Sons of Japheth: Part V Javan (No. 46E)

Introduction

We note from Scripture that Javan was the fourth of seven sons of the patriarch Japheth.

Genesis 10:1-2 These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; sons were born to them after the flood. ² The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. (RSV)

The parallel verse is found in 1Chronicles 1:5. The sons of Javan are given as Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim (or Dodanim) in verse 7 (cf. Gen. 10:4), where the latter two names appear to be tribes rather than individuals and are also used for the lands occupied by these people. Of particular note, it is said of the Javanites that, “from these the maritime nations branched out” (v. 5, JPS Tanakh).

The name Javan (SHD 3120) is probably from the same root as yayin (H3196), meaning wine or “effervescing (that is, hot and active)”, the appropriate temperament perhaps for a pioneering people. His Greek name was Ion and is thus the progenitor of the Ionians found in western Asia Minor (in modern Turkey) and the adjacent islands. Javan was also a son of Joktan and the name of a place in Arabia, however, it is the so-called maritime ‘Greeks’ and the associated maritime nations that we are concerned with in this study.

In Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus makes the following general point regarding the dispersion of the nations after the Flood, with particular relevance to Javan:

1. AFTER this they were dispersed abroad, on account of their languages, and went out by colonies every where; and each colony took possession of that land which they light upon, and unto which God led them; so that the whole continent was filled with them, both the inland and the maritime countries. There were some also who passed over the sea in ships, and inhabited the islands: and some of those nations do still retain the denominations which were given them by their first founders; but some have lost them also, and some have only admitted certain changes in them, that they might be the more intelligible to the inhabitants. And they were the Greeks who became the authors of such mutations. …

(Bk. I, v).

In his work, The Emergence of Civilisation, Colin Renfrew postulates that: “Aegean civilisation … is first seen in Crete a little before 2000 B.C., and several centuries after the development of urban society in Mesopotamia” (Methuen & Co., London, 1972, p. 15). This is almost in keeping with the post-Flood biblical chronology, assuming a Flood date of 2348 BCE.

The archaeologist and classical scholar Emily Vermeule has also commented on the migrations out of Anatolia or Asia Minor.

A variety of movements spread from Anatolia across the Aegean islands … Crete perhaps received a group of Anatolian sailors, and Anatolians certainly settled the largely unexplored mounds of Macedonia and Thessaly. They were not all the same racial stock … nor did they speak precisely the same language or make the same objects (Greece in the Bronze Age, University of Chicago Press, 1964, p. 26).

The early philologist/archaeologist V. Gordon Childe claimed that civilisation spread to the Greek islands and Crete before mainland Greece. In his 1957 book, The Dawn of European Civilisation (London, p. 66), Childe added further that: “If a migration from Asia Minor be assumed, it will be necessary to postulate several streams with different starting points …”. From archaeological and historical evidence, it is apparent that there were at least three major routes used for migrations out of Anatolia and into Greece: directly across the narrow straits at the Bosphorus and Dardanelles and then overland via Thrace and Macedonia; by the 160-mile (260-km) sea-road from north-west Anatolia via the islands in the Thracian Sea; out of the south-western corner of Anatolia, using the arc of islands as stepping-stones from Rhodes to the mainland of Greece.

The Book of Jubilees gives the possessions of the sons of Noah: “And for Javan came forth the fourth portion every island and the islands which are towards the border of Lud” (9:10b-11).

The entry in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible under ‘Javan’ has the following:

J[avan], in fact, is the Greek ’Iavn, ‘Ionian,’ and its position in Gn 10² shows that it must there mean Cyprus (in which Kition [Kittim] was situated), called mat Yavna, Yanan, and Yanana, ‘the land of the Ionians,’ in the inscriptions of Sargon and Sennacherib. In the Bab. transcripts of the inscriptions of Darius Hystaspis, Yavana represents the Ionians of Asia Minor; and when, in B.C. 711, the people of Ashdod revolted from Assyria and deposed their lawful king, they put on the throne in his place a certain Yavanu or ‘Greek’.

Gaza was also called Ione, and the sea between Philistia and Egypt was known as ‘Ionian’ (Steph. Byz. s.v. ’Iavnon). In Egypt. hieroglyphs Ha-nibu or Ui-nivu is rendered by Uinin or ‘Ionians’ in demotic, and the Mediterranean is termed the ‘circle of the Ha-nibu’ as early as the pyramid-texts of the 6^th dynasty. One of the Tel el-Amarna tablets (B.C. 1400) speaks of a Yivana or ‘Ionian’ in the land of Tyre, and W. Max Müller (Asien und Europa, p.370) has pointed out that the name of one of the allies of the Hittites in their struggle with Ramses II. must be read Yevana, ‘Ionians’ (A.H. Sayce; publ. by T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1899, Vol. II, p. 522; emphasis added).

Thus the descendants of Javan were known quite early to the Egyptians. The 6^th Dynasty mentioned here has been assigned the period 2345–2181 BCE (cf. ‘List of Pharaohs’ on Wikipedia).

This reference is important as the sons of Javan in Tyre are in fact the survivors as the most prolific Haplogroup identified with Tyre and the Lebanon as Phoenician is the Japhehtite Hg K2 which extends into Malta and on into Wales through trading influence there. We can conclude that the Lebanon is still to this day peopled by the sons of Javan.

Sons of Javan

There are four ‘sons’ of Javan listed in the Bible, and each will be looked at separately. Josephus, however, records only three of the sons. This may be because Tarshish is sometimes referred to as the daughter of Javan (the word ben in Genesis 10 then having its general meaning of children rather than sons).

Of the three sons of Javan also, the son of Japhet, Elisa gave name to the Eliseans, who were his subjects; they are now the Aeolians. Tharsus to the Tharsians, for so was Cilicia of old called; the sign of which is this, that the noblest city they have, and a metropolis also, is Tarsus, the tau being by change put for the theta. Cethimus possessed the island Cethima: it is now called Cyprus; and from that it is that all islands, and the greatest part of the sea-coasts, are named Cethim by the Hebrews: and one city there is in Cyprus that has been able to preserve its denomination; it has been called Citius by those who use the language of the Greeks, and has not, by the use of that dialect, escaped the name of Cethim (Antiq. Jews, I, vi, 1).

The medieval, rabbinic Book of Jasher further states: “And the children of Javan are the Javanim who dwell in the land of Makdonia”, i.e. the Macedonians, from whom arose Alexander the Great (10:13). Jasher continues:

15 And the children of Elishah are the Almanim, and they also went and built themselves cities; those are the cities situate between the mountains of Job and Shibathmo; and of them were the people of Lumbardi who dwell opposite the mountains of Job and Shibathmo, and they conquered the land of Italia and remained there unto this day.

16 And the children of Chittim are the Romim who dwell in the valley of Canopia by the river Tibreu.

17 And the children of Dudonim are those who dwell in the cities of the sea Gihon, in the land of Bordna.

The Romans near the river Tiber are thus said to be descendants of the Kittim. In Chapter 60 of Jasher, the island of Sardinia is also associated with the Kittim or Chittim. Further, in Jasher 61:23-25 it is said that while Zepho was king of the Kittim and after having defeated the ‘troops of Africa’, he led his people so that “they made war with Tubal and the islands, and they subdued them and when they returned from the battle they renewed his government for him, and they built for him a very large palace for his royal habitation and seat, and they made a large throne for him, and Zepho reigned over the whole land of Chittim and over the land of Italia fifty years”.

The book also provides additional information on both the Kittim and the sons of Elishah, who occupied both Britain and Kernania (which has not been successfully identified).

29 And during his reign he [Zepho] brought forth an army, and he went and fought against the inhabitants of Britannia and Kernania, the children of Elisha son of Javan, and he prevailed over them and made them tributary. 30 He then heard that Edom had revolted from under the hand of Chittim, and Latinus went to them and smote them and subdued them, and placed them under the hand of the children of Chittim, and Edom became one kingdom with the children of Chittim all the days. (ibid., 90)

If Jasher is historically accurate, then the Kittim actually ruled the Edomites for a time. Latinus is presumably the progenitor of the tribe of Latins in Italy, although the Italic people in the peninsula were thought to be descendants of Tubal, as noted by the historian Nennius (see under heading ‘Other descendants of Javan’ below; also paper Sons of Japheth: Part VI Tubal (No. 46F)). The events above are said to have occurred during Joshua’s lifetime, i.e. between ca. 1544 and 1434 BCE.

The mention regarding the Lumbardi being in the Book of Jasher creates more of a problem than at first appears. The Lombards were a tribe related to the Anglo-Saxons, but they split off from them and went southeast to the Danube and then into Italy where they occupied the Po Valley in Northern Italy. The time-frame here would require a group of the Javanite Lumbardi going into Northern Italy in the early occupation and the remnant joining them in the first Millennium CE, from the fifth century.

