Tracing European Founder Lineages in the Near Eastern mtDNA Pool

Martin Richards et al

American Journal of Human Genetics 67:1251-1276, 2000

"In fact, the historical evidence for gene flow between Europe and the Near East provides strong grounds for assuming that there is at least some back-migration from Europe across the Bosporus- or, further east, across the Caucasus into the Near East - throughout the past 10,000 years. Candidates include the Philistine migrations from the Aegean into the Levant during the Bronze Age (Kuhrt 1995; Tubb 1998); the expansion of Greek Phrygian, and Armenian speakers into western Anatolia, and Armenia, respectively, ~1200 B.C. (Redgate 1998); and the importation of European as well as African slaves by the Islamic caliphs of Syria and Iraq during the medieval period (Lewis 1998)."