Macedonism in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the dogma of the Macedonian genes.
Tymphaios
April 10, 2009
Macedonism is a word used to refer to the doctrine of the Macedonian origin currently popular among many vocal political campaigners from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Several arguments are presented to support this idea. Among the pseudo-scientific ones is the claim that the modern inhabitants of FYROM have inherited the genes of the Macedonians. Studies of human genes and their distributions is a somewhat controversial area of genetic research, too often used by race supremacists to back up their racist beliefs.
Of course there have not been any studies of the genes of ancient Macedonians. The key argument in relation to Macedonism instead hinges on a paper titled "HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks" (posted at http://bulgarsandgreeks.blogspot.com/2007/07/hla-genes-in-macedonians-and-sub.html) by Arnaiz-Villena and colleagues in 2001 (1) with three of the co-authors being apparently FYROM nationals. Moreover, the DNA samples were analysed by the Tissue Typing laboratory, Institute of Blood Transfusion, Skopje, "Republic of Macedonia". The samples were not analysed blindly, as the Greek samples and samples from other populations came from a chapter in an obscure book that was not peer-reviewed and is not easily accessible. Neither FYROMacedonians nor Greeks were randomly reshuffled to determine that any variability claimed was significant. The unscientific prejudice is already evident in their introduction:
"Ancient Macedonians were among the peoples that lived between northern Greece (Thessaly) and Thrace in the Balkans and were considered by the classical Greeks as "non-Greek barbarians" that could not participate in the Greek Olympic Games (2). Herodotus wrote that "Macedonians" were "Dorians" and were never admitted to the Greek community (3). They did not speak Greek but another language presently unknown and of which only proper names remain"
None of this has any relation to the data they are presenting, which are genetic. The political speech is, moreover, unworthy even as history or geography. Strabo, the ancient geographer who gave accurate descriptions of the geography of his time, clearly stated:
"Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece".
Strabo, VII, Frg. 9 (Loeb, H.L. Jones).
Herodotus wrote indeed that Macedonians were Dorians, however, the conclusion that they were therefore not Greek is mystifying.
"Then after this he [Croesus] gave thought to inquire which people of the Hellenes he should esteem the most powerful and gain over to himself as friends. And inquiring he found that the Lacedemonians and the Athenians had the pre-eminence, the first of the Dorian and the other of the Ionian race. For these were the most eminent races in ancient time, the second being a Pelasgian and the first a Hellenic race"
Herodotus, Histories Book 1, paragraph 56 (5th C BC)
Herodotus states the Dorian race was a Hellenic race. This in any case is not disputed by any serious historian. Moreover, Herodotus indeed specifically says elsewhere that the Macedonians were a Greek race:
"And that these descendants of Perdiccas are Hellenes, as they themselves say, I happen to know myself, and not only so, but I will prove in the succeeding history that they are Hellenes."
Herodotus Histories Chapter 5, paragraph 22 (5th C BC)
Herodotus immediately embarks on the participation of Alexander, king of Macedonia, in the Olympic games, presumably the first argument that the Macedonians were Greeks and completely the opposite argument that the authors of this paper claim Herodotus was making.
"Moreover the Hellanodicai, who manage the games at Olympia, decided that they [ie. the Macedonians] were so [ie. Hellenes]: for when Alexander wished to contend in the games and had descended for this purpose into the arena, the Hellenes who were to run against him tried to exclude him, saying that the contest was not for barbarians to contend in but for Hellenes: since however Alexander proved that he was of Argos, he was judged to be a Hellene."
Herodotus Histories Chapter 5, paragraph 22 (5th C BC)
The statement that the Macedonians were considered by the Greeks as "non-Greek barbarians" is not referenced and it is not made in ancient sources. An allegation by Demosthenes that Philip was a barbarian was specific to Philip and indeed the same insult was made against Demosthenes by his political opponents. The language of the ancient Macedonians is known via their names and placenames such as the names of their cities ("proper names"), works of literature and philosophy, epigraphy, their religion and customs, etc and these are Greek, as Greek as those of the other Greeks, if not more so.