Elishah

Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible gives a comprehensive summary of the first son of Javan who is said to be the progenitor of the people known as the Aeolians.

… In Ezk 27⁷ the Tyrians are said to have procured their purple dye from the ‘isles’ or ‘coastlands’ of E[lishah], which shows that we must look for the locality in the Greek seas. Josephus (Ant. I. vi. 1) identified E. with the Aeolians; phonetically, however, this is impossible; moreover, Greek ethnology made Aeolus the brother, and not the son, of Ion, the Heb. Javan.

Note the reference here to the Hebrew Javan son of Joktan. The modern Greeks are sons of the Hg J Arabs and Edomites, Hg I sons of Keturah and some 50% Hg E3 B North Africans.

… Dillmann proposed to identify E. with Southern Italy, and Movers with Carthage; both identifications, however, are inconsistent with the statement that it was the source of the purple dye, and it is difficult to find any name on either the Italian or African coast which can be compared with that of Elishah.

The Tel el-Amarna tablets have thrown a new light on the question. Several of them are letters to the Pharaoh from ‘the king of Alasia,’ a country which a hieratic docket attached to one of them identifies with the Egyptian Alsa. … It is tempting to identify E., on the phonetic side, with the Greek Hellas. We might assume that the Egyptian form of the name, Alsa, was taken from the cuneiform Alasia, in which the initial aspirate of the Greek would not be expressed. But the Homeric poems seem to show that the name of Hellas could not have migrated from its original home in northern Greece to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean so early as the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets.

Moreover, as late as the reign of the Assyrian Sargon, Cyprus was still known to the inhabitants of Asia as ‘the country of the Ionians,’ not of the Hellenes, while a Yivana or ‘Ionian’ is mentioned in two of the Tel el-Amarna letters. The termination of Alasia implies a Greek adjective in -sioV, and it is possible that Crete, rather than Cyprus, is intended by that name. (A.H. Sayce, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 696-7)

We can see from this that there is still considerable debate among scholars as to the identity and location of Elishah.

Kittim

The entry in Hastings’ Dictionary provides some interesting details regarding this more identifiable son of Javan.

Kittim … A people described in Gn 10⁴ as descended from Javan, and therefore belonging to the Greek or Graeco-Roman races of the West, occupying territories stretching along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Elishah, Tarshish, and Rodanim … are now generally identified respectively with Sicily and Southern Italy, Spain, and Rhodes. As these are all islands or coastlands in the West, it is natural to look in the same region for the localizing of the Kittim. That they were islanders is explicitly asserted by the phrase current among the prophets, ‘the isles of Kittim’ (Jer 2¹⁰, Ezk 27⁶).

But though distinctly Western in respect of geographical situation, they are represented as having been from the earliest times intimately associated with the civilized and commercial peoples of the extreme eastern limits of the Mediterranean coast. Thus Ezekiel (27⁶) mentions ‘the isles of K.’ as supplying Tyre with boxwood, or more probably sherbin wood, a species of cedar, out of which the benches or decks of their costly and luxurious ships were constructed. And further, we find that the prophet in this passage places ‘the isles of K.’ between Bashan and Elishah, therefore west of the former and east of the latter, i.e. between Palestine on the east and Sicily or Italy on the west. …

Josephus (Ant. I. vi. 1) points to the name of the city Kition or Citium in Cyprus as a memorial of the residence of the K. in that island. This writer also, most probably drawing his information from tradition current among the Jews of his day, states that the ancient name of Cyprus was Cethima, and that it received its name from Cethimus, the third son of Javan, who had settled there, and whose descendants held possession under the name of Kittim.

Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, whose life covers most of the 4^th cent., makes use (Haer. xxx. 25) of the name K[ittim], in a wider sense, to include not only the inhabitants of Cyprus, but also those of Rhodes, and even of the coastlands of Macedonia. This, indeed, is quite in keeping with the later Jewish usage of the word. ‘The ships of K.’ in Dn 11³⁰ are evidently those of the Romans, and ‘the land of K.’ in 1 Mac 1¹ 8⁵ is evidently that of the Macedonians. In this late period the name was applied generally to the lands and peoples of the West. …

Herodotus (Hist. vii. 90) distinctly states that most of the Cypriote cities had originally been Phoenician colonies. The Phoenician origin of Kition, a city in the south-east of the island, now Larnaka, is plainly witnessed to by Cicero (de Finibus, iv. 20), and naturally enough the Phoenician settlers in other parts of the island would carry with them the name of their oldest and principal foundation. These Phoenician settlements in Cyprus date from a very early age – it may be even before the days of Moses (Diodor. v. 55. 77; Herodot. i. 105; Pausan. i. 14. 6). …

Interesting inscriptions have been discovered near Larnaka, the ancient Kition, which, although figured in Phoenician letters, are yet composed in a Greek dialect. This seems to indicate that the people from whom these inscriptions have come down to us were a Greek people, ethnographically belonging to the family of Javan, retaining their language and modes of thought, but largely influenced by the presence of a Phoenician immigration. That they adopted the Phoenician letters and mode of writing is just the sort of result we should have expected, seeing that the Phoenician colonists were enterprising merchants, who would naturally lead in matters of commerce and correspondence with those around (J. Macpherson, Vol. III, pp. 6-7; emphasis added).

In his book The Faith of Qumran, Helmer Ringgren also mentions the confusion with this name as found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The reference to the Macedonians as Kittim concurs with Bishop Epiphanius’ assertion above.

The Kittim (written KTY’YM = kitti’im or KTYYM = kittiyim) are chiefly known from the Habakkuk Commentary and the War Scroll. The word is biblical. … In Numbers 24:24, however, the reference is enigmatic; … In Daniel 11:30, as also in the Targums, this passage is taken as referring to the Romans. According to I Maccabees 1:1 Alexander the Great comes from the land of the Kittim and in 8:5 Perseus, king of the Macedonians, is called the king of the Kittim.

The following facts concerning the Kittim are found in the Habakkuk Commentary: they are fleet and heroes in warfare (ii.12f.), feared by people whose cities they plunder (iii.1f., 4f.); they are cunning and deceitful (iii.5f.) and do not believe in the statutes of God (ii.14f.). They come from afar from the isles in the sea (or: the coastlands) (iii.10f.); they scorn the fortresses of the peoples (iv.5f.) and their rulers (mos^elim) come one after another to destroy the earth (or: the country) (iv.12f.). They gather wealth and loot as abundant as the fish of the sea (vi.1f.), and they sacrifice to their standards and worship their weapons (vi.3f.). They are cruel and merciless and “destroy many with the sword, youths, men and old men, women and small children and toward the fruit of the womb they have no compassion” (vi.10-12). And finally it is said the “Jerusalem’s last priests” with all their riches and spoils shall be delivered into the hands of the Kittim “because they are the ‘remnant of the peoples’” (ix.4-7, commentary on Hab. 2:7f.).

Almost all of these statements could refer to any enemy nation at all; in any case the description would fit both the Romans and the Seleucid Greeks. However, the worship of battle standards and weapons is considered to refer to the Romans, although there is not clear evidence of such practice among them before the time of Josephus; and it is possible that the custom could already have existed in the Seleucid armies.

It is important to note the uses of the word Kittim in the War Scroll, where it occurs eighteen times in all. … It seems probable that the Kittim here is not an actual name of a particular people, but is a designation of all the peoples who are enemies of Israel, God’s chosen people. The Kittim and the children of darkness are identical. In an unpublished fragment the Kittim are even the same as “the peoples” (‘ammim), hence it would be possible to speak of the “Kittim of Assyria,” while the actual name of the nation could not be put in such a double genitive construction in Hebrew. But precisely this expression refers in all probability to the Seleucids (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, USA, 1963; pp. 26-31; emphasis added).

If correct, this latter statement (bold type) may have both historical and future significance.

It should also be remembered that the other sons of Japheth around the Black Sea worshipped weapons as a symbol of their principal god (see especially the Sons of Japheth: Part III Magog (No. 46C)).

Dodanim

For these sons of Javan known as Dodanim, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Bible and Jerome all use the term Rodanim for Rhodus (Rhodes), an island familiar to the Phoenicians (cf. Homer’s Iliad ii. 654).

Hastings’ Dictionary provides brief details under its entry ‘Dodanim’, beginning with a statement as to who these people are not:

… There can be no connexion … with the inland town of Dodona in Epirus. Nor can it mean Dardanians, as Delitzsch still maintains, for the Trojan province of Dardania was never of such consequence as to give its name to a leading family in the genealogy of mankind. Dillmann and others are inclined to accept the reading of the LXX … and identify the Dodanim with the Rhodians or the inhabitants of the islands of the Aegean Sea.

