Did you know that Kurds(Kurdish PeoPle) are Europeans?

[davef]

but how did their language originate then, a mixture of Semitic and Latin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_people#Language

Yes the language is a mixture of Sicilian, Arabic and a few other languages but they are still genetically Sicilian with a bit more North African and Southwest Asian in them compared to Sicilians, as mentioned.

 

[Angela]

When the Muslims conquered Sicily and held it for about 200 years, they imposed their language, among other things. A certain number of Sicilians, as happened in Spain and Portugal, converted to Islam. They may have adopted a Semitic language as well. The non-converts might have kept their own language, although there is controversy as to whether "their" language was a Latin dialect or a Greek dialect or whether there were both Greek and Latin dialect speakers. Also, it may be that in certain areas even non-converts might have adopted the Semitic dialect, although interspersed with "Sicilian" Latin based terms. It's just not very clear what precisely happened in terms of the language.

The genetics, by contrast, are very clear: they're very similar to Sicilians.

The source of the additional South-west Asian and North-African is, however, not clear.

It may be because when the Knights of St. John came from Rhodes and Cyprus, their previous headquarters, they brought servants from those places with them. In later centuries when their raison d'etre had disappeared and they became virtual corsairs attacking and plundering Ottoman and North African shipping, the slaves they took and kept instead of selling admixed with locals.

In a large population it wouldn't have made a difference, but this was a small, isolated island with a small population, so perhaps it did. There was a Maltese-Australian on 23andme who used to talk about this. One of his very remote ancestresses was a North African slave if I remember correctly.

 

[IronSide]

This is one strange PCA

in the PCA that Angela posted above, modern West Eurasians were used to construct the PCA, but then the Ancients were projected, this is very important, the position of ancients is not accurate, WHG is not closer to Basques than to Bedouins for example

in this one I posted (from Lazaridis(2014)) the reverse was done, the PCA was constructed using ancients, but then modern West Eurasians were projected to it, and low and behold they're all clustered in the middle, projection is forcing the projected sample to vary by the ancestry of the samples that were used to construct the PCA, that ancestry could very well be meaningless, look how Papuans are close to Iranians ? or the Karitiana is north of Caucasus ? this is because of ASI and ANE ancestries from Iran and Caucasus.

so when the opposite is done, it is forcing the moderns to vary by the ancestry of the ancients, it reveals that all of them, Europe and West Asia, have ancestry from all three sources.

Europe and West Asia are a continuum, not discrete distinct entities.

 

[Angela]

In the following PCA (Haber) you can see virtually all modern human populations. There's no projection to cause distortion.

It's like a tripod. You can see where admixture has taken place.

Clearly, Armenians and Caucasus people and some Middle Easterners are very close to Europeans. My impression is that they are one stock, but some of the Middle Easterners have some admixture from Central Asia and some from Africa. That's the only difference. (I hope you can enlarge it to see the labels.) It's the North Africans and the Central Asians who pull away from the triangle at the top, which makes sense, because then you're talking about significant admixture, 20% as an average for North Africans.

 

[IronSide]

This is a beautiful visualization of the world:

http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mcdonald/PCA84pops.html

Sorry if my posts seem to deviate from the discussion on Maltese people, they're meant to address the original question of this thread, are Kurdish people European ? of course not, they're West Asian, but West Asian itself is not that different from European.

 

[Boreas]

No, they're not Asian either.

Any PCA of Europe would show you where they plot, which is a little bit south of Sicilians.

Most of their ancestry derives from the initial settlement of a group of Sicilians on the island. Since then there has been some admixture, but that is the base. The result is that they are a bit more North African and South-west Asian than Sicilians. However, they are NEITHER West Asian nor North African. If that much North African made you North African, then all Spaniards and Portuguese are also North African.

We've discussed this numerous times on many threads.

There's even a dedicated thread on their genetics.

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/31222-Dodecad-12b-Maltese-results?highlight=Malta+settled

Sicilians are not a good reference about being European. Maltese West Asian admixture is far more then Central Asian admixture of Turks in Turkey also Sicilian same (they are just a little bit more European)

West Asian between 20-30%
https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/West-Asian-admixture.gif

South West Asian 15-20%
https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/Southwest-Asian-admixture.gif

 

[Angela]

Sicilians are not a good reference about being European. Maltese West Asian admixture is far more then Central Asian admixture of Turks in Turkey also Sicilian same (they are just a little bit more European)

West Asian between 20-30%
https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/West-Asian-admixture.gif

South West Asian 15-20%
https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/Southwest-Asian-admixture.gif

In your dreams, buddy. What? Having a lot of ancestry from early Anatolian farmers makes someone not European? You're more European if you have more descent from black haired, brown skinned WHG or also black haired if lighter half Armenian like Yamnaya types? Yamnaya types, by the way, whose other half is EHG which has East Asian in it.

