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Monday, March 31, 2008

The Genetic Map of Lebanon

WES1, in red, is the most common haplotype in Lebanese Christians. Note how it is not found anywhere near Lebanon but located in Crusader producing and conquered areas.


Lebanon is known for its diversity. It was the last Christian country in the Middle East up until the early to mid 1900s. It has both Catholics and Orthodox, Sunni and Shiites, and even Druze. The upper classes speak French just as well as Arabic. It is inspired by European-ideals like religious freedom and democracy.

The reason for Lebanon's diversity is geography. Lebanon is located in one of the world's crossroads and its hilly landscape makes it easy for embattled groups like Marionites, Druze, and Shiites to fend off greater threats.

The crossroads aspect is explored by National Geographic and an academic paper entitled Y-Chromosomal Diversity in Lebanon Is Structured by Recent Historical Events (PDF). The long-story short is that Christians in Lebanon are more likely to have European traits while Muslims and Druze have roots back to Arabia. The Ottoman Turk conquest of the 1600s apparently left little impact on the Lebanese genetic makeup. Turks conquered and ruled as an insular caste not mixing in with the locals. This was one of the reason that led to their decline.

Interesting note: Proto-Catholicgauze relatives of the M17 line are more likely to be Druze and Muslim than Christian according to the study. This makes sense because M17 is found more in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia rather than the Crusading states of Western Europe.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is a logical error in here, isn’t it?

It is the Phoenicians who colonized Europe (Europe and Asia comes from Phoenician words describing sunset and sunrise) and not vise versa.

The Phoenicians were the first Christians. Lebanon (Phoenicians) spread civilization to Europe and not vise versa.

www.phoenicia.org

I believe many Europeans are the sons and daughters of the Phoenicians and not vise versa.

Catholicgauze said...

Sorry but no. Europe comes from "Europa" a Greek word and "the word Asia originated from the Ancient Greek word "Ασία", first attributed to Herodotus (about 440 BC) in reference to Anatolia or, for the purposes of describing the Persian Wars, to the Persian Empire, in contrast to Greece and Egypt."

Your site seems just as nutty as the ones for believe Albanians conquered the world.

There are native Christians in Lebanon but their population have intermixed with European invaders. Plus, I think Jews can claim the right of having the first converts to Christianity.

Anonymous said...

The Phoenician civilization is older than the Greek civilization.

Thus, most likely and logically the origin of the word Europe is Phoenician and not Greek.

If you look at the geographical location of Lebanon (Phoenicia) you will notice that the sunset goes into the Mediterranean (west of Lebanon). Thus the sunset represent to the Phoenician a direction for sailing (traveling). Now the sun rises from east of Lebanon which is in the direction
of Asia.

Because of geopolitical reasons there is a continuous attack on the Phoenician civilization and history besides other Middle Eastern civilizations but the Egyptian: because it has been associated with having Jewish slaves building the Pyramids.

Anyway

www.phoenicia.org

Provides references to its content.You can Read on this website about Britain, America, world map, bible and etc.

For Your Information the first person who ever believed in Jesus as son of God was a Phoenician woman. Also the first miracle Jesus has performed was in a wedding in Qana (cana) south of Lebanon (where his mother Mary is from) by turning water into wine. These are symbolic events.

Unknown said...

Greek like every other language borrowed many, many, many words from neighbouring civilizations. Many Greek words have identifianle roots from Coptic, Phoenician, and Assyrian, Hittite, etc...
Traditionally in English they etymology of a word is traced back to Greek and Latin and it ends there, but there were many ancient Latin and Greek word glossaries that listed the foreign origins of their own words.
This is why pinpointing the origin of a word can have you bounce around the shores of the meditarranean like a ping pong ball.
A given word in English might have been borrowed from Spanish which borroewd it from Arabic which borrowed it from Latin, which borrowed it from Etruscan, which borrowed it from Phoenician.
We know of the massive influence that Etruscan had on the formation on Latin, and we also know of the tremendous influence that Phoenician had on Etruscan.
We cannot know definitivly the etymology of Europe and Asia, but after all Europa was a Phoenician Princess.

"Etymologically, the dominant theory suggests the name Europe is derived from the Greek roots meaning broad (eur-) and eye (op-, opt-), hence Eurṓpē, "wide-gazing" (compare with glaukōpis (grey-eyed) Athena or boōpis (ox-eyed) Hera). Broad has been an epithet of Earth itself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion. A minority, however, suggest this Greek popular etymology is really based on a Semitic word such as the Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down, set",[3] cognate to Phoenician 'ereb "evening; west" and Arabic Maghreb, Hebrew ma'ariv. See also Erebus, PIE *h1regwos, "darkness"." (From Wikipedia)

Best,
AH

Unknown said...

Also I am highly sceptical of the idea of Maronites interbreeding with Crusaders. Most European and Arab sources show that to Catholic Christians Eastern Christians were as unclean as Muslims and Jews. Remember that the Maronites were at that point five hundred years away from reaching communion with Rome.
And furthermore isolated in the area of Mt. Lebanon I wonder how much intermixing the Maronites had with Crusaders at all.
If any Christian intermingled with the Crusaders it would bethe Orthodox and Armenian Christians spread throughout Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Southern Turkey.
Best,
AH

Catholicgauze said...

The Marionites claimed never to break communion with Rome. Plus, there is debate over whether or not the schism of the 1000s actually broke the church in two or was just a battle between pope and patriarch. Remember, the crusades happened when the eastern Christian emperor asked the western Christian pope for help against the Arabs.

And remember, never underestimate the chance for settlers to interbreed with "lesser" groups a la Spanish and Amero-Indian.

Unknown said...

Now a days in a pique of ecumenical enthusiasm many Christian groups downplay in embarrassment former rivalries. I've noticed that "Asian" Churches such as the Maronites and Armenians in particular are very eager to downplay any historical differences with the West.
The fact of the matter is the when the Crusades happened the Maronites were a bunch of hicks in the backwoods that got no more attention then anyone else. The reason that they are so central to contemporary politics is their former (perhaps still current) patronage by France. Now that the Maronites are so omnipresent in contemporary discussions of the Middle East people tend to think they were always such a central community.
I'm not quite sure what the Eastern Emperor has to do with the Maronites.
As you point out one should never underestimate the chance for settlers to interbreed with "lesser" groups which would lead one to find greater mixing of European DNA in areas with greater numbers of Crusdaers, i.e. modern Palestine and the area around Antioch as well as the island of Cyprus.
There were never Crusaders in great numbers in Maronite lands, this theory seems very unlikely. Quite frankly most of these DNA studies seem extremely questionable.
One has to ask what type of scientist would carry out such a study in the first place? If you are looking to find DNA codes that link Jews, Iyers or whomever somehow I suspect you will find it if you want to find it enough.

Catholicgauze said...

I'll get back to you Ali in a day (busy right now and I don't want you to think I am ignoring you).

Unknown said...

I'm sorry I had a root canal this morning and now that the painkillers have worn off I'm mortified by my rude and rather rambling posts. My apologies.

Akdamos said...

There is no doubt that Europa was Phoenician. In Greek "Mythology", Europe was a Phoenician princess who was abducted by Zeus (who had to morph into a white bull), and it was her brother Kadmos who, while attempting to rescue her, introduced the alphabet (a Phoenician invention---Aleph Ba) into Greece, which then spread to the Romans, thus giving birth to the Latin alphabet.