If Elishah be Southern Italy and Sicily, the two pairs of sons of Javan will be named from east to west: Elishah and Tarshish; Kittim (Cyprus) and Dodanim (Rhodes). The inhabitants of Rhodes from B.C. 800 onward were Ionian Greeks, sons of Javan, who took the place of the earlier Phoenician population. The Rhodians are certainly in their proper place alongside of the Kittim. They were known even to Homer, and were visited from a very early period by all the trading peoples of the Mediterranean coasts (J. Macpherson, Vol. I, p. 615).

The Rhodians, along with the Cretans, were noted slingers and both were included in the Greek force at the famous Battle of Marathon against the Persians. The Balearic Islanders (off the east coast of Spain) were also expert slingers, a fact that may indicate some tribal affinity. One particular tribe of Israel, the Benjamites, were also considered master slingers but they were sons of Shem and not Japheth.

Tarshish

Tarshish was the name of the second of Javan’s children, but it has been variously applied to a particular region and to cities as widely separated as Carthage in North Africa, Tarsus in Cilicia, and Tartessus in Spain. The Jewish Encyclopaedia has a comprehensive article on Tarshish, part of which reads as follows:

In the genealogical table of the Noachidو, Tarshish is given as the second son of Javan and is followed by Kittim and Dodanim (Gen. x. 4; I Chron. i. 7). As with all these names, Tarshish denotes a country; in several instances, indeed, it is mentioned as a maritime country lying in the remotest region of the earth. Thus, Jonah flees to Tarshish from the presence of Yhwh (Jonah i. 3, iv. 2). With Pul, Tubal, and Javan, it is mentioned as one of the remote places that have not heard of Yhwh (Isa. lxvi. 19, comp. lx. 9; Ps. lxxii. 10; Ezek. xxxviii. 13). Any large vessel capable of making a long sea-voyage was styled a "ship of Tarshish," though this did not necessarily mean that the vessel sailed either to or from Tarshish (Ps. xlviii. 7; I Kings x. 22, xxii. 48; Isa. ii. 16; et al.). It seems that in parallel passages referring to Solomon's and Jehoshaphat's ships (I Kings l.c.) the author of Chronicles did not understand the meaning of "ships of Tarshish" (II Chron. ix. 21, xx. 36).

Tarshish appears to have had a considerable trade in silver, iron, tin, and lead (Jer. x. 9; Ezek. xxvii. 12). It gave its name, besides, to a precious stone which has not yet been satisfactorily identified … The Targum of Jonathan renders the word "Tarshish" in the prophetical books by "sea," which rendering is followed by Saadia. Moreover, the term "ships of Tarshish" is rendered by Jewish scholars "sea-ships" (comp. LXX., Isa. ii. 16, πλοiα θαλαssης).

Jerome, too, renders "Tarshish" by "sea" in many instances; and in his commentary on Isaiah (l.c.) he declares that he had been told by his Jewish teachers that the Hebrew word for "sea" was "tarshish." In Isa. xxiii. 1 the Septuagint, and in Ezek. xxvii. 12 both the Septuagint and the Vulgate, render "Tarshish" by "Carthage," apparently suggested by Jewish tradition. Indeed, the Targum of Jonathan renders "Tarshish" in I Kings xxii. 48 and Jer. x. 9 by "Afriki," that is, Carthage.

Josephus ("Ant." i. 6, § 1), apparently reading "Tarshush," identifies it with Tarsus in Cilicia … but it seems from Assyrian inscriptions that the original Hebrew name of Tarsus was not "Tarshush." Bochart (in his "Phaleg"), followed by many later scholars, identifies Tarshish with Tartessus, mentioned by Herodotus and Strabo as a district of southern Spain; he thinks, moreover, that "Tartessus" is the Aramaic form of "Tarshish." … Cheyne (in "Orientalische Litteraturzeitung," iii. 151) thinks that "Tarshish" of Gen. x. 4, and "Tiras" of Gen. x. 2, are really two names of one nation derived from two different sources, and might indicate the Tyrsenians or Etruscans. Thus the name may denote Italy or the European coasts west of Greece. (JewishEncyclopaedia.com; emphasis added)

From the foregoing, we again note considerable scholarly debate as to where the descendants of all the patriarchs are to be found, a debate that may be resolved finally by genetics.

Tarshish is also located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula and the sons of Javan in the South were neighbours with the sons of Tubal in the North – who we noted as the Basques – and also the Aquitanians (see also the Sons of Japheth: Part VI Tubal (No. 46F)).

The Mediterranean and its Islands

Both Tubal and Javan were given possession of islands firstly in the Mediterranean Sea, but ultimately of many other islands and coastal locations throughout the world.

The Mediterranean itself is a unique and remarkable body of water, as seen in this passage from Michael Grant’s work, The Ancient Mediterranean.

Surface evaporation from the sea is extremely high. Little more than one-fifth as much is made up again by rain, and less than one-twentieth by rivers; one-thirtieth flows in from the east through the Bosphorus, and the whole of the remaining seventy percent enters from the west, through the Strait of Gibraltar.

Since the surface of the Mediterranean lies between four and twelve inches lower than the Atlantic ocean outside, this water is driven in at a speed of nearly five miles an hour, forming a current which extends two hundred and fifty feet downwards. So huge and pressing an intake would be far too large for the existing basin if there were not also a compensating outflow. …

A second factor which helps to prevent the intake from swamping all before it is an underwater shelf at the strait which is twelve hundred feet high and acts as a gigantic lock. One effect of this barrier is to reduce the tides of the Mediterranean to a mere fraction of those of the Atlantic, scarcely exceeding a maximum of twenty inches. Another result is to keep out the cold deep Atlantic currents so that only the warmer surface water is admitted. … The Mediterranean retains, on average, a temperature eighteen degrees higher than the Atlantic, and is, indeed, the hottest of all seas in the temperate zone. (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1969, p. 4)

It is interesting to note that the Strait of Gibraltar, the neck of the Mediterranean bottle, is a mere 8 miles (13 km) wide. If it were to be closed off, the sea level in the basin would drop by an estimated 3 feet (~1m) per year, so that the Mediterranean would completely dry up (albeit in about 1500 years) as a result of evaporation and leave behind enormous quantities of salt.

The major islands given as the initial inheritance of Japheth in the Mediterranean most probably included Cyprus, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Malta; but it is unlikely that these were occupied solely by descendants of Javan. The other island of significance, Crete or Caphtor, was apparently assigned to Arphachsad, son of the patriarch Shem, but somehow came into the possession of the descendants of Mizraim, son of Ham. The famous Minoan civilisation arose in that island but was supplanted by the Mycenean one from mainland Greece. The original allocations were discussed in the paper Sons of Japheth: Part I (No. 46A).

In his recent comprehensive work An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades, Cyprian Broodbank details the new type of vessel that made its appearance on the Mediterranean during a particularly significant period.

Sailing ships transformed interaction between the Aegean and the areas to the east. Previously, innovations or objects originating in the Near East probably moved west via down-the-line passage across the Anatolian land-bridge or along its southern shore, being so heavily filtered and repackaged for small-scale societies en route … From now onwards, however, innovations and objects from the Near East could be directly transferred from their core areas of deployment. …

The introduction of sailing ships into the Aegean dates to c. 2200-1950 BC, to judge from depictions on Minoan seals …, plus the contemporary rise in the incidence of long-range contacts, attested by the first transfers of pots between Crete and Cyprus … The first Minoan depictions show vessels with a deep, curving, clearly plank-built hull, oars, mast and rigging, all a far remove from dug-out canoes or elaborations of such designs. The first actual illustration of a sail dates slightly later, but the presence of the mast on the antecedent images manifestly indicates the usage of sails.

Such ships resemble the so-called ‘Byblos ships’ that had plied routes between the Nile delta and the Levantic coast since the middle of the third millennium BC, forging a maritime link between the urban centres and resources of the Levant and the colossal vortex of consumption that was Old Kingdom Egypt …

The fact that the sail seems to have been invented only two or three times in human history (in the south-west Asian and Egyptian sphere, the Indo-Pacific, and the west coast of South America, if the last case was not triggered by Polynesian contacts), combined with the overall similarity of the first Aegean boats to Levantine types, makes the likelihood of an indigenous Aegean invention vanishingly remote. … the seal depictions and evidence for direct contacts between Crete and the east make Crete a likely point for the initial adoption of the new technology (Cambridge Univ. Press, UK, 2000, pp. 341-2).

His suggestion that sailing ships were introduced into the Aegean after about 2200 BCE would accord well with the post-Flood chronology by allowing an appropriate length of time for dispersion of the tribes out of Urartu, and for the sons of Javan and others to migrate to the far western shores of Anatolia before moving out into the islands – and thereby become the truly maritime peoples to which the Bible refers.

Although he was concerned mainly with the central island group known as the Cyclades, Broodbank briefly summarises the events in the Mediterranean over nearly two millennia.