You're the ones who got overrun by Iran Neolithic and Central Asians. You changed massively since the early Neolithic. Italians and Spaniards preserved that initial Western Neolithic farmer heritage better. It can't be because Sicilians have more West Asian than the Germans, for example. The Greeks have even more. Maybe they're not European either? What is wrong with you people? They invented Europeanness, they along with Romans.

Or is it because Sicilians and Southern Italians have some North African? They, and the Portuguese and Spaniards, are just as "European" as Finns, for example, or Northern Russians, both of whom have Central Asian, and both of which groups have contributed much, much, less to European civilization.

Who are you to pontificate as to who is "European" enough? The Maltese, I'll have you know, kept the Ottomans out of Europe not only when they directly assaulted the Knights of St. John on Malta, but in many battles in subsequent times. They've more than proved their "Europeanness".

You know, you people are going to have to make up your minds. Half the time you're trying to prove you're as European as Greeks and Southern Italians and Sicilians, and half the time you're following your "Great Leader" back into the dark ages of a Saudi like ultra-orthodoxy. Not very "European" like. I suggest going back and reading Ataturk.

Make up your frigging minds. You can't have it both ways.

 

[Maleth]

I don't know whether this is correct, but I was told Maltese are non-Muslim ethnic Arabs.
Their language would be Arab.

I would have thought that someone with good genetic knowledge like yourself would not say such absurdities.

 

[Maleth]

So where do the contemporary Maltese come from? Research carried out in Malta points to just a few hundred miles north. A study published in the Annals of Human Genetics in 2004, on which Felice collaborated, looked at Y chromosome haplogroups found throughout the Mediterranean and identified common population groups. ‘Data on Mitochondrial DNA [from the ongoing Maltese Genome Project] is also nearly complete but what we have also points in the same direction [as the previous study]: that most contemporary Maltese males and females can trace their ancestry to Sicily and [Southern] Italy around 1,000 years ago,’ reveals Felice. Middle Eastern DNA, including Lebanese DNA, contributed less than 5% to today’s Maltese DNA.

https://www.um.edu.mt/think/the-hidden-history-of-the-maltese-genome/

 

[Maleth]

No, they're not Asian either.

Any PCA of Europe would show you where they plot, which is a little bit south of Sicilians.

Most of their ancestry derives from the initial settlement of a group of Sicilians on the island. Since then there has been some admixture, but that is the base. The result is that they are a bit more North African and South-west Asian than Sicilians. However, they are NEITHER West Asian nor North African. If that much North African made you North African, then all Spaniards and Portuguese are also North African.

We've discussed this numerous times on many threads.

There's even a dedicated thread on their genetics.

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/31222-Dodecad-12b-Maltese-results?highlight=Malta+settled

Very correct, and lets not forget that a good amount of the so called 'North African' component arrived through Spain and Portugal (not north Africa) as witnessed by a number of popular surnames that arrived from those regions

 

[Jovialis]

In your dreams, buddy. What? Having a lot of ancestry from early Anatolian farmers makes someone not European? You're more European if you have more descent from black haired, brown skinned WHG or also black haired if lighter half Armenian like Yamnaya types? Yamnaya types, by the way, whose other half is EHG which has East Asian in it.

You're the ones who got overrun by Iran Neolithic and Central Asians. You changed massively since the early Neolithic. Italians and Spaniards preserved that initial Western Neolithic farmer heritage better. It can't be because Sicilians have more West Asian than the Germans, for example. The Greeks have even more. Maybe they're not European either? What is wrong with you people? They invented Europeanness, they along with Romans.

Or is it because Sicilians and Southern Italians have some North African? They, and the Portuguese and Spaniards, are just as "European" as Finns, for example, or Northern Russians, both of whom have Central Asian, and both of which groups have contributed much, much, less to European civilization.

Who are you to pontificate as to who is "European" enough? The Maltese, I'll have you know, kept the Ottomans out of Europe not only when they directly assaulted the Knights of St. John on Malta, but in many battles in subsequent times. They've more than proved their "Europeanness".

You know, you people are going to have to make up your minds. Half the time you're trying to prove you're as European as Greeks and Southern Italians and Sicilians, and half the time you're following your "Great Leader" back into the dark ages of a Saudi like ultra-orthodoxy. Not very "European" like. I suggest going back and reading Ataturk.

Make up your frigging minds. You can't have it both ways.

Well said. It seems some of our members like adjust reality to fit their agenda.

 

[IronSide]

You're the ones who got overrun by Iran Neolithic and Central Asians. You changed massively since the early Neolithic. Italians and Spaniards preserved that initial Western Neolithic farmer heritage better. It can't be because Sicilians have more West Asian than the Germans, for example. The Greeks have even more. Maybe they're not European either? What is wrong with you people? They invented Europeanness, they along with Romans.

Overrun