I'm going to make this as clear as possible:
The DNA test being done does not conclusively prove whether or not your ancestors were Phoenicians. Please stop marketing as such, and if the authors or anyone is doing so, then it is misleading.
Why?
Because the studies have focused on genetic markers on the male Y chromosome, and not the mitochondrial DNA of males or females. In other words, this is tracing the ancestry of only your PATERNAL ancestors.
That said, in the study, the genetic marker of the Phoenicians is named 'J2'. This marker is the result of a random mutation that happened to a certain person thousands of years ago, and spread within the population through the offspring of this male for many generations. Back then there was little interaction relative to today, therefore this genetic marker could be linked to geographical populations. Why J2? because studies done on some remains showed most had J2 marker.
Now not all the Phoenicians were J2! such markers arise over thousands of years, and no single population would be expected to be exclusively having the same marker. What the evidence suggests so far is that most Phoenicians, or at least a good proportion of them, had J2.
In other words, Marcel Ghanem could still have had Phoenician ancestors - from his father's side. Remember the mother's side had not been tested.
For more detail...the first study that came out on Lebanon is at:
http://download.cell.com/AJHG/pdf/PI...ermediate=true
In this article, we find that J2=.253, meaning that 25.3% of all males from all sects and regions combined, had J2 marker. What we could say from this is that these males
probably had Phoenician ancestry from their
paternal side. This is by far the most frequent genetic marker in the Lebanese population as this article suggests.
What might also be interesting to some is the J*(xJ2) marker, which means all J markers which are not J2. One of the markers included in this category is 'J1', as well as ones neither J1 nor J2. Studies done so far on Gulf Arab populations have shown very high frequency of J1...well over 50% in some cases. In the study 45.3% is used as reference. In the Lebanese sampled, 0.197 or 19.7% are J*(xJ2). This suggests that these males
probably had 'Arab' ancestry from their
paternal side.
Also note that both J2 and J*(J2) are very significantly different in Lebanon vs. Arabian Peninsula.
If I were to do the same that you did Dalzi, then I would say that more Lebanese today are Phoenicians than are Arabs. But that is BS since genetics should never be used to form identity. Also, to I am not interested in debating equally racist pro-Arab and pro-Phoencian slogans. We today are Lebanese, we have a Phoenician heritage which is strongly evident in our land, history and culture, as well as an Arab heritage which has greatly influenced us. We can disagree to what extent each is there, but there is little doubt that both are present. We are not a 'pure' people, there is no such thing. People will keep debating our identity, until they finally realize we have several components in our indenty, not one. I know many are sick and tired or racists, but responding to them with counter-racism is not the best way.
This field of science is still developing, and since geneticists and anthropologists are not yet working well together on such issues, there is much uncertainty still. What we can also say is that not all J1 are definitively 'Arab', nor all J2 definitively 'Phoenician', since the markers did not specifically arise in these populations, and may have been also influenced and present in other ancient peoples in the region. And still we are talking only of the paternal side - whose genes are more likely to be moved around regions due to wars, whereas the less studied female gene markers are better indicators of ancestral populations since women in general travelled far less.
So what can we conclude? At the very least we can say the following:
- People from the Levant region are far more common genetically than people from the Gulf region.
- The modern day Lebanese are indeed a genetic mix of people, but that is the case in all modern day populations.
- While there may be minor differences among certain sects, there is no doubt that Lebanese are more similar genetically to each other, than to any other people.
This field needs far more study, and it is wrong to present the ones done so far as a conclusion.
The more important thing is, that this issue seems to be miss-used by people for political/racist discussion. This is not the point of such science, although some think it to be. It is sad that a lot of people out there are misunderstanding the issue, and to be honest it is quite easy to be misled. I was lucky to have someone explain it, but even some of these are contributing to the problem.
The point is to find out how ancient people migrated, and to see what happened to those we thought 'disappeared' from history...Not to divide people by their partial genetic ancestry, and encourage racist tendencies.
Ultimately, go back to the most ancient markers, and it is clear that all human beings branched out from the same source. So why discriminate against each other if my grand ancestor migrated away 20,000 years ago while his brother-your grand ancestor-stayed put. We are all related...that is for certain.
Cheers!
P.S. Much thanks to Amigo mio for his precious help!
4th November 2008
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