By the end of the first century of the new millennium [2^nd mill. BCE], material from the first established Minoan palace-states in Crete started to appear in the Cyclades, and over the next 500 years Minoan economic, cultural and maybe political influence grew stronger, particularly on Thera, Melos and Kea, prompting an ongoing debate over the existence of Cretan colonies … Similar questions are raised by Mycenaean hegemony during the later second millennium BC … The next millennium saw a Persian sack of Naxos, Cycladic tribute to Classical Athens under the guise of the Delian League, Athens’ notorious destruction of Melos …, the establishment on Kea of a military base for the Egyptian-based Ptolemaic empire …, proxenoi (consuls) of Cycladic towns established as far away as Marseilles …, and the islands’ eventual incorporation in the mare nostrum of imperial Rome. ...

The archaeological evidence for discontinuities in the Cyclades within the period 2200-1900 BC confirms the identification of a major ending and the beginning of a new order in the islands. This period can be helpfully sub-divided into an earlier phase of internal disruption and transformation of island life, from c. 2200 BC, and a later phase marked by the first expansion of Cretan palatial activities in these islands, c. 1950-1900 BC.

… The single feature that has most impressed archaeologists is the very large number of settlements that ceased to exist at this juncture, with some terminated by acts of violence, as at Panermos …, but others simply abandoned, as seems to be the case in Markiana … In most cases this cessation was permanent. Moreover, it affected not just farmsteads and hamlets, but also the big, central settlements. (ibid., p. 321)

Broodbank suggested a number of models for the collapse of civilisation during the period 2200-1900 BCE, namely:

· external invasion

· world-systemic disruption

· degradation of land

· sudden climatic snap involving a high level of aridity

· wave of epidemic.

If we were to take the first date of the period in question back a mere 150 years, the second model would then suggest the Great Flood of 2348 BCE, as this would undeniably have caused ‘disruption’ to all early civilisations. The second great catastrophe to hit the eastern Mediterranean (although much later than 1900 BCE) was the volcanic eruption on the island of Thera (now Santorini). This island had strong ties with the Minoans on Crete. The eruption has now been precisely dated by a team led by the Danish geologist Walter Friedrich from the University of Aarhus, following a 30-year study.

The new dating pinpoints the date of the eruption to 1613 BC, with a margin of error of less than 13 years. This is a century earlier than the traditional archaeological interpretations indicate. The new dating is so precise, definite and direct that archaeologists now have something to think about. This may lead to rewriting the current dates in history books, for example. Not only regarding the Minoan civilisation, but also the list of Egyptian pharaohs, which has formed an indirect basis for the archaeologists' traditional dating of the eruption. (http://www.nat.au.dk/default.asp?id=11296&la=UK)

The eruption is said to have caused crop failure as far away as China and to have affected much of the Northern Hemisphere, just as the Krakatoa volcano did the Southern Hemisphere in 1883, almost 3500 years later.

We will now take a necessarily brief look at each of the five major islands assigned to the descendants of Javan, beginning with Cyprus and moving sun-wise around the Mediterranean.

Cyprus

As shown earlier, this island was known as Kittim or Chittim. The later name Cyprus derives from the metal vital to the Bronze Age cultures and mined there in large quantities since ancient times, namely copper (Lat. cyprium).

While copper was the mainstay of the island, Robin Osborne outlines its surprising significance to the development and use of a new metal that eventually superseded copper (and its alloy, bronze) and ushered in the all-important Iron Age.

Extensive archaeological work on Cyprus in recent years has revealed evidence which suggests that it was there that important pioneering work in iron metallurgy went on during the twelfth and eleventh centuries BC; by the middle of the eleventh century Cyprus had become the first place in the Mediterranean where iron came to predominance over bronze as the working metal, and hence the first place to make the transition from a ‘Bronze Age’ to an ‘Iron Age’. The independent development of iron technology and the types (all-iron knives replacing bronze-riveted knives) of iron knives found in mainland Greece from the end of the twelfth century BC onwards, together with the earliest working iron objects, were derived from Cyprus. …

Cyprus is rich in copper sources and some of the copper ores are also rich in iron. It is at least possible that it was through exploiting the waste products of copper metallurgy, initially as a supplement to bronze manufacture, that the Cypriot iron industry became established. If that is the case, it would explain how Cyprus might slip from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age with relatively little disruption: no changes in supply systems were necessary. But as iron-working spread, and as iron ores came to be discovered elsewhere and exploited in their own right, the consequences of the coming of the Iron Age would be rather different.

By the year 1000 BC the Iron Age had come to Crete and to the Greek mainland: … Once the technology had been acquired, the search for new iron sources began; dependence upon Cyprus was short-lived (ibid., pp. 25-26).

Kittim appears in several prophecies, as is noted below. However, it must be realised that the modern Greeks are NOT sons of Javan. They are half-Semite and half-North African Hamites.

Malta

This was the island known to the Apostle Paul as Melita (possibly from Gk. Μελίτη, meaning honey or honey-sweet, from the distinctive honey long produced there). Alternatively, the name is said to derive from the Phoenician word Maleth, a haven. The Wikipedia entry on Malta gives an overview of the early history of the island.

One of the very earliest marks of civilization on the islands is the temple of Hagar Qim, which dates from between 3200 and 2500 BC, stands on a hilltop on the southern edge of the island of Malta. Adjacent to Hagar Qim, lies another remarkable temple site, l-Imnajdra. The people who built these structures eventually died out or at any rate disappeared. Phoenicians colonized the islands around 700 BC, using them as an outpost from which they expanded sea explorations and trade in the Mediterranean.

After the fall of Tyre, the islands later came under the control of Carthage (400 BC), a former Phoenician colony, and then of Rome (218 BC). The islands prospered under Roman rule, during which time they were considered a Municipium and a Foederata Civitas. Many Roman antiquities still exist, testifying to the close link between the Maltese inhabitants and the people of Rome. The island was a favorite among Roman soldiers as a place to retire from active service. In AD 60, the islands were visited by Saint Paul, who is said to have been shipwrecked on the shores of the aptly-named "San Pawl il-Bahar" (Saint Paul's Bay).

The following is an extract from an article entitled ‘In the Wake of the Phoenicians: DNA study reveals a Phoenician-Maltese link’, by Cassandra Franklin-Barbajosa, regarding a genetic study of the Phoenicians.

Supported by a grant from National Geographic's Committee for Research and Exploration, the scientists collected blood samples from men living in the Middle East, North Africa, southern Spain, and Malta, places the Phoenicians are known to have settled and traded. …

As DNA samples continue to be analyzed, more revelations are surfacing. "We've just received data that more than half of the Y chromosome lineages that we see in today's Maltese population could have come in with the Phoenicians," [researcher] Wells says. "That's a significant genetic impact. But why?" At this point he can only speculate. "Perhaps the population on Malta wasn't as dense. Perhaps when the Phoenicians settled, they killed off the existing population, and their own descendants became today's Maltese. Maybe the islands never had that many people, and shiploads of Phoenicians literally moved in and swamped the local population. We don't know for sure, but the results are consistent with a settlement of people from the Levant within the past 2,000 years, and that points to the Phoenicians." (National Geographic Online extra, Oct 2004.)

The “existing population” to which the author refers is the Hg K2 descendants of Javan, who were part of the Phoenicians known as the Ships of Tarshish.

This route of these Hg K people went far into the East in Melanesia, as we will examine later.

Sicily

The Wikipedia entry on the History of Sicily gives details of some of the early settlers to this important and largest Mediterranean island.

Throughout much of its history, Sicily has been considered a crucial strategic location due in large part to its importance for Mediterranean trade routes. The area was highly regarded as part of Magna Graecia, with Cicero describing Siracusa as the greatest and most beautiful city of all Ancient Greece.

The indigenous peoples of Sicily, long absorbed into the population, were tribes known to ancient Greek writers as the Elymians, the Sicani and the Siculi or Sicels (from which the island gets its name). Of these, the last were clearly the latest to arrive on this land and were related to other Italic peoples of southern Italy, such as the Italoi of Calabria, the Oenotrians, Chones, and Leuterni (or Leutarni), the Opicans, and the Ausones. It is possible, however, that the Sicani were originally an Iberian tribe. The Elymi, too, may have distant origins outside of Italy, in the Aegean Sea area. Complex urban settlements become increasingly evident from around 1300 BC.

In around 750 BC, the Greeks began to colonize Sicily, establishing many important settlements. The most important colony was Syracuse; other significant ones were Akragas, Gela, Himera, Selinunte, and Zancle. The native Sicani and Sicel peoples were absorbed by the Hellenic culture with relative ease, and the area was part of Magna Graecia along with the rest of Southern Italy, which the Greeks had also colonized.

Sicily was very fertile, and the introduction of olives and grape vines flourished, creating a great deal of profitable trading;[8] a significant part of Greek culture on the island was that of Greek religion and many temples were built across Sicily, such as the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento.

