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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the life-finds-a-way dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

DNA from medieval Crusader skeletons suggests surprising diversity

European soldiers and civilians poured into the Levant in the 12th and 13th centuries, often killing or displacing local Muslim populations and establishing their own settlements in an effort to seize control of sites sacred to three major religious groups.

But in a new study, DNA from the skeletons of nine soldiers hints that the armies of the Crusades were more diverse and more closely linked with local people in Lebanon than historians previously assumed. The genetic evidence suggests that the Crusaders also recruited from among local populations, and European soldiers sometimes married local women and raised children, some of whom may have grown up to fight in later campaigns.

For centuries, the mingled, charred bones of at least 25 soldiers lay buried in two mass graves near the ruins of the Castle of St. Louis, a 12th- to 13th-century Crusader stronghold near Sidon, in south Lebanon. Several of the skeletons (all apparently male) bore the marks of violent death, and the artifacts mingled with the bones—buckles of medieval European design, along with a coin minted in Italy in 1245 to commemorate the Crusades—mark the pit's occupants as dead Crusader soldiers, burned and buried in the aftermath of a battle. From nine of them, geneticist Marc Haber and his colleagues at the Wellcome Sanger Institute obtained usable DNA sequences, which offer a rare look into the ranks of the soldiers who fought on one side of the 200-year series of wars.

The American Journal of Human Genetics, 2019. DOI: 10.1016/10.1016/j.ajhg.2019.03.015


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  • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @06:22PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @06:22PM (#834441)

    "European soldiers and civilians poured into the Levant in the 12th and 13th centuries, often killing or displacing local Muslim populations and establishing their own settlements in an effort to seize control of sites sacred to three major religious groups."

    Someone needs to kill or displace the author of this anti white propaganda. The desert rats invaded Aryan lands constantly, slaughtering thousands, and the christian religion was used as a PC motivator to slowly, partially kick the invading vermin out at great cost. Now self hating whites regurgitate lies taught to them by Jews while other college "educated" idiots think it's accurate history.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:32PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:32PM (#834509)

    Parent should be modded +1 informative.
    The Muslims were the invaders. In some cases the rightful inhabitants won their land back, as the Christians did in Spain in the late 15th Century.
    Are you against defense? Do you favor invasions but only if they are done TO you?
    Your kind is sick and weak, a cancer on nations.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:46PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:46PM (#834514)

      Your kind is stupid, ignorant, racist, and not too bright. This is why we cannot have white supremacy! Because you fail intellectually.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @11:38PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @11:38PM (#834559)

        You'll be crushed by people who will take your things from you.
        You have no back bone. Others do your fighting for you.
        Let me guess never been in the military have you?

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Thursday April 25 2019, @03:29AM

      by Reziac (2489) on Thursday April 25 2019, @03:29AM (#834602) Homepage

      Here's a Handy Dynamic Battle Map showing the military ventures from both sides. Enjoy.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_To-cV94Bo [youtube.com]

      --
      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:48PM (#834516)