I understand that it’s “interesting” to some. But it’s also irrelevant. The only people who find this information relevant, are those who will then use it for such slogans as “We are Phoenician, not Arabs” or any number of similar sloganeering (Christian, vs. Muslim, etc.)

Well, I don’t see what it matters what Lebanese call themselves: Phoenicians, Arabs, whatever. Can’t they just be Lebanese and take some pride in their interesting and apparently complicated history? It’s a history that shows that they are Phoenicians, Arabs, and even a bit of European and not any particular group exclusively. I would think this study would discourage sloganeering because it demonstrates that reality is more complex than any simple slogan can account for.

I guess that makes some of us “Africans” or “Asians”…I’m sure there’s also some Pharaonic blood in there somewhere. Which I suppose means something to someone…

And yes it does. I find the prehistory and the evolution of the human race to be very interesting. You aren’t at all curious as to where we humans originated from, who are ancestors were, and how we got where we are today? Would you prefer we not know or leave it to mythology, superstition, or unverified theory to provide us with explanations? I’ll leave it at that.

I understand that it’s “interesting” to some. But it’s also irrelevant. The only people who find this information relevant, are those who will then use it for such slogans as “We are Phoenician, not Arabs” or any number of similar sloganeering (Christian, vs. Muslim, etc.)

My main beef with this line of thought is not the science of it, or the level of interest, but the fact that some of us still think in these terms, which perpetuates some of the very notions that have put us where we are.

In most of the civilized world, being “Christian” or “Muslim” is a matter of choice. It is a matter of belief. It is a PERSONAL choice you or I make in what we want to believe in. Tying in something like that with genetics is just a very dangerous way of labeling people, even if it’s scientifically correct, even if it’s “interesting”.

Why is it “interesting” to find out the genetics of Muslims vs. Christians and stop there? Why not go back to before the times of monodeitic religions? I’m sure some of us would be interested in finding out that we migrated to what is now Lebanon from the Caucasus, or from the African continent, back in prehistoric times. I guess that makes some of us “Africans” or “Asians”…I’m sure there’s also some Pharaonic blood in there somewhere. Which I suppose means something to someone…

Sorry. I just don’t get it.

Why the **** are we talking about genetics and DNA here? Why are there still people out there who think this crap matters? Race, religion, genetics…This is the kind of thinking that belongs in the past. We’re all Lebanese. I don’t give a rats’ ass about phoenicians and crusaders and whoever else mingled their blood to create me. I am myself. Defined by my actions.

It isn’t about who you are in particular. It also isn’t about personal responsibility. It is just interesting to look back and see the component peoples that came to make up the modern Lebanese as a whole and how it came to pass. It’s part of history and the making of a culture and while you may not find those things very fascinating, I think many other people would disagree with you.

Heck, those studies you smartasses are quoting remind me of similar “scientific” studies commissioned by the Nazis about racial purity and the Aryan race.

This isn’t about defining a hierarchy of superior or inferior races–the study doesn’t do that. Instead, it simply helps resolve a long-standing question: are the modern Lebanese the descendants of the Phoenicians, Arab invaders, or others and to what extent? And, like it or not, this is indeed science and not Nazi pseudoscience.

Tommy’s genetic comment, I refer him to the studdy done by Dr Zalloua for National Geographic where DNA samples proved irrefutably that lebanese irrespective of religion mainly from coastal areas share the same phoenician DNA.

If you read the link above, you’ll see Dienekes specifically mentions the National Geographic study and some of the problems with it:

As I predicted, the finding of similarity between Christian and Muslim Lebanese in the older National Geographic story on Wells’ and Zalloua’s work was premature, based on their common possession of Y-haplogroup J, because it did not look at downstream markers which differentiate between Christians and Muslims. As I observed based on the work of Capelli et al., it is the overrepresentation of Y-haplogroup J*(xJ2), which comprises almost entirely of J1 chromosomes that is the mark of the Arab descent of Muslim Lebanese.

I have little doubt that the majority of the Lebanese gene pool predates both the Arab expansion and the Crusades, but these later contributions are not as insignificant as once thought and they do fall along predictable religious lines.