Under the heading ‘Genetics and Anthropology in Sicily, the Best of Sicily website provides preliminary observations of genetic research done in the island.

Leaving aside specialized studies, if we consider the major Y haplogroups, Sicily's population-genetic distribution is somewhat similar (though by no means identical) to mainland Italy's. If only approximately the proportions are: J Group (J1, J2, etc.) 35%, R Group (primarily R1b) 25%, I Group 15%, K Group 10%, H Group 10%, Others 5%. Along female lines, Sicilians' descent from the “Seven Daughters of Eve” seems to be distributed fairly equally, but much more data must be collected in this area. These factors (and scholarly studies) all point to the island's multi-peopling as the main cause of its genetic diversity.

http://www.bestofsicily.com/genetics.htm#haplogroups

Thus we can see the distribution as 35% Semitic, probably Greco-Arab; 25% R1b Japhethite sons of Gomer and Ashkenaz, from the Norman occupation and the later Italic Japhethite tribes; 15% Semitic Hg I from the Sons of Keturah in Greece; 10% K Phoenician Javanite; 10% Hg H Assyro-Indian from the East; 5% Miscellaneous.

Note that Sicily does not have the massive E3b numbers present in the Greek populace, thus the E3B invasion of Greece was a late event coming in from North Africa.

Sardinia

The ‘History of Sardinia’ article in Wikipedia gives the following details on this island:

The first humans to settle in Gallura and Northern Sardinia probably came from Italian peninsula, possibly from Tuscany. The central region may have been populated by people arriving from the Iberian Peninsula through the Balearic Islands.

Prehistoric Sardinia is characterised by typical structures in stone that are called nuraghe. There are more than 8000 of these structures, more or less complex. The most famous is the complex of Barumini in the province of Medio Campidano. The Nuraghe were mainly built in the period from about 1800 to 1200 BC, though many were used until the Roman period. Next to these, holy waterplaces have been built (for example Santa Cristina, Sardara) and the grave structures called Dolmen.

It is known that the Sardinians already had contact with the Myceneans, who traded with the West Mediterranean. The alleged connection with the Shardana, the sea people that invaded Egypt has not been proven. Euboeans, the first Greeks to navigate westwards, called the island Hyknousa (later Latinized in Ichnus(s)a). The Nora stone has been seen as proof that the island was called Sharden by the Phoenicians, and from there it derived the name Sardinia. …

Sardinia had a special position because it was central in the Western Mediterranean between Carthage, Spain, the Rhone river and the Etruscan civilization area. The mining area around Iglesias was important for the metals lead and zinc. The cities were founded on strategic points, often peninsulas or islands near estuaries, easy to defend and natural harbours.

Sardinia had little copper and tin of its own but was rich in both lead and iron, and it has been plausibly suggested that Cypriot copper ingots were therefore exchanged for Sardinian iron.

Another entry on Sardinia has this to say under the heading ‘Genetics’:

The original Nuraghe inhabitants of Sardinia, who are now concentrated in the interior of the island due to pressure from colonists … belong to Y-chromosome haplogroup I, which otherwise has high frequency only in Scandinavia and the Croatia-Bosnia area. Furthermore, the I haplogroup of the indigenous Sardinians is of the I1b1b subtype, which is unique to the island. The I1b1b haplogroup also has a low distribution in and around the Pyrenees, indicating some migration of Sardinians to that area. The Sardinian subtype is more closely related to the Croatian-Bosnian subtype than to the Scandinavian subtype. Sardinia also has a relatively high distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroup G, which results from people that migrated to Sardinia from Anatolia. Y-chromosome haplogroup G also has a relatively high concentration in and around the Pyrenees, again indicating migration of Sardinians to that area (Wikipedia).

Haplogroup G is found in the areas of the Assyrians up through Armenia into Georgia. The Hg I of the Croats and Bosnians came in from the steppes in the area north of Iran and is indicative of the Semitic elements of the Joktan Hebrews and the Elamites. Modern tests of the Assyrians in the United Kingdom are Haplogroup G except for the R1b English intermarriages.

Corsica

Due in part to its isolation, it seems that little is known of the early occupants of Corsica apart from the megalithic structures they left, and there is a further large gap to the written historical records, as noted in this BritannicaOnline article.

Remains of human occupation dating from at least the 3rd millennium BC are evident in the many dolmens, menhirs, and other megalithic monuments that still stand on the island. The recorded history of Corsica begins about 560 BC, when Greeks from Phocaea in Asia Minor founded the town of Alalia on the east coast. Carthaginian domination followed in the early 3rd century BC, …

Several Wikipedia articles add extra details regarding the island’s history:

The Phoenicians were the first to establish several commercial stations in Corsica and in Sardinia. After the Phoenicians, there arrived the Greeks, who also established their colonies. The Carthaginians, with the help of the Etruscans, conquered the Phoenicians in Alalia, a colony on Corsica, in 535 BC. After Corsica, Sardinia also came under control of the Carthaginians. ….

The island was under Carthaginian influence and domination until 237 BC, when it was taken over by the Roman Republic. It remained under Roman domination until its conquest by the Vandals in AD 430, and later by the Byzantine Empire in 522. With the collapse of Byzantine control, the island came under various influences, including Arabs and Lombards.

The language and genetic makeup of the Corsicans is given in this abstract from the Human Biology journal (1 April 2004) under the title ‘Genetic history of the population of Corsica (western Mediterranean) as inferred from autosomal STR analysis’:

The Language. The ability to trace the evolution of the Corsican idiom, or Corsu, has been limited by a lack of written sources. The Roman historian Seneca wrote in A.D. 40-41 that "Corsicans speak a rough and incomprehensible idiom," thus suggesting the presence of a pre-Latin spoken language of uncertain origin. A recent interpretation of this archaic substratum (Alinei 2000) claims a linguistic continuity with ancient Indo-European Italid variants of Tuscan-Ligurian origin with later influences of Sardinian (for southern Corsica), Central Italian (for the southeast), and Celtic (for the whole island). … Present Corsican is classified into the Southern Romantic subbranch of the Indo-European family, in the Tuscan group of Italian varieties (Grimes 1996). ... Four dialects have been recognized: Northern Corsican, Venachese, Ajaccio, and Sartenese. ...

Several researchers claim a common genetic legacy for Corsicans and Sardinians. Phylogenetic trees based on blood proteins (Varesi et al. 1996; Memmi et al. 1998; Vona et al. 2002), HLA class I markers (Grimaldi et al. 2002), and mitochondrial HVS-I sequences (Varesi et al. 2000) place the two island populations on the same branch, separated from other continental Mediterranean populations. According to some investigators, the results can be reasonably explained by the persistence in the two islands of the same Paleolithic genetic background. However, studies based on NRY haplogroup variability (Scozzari et al. 2001; Francalacci et al. 2003), Alu insertions (Moral et al. 1999), and mtDNA coding regions (Morelli et al. 2000) suggest much earlier origins, almost no recent gene flow from Corsica to Sardinia, and shared genetic features with Tuscans or Catalans. (emphasis added)

http://goliath.ecnext.com/comsite5/bin/pdinventory.pl?pdlanding=1&referid=2750&item_id=0199-604125

A paper by P. Francalacci et al. in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology then gives details of the connections or otherwise between the inhabitants of three of the islands mentioned above.

Peopling of Three Mediterranean Islands (Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily) Inferred by Y-Chromosome Biallelic Variability

ABSTRACT … Approximately 60% of the Sicilian haplotypes are also prevalent in Southern Italy and Greece. Conversely, the Corsican sample had elevated levels of alternative haplotypes common in Northern Italy. Sardinia showed a haplotype ratio similar to that observed in Corsica, but with a remarkable difference in the presence of a lineage defined by marker M26, which approaches 35% in Sardinia but seems absent in Corsica.

Although geographically adjacent, the data suggest different colonization histories and a minimal amount of recent gene flow between them. Our results identify possible ancestral continental sources of the various island populations and underscore the influence of founder effect and genetic drift. The Y chromosome data are consistent with comparable mtDNA data at the RFLP haplogroup level of resolution, as well as linguistic and historic knowledge.

The three main Mediterranean islands studied show evidence of different patterns of human peopling, with Corsica and Sicily closely associated with neighboring continental populations, while Sardinia shows a marked feature of isolation, with some possible ancient contact with the Iberian Peninsula. These data are in substantial agreement with the trend observed with mtDNA data (Morelli et al., 2000), suggesting that there was no gender differentiation in the population pathways. The linguistic data and historic events of the islands also support this interpretation (121:270–279, 2003). http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/AJPA_2003_v121_p270-279.pdf

Thus we can deduce that Sardinia having 35% M26 marker is 35% Hg I1b2, which is a specific Semitic lineage of Hebrew derivation.

