Are today's Greeks really a mix of Gypsies, Slavs, Jews, Turks, Northern Africans, etc?

Question

I was told that the Ancient Greeks are extinct and that today's inhabitants of Greece are a mix of everything.. many Greeks have dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin... while the Ancients had light eyes, light hair and fair skin. The ones who have PRESERVED these lighter traits are really mixed with Arvanites, Albanians, etc.

Is this true? Is Greece just a melting pot of South eastern Europeans and Asia Minor?

Answer 1

OMG you sinned OMG you said someone was mixed with something OMG OMG....................seriously though, not speaking politically correct, yes they are.

Answer 2

everybody mixed of different nationalities nobody is pure theres no such thing as a pure race greece like britain and the rest of europe have been conquered by different races

Answer 3

The terms used to define Greekness have varied throughout history. By Western standards, the term Greeks has traditionally referred to any native speakers of the Greek language, whether Mycenaean, Byzantine or modern Greek. While Byzantine Greeks called themselves Rhomioi, they valued the classical tradition, considered themselves the political heirs of Rome, and deemed themselves the ethnic, cultural, and literary heirs of ancient Greece.The use of the older self-descriptive ethnic term Hellenes begun to be revived during the era following the Greco-Latin clashes between the Greeks and the Western Crusaders in the 12th century. It regained some popularity through its use by late Byzantine Emperors and scholars such as Gemistus Pletho and Ciriaco Pizzicolli. It became fairly common with the emergence, in the late 18th century, of the nation-state and its gradual consolidation, but it was not until the early 19th century that its popular use was firmly re-established.

The Greeks today are a nation in the meaning of an ethnos (έθνος in Greek), defined by possessing Greek culture, and having a Greek mother tongue, rather than by citizenship, race, religion or by being subjects to any particular country. However, Greeks are also identified as a genos (γένος in Greek) in the sense that most share a common ancestry. The term Greek also referred to the Eastern Orthodox Christian inhabitants of the Rum Millet of the Ottoman Empire.

Throughout the centuries, the Greeks have been known by a number of names, including:

    * Hellenes (Έλληνες) - In mythology, Hellen, son of Deucalion and Pyrrha (the Greek equivalents of Adam and Eve and Noah), received from the nymph Orseis three sons, Aeolus, Dorus and Xuthus. Aeolus and Dorus, and two sons of Xuthus, Achaeus and Ion were the legendary founders, respectively, of the four principal tribes of Hellas, the Aeolians, Dorians, Achaeans and Ionians. Originally, only members of a small tribe in Thessaly were called Hellenes, but the term soon extended to the rest of the peninsula and came to encompass all Greek speakers.  In early Christian times Hellene came to mean "pagan". It remains in Greece today, the primary national name.

    * Greeks (Γραικοί) - In mythology, Graecus was the brother of Latinus and nephew of Hellen. It was the name of a Boeotian tribe (Graii lit. gray)[67] that migrated to the Italian peninsula in the 8th century BCE and, probably through contact with natives there, came to represent all Greek speakers.[68] Aristotle and Apollodorus mention that it was the name used by Greeks before adopting the name Hellenes.[69] It was later re-borrowed as an ethnonym by the Greeks themselves.

    * Rhomioi (Ρωμιοί) - Romans is the name by which the Byzantine Greeks called themselves during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages while the term Byzantine would have been meaningless to them. The name in antiquity signified the inhabitants of the city of Rome in Italy, but after Caracalla's decree and the gradual formation of a Roman national identity among imperial subjects, it soon lost its exclusive connection with the Latins. Later, while in the West the term Roman acquired a new meaning in connection with the church and the Pope of Rome the Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greeks of the Eastern Roman Empire who still call themselves by that name today.The term Roman (Ρωμαίος) represented for the Greeks their Roman citizenship and the word Romaioi came to represent the Greek inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire. Among Greeks it remains the most often used national name after Hellene and it is used by Turkey to signify the Greek Orthodox minority. It is found also in the Koran; Surah 30 is entitled Ar-Rum, variously translated as The Romans, Byzantines, or Greeks.

    * Achaeans, Argives, and Danaans are names used interchangeably by Homer, to signify the Greek allied forces. Danaans is attested in the Aeneid phrase timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, (engl. beware of Greeks bearing gifts)

    * Yavan or 'Javan', traditionally in Hebrew, Javan was the name of the tribe (and then the nation) which, according to the Torah, migrated from early Biblical times to establish the Balkan peninsula.

    * Yona or Yavana, (Ίωνες), were names used by Indians who encountered Alexander the Great and his successors who ruled areas of Central Asia. Originally from the Persian Yauna, itself a transliteration of the Greek Ionia, is the name by which the Greeks are known in the East today. The term became established in Asia by the Persians, who were in contact with the Ionian tribes in western Asia Minor from the 6th century BC and extended the name to all Hellenes.

The most obvious link between modern and ancient Greeks is their language, which has a documented tradition from at least the 14th century BC to the present day, albeit with a break during the Greek Dark Ages. The Byzantinist Robert Browning, compares its continuity of tradition to Chinese alone.