Even the most ignorant geneticist would have been alarmed by such clamorous political allegations appearing in the introduction of a paper with scientific pretenses specifically about Macedonian and Greek genes. But what follows is even more puzzling, indeed so much so that a subsequent paper relying on these data received so much criticism that it had to be retracted by the journal, an extremely rare case in science. Let us examine the genetic claims made in the first paper. The authors claim:
"1) Macedonians [of FYROM] belong to the "older" Mediterranean substratum, like Iberians (including Basques), North Africans, Italians, French, Cretans, Jews, Lebanese, Turks (Anatolians), Armenians and Iranians,
2) Macedonians [of FYROM] are not related with geographically close Greeks, who do not belong to the "older" Mediterranenan substratum,
3) Greeks are found to have a substantial relatedness to sub-Saharan (Ethiopian) people, which separate them from other Mediterranean groups. Both Greeks and Ethiopians share quasi-specific DRB1 alleles."
On the basis of a study on a single gene, the authors concluded that "the reason why Greeks did not show a close relatedness with all the other Mediterraneans analyzed was their genetic relationship with sub-Saharan ethnic groups now residing in Ethiopia, Sudan, and West Africa (Burkina Faso)." Ironically, a newer study (4) that looked at the five most important haplogroups finds FYROMacedonians most closely related to the Serbs and Bulgarians. One gene that is common in Africa, the E3b1 allele, was found at an incidence of 21.5% in the FYROMacedonian sample. It is found at an incidence of over 70% among Somalis (5). This irony fully shows the way science is conveniently twisted and turned into the service of Macedonism by the involved scientists and campaigners.
The so-called Arnaiz-Villena controversy continued with a subsequent paper in a different journal (6). This second paper dealt specifically with the relatedness of Palestinians and Israelis and was subsequently "deleted from the scientific literature". The editor-in-chief Nicole Suciu-Foca wrote in her Editorial: "As Editor-in-Chief, I did not read Dr. Antonio Arnaiz-Villena´s own paper in Human Immunology in depth until the issue was published. I regret deeply that the authors have confounded the elegant analysis of the historic basis of the people of the Mediterranean Basin with a political viewpoint representing only one side of a complex political and historical issue. While the authors have the right to their political opinion they have no special expertise in this area and their views have no place in a scientific journal. The Editors deplore the inappropriate use of a scientific journal for a political agenda and apologize to the readers. This paper has been deleted from the scientific literature."
Erica Klarreich's report on the controversy further quotes Sucio-Foca as saying that the reaction against the paper was so severe that "We would have had mass resignations and the journal would have been destroyed if this paper were allowed to remain." The controversy was further reported on in numerous newspapers including the Observer.
Shortly after this, three highly respected geneticists, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Alberto Piazza and Neil Risch, published a critique of the scientific limitations of Arnaiz-Villena's methodology (7). They expressly said that their criticism has nothing to do with the politics involved:
"Our primary concern, however, is that the authors might be perceived to have been discriminated against for political, as opposed to legitimate scientific, reasons" and continued with the substance of their criticisms:
"Even a cursory look at the paper's diagrams and trees immediately indicates that the authors make some extraordinary claims. They used a single genetic marker, HLA DRB1, for their analysis to construct a genealogical tree and map of 28 populations from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Japan. Using results from the analysis of a single marker, particularly one likely to have undergone selection, for the purpose of reconstructing genealogies is unreliable and unacceptable practice in population genetics. The limitations are made evident by the authors' extraordinary observations that Greeks are very similar to Ethiopians and east Africans but very distant from other south Europeans; and that the Japanese are nearly identical to west and south Africans. It is surprising that the authors were not puzzled by these anomalous results, which contradict history, geography, anthropology and all prior population-genetic studies of these groups. Surely the ordinary process of refereeing would have saved the field from this dispute."
