Here's an "Enigma" for you: What links Alan Turing, famed cracker of Nazi codes, to rare butterflies and Hebrew names from the First Temple period?Sounds like an interesting study, albeit one that squeezes the last bit of inference out of very limited data. The Haaretz article gives lots of helpful background. The underlying article is also covered in:The answer is that a team of researchers has revealed new information about the history of the biblical kingdoms of Judah and Israel by studying the Hebrew names scribbled on pottery or etched on personal seals during the First Temple period. The analysis used statistical methods first developed during World War II by Turing and colleagues to decode Germany's Enigma cipher, and which have since been applied by ecologists to study rare species.
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What’s in a name? Diving into the ancient names of biblical Israel. Ancient name data reveals Israel was more diverse than Judah, offering new insight into biblical-era societies through a modern statistical lens (JOANIE MARGULIES, Jerusalem Post)
Ancient Israelites were more worldly than their insular Judean cousins, study shows. Using statistical methods from field of ecological biodiversity, Israeli scholars analyze 1,000 First Temple period names and find that the northern state was likely more ‘cosmopolitan’ (Rossella Tercatin, Times of Israel).
A Hebrew University press release is published at Phys.org:
Name diversity sheds light on social patterns in ancient Hebrew kingdoms.
I cannot comment on the underlying article, because, oddly, it is no longer up at the PNAS site. The link is correct, shared by all the above articles, but it goes to a dead end. And neither the title nor the author show up in a search of the site. But you should check the link again. Perhaps it is back up when you read this.
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