Haplogroup I was the stem of the supergroup IJ linked by S2 and S22 and represents the Hebrews and Elamites. This stem probably came in with the Spartan Greeks before the North African invasion. They were Hebrew Sons of Keturah.

Language indicators

It has been noted elsewhere that language (allied with archaeology) gave important clues to tribal affiliations well before the advent of genetic research. However, Jonathan Hall, in his work Ethnic identity in Greek antiquity, adds a cautionary (and general) note to linguistic studies as they relate to ethnicity.

In analysing the role of language within Greek ethnicities, it is essential to challenge two notions … The first is that linguistic groups can be equated with ethnic groups. It has already been noted … that language need not be a stable dimension within ethnic identification and that consequently it should be regarded as an ethnic indicium [indicator] rather than an ethnic criterion (Cambridge Univ. Press, UK, 1997; 2000 edit., pp. 180-1).

In his book The Ancient Mediterranean, Michael Grant states that: “Certain types of pre-Greek place-names [e.g. those ending in -assos], which later survived on the mainland, confirm the assumption of this trans-Aegean association, since they are also found over a wide area extending to the farthest extremities of Asia Minor” (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1969, p. 29). This would again provide evidence of significant west-to-east migration into Anatolia from mainland Greece as a sort of back swing, centuries later, of the migration pendulum that had initially swung from east to west out of the patriarchs’ homelands in Anatolia.

The migration into Anatolia was noted by Hall:

… a popular theory earlier this century held that the Greek language was, for the most part, already divided into the major dialect groups prior to the arrival of the Greek-speakers, who infiltrated Greece in three migratory waves [Kretschmer 1909]. The first to come were the ‘proto-Ionians’ towards the beginning of the second millennium BC. They were followed by the ‘proto-Akhaians’ who, once in Greece, divided into a northern ‘proto-Aiolic’ branch and a southern ‘proto-Arkado-Cypriot’ branch (these would have been Homer’s ‘Akhaians’, and their date of entry into Greece should coincide with the emergence of a recognisably Mycenaean culture ca. 1600 BC). Finally at about ca. 1200 BC the Dorians entered Greece.

Kretschmer’s reconstruction is generally no longer accepted. Instead the majority of philologists now believe that Greek-speakers entered Greece in one single migratory wave … (op. cit., p. 159).

However, these modern scholars cannot agree among themselves and offer vastly differing timescales, with Renfrew (1987) believing that Greek-speakers entered the Balkans in the 6^th millennium BC, while Drews (1988) suggested a date of about 1600 BC for the arrival of the Greeks into ‘Greece’ (the commonly accepted date is ca. 2100 BC, in the Early Helladic III period; ibid.).

On page 154 of his book, Hall produces a Dialect map of Greece, which classifies known 8^th-century BCE dialects into four major groups and shows their locations throughout Greece itself and into Greek-speaking Anatolia. These are: West Greek, Attic-Ionic, Aiolic and Arkado-Cypriot. Robin Osborne gives details of the expansion of the Greek language as far east as Anatolia.

The idea of an Ionian migration from Athens has some archaeological support. Indeed, the archaeological record might be held to support not one but two migrations from Athens to Asia Minor: first in the Helladic IIIC, … and second in the early protogeometric period [of pottery design] …

By the end of the archaic period, and perhaps already by the seventh century, there were plenty of features in the observed customs and linguistic patterns of the day to suggest that Athens, or at least Attica, and Ionia had once been closely linked. In the first place, the Attic and Ionic dialects shared important characteristics which set them apart from other Greek dialects; second, Athens, the Cyclades, and Ionia shared certain institutions … [cf. Herod. I, 147.2]

Only the coastal states of the Peloponnese spoke Doric; Elis (like Phokis and Lokris) spoke North-West Greek, in Arkadia the dialect is what is known today as Arcado-Cypriot, and in Boiotia the dialect was Aeolic. Arcado-Cypriot and Aeloic both have features which cause them to be grouped with Ionic as ‘East Greek Dialects’, as opposed to the ‘West Greek dialects’, Doric and North-West Greek. Philologists suggest that many of the distinct features of Doric may have developed in the period after 1200 BC … (Greece in the Making, 1200–479 BC, Routledge, London, 1996, pp. 35-36)

The problem with these views is that they are not backed by YDNA and mtDNA genetics. The genetics show an early wave of the Sons of Keturah, as is substantiated by Josephus, and a later wave of Edomite and Arab influence. The E3b wave was a late migration of North African colonists who had adopted the African Hellenised Greek and took it with them into Greece.

The Sea Peoples

The term “peuples de la mer” – Sea Peoples – was coined by Gaston Maspero in 1881. These enigmatic people were the scourge of the Egyptians and others throughout the Mediterranean. Frederik C. Woudhuizen of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, in his recent paper, The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples, provides significant details about them.

In Maspero’s view, then, the homeland of the Sea Peoples should be restricted to western Anatolia and mainland Greece. Thus, apart from embracing the equation of the Ekwesh with the Akhaians of mainland Greece, the Sherden were supposed to be linked up with the Lydian capital Sardis, the Shekelesh with the Pisidian town of Sagalassos, and the Weshesh with the Carian place name Wassos. His main reason for the central position of Anatolia in his reconstructions was formed by Herodotos’ location of the ultimate homeland of the Tyrrhenians in Lydia (Histories I, 94). Like in the case of the Tyrrhenians, these Anatolian peoples were suggested to have moved after their attack on Egypt to their later Central Mediterranean homelands. Only the Philistines were supposed to have turned east and settled in Canaan. (p. 35

athttp://publishing.eur.nl/ir/repub/asset/7686/Woudhuizen%20bw.pdf)

The problem we also have is that the Weshmesh were also a Libyan tribe that invaded Egypt from Libya and there may be some confusion in that regard.

The author then lists the various ancient names of these peoples and their suggested locations.

This is exactly the situation recorded by the Egyptian sources on the so-called Sea Peoples, which inform us about raids by the Shekelesh, Sherden, and Weshesh, in which we can recognize the Italic peoples of the Sicilians, Sardinians, and Oscans ... These western raiders made common cause with colleagues from the east-Mediterranean basin, like the Ekwesh or Akhaians from the Greek mainland, Peleset or Pelasgians from the Aegean, Tjeker or Teukrians from the Troas, and Lukka or Lycians from western Asia Minor. …

Within the frame of the autochthonous thesis, the Teresh or Tyrsenians (= Tyrrhenians) are, on the analogy of the Sicilians and Sardinians, likewise supposed to have come from Italy, but considering their Aegean location in early Greek literary sources this is unlikely ... At any rate, the direction of the migrations at the end of the Bronze Age is clearly from west to east, and not the other way round. Therefore, the colonization by the Etruscans of Italy from Asia Minor as recorded by Herodotos does not fit into the period of the Sea Peoples (ibid., p. 83).

Some scholars also make the connection between the particular Sea Peoples called Peleset and the Philistines. The West to East hypothesis, as above, is not supported by the movements into Europe to the North.

Other descendants of Javan

As noted earlier, the sons of Javan were assigned islands and ‘coastlands’ all over the world as their inheritance. By use of the latest genetic research, movements of these descendants can be tracked with reasonable accuracy.

As we have already noted, this inheritance included Britannia or the British Isles (cf. also the paper Sons of Japheth: Part VI Tubal (No. 46F)). In his historical and partly genealogical work Historia Brittonum, Nennius puts names to individuals and the tribes they founded. Alanus is said by him to have been the first man into Europe (after the Flood), and to have been only 17 generations removed from the patriarch Javan or ‘Joham’.

17. I have learned another account of this Brutus from the ancient books of our ancestors. After the deluge, the three sons of Noah severally occupied three different parts of the earth: Shem extended his borders into Asia, Ham into Africa, and Japheth into Europe.

The first man that dwelt in Europe was Alanus, with his three sons, Hisicion, Armenon, and Neugio. Hisicion had four sons, Francus, Romanus, Alamanus, and Bruttus. Armenon had five sons, Gothus, Valagothus, Cibidus, Burgundus, and Longobardus. Neugio had three sons, Vandalus, Saxo, and Boganus. From Hisicion arose four nations – the Franks, the Latins, the Germans, and Britons: from Armenon, the Gothi, Valagothi, Cibidi, Burgundi, and Longobardi: from Neugio, the Bogari, Vandali, Saxones, and Tarincgi. The whole of Europe was subdivided into these tribes.

Alanus is said to have been the son of Fethuir; Fethuir, the son of Ogomuin, who was the son of Thoi; Thoi was the son of Boibus, Boibus of Semion, Semion of Mair, Mair of Ecthactus, Ecthactus of Aurthack, Aurthack of Ethec, Ethec of Ooth, Ooth of Aber, Aber of Ra, Ra of Esraa, Esraa of Hisrau, Hisrau of Bath, Bath of Jobath, Jobath of Joham, Joham [Javan] of Japheth, Japheth of Noah, Noah of Lamech, Lamech of Mathusalem, Mathusalem of Enoch, Enoch of Jared, Jared of Malalehel, Malalehel of Cainan, Cainan of Enos, Enos of Seth, Seth of Adam, and Adam was formed by the living God. We have obtained this information respecting the original inhabitants of Britain from ancient tradition.