The scientists conclude by saying that "We believe that the paper should have been refused for publication on the simple grounds that it lacked scientific merit."
No multiple-marker analysis has ever duplicated Arnaiz-Villena's results. In The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, 1994), Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza grouped Greeks with other European and Mediterranean populations based on 120 loci. Ayub et al. (8) came to the same conclusion in 2003 using 182 loci.
Finally in 2004, a group of scientists working at the University of Skopje (9) refuted the evidence in the first Arnaiz-Villena paper. They studied the same HLA-DRB1 locus and indeed compared it also to the Bulgarian population and found that the FYROMacedonian forms and their incidence in the population are similar to those of the other Balkan peoples, including the Bulgarians. A Bulgarian study confirmed this (10). Both these studies appear to have been completely missed by the genetic Macedonists. The discredited Arnaiz-Villena paper continues to be cited all over the internet, mostly by white supremacists and Macedonian Slav nationalists who have political motivations to make arguments on racial purity by suitably interpreting the controversial paper. The white supremacists make the argument that the modern Greeks and other "white" people are becoming impure via some kind of genetic contamination by black Africans. The Macedonists continue regardless with their claims that the study proves that the ancient Macedonians are related to the modern FYROMacedonians and were unrelated to the ancient Greeks who had come from Africa.
Macedonia (Strumica, Macedonia): "they are Ethiopians - http://www.makedonika.org/processpaid.aspcontentid=ti.2001.pdf" May 17, 2008
Alpin Turk (Tubize, Belgium): "Greeks have indeed 6% Ethiopian Genes and 30% Arab genes; they're interesting ppl. Ancient Greeks are all dead, they were white men." May 18, 2008
VLADIMIR (UK): "Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the south-east and Djibouti to the north-east. The Hellenic part of ethiopia is a small country located under Macedonia. The Hellenic ethiopian province is dictated by the ethiopian government. GREECE ROOTS" May 20, 2008
HELL -ASS and BUL- GUSS (Wollongong, Australia): "
THEY WON'T REVEAL DNA OF THE ANCIENT MACEDONIAN SOLDIERS DISCOVERED RECENTLY.. OR NO DNA FROM THE MACEDONIAN TOMBS. WHY? WHY? WHY? SCARED? SCARED? AFRAID? AFRAID? OF THE TRUTH...." Sep 19, 2008
Eni Macedonia: " DNA GENES: 1) Macedonians belong to the "older" Mediterranean substratum, like Iberians (including Basques), North Africans, Italians, French, Cretans, Jews, Lebanese, Turks (Anatolians), Armenians and Iranians." Sep 22, 2008 (quoting from the Arnaiz-Villena paper).
Alexandra Aleksovska: "The Swiss company iGenea, the European subsidiary of the worlds largest Genealogical DNA company – FamilyTreeDNA, has taken this data and put together genetic profiles of ancient peoples based on specific genetic markers. One of these is a specific Ancient Macedonian genetic profile. The Macedonian profile is similar to the Ancient Greek profile – but different enough to be distinct. Genetically, they were a separate people. In my chromosomes, I carry the same DNA markers that the Ancient Macedonians had. From Alexandra Aleksovska´s " On ´On Ethnicity´ http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/93915
These relatively recent posts clearly show the gulf of misunderstanding. The Macedonian dead were often cremated (their dead bodies were burned) two thousand years ago or more and there would be no way modern science could tell anything about their DNA. iGENEA has no data on ancient Macedonian genes either. They are a private company, not a research institute. Their business involves comparing the genes of modern FYROMacedonian individuals (among else) with the genetic profiles of modern peoples (including other FYROMacedonians) and sending off "ancestry" reports. In this context they are simply comparing how close a FYROMacedonian´s genetic markers come to the average profile of FYROMacedonians. If they look halfway in the direction of the Bulgarian profile, they would say something along the lines "you are half-FYROMacedonian, half-Bulgarian". That proves absolutely nothing about the alleged origin from the ancient Macedonians.
