Marc Haber

Our findings give us an unprecedented view of the ancestry of the people who fought in the Crusader army. And it wasn't just Europeans, we see this exceptional genetic diversity in the Near East during medieval times, with Europeans, Near Easterners, and mixed individuals fighting in the Crusades and living and dying side by side.

If you look at the genetics of people who lived during the Roman period and the genetics of people who are living there today, you would think that there was just this continuity, you would think that nothing happened between the Roman period and today, and you would miss that for a certain period of time the population of Lebanon included Europeans and people with mixed ancestry. After the fighting had finished, the mixed generation married into the local population and the genetic traces of the Crusaders were quickly lost.