18. The Britons were thus called from Brutus: Brutus was the son of Hisicion, Hisicion was the son of Alanus, Alanus was the son of Rehea Silvia, Rhea Silvvia was the daughter of Numa Pompilius, Numa was the son of Ascanius, Ascanius of Eneas, Eneas of Anchises, Anchises of Troius, Troius of Dardanus, Dardanus of Flisa, Flisa of Juuin, Juuin of Japheth; but Japheth had seven sons; from the first, named Gomer, descended the Galli; from the second, Magog, the Scythi and Gothi; from the third, Madian, the Medi; from the fourth, Juuan, the Greeks; from the fifth, Tubal, arose the Hebrei, Hispani, and Itali; from the sixth, Mosoch, sprung the Cappadoces; and from the seventh, named Tiras, descended the Thraces: these are the sons of Japheth, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech.

Now there are some problems thrown up by this lineage as we can see. The line also contains females and thus the line from Javan may well include other lines from the female marriages. We will return to this aspect.

By following the genetic trail, we can see that the sons of Japheth also travelled eastward, even as far as the islands of South-East Asia, Australia and the Pacific and into South America.

Making the correct divisions and distinctions is the major problem.

We have identified the sons of Javan in the K2 distinction but that does not mean the other K subdivisions are all of Javan.

Genetic divisions of the Sons of Japheth

The tree maintained by Gareth Henson at http://www.isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpK.html is a very useful resource for the Hg K overview. It is important for the Bible student to understand that, based on current scientific knowledge all Japhethite tribal groups came through Hg K.

K   M9
•       K*   -
•       K1    M353, M387
•      •       K1*   -
•      •       K1a   SRY9138 (M177)
•       K2   M70, M184, M193, M272
•      •       K2*   -
•      •       K2a   M320
•       K3   M147
•       K4   P60
•       K5   M230
•      •       K5*   -
•      •       K5a   M254
•      •       •       K5a*   -
•      •       •       K5a1   M226
•       K6   P79 (added)
•       K7   P117 (added) [note that FTDNA adds P118: Cox]

Note on 50f2/C:
The 50f2/C deletion in the AZFc region of the human Y chromosome has been observed in several different haplogroups and is not a unique event polymorphism. It is notable, however, that it has been detected at relatively high levels in subgroups of K in Melanesia - K* (21%), K6 (14%) and K7 (5%).
Note on P57 and P61
P57 and P61 cannot be placed on the tree until their status relative to M254 and M226 is known.

The current scientific view is that Y-DNA Haplogroup K is an old lineage whose origins were probably in South-west Asia.

This view is in accord with our understanding of the origin of Japheth and the distribution of his sons.

The place of departure for these groups is at M9, which is the root of K at K*. K has then divided into the base divisions of K we see from K1 to K7 and then also Hgs L, M and P. The supergroup of the sons of HN is also an offshoot at M214. They are discussed in detail in the Appendix The Sons of Japheth Part II Gomer: The Sons of HN (No. 46B1).

Thus the sons of Javan in the Mediterranean and Britain related to the early Phoenician traders did not mutate to the same degree as the other subdivisions that were more landlocked. We will see that isolation had a large part to play in the relative location and stability of the subgroups K1 to K7. In our view that is because of the background radiation stability and the mtDNA stability in isolated tribal groups.

None of these subgroups from K1 to K7 has any of the mutations (SNPs) defining the major groups. We will deal with the major groups more fully in the section of the YDNA Haplogroup Tree of Japheth.

The groups K* and K1 to K7 are found at low frequencies in various parts of Africa, Eurasia, Australia and the South Pacific.

We can thus assume that the sons of Japheth also made moves into Africa from South-west Asia in a small degree.

The location of the subgroups K1 to K7 are as follows:

K1 is found at low frequencies in Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

K2, which we have identified with Javan, is found at low frequencies throughout Europe and in parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and West Africa and in Britain. The Welsh family of Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States (1801-09), was determined to be of the K2 subclade.

According to the scientific resources listed by Gareth Henson (see below):

“K5 is a major haplogroup in the highlands of mainland Papua New Guinea where it is found at frequencies of around 50% in some populations and is also present at lower frequencies in adjacent islands of Indonesia and Melanesia.”

It is noted that K* K6 and K7 are found in Melanesia. They thus retained a smaller degree of mutation through isolation.

K* then mutated into the Hg M group from the K* original colonisers, some of whom retained their original DNA in Melanesia and elsewhere.

The possibility exists that they may well be sons of Javan with their distinctive features through their mtDNA combination.

The Haplogroup M, which is defined from K by M4, M5, M106, M186, M189, P35, developed in Papua New Guinea and West New Guinea, now Irian Jaya, and New Britain. All of M has these specific links. The Hg M subclades M1 and M2 are defined by P34 and seemingly P87. This is a very homogenous and isolated sequence of mutations. The article of the analysis has this to say of the Hg M sequence from the root M4.

Haplogroup M-M4

The majority of males analyzed from WNG [West New Guinea] (77.5% from the lowlands/coast and 74.5% from the highlands) carried the M-M4 haplogroup (tables 3 and 4; figs. 1 and 3), which is additionally characterized by the mutant state of the markers M5, M186, and M189 (fig. 2). Haplogroup M-M4 was previously identified as the predominant Y-chromosome type in Melanesia, on the basis of data from mainland and island PNG (Kayser et al. ^2001a), with a frequency of 35.5% in highland PNG, 29% in coastal PNG, 30.2% in the Trobriand Islanders, and 6.5%–20.6% in eastern Indonesia (table 3; fig. 1). It has also been observed in other population samples from Melanesia and eastern Indonesia (Su et al. ²⁰⁰⁰; Capelli et al. ²⁰⁰¹; Hurles et al. ²⁰⁰²). M-M4 has a very high frequency overall in WNG, with some groups completely fixed for this haplogroup, including the Yali, the Una, and the Ketengban from the eastern highlands of WNG, as well as the Awyu from the WNG lowlands (table 4; fig. 3).

(cf. Reduced Y-Chromosome, but Not Mitochondrial DNA, Diversity in Human Populations from West New Guinea

Manfred Kayser,¹ Silke Brauer,¹ Gunter Weiss,¹ Wulf Schiefenhövel,² Peter Underhill,³Peidong Shen,⁴ Peter Oefner,⁴ Mila Tommaseo-Ponzetta,⁵ and Mark Stoneking¹

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=379223

The conjecture is that the people arrived here by coastal craft and through relative isolation maintained their distinct K* or K1 and K3 to K7 lineages, while K2 remained in the Mediterranean area.

The relative incidence of C is of note as there is a much greater incidence of C in Irian Jaya (WNG) and New Britain than we find in PNG but, nevertheless, there are some, as there are in Borneo (Kalimantan), with much less in Malaysia and more in the Philippines and among the Chinese. The only group in South-East Asia and the Pacific not to have the K grouping is among the Maori, but they instead have a small number of Hg N as does the Philippines and Japan along with O, indicating they may have picked up this group from their home in the Malay Archipelago adjacent to the Philippines before they moved into the Pacific and New Zealand. They displaced the small Hg K groups from NZ but not so in Western Samoa and French Polynesia.

The dating of the groups is typical of the evolutionist model but has been reduced to 4000+ years BP in some models. The spread alleges 30,000 BP to 4000+ BP (see above). The timing is corrupted by incorrect dating premises.

The biblical model requires a movement of Javan into his inheritance at approximately 4150-4200 BP.

The outstanding point here is that the mtDNA of the Polynesians is overwhelmingly Hg B and more so than anywhere else in the world. This group is found on both sides of the Pacific in both hemispheres. The Polynesians also possess a small element of mtDNA Hgs M and F. These are found in increasing numbers from PNG to South Asia and north to Japan and in China and among the Mongols. Hgs B and M and F are found among the Thai, Han and aboriginal Taiwanese.

