Who are the descendents of the Canaanites?

The land of Canaan is referred to many times in the Bible and other documents from the same period. Historians have been puzzled, however, as to who these Canaanites really were. They had a tremendous influence on the cultures of the people around them, but most of what we know comes from their enemies, and their origins and fate have been mysterious. Now the sequencing of genomes from one of their major cities has provided some answers. 

Around 3,700 to 3,100 years ago, much of the territory now marked as Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan was inhabited by the Canaanites. They appear to have been the first people to create a systemic alphabet, and for a while represented such a superpower in the region they were able to establish numerous colonies and offshoots, including Carthage.

Yet for all their capacity with letters, few Canaanite written records survive, perhaps because they preferred papyrus to clay. Consequently, most of what we know of them comes from ancient Romans, Greeks and Israelites, none exactly unbiased sources. So we know little about their ancestry or what happened to them, assuming you take Biblical accounts of their annihilation with a grain of salt.

The Sanger Institute's Dr Mark Haber extracted DNA from the skulls of five Canaanites buried 3,700 years ago in Sidon, a major city in what is now Lebanon, and sequenced their genomes. These were compared with the genomes of 99 modern Lebanese individuals. In the American Journal of Human Genetics Haber reveals that, far from disappearing from the region the Bible implies, the Canaanites were the dominant contributor to the genetics of the people living there today. The Sidon genomes were also similar to those from nomadic people of the day in what is now Jordan, who also called themselves Canaanites.

“The present-day Lebanese are likely to be direct descendants of the Canaanites, but they have in addition a small proportion of Eurasian ancestry that may have arrived via conquests by distant populations such as the Assyrians, Persians, or Macedonians," Haber said in a statement. As to their origins; “The Canaanites were a mixture of local people who settled in farming villages during the Neolithic period and eastern migrants who arrived in the region about 5,000 years ago."

"In light of the enormously complex history of this region in the last few millennia, it was quite surprising that over 90 percent of the genetic ancestry of present-day Lebanese was derived from the Canaanites," said co-author Dr Chris Tyler-Smith.

Moreover, Haber and Tyler-Smith's work shows that the Canaanites looked much like modern Lebanese, their genes indicating, hair and eye colors and slightly darker skin. Something to consider when you see portrayals of biblical peoples as fair haired and light-skinned.

Answer

The Canaanites were a group of ancient people who lived in the land of Canaan on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Canaan is described in the Bible as extending from Lebanon toward the Brook of Egypt in the south and the Jordan River Valley in the east. In the Bible, notably in Genesis 10 and Numbers 34, this was called the “land of Canaan” and occupies the same area that is occupied by modern Lebanon and Israel, plus parts of Jordan and Syria.

The Canaanites are mentioned over 150 times in the Bible. They were a wicked, idolatrous people descended from Noah’s grandson Canaan, who was a son of Ham (Genesis 9:18). Canaan was cursed because of his and his father’s sin against Noah (Genesis 9:20–25). In some passages, Canaanites specifically refers to the people of the lowlands and plains of Canaan (Joshua 11:3); in other passages, Canaanites is used more broadly to refer to all the inhabitants of the land, including the Hivites, Girgashites, Jebusites, Amorites, Hittites, and Perizzites (see Judges 1:9–10).

The land of Canaan was the land God promised to give to Abraham’s descendants (Genesis 12:7). The Canaanites are described in the Bible as a large and fierce people, not easily defeated, so the Israelites would need divine help to come against them, defeat them, and take their land away. God promised Moses and Joshua that help (Joshua 1:3).

After the Exodus, when the Lord told Moses to invade Canaan, Moses sent a group of spies into the land of Canaan to see what the people were like. The spies came back with a report that was both encouraging and daunting. The fruit of the land was huge—it took two men to carry back one cluster of grapes (Numbers 13:23)—and the land was bountiful in many other ways. However, the Canaanites were strong, and the cities were large and fortified. Also, the Israelite spies had seen what they described as Nephilim and the descendants of Anak there (Numbers 13:28, 33)—next to these fierce people, the Israelites saw themselves as “grasshoppers” (verse 33). In the end, the Israelites were so afraid of the Canaanites that they refused to go into the land God had promised to them. Only Joshua and Caleb were confident that God would help them defeat the Canaanites. Because of their unwillingness to trust God, that generation of Israelites was denied entry into Canaan (Numbers 14:30-35).

Despite a long campaign against the inhabitants of Canaan, there remained several pockets of Canaanites in Israel after the land had been divided among the twelve tribes (Judges 1:27–36). Some of the Canaanites who remained in Israel were pressed into forced labor, but many strongholds remained in the land. The partial obedience of Israel, resulting in these Canaanite citadels, caused much trouble throughout the time of the Judges.