Some authors in the West and Turkey have sugested that Greeks of today are not culturally or ethnically related to the Greeks of Antiquity. Notable among them was 19th century Austrian historian Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer. Fallmerayer's controversial (some say racist)views were later incorporated in n**i theoretician Alfred Rosenberg's Der Mythus des 20es Jahrhunderts[88] and found adherents in the Third Reich.who echoed them in their writings.Other Western authors say that it is Westerners who are the "true heirs" of Greece since Greeks today, whom they label "modern Greeks", are the product of "genetic dissonance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks

Answer 4

Everybody is a mix of everybody else ... especially their neighbors.

That's true of the modern Greeks and it's also true of the ancient Greeks. There is very little to suggest the ancient Greeks had a different range of physical characteristics than the modern Greeks.

Of course any European or Mediterranean population includes some people with light hair and other people with dark hair, some people with blue or green eyes and other people with brown eyes. The former features are more common in northern Europe, less common in central Europe, less common in southern Europe, north Africa, and western Asia, and so on. (And almost any features associated with almost any region will be most common in their "core" area and less and less common at greeater and greater distances).

Answer 5

Yes, you are right, but Ancient Greeks weren't blondy.

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Athena-Afroa...

Find me Greece in Roman and Othoman map:

http://intranet.dalton.org/groups/Rome/R...

http://www.ottomansouvenir.com/img/Maps/...

There is not.

In 1828 west for own interest made Bavarian kingdom, and Macedonians have been baned and killed, started Macedonian genocide and Golgotha, wasn't enough Romans, Bulgarians , Serbs and Othomans..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_...

Some one comment me, response: the new Greeks haven't connection with ancient Greeks at all. I didn't invent evidences that Ancient people from Athens were from Africa origin. There are facts,I show link for book by Martin Bernal.

There are many genetic research and all of them are not valuable, because they took DNA from people which they want to have own result, if they want to prove that they are Blondy, they took DNA from Blondy people.Since you mentioned Macedonia: There are big differences between Ancient Macedonians and Ancient Greeks.

http://historyofmacedonia.org/

Answer 6

The Greeks are pretty much the same as they were in classical times. They've just had a little spice thrown into the pot.

They've picked up a lot of Arab and Berber Y chromosomes in Greece from the Moorish invasions, but these people are are still fairly light, and even have blond and red hair sometimes, so it's probably not made a lot of difference to their appearance.

The hilarious answer above me.. Have you seen any Greek statues? Not well known for their Afro's, wide lips or any other African features. Non Caucasian DNA in Greece is less than 2%, and they've found two skulls of black Africans TOTAL in ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks are much more likely to be the descendants of the Vinca or Trypillians in the Balkan areas, the area their own legends describe them as coming from. These cultures had chariots, copper working and towns of over ten thousand people when Egypt was stll a few scattered farmers. There's some evidence that a writing system was in use there before the middle East (the Dipsillio tablet, cave runes in Macedonia).



A good place to check the DNA study is Dienekes anthropology blog, I'd paste a link to the page, but the links are off again! So I'll paste the study. Sorry about hogging the page.

Greek Y-chromosomes

by Dienekes Pontikos

Last Update: 16 February, 2007

The most comprehensive study of Y-chromosomal diversity in Europe thus far is Rosser et al., [1]. The human Y chromosome is passed on from father to son. One can thus study one half of a population's ancestry (along the paternal line) by studying the Y-chromosome. Greek Y-chromosomes belong to haplogroups HG1, HG2, HG3, HG9, HG21 and HG26. None of the 35 Greek Y chromosomes are of non-Caucasoid origin.

A second Y-chromosome study including Greeks have also shown similar results. Helgason et al., [2] reports one HG16 sequence of North Eurasian provenance in a sample of 42 Greeks (at least 97.6% Caucasoid). To put this in perspective, eight HG16 chromosomes occur in 110 Swedes (at least 92.7% Caucasoid) and three HG16 sequences in 112 Norwegians (at least 97.3% Caucasoid) were also found. HG16 is shared by many populations ranging from Europe to Mongolia. Its origin has been placed by [7] in the Eastern range of its current geographical distribution.

A third Y-chromosome study, by Malaspina et al., [3] which included a sample of 28 continental and 83 Cretan Greeks (total sample size of 111) found no evidence of the presence of non-Caucasoid Y chromosomes in Greeks.

A fourth Y-chromosome study, by Semino et al., [4] included 76 Greeks and 20 Macedonian Greeks. One Eu6 lineage, corresponding to HG10/HG36 [5] is probably of East Asian origin. One Eu17 lineage corresponds to HG 28 which is frequent in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent [6]. In total, admixture of 2.1% is detected (if we label HG 28 as non-Caucasoid).

A fifth Y-chromosome study, by Weale et al., [8] included 132 Greek students from Athens. The same haplogroups found in [1] were detected in this study. No non-Caucasoid chromosomes were found.