Indian Japheth

The K* basic Haplogroup moved into India and on into South-East Asia. What is significant is that the groups in India developed in isolation into the YDNA Hg L, which is marked by M11, M20, M22, M61 and M 205. They further divided into L* and L1 and L2 subclades. What is most interesting is that the K* did not remain in India in either the Dravidians or the Indians generally, and the portion of Hg L is similar throughout India. However, despite the Indianisation of South-East Asia Hg L did not extend further than the subcontinent. The Haplogroup L in India seems to have been a mutation from the K basic element of the early Aryans that moved into India probably before the Aryan Invasion with the Hg F progenitor to the Japhethites or Semites not tested properly, and the Hg H Semites. It is probable that the F group in India is the precursor to the H Semites going there from the Middle East ca. 1750 BCE. The Haplogroup F group is found in greater quantities among the Dravidians than the Indians generally and may well be a reflection of the observations of insufficient testing elsewhere. There is only a small element of Kushites left in India and among both Indians and the Dravidians. Thus, most Indians are Japhethites, with some 15% Semites (Hg H (+ Hg F and smaller Hg J) among the Indians and about 40% (H with a larger sector of F and slightly less J) among the Dravidians (see also the work Mysticism (B7_1) for the early settlement.

The R*xR1 found among the Dravidians and to a much lesser extent in the Indians may reflect also the mutation from K in the South as we found also in Cameroon and in Australia.

The Aryan R1a Hg that came into India ca. 1000 BCE with the invasion is much less common among the Dravidians and represents almost no other group in SE Asia, and is not present among the Malay or in Sumatra or in Kalimantan, other than through recent immigrants.

The diverse mutation of YDNA L and M may well be through background radiation levels probably arising from the diverse mtDNA mutation rates observed in areas of high background radiation.

The Aryan Invasion of 1000 BCE is from the Aryans of Madai and the Eastern Scythians.

The coastal influence of the Javanite fleets may well have extended into South India and South-East Asia, being more in its original form the further east it went into Melanesia with less mutations in the island groups. The rule seems to have held for Malta and Lebanon and in some Welsh families also. The levels of the early K groups in Australia are at about 25% of the aboriginal populace with 5 to 8% R*xR1 Aryans with a small portion of Chinese and others. Now the incidence of R1b and I and others is much greater since 1788.

It cannot be excluded that these islands of Australasia and Melanesia and the Pacific were peopled by the sons of Javan before the K* subdivisions ca. 2000 BCE.

The relative incidence of YDNA Hg C4 to the mtDNA Hg N indicates that the N group was the Cushite females that came overland from India via the coastline. Those females who did not remain, but came on into Australia, did not mutate. In India they developed into R and subgroups spreading into South-East Asia and East Asia. The other mtDNA basic Group M also had an element that came into India and spread into South-East Asia. The Maori females undoubtedly almost all came from the area of South-East Asia among the Taiwanese, the Chinese mtDNA Hg B, and Malay and PNG. The other group that constitutes 40% of the Australian Aboriginal females is Hg P. They are found in PNG at only slightly lesser levels and correspond to the K and R*R1 elements.

There are thus at least two distinct migrations into Australia, and probably three, with the females of the second wave the Hg P. If there was a third the same female Haplogroup came with them.

The movements into PNG and Melanesia comprised two elements of mtDNA Hg M and its mutation Q and the mtDNA mutations of supergroup R from N, which are B and P. Thus the migrations into PNG and Melanesia were from the islands to the north of Thailand as no R group is present – only the subsequent mutations of R. The Maori females thus also did not come via PNG or Australia, nor could they have come from South-East Asia among the Thai. They had to come from a no-longer existent island between Taiwan, Kalimantan and Malaysia.

It cannot be excluded that the colonisation of Melanesia, Papua and New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania was done originally by Hg K sons of Javan. The Hg C Cushites comprising the C2 Maori and the C4 Australian Aborigines came in subsequently. Certainly the Maori did not leave the coasts of Asia before 1000 CE. They forced the movement of the natives into the Cook Islands. Both they and the Tasmanians were of the Papuan-type stock. The Aboriginal Australians represent at least two waves and probably eight, in eight ethno-linguistic groups over the period from 2000 BCE to approximately the first century of the current era. The RxR1 group is a comparatively recent mutation of the YDNA structure that occurred before 1000 BCE, and the Aryan R1a invasion of India. This group may well have come in from the Dravidians in India. As there are no other significant R*xR1 groups elsewhere in the region, they probably came direct.

The sons of Javan will also appear when we deal with the other sons of Japheth as they are combined in the most significant ways.

Unravelling the puzzle has enormous implications for Bible Prophecy.

Javan in Prophecy

Javan’s descendants are mentioned several times in a prophetic context. In Isaiah 66:19, Tarshish is the only ‘son’ of Javan mentioned directly in conjunction with the patriarch – as well as with the unusual combination of Pul, Lud and Tubal. Descendants of Javan’s brother Tubal are thus included among those inhabiting the isles afar off, or the distant coasts alongside the descendants of Javan, as noted in the paper Sons of Japheth: Part VI Tubal (No. 46F).

Isaiah 66:18-20 [The time] as come to gather all the nations and tongues; they shall come and behold My glory. ¹⁹ I will set a sign among them, and send from them survivors to the nations: to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud -- that draw the bow -- to Tubal, Javan, and the distant coasts, that have never heard My fame nor beheld My glory. They shall declare My glory among these nations. ²⁰ And out of all the nations, said the Lord, they shall bring all your brothers on horses, in chariots and drays, on mules and dromedaries, to Jerusalem My holy mountain as an offering to the Lord – (JPS Tanakh).

In Ezekiel 27:13, the people of Javan appear allied with Tubal and Meshech, as slave traders and bronze merchants in particular, while in verse 19 a connection is made with the Israelite tribe of Dan, descendant of Shem. Three of the tribes descended from Javan are also mentioned in this chapter of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 27:1-19 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, ² Now, thou son of man, take up a lamentation for Tyrus; ³And say unto Tyrus, O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, [which art] a merchant of the people for many isles, Thus saith the Lord GOD; O Tyrus, thou hast said, I [am] of perfect beauty. ⁴Thy borders [are] in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty. ⁵They have made all thy [ship] boards of fir trees of Senir: they have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee. ⁶[Of] the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars; the company of the Ashurites have made thy benches [of] ivory, [brought] out of the isles of Chittim. ⁷Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was that which covered thee. ⁸The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad were thy mariners: thy wise [men], O Tyrus, [that] were in thee, were thy pilots. ⁹ The ancients of Gebal and the wise [men] thereof were in thee thy calkers: all the ships of the sea with their mariners were in thee to occupy thy merchandise. ¹⁰They of Persia and of Lud and of Phut were in thine army, thy men of war: they hanged the shield and helmet in thee; they set forth thy comeliness. ¹¹The men of Arvad with thine army [were] upon thy walls round about, and the Gammadims were in thy towers: they hanged their shields upon thy walls round about; they have made thy beauty perfect. ¹²Tarshish [was] thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all [kind of] riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs. ¹³Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they [were] thy merchants: they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market. ¹⁴They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules.¹⁵The men of Dedan [were] thy merchants; many isles [were] the merchandise of thine hand: they brought thee [for] a present horns of ivory and ebony.¹⁶Syria [was] thy merchant by reason of the multitude of the wares of thy making: they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate. ¹⁷Judah, and the land of Israel, they [were] thy merchants: they traded in thy market wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm.¹⁸Damascus [was] thy merchant in the multitude of the wares of thy making, for the multitude of all riches; in the wine of Helbon, and white wool.¹⁹Dan also and Javan going to and fro occupied in thy fairs: bright iron, cassia, and calamus, were in thy market. (RSV)

In Joel 3:6 it speaks of the captive Jews who were sold to the sons of Javan, or the Greeks as many translations call them (e.g. NKJV). The same word rachoq (SHD 7350) is used in verse 8 for those that are “afar off” as in Isaiah 66:19, although the reference in Joel is to the Sabeans.

The Mainland Greeks as we have established are not sons of Javan. They are mostly North African Hamites and Hgs I and J Semites.

Other prophecies concerning the sons of Javan are found at Isaiah 23:1-2,12-14, Daniel 11:30 and Jeremiah 2:10-11.

An interesting section in the entry on Kittim in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible gives a more generalised meaning of the tribal name that may yet have prophetic fulfilment.

The last recorded words of Balaam are a prophecy of the destruction of Asshur and Eber by some conquering power coming in ships from ‘the coast of Kittim’ (Nu 24²⁴). It is quite evident that here the term [Kittim]… is used, not to describe the island of Cyprus, or any other exactly defined territory, but as indicating quite generally some great Western people which had made themselves a name, and become a terror among the nations. No doubt Asshur and Eber stand for the great powers of the East collectively, and the prophecy is a foretelling of the utter overthrow of the sovereignty of the Eastern monarchies by the advancing power of the great empires of the West. The beginning of the fulfilment was seen in the campaigns of Alexander the Great, but it was much more truly and permanently realized in the development and growth of the empire of the Romans. The phrase ‘coast of Kittim,’ therefore, does not mean Macedonia, nor Rome, but simply the Western power which, for the time being, is to the front, or gives promise of prominence and permanence in the immediate future. (op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 6-7; emphasis added)

When we unravel Gomer and Magog and Tubal we will be astounded at what is happening.