DNA Testing Annihilates Greek Propaganda
By Victor Bivell
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Governments are not supposed to tell you who you are. That's a job
for your parents. But in Greece the government does tell you who you
are, and if you disagree you are in big trouble and can be seen as an
enemy of the state. As a person of Macedonian heritage whose family
is from the Greek side of the 1912 modern day border between Greece
and Macedonia, the Greek government gives me two choices for my identity.
I can be Greek and claim direct descendance from the glorious ancient
Greeks; or I can be Macedonian, but if I do that then I am not really
a Macedonian as I have, according to the government, no connection to
the glorious ancient Macedonians and I am really a ‘Slav', a ‘Slavic
speaker' and a ‘Slavophone' whose predecessors came from a swamp somewhere
in the Ukraine or Belarus, supposedly sometime in the sixth or seventh
century. These are my only choices. Just as laughable is that there
are academics, some of them self-confessed philhellenes who hang out
at places like Oxford and Cambridge universities, who also peddle this
stuff.
To me, it never rang true. I wondered if it may be true, but I couldn't
bring myself to believe it. Firstly, because I could see that it was
propaganda: a convenient lie by which the Greek government tries to
justify its 1912 invasion of Ottoman Macedonia and its annexation of
about 34,000 square kilometres of some of the best real estate in Europe.
Telling the world that "Macedonia is Greek" hides the Greek government's
massive dispossession of this land from village people who were born
in Macedonia and had never lived anywhere else. Telling the world that
"Macedonians are Greeks" hides the Greek government's theft of these
people's indigenous Macedonian identity so it can give it to Greeks,
most of whom were transplanted from Turkey to Macedonia in the 1920s
but somehow are now the only true descendants of the ancient Macedonians.
The second reason I couldn't believe it is that there was nothing in
our family history about Slavs, Ukraine or swamps. Growing up, I never
once heard the word ‘Slav' or its derivatives. Our family and relatives
were village people. All I ever heard was "Niesme Makedonsi", which
means "We are Macedonians". That was it. The first time I remember hearing
the world "Slav" was when I was in my early 30s and had just developed
an interest in Macedonian affairs. I came upon it in my reading, where
suddenly almost every Greek and some western academics were so keen
for me to see myself as a ‘Slav' that I felt it was being forced upon
me. As I had not come across this alternative history and identity before,
I didn't know what it was or anything about the huge amount of historical
and propaganda baggage it came with. Perhaps a bit like how the body
can reject a transplanted organ, my identity rejected something that
was foreign and seemed alien.
I'm lucky I did, because I have now done a DNA test that shows my instinct
was right.
Now in my late 50s, I recently did a DNA test to found out what it
could tell me about my origins. I did a Y-DNA test and an mtDNA test.
The Y-DNA test is for the Y chromosome that is passed from father to
son to son and so on along the paternal line. The testing agency says
that sections on the Y chromosome determine the male's haplogroup, the
origins of his ancestors and their path as they migrated around the
world. The mtDNA test examines the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that is
passed down from mother to children. It traces the migration path of
your maternal line, your mother's mother's mother and so on.
In their detail, the results were far more than I expected. Yet in
their conclusions they confirmed my belief, based on common sense, that
the Macedonians and other peoples of the Balkans are a mixture of the
many peoples who have lived there. The results said I am 100 per cent
European. I am 79 per cent from Southern Europe – 61 per cent from the
Balkans, 15 per cent from the Italian Peninsula and 3 per cent from
Malta; I am 12 per cent from Eastern Europe – 6 per cent Magyar (Hungary
and the border regions of its neighbours) and 6 per cent West Slavic
(Poland and Slovakia and the border regions of their neighbours); and
9 per cent from Scandinavia.
Being 61 per cent from the Balkans means I am a native of the Balkans.
The DNA testing firm says the Balkans means the area from Slovenia,
Croatia and Romania in the north to Greece in the south. It includes
Macedonia.