While white supremacism is somewhat faceless, the case of Macedonism has an identifiable following. A nationalistic dogma is being forged on a pseudoscientific "myth", indeed on a discredited scientific study. This myth continues to appeal to a group of people who must clearly have a difficulty in separating dogma from science. The basis for understanding and mutual coexistence must surely be education. Without education one may hope in miracles in the same way someone else puts faith in pseudoscience.
REFERENCES
1. Arnaiz-Villena A, Dimitroski K, Pacho A, Moscoso J, Gómez-Casado E, Silvera-Redondo C, Varela P, Blagoevska M, Zdravkovska V, Martínez-Laso J. (2001) HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks. Tissue Antigens. 57:118-27
2. Villar F. Los indoeuropeos y los orígenes de Europa.Madrid: Gredos, 1996.
3. Herodotus. History.Madrid: Gredos, 1989.
4. Pericic et al (2005) High-Resolution Phylogenetic analysis of Southeastern Europe traces major episodes of paternal gene flow among Slavic populations. Molecular Biology and Evolution 22:1964
5. Sanchez JJ, Hallenberg C, Børsting C, Hernandez A, Morling N. (2005) High frequencies of Y chromosome lineages characterized by E3b1, DYS19-11, DYS392-12 in Somali males. European Journal of Human Genetics. 2005 Jul;13(7):856-66.
6. Arnaiz-Villena et al (2001) The origin of Palestinians and their genetic relatedness with other Mediterranean populations. Human Immunology 62:889-900.
7. Risch N, Piazza A, Cavalli-Sforza LL (2002) Dropped genetics paper lacked scientific merit. Nature 416:677.
8. Ayub et al (2003) Reconstruction of human evolutionary tree using polymorphic autosomal microsatellites. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 122:259-68.
9. Petlichkovski A et al (2004) High-resolution typing of HLA-DRB1 locus in the Macedonian population. Tissue Antigens 64:486 - 491
10. Ivanova M et al (2002) HLA polymorphism in Bulgarians defined by high-resolution typing methods in comparison with other populations. Tissue Antigens 60:496-504.
Of course there have not been any studies of the genes of ancient Macedonians. The key argument in relation to Macedonism instead hinges on a paper titled "HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks" (posted at http://bulgarsandgreeks.blogspot.com/2007/07/hla-genes-in-macedonians-and-sub.html) by Arnaiz-Villena and colleagues in 2001 (1) with three of the co-authors being apparently FYROM nationals. Moreover, the DNA samples were analysed by the Tissue Typing laboratory, Institute of Blood Transfusion, Skopje, "Republic of Macedonia". The samples were not analysed blindly, as the Greek samples and samples from other populations came from a chapter in an obscure book that was not peer-reviewed and is not easily accessible. Neither FYROMacedonians nor Greeks were randomly reshuffled to determine that any variability claimed was significant. The unscientific prejudice is already evident in their introduction:
"Ancient Macedonians were among the peoples that lived between northern Greece (Thessaly) and Thrace in the Balkans and were considered by the classical Greeks as "non-Greek barbarians" that could not participate in the Greek Olympic Games (2). Herodotus wrote that "Macedonians" were "Dorians" and were never admitted to the Greek community (3). They did not speak Greek but another language presently unknown and of which only proper names remain"
None of this has any relation to the data they are presenting, which are genetic. The political speech is, moreover, unworthy even as history or geography. Strabo, the ancient geographer who gave accurate descriptions of the geography of his time, clearly stated:
"Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece".
Strabo, VII, Frg. 9 (Loeb, H.L. Jones).
Herodotus wrote indeed that Macedonians were Dorians, however, the conclusion that they were therefore not Greek is mystifying.
"Then after this he [Croesus] gave thought to inquire which people of the Hellenes he should esteem the most powerful and gain over to himself as friends. And inquiring he found that the Lacedemonians and the Athenians had the pre-eminence, the first of the Dorian and the other of the Ionian race. For these were the most eminent races in ancient time, the second being a Pelasgian and the first a Hellenic race"
Herodotus, Histories Book 1, paragraph 56 (5th C BC)
Herodotus states the Dorian race was a Hellenic race. This in any case is not disputed by any serious historian. Moreover, Herodotus indeed specifically says elsewhere that the Macedonians were a Greek race:
"And that these descendants of Perdiccas are Hellenes, as they themselves say, I happen to know myself, and not only so, but I will prove in the succeeding history that they are Hellenes."
Herodotus Histories Chapter 5, paragraph 22 (5th C BC)
Herodotus immediately embarks on the participation of Alexander, king of Macedonia, in the Olympic games, presumably the first argument that the Macedonians were Greeks and completely the opposite argument that the authors of this paper claim Herodotus was making.
"Moreover the Hellanodicai, who manage the games at Olympia, decided that they [ie. the Macedonians] were so [ie. Hellenes]: for when Alexander wished to contend in the games and had descended for this purpose into the arena, the Hellenes who were to run against him tried to exclude him, saying that the contest was not for barbarians to contend in but for Hellenes: since however Alexander proved that he was of Argos, he was judged to be a Hellene."
Herodotus Histories Chapter 5, paragraph 22 (5th C BC)
The statement that the Macedonians were considered by the Greeks as "non-Greek barbarians" is not referenced and it is not made in ancient sources. An allegation by Demosthenes that Philip was a barbarian was specific to Philip and indeed the same insult was made against Demosthenes by his political opponents. The language of the ancient Macedonians is known via their names and placenames such as the names of their cities ("proper names"), works of literature and philosophy, epigraphy, their religion and customs, etc and these are Greek, as Greek as those of the other Greeks, if not more so.
Even the most ignorant geneticist would have been alarmed by such clamorous political allegations appearing in the introduction of a paper with scientific pretenses specifically about Macedonian and Greek genes. But what follows is even more puzzling, indeed so much so that a subsequent paper relying on these data received so much criticism that it had to be retracted by the journal, an extremely rare case in science. Let us examine the genetic claims made in the first paper. The authors claim:
"1) Macedonians [of FYROM] belong to the "older" Mediterranean substratum, like Iberians (including Basques), North Africans, Italians, French, Cretans, Jews, Lebanese, Turks (Anatolians), Armenians and Iranians,
2) Macedonians [of FYROM] are not related with geographically close Greeks, who do not belong to the "older" Mediterranenan substratum,
3) Greeks are found to have a substantial relatedness to sub-Saharan (Ethiopian) people, which separate them from other Mediterranean groups. Both Greeks and Ethiopians share quasi-specific DRB1 alleles."
On the basis of a study on a single gene, the authors concluded that "the reason why Greeks did not show a close relatedness with all the other Mediterraneans analyzed was their genetic relationship with sub-Saharan ethnic groups now residing in Ethiopia, Sudan, and West Africa (Burkina Faso)." Ironically, a newer study (4) that looked at the five most important haplogroups finds FYROMacedonians most closely related to the Serbs and Bulgarians. One gene that is common in Africa, the E3b1 allele, was found at an incidence of 21.5% in the FYROMacedonian sample. It is found at an incidence of over 70% among Somalis (5). This irony fully shows the way science is conveniently twisted and turned into the service of Macedonism by the involved scientists and campaigners.
The so-called Arnaiz-Villena controversy continued with a subsequent paper in a different journal (6). This second paper dealt specifically with the relatedness of Palestinians and Israelis and was subsequently "deleted from the scientific literature". The editor-in-chief Nicole Suciu-Foca wrote in her Editorial: "As Editor-in-Chief, I did not read Dr. Antonio Arnaiz-Villena´s own paper in Human Immunology in depth until the issue was published. I regret deeply that the authors have confounded the elegant analysis of the historic basis of the people of the Mediterranean Basin with a political viewpoint representing only one side of a complex political and historical issue. While the authors have the right to their political opinion they have no special expertise in this area and their views have no place in a scientific journal. The Editors deplore the inappropriate use of a scientific journal for a political agenda and apologize to the readers. This paper has been deleted from the scientific literature."
Erica Klarreich's report on the controversy further quotes Sucio-Foca as saying that the reaction against the paper was so severe that "We would have had mass resignations and the journal would have been destroyed if this paper were allowed to remain." The controversy was further reported on in numerous newspapers including the Observer.
Shortly after this, three highly respected geneticists, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Alberto Piazza and Neil Risch, published a critique of the scientific limitations of Arnaiz-Villena's methodology (7). They expressly said that their criticism has nothing to do with the politics involved:
"Our primary concern, however, is that the authors might be perceived to have been discriminated against for political, as opposed to legitimate scientific, reasons" and continued with the substance of their criticisms:
"Even a cursory look at the paper's diagrams and trees immediately indicates that the authors make some extraordinary claims. They used a single genetic marker, HLA DRB1, for their analysis to construct a genealogical tree and map of 28 populations from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Japan. Using results from the analysis of a single marker, particularly one likely to have undergone selection, for the purpose of reconstructing genealogies is unreliable and unacceptable practice in population genetics. The limitations are made evident by the authors' extraordinary observations that Greeks are very similar to Ethiopians and east Africans but very distant from other south Europeans; and that the Japanese are nearly identical to west and south Africans. It is surprising that the authors were not puzzled by these anomalous results, which contradict history, geography, anthropology and all prior population-genetic studies of these groups. Surely the ordinary process of refereeing would have saved the field from this dispute."
The scientists conclude by saying that "We believe that the paper should have been refused for publication on the simple grounds that it lacked scientific merit."
No multiple-marker analysis has ever duplicated Arnaiz-Villena's results. In The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, 1994), Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza grouped Greeks with other European and Mediterranean populations based on 120 loci. Ayub et al. (8) came to the same conclusion in 2003 using 182 loci.
Finally in 2004, a group of scientists working at the University of Skopje (9) refuted the evidence in the first Arnaiz-Villena paper. They studied the same HLA-DRB1 locus and indeed compared it also to the Bulgarian population and found that the FYROMacedonian forms and their incidence in the population are similar to those of the other Balkan peoples, including the Bulgarians. A Bulgarian study confirmed this (10). Both these studies appear to have been completely missed by the genetic Macedonists. The discredited Arnaiz-Villena paper continues to be cited all over the internet, mostly by white supremacists and Macedonian Slav nationalists who have political motivations to make arguments on racial purity by suitably interpreting the controversial paper. The white supremacists make the argument that the modern Greeks and other "white" people are becoming impure via some kind of genetic contamination by black Africans. The Macedonists continue regardless with their claims that the study proves that the ancient Macedonians are related to the modern FYROMacedonians and were unrelated to the ancient Greeks who had come from Africa.
Macedonia (Strumica, Macedonia): "they are Ethiopians - http://www.makedonika.org/processpaid.aspcontentid=ti.2001.pdf" May 17, 2008
Alpin Turk (Tubize, Belgium): "Greeks have indeed 6% Ethiopian Genes and 30% Arab genes; they're interesting ppl. Ancient Greeks are all dead, they were white men." May 18, 2008
VLADIMIR (UK): "Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the south-east and Djibouti to the north-east. The Hellenic part of ethiopia is a small country located under Macedonia. The Hellenic ethiopian province is dictated by the ethiopian government. GREECE ROOTS" May 20, 2008
HELL -ASS and BUL- GUSS (Wollongong, Australia): "
THEY WON'T REVEAL DNA OF THE ANCIENT MACEDONIAN SOLDIERS DISCOVERED RECENTLY.. OR NO DNA FROM THE MACEDONIAN TOMBS. WHY? WHY? WHY? SCARED? SCARED? AFRAID? AFRAID? OF THE TRUTH...." Sep 19, 2008
Eni Macedonia: " DNA GENES: 1) Macedonians belong to the "older" Mediterranean substratum, like Iberians (including Basques), North Africans, Italians, French, Cretans, Jews, Lebanese, Turks (Anatolians), Armenians and Iranians." Sep 22, 2008 (quoting from the Arnaiz-Villena paper).
Alexandra Aleksovska: "The Swiss company iGenea, the European subsidiary of the worlds largest Genealogical DNA company – FamilyTreeDNA, has taken this data and put together genetic profiles of ancient peoples based on specific genetic markers. One of these is a specific Ancient Macedonian genetic profile. The Macedonian profile is similar to the Ancient Greek profile – but different enough to be distinct. Genetically, they were a separate people. In my chromosomes, I carry the same DNA markers that the Ancient Macedonians had. From Alexandra Aleksovska´s " On ´On Ethnicity´ http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/93915
These relatively recent posts clearly show the gulf of misunderstanding. The Macedonian dead were often cremated (their dead bodies were burned) two thousand years ago or more and there would be no way modern science could tell anything about their DNA. iGENEA has no data on ancient Macedonian genes either. They are a private company, not a research institute. Their business involves comparing the genes of modern FYROMacedonian individuals (among else) with the genetic profiles of modern peoples (including other FYROMacedonians) and sending off "ancestry" reports. In this context they are simply comparing how close a FYROMacedonian´s genetic markers come to the average profile of FYROMacedonians. If they look halfway in the direction of the Bulgarian profile, they would say something along the lines "you are half-FYROMacedonian, half-Bulgarian". That proves absolutely nothing about the alleged origin from the ancient Macedonians.
While white supremacism is somewhat faceless, the case of Macedonism has an identifiable following. A nationalistic dogma is being forged on a pseudoscientific "myth", indeed on a discredited scientific study. This myth continues to appeal to a group of people who must clearly have a difficulty in separating dogma from science. The basis for understanding and mutual coexistence must surely be education. Without education one may hope in miracles in the same way someone else puts faith in pseudoscience.
REFERENCES
1. Arnaiz-Villena A, Dimitroski K, Pacho A, Moscoso J, Gómez-Casado E, Silvera-Redondo C, Varela P, Blagoevska M, Zdravkovska V, Martínez-Laso J. (2001) HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks. Tissue Antigens. 57:118-27
2. Villar F. Los indoeuropeos y los orígenes de Europa.Madrid: Gredos, 1996.
3. Herodotus. History.Madrid: Gredos, 1989.
4. Pericic et al (2005) High-Resolution Phylogenetic analysis of Southeastern Europe traces major episodes of paternal gene flow among Slavic populations. Molecular Biology and Evolution 22:1964
5. Sanchez JJ, Hallenberg C, Børsting C, Hernandez A, Morling N. (2005) High frequencies of Y chromosome lineages characterized by E3b1, DYS19-11, DYS392-12 in Somali males. European Journal of Human Genetics. 2005 Jul;13(7):856-66.
6. Arnaiz-Villena et al (2001) The origin of Palestinians and their genetic relatedness with other Mediterranean populations. Human Immunology 62:889-900.
7. Risch N, Piazza A, Cavalli-Sforza LL (2002) Dropped genetics paper lacked scientific merit. Nature 416:677.
8. Ayub et al (2003) Reconstruction of human evolutionary tree using polymorphic autosomal microsatellites. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 122:259-68.
9. Petlichkovski A et al (2004) High-resolution typing of HLA-DRB1 locus in the Macedonian population. Tissue Antigens 64:486 - 491
10. Ivanova M et al (2002) HLA polymorphism in Bulgarians defined by high-resolution typing methods in comparison with other populations. Tissue Antigens 60:496-504.
Print
Email
