signatures suggested a local education. "We expected the isotope analysis to show that this person migrated to Alalakh, since her genetic data was so different from the rest of the population, so we were surprised to see that she was probably native to Alalakh. her parents or grandparents who made the move, instead, "explained Tara Ingman, the other lead author of the study from Koç University. While different types of mobility were identified, including short-distance, long-distance migration and return, there were no complete aliens in the data. Most people were born and raised in Alalakh and also their ancestors came from the region. "There are several ways to explain this. It is possible that far fewer long-distance migrants have lived in Alalakh than we previously thought. Another possibility is that we have not yet found their graves. Probably most individuals. that came from far away were not buried directly in Alalakh, or somehow we can not trace it, "said Murat Akar, director of excavations. ### Responsibility: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of the press releases posted on EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system. Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/mpif-wat062921.php The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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Where are the foreigners of the first international era?

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Where are the foreigners of the first international era?

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