If my forebears had been part of a Slav migration then I should have
a much higher percentage of Eastern European than 12 per cent. And if
the Greek government is right then I would have registered 100 per cent
ancestry from Eastern Europe. But I didn't. Science says I am only 12
per cent East European. Science says I am six and a half times more
Southern European than Eastern European, and that I am more Italian
than Eastern European. Science also says I am 9 per cent Scandinavian.
But that doesn't get a mention in Greek propaganda.
And there is more to the story. The testing firm says "Present day
populations in the Southeast Europe cluster show some of the highest
rates of genetic relatedness to the second wave of migration into Europe
roughly 11,000 years ago."
What's that? 11,000 years ago? That right. And it looks like I could
be related to them. Thanks to science, I now have a third alternative
identity: not a Greek who pretends to be a direct descendant of the
ancient Greeks, not a Slav from a swamp whose forbears arrived in the
Balkans 1,400 years ago, but a Macedonian whose forbears arrived in
the Balkans possibly 11,000 years ago.
Let's think about what that means. We don't know exactly when my father's
forebear arrived but if we assume it was about 11,000 years ago, that
would be around 440 generations ago if the average is 25 years per generation
and 550 generations ago if the average is 20 years per generation. These
generations are not unlikely given the early marriages and the lack
of contraception in those times.
And these generations didn't keep still. Depending on how they moved
about, 500 or so generations is enough time for my 500 times great grandfather
and me to have relatives who are not just Macedonian but also Greek,
Albanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Croatian and every other nationality in
the Balkans and much of the rest of Europe to boot. It is so many generations
that these relatives could have spread that far and wide even before
the start of the classical period. It makes a mockery of the simplistic
Greek position.
Even more laughable is that Greek historians say the Greeks arrived
in Greece between 4,100 and 3,650 years ago. It will be interesting
to see what genetics says, but meanwhile if the Greek historians are
right then it is the Greeks who are the newcomers, not me. And on their
principle of ownership to the first on the scene, then Greece belongs
to me and my genetic kin, not them.
Unlike the Greek propaganda, science also gives me reason to be proud
of my ancestors. The Y-DNA test said my paternal haplogroup is E-M35.
I did an internet search and found numerous scientific papers that discuss
the relationship between E-M35 migrants and the arrival of neolithic
languages, agriculture and technologies from the Middle East into the
Balkans and Europe.
One paper, titled "Y Haplogroups, Archaeological Cultures and Language
Families: a Review of the Possibility of Multidisciplinary Comparisons
Using the Case of E-M35" by Andrew Lancaster (Journal of Genetic Genealogy,
2009) was illuminating. It says:
"As shall be shown, there are obvious reasons for considering whether
Y Haplogroup E-M35 male lineages may have been present amongst peoples
who spread the earliest Afroasiatic languages as well as the earliest
technologies associated with farming and pastoralism in the Middle East,
Africa and Europe. This has also been noted in DNA surveys of the last
decade. Initially, what was noted was a seeming link to the European
Neolithic.
"Semino et al. (2000) proposed that in Europe, haplogroup "Eu4" or
"Ht-4", equivalent to E-M35, represented "the male contribution of a
demic diffusion of farmers from the Middle East to Europe".
"King and Underhill (2002) went further and showed an association between
the distribution of these E-M35 lineages and the distribution of findings
of Neolithic painted pottery and figurines, again focussing on diffusion
from the Middle East into South-eastern Europe."
These researchers have started to sketch out what these early men who
carried the E-M35 variation were like as people. Not only were they
travelers and migrants, they helped to spread language, agriculture
and technology around Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and Europe.
That sure beats the modern Greeks' story of Slav swamp dwellers stealing
supposedly Greek history as if they had nothing better to do in life.
The mtDNA test said my haplogroup is H15b, which is part of the mitochondrial
haplogroup H. World Heritage Encyclopedia says "Several independent
studies conclude that haplogroup H probably evolved in West Asia c.
25,000 years ago. It was carried to Europe by migrations c. 20-25,000
years ago, and spread with population of the southwest of the continent."
The company that did my DNA test says H now has a significant presence
throughout Europe and accounts for between 30 and 50 per cent of the
population of Western Europe. So it's a big club.
Within the club, H15 is unlikely to be from Europe, and is an uncommon
branch found at low frequencies in Europe and the Near East.
The branch H15b is not well researched at all. The haplogroup.org web
site says H15b is much younger than the beginning of the last ice age.
"The age of H15b and its spread from the Middle East to Europe may link
it to the spread of farming in the late Neolithic. It could also have
come to Europe with later migrations in the Bronze Age." It says "The
woman who founded this line lived between 2,200 and 8,800 years ago
(Behar et al 2012b)." In scientific papers, people with H15b have been
studied with "diverse maternal origins in Europe and the Middle East.
In the Middle East, results come from Turkey, Iran, and Lebanon. In
Europe, they come from Greece, Italy, and Denmark. Further, there are
Americans in the United States with European origins." So as yet there
is nothing definite to report. Except we can say that all the countries
mentioned above are a long way from Eastern Europe.
Each of us has four grandparents. So far I have discussed the DNA results
of two of mine, my father's father's paternal line and my mother's mother's
maternal line. However, obtaining mtDNA results for my father's mother
and Y-DNA results for my mother's father is more difficult as I would
need to ask the appropriate cousins to do the tests. But I do not expect
the results to be much different. This is because my heritage is 100
per cent European and 79 per cent Southern European. Those numbers indicate
my father's mother's line and my mother's father's line were also European.
Still to be explained are the 15 per cent Italian, 9 per cent Scandinavian,
6 per cent Magyar, 6 per cent West Slavic, and 3 per cent Maltese parts
of me. Since these numbers are relatively small, the likely answers
are the occasional inter-ethnic marriage and or marriage to someone
with a different mixed ancestry.
The results of the DNA tests put me in a difficult intellectual and
moral dilemma. Who do I believe? Should I believe modern science with
its many thousands of highly trained PhDs and specialists, or should
I believe a bunch of Balkan Johnnies-come-lately who act as if they
are 100 per cent descended from the ancient Greeks and who have been
shamelessly pumping out nationalist propaganda for over 100 years? Yes,
that is a hard one.
The DNA tests have opened a lot of new questions, but they have also
given me a much stronger sense of certainty about who I am and where
I come from. They have given me a much stronger sense of my Macedonian
identity and heritage. They have also strengthened my European identity
and my world identity. They have widened my appreciation for other nationalities,
especially in the Balkans and Europe where nationalism can be dangerously
strong. At a deeper level I can see that we are more related and more
connected than I have so far understood. I see better than ever that
I have thousands of distant genetic relatives throughout the Balkans,
including all of Macedonia's neighbors with whom there has been so much
modern political history. And I better understand that I have an untold
number of genetic relatives around the world. At any time I can log
in to the testing company's database and see the names of many hundreds
of these relatives. Many have provided their email addresses if I want
to make contact. And yes, a good number are in Macedonia and a good
number are in Greece.
What these genetic results show is the shallowness and futility of
Greek government propaganda and the needless nature of Balkan nationalism.
Postscript: In March 2021 the DNA company that did my analysis said
it had improved the science and methodology it uses to calculate people's
geographic origins and had updated its database to give people a more
precise breakdown of their geographic percentages. This changed my percentages.
The original version of this article said "I am 90 per cent European
and 11 per cent Middle Eastern from Asia Minor (the extra 1 per cent
is simply rounding.) My European part comprises 66 per cent Southeastern
European, 15 per cent East European and 9 per cent West and Central
European." My updated percentages are as stated in the amended article:
"I am 100 per cent European. I am 79 per cent from Southern Europe –
61 per cent from the Balkans, 15 per cent from the Italian Peninsula
and 3 per cent from Malta; I am 12 per cent from Eastern Europe – 6
per cent Magyar (Hungary and the border regions of its neighbours) and
6 per cent West Slavic (Poland and Slovakia and the border regions of
their neighbours); and 9 per cent from Scandinavia."
Copyright 2017
Source: www.pollitecon.com