The most recent and comprehensive study of Greek Y-chromosomes, by Di Giacomo et al., [9] included 154 individuals from continental Greece and 212 from Crete, Lesvos and Chios. In total, Greeks from thirteen separate locations were examined, thus giving the most complete picture of variation so far. A single haplogroup A chromosome was found (in Lesvos) which is usually found in Africa. The remainder belonged to haplogroups found in Caucasoid populations. The breakup (in percent) of the haplogroups observed) based on the set of markers typed is as follows.

P*(xR1a) R1a DE G2 I-M170 J2(DYS413= 18) J2*(xDYS413= 18) J*(xJ2) A Y*(xA,DE,G2,I,J,P)

12.8 9.8 20.2 6.6 14.8 20.2 4.9 2.7 0.3 7.7

A newer study by Semino et al. [10] has studied two samples of Greeks of size 84 and 59 (Macedonian Greeks). The focus was on two specific haplogroups E and J which are frequent in the Mediterranean region and can be used to detect population movements between Europe, Africa and the Near East. 2.4% of Greeks belong in haplogroup E-M123 and 21.4% in E-M78. Clades of E prevalent in Northern or Sub-Saharan Africa were not found. According to Cruciani et al. [11] most Greeks and other Balkan people belong to a specific cluster a within haplogroup E-M78 that is found in lower frequencies outside the Balkans and marks migrations from the Balkan area. E-M123 and its daughter haplogroup E-M34 originated in the Near East in prehistoric times. As for haplogroup J, most Greeks (22.8% Greeks/14.3% Macedonian Greeks) belong to J-M172 and its subclades which is associated with Neolithic population movements. Only 1.8%/2.2% of Macedonian Greeks/Greeks belonged to haplogroup J-M267 which could potentially (althought not certainly) reflect more recent Near Eastern admixture.

Bosch et al. [14] studied Y chromosome variation in the Balkans, including a sample of 41 Greeks. Greeks belonged to the major Caucasoid haplogroups. The identity of the K*(xP) chromosomes is not clear, but they could belong to the minor Caucasoid haplogroups K2 and L which have been previously observed in Greeks, or to other K-related lineages.

E3b1 E3b3 G I J2 K*(xP) R1a1 R1b

17.1 2.4 4.9 19.5 19.5 2.4 22.0 12.2

Firasat et al. [15] tested 77 Greeks as part of a study of the purported Greek origins of certain ethnic groups of Pakistan. The breakdown of the observed haplogroups is given in the table below. One haplogroup H2 was observed, which is more typical of South Asian populations.

E3b*(xE3b1,E3b3) E3b1 E3b3 F*(xG,H1,H2,I,J,K) G H2 I J1 J2 K*(xK2,L,NO,P) K2  R1*(xR1a1) R1a1

1.3 16.9 2.6 1.3 9.1 1.3 19.5 1.3 15.6 1.3 2.6 11.7 1 5.6

Martinez et al. [16] has studied a sample of 168 Greek men from Lasithi and Heraklion in Crete. No Sub-Saharan African influence was detected, and 2 Q chromosomes, which could conceivably be indicative of Asian influence were detected. The exact origin of these is uncertain, since no downstream markers were typed. The Y chromosome haplogroups detected in this sample are listed below (click to magnify).

Thus, at present, in a total of seven studies, in which 1,211 Greek males were tested, one HG16, one HG28, one HG10/HG36, one H2, one haplogroup A, and two haplogroup Q chromosomes have been found, for a total of 0.58% possible non-Caucasoid contribution to the modern Greek male gene pool. Additionally, the latest studies [9, 10] with a more refined version of the Y chromosome phylogeny indicate that influences from the Near East and North Africa in historical times are unlikely (perhaps in the order of ~2%). Additionally, Y chromosome haplogroup R1a which is very frequent in Slavic populations (>50%) is found in only around 9.8% of Greeks, and is also found at comparable frequencies further East (10.8% in Iraq; Al-Zahery et al. [12]) indicating that its presence in Greece need not be associated with medieval intrusions by Slavic speakers. The emerging picture of Y chromosome variation in Greece indicates genetic continuity, with slight influences from neighboring Caucasoid regions and virtually no influence from non-Caucasoids.

Flores et al. [13] have compiled haplogroup and sub-haplogroup data from three of the afore-mentioned studies which included Greek samples [4, 9, 10]. The total sample size of this meta-analysis is 442. An error has resulted in the false inclusion of 0.2% frequency of haplogroup B which was not reported in the original sources (A.M. González, personal communication). The table of haplogroup frequencies reported in [13] is given below:

A C E3b3 E3b1 F*(xG,H,I,J,K) G I J1 J2 K2 L R1*(xR1a1) R1a1

0.2 1.3 2.0 18.6 3.4 5.9 13.6 2.5 24.5 1.1 1.1 15.4 10.2

Future studies with larger samples and more detailed founder analyses will allow us to obtain a better pictures of Y-chromosome variation in Greece, Europe and the world at large. At present, it appears that modern Europeans share many of the haplogroups, while there is also geographic structure in the distribution. With the exception of the Northeast corner of Europe, all other European populations have very small traces of extra-Caucasoid genetic input(a).