My Greek DNA Beats Yours

Dear U of U: You don't have to be born in Greece to be a Greek.

A couple of years ago, I and other family members traced our DNA through FamilyTree.com. My DNA—so that of my father, his Greek father and so on—tested into Haplogroup R1a1, meaning our Y chromosomes have been wandering around central Europe since at least the time of the last Ice Age. My mother’s Cretan father (tested via a male cousin born to my mother’s brother) was shown to be a member of Haplogroup J2. That group is found throughout the ancient seafaring regions of the eastern Mediterranean. Landing there perhaps thanks to the Phoenicians, J2 is prevalent on the island of Crete, and it dates at least to the Minoan era.

That means distant male relatives of mine have been traipsing on or around the Greek homelands for thousands of years. During those millennia, the great power Macedon arose in what is now northern Greece and gave history two great leaders: Phillip II and his son, Alexander the Great, who conquered the world.

When he did so, he used some of those J2 DNA Cretans as archers in his army. Given the prevalence of R1a1 DNA throughout the Balkans, I can easily imagine that somebody in my bloodline helped Alexander ride into history. As such, I’m more than interested in the current tensions in that region between Greece and its neighbor to the north.

Macedonia is the northernmost Greek province, spreading vastly outward from the main port city of Thessaloniki. In recent decades, the southernmost republic of what was once called Yugoslavia— southern Serbia in fact—magically began calling itself Macedonia, too. The two Macedonias border each other. Imagine if someone decided to change the name of northern Mexico to Texas. Texans would be pissed. Well, Greeks are pissed

The whole article >>> cityweekly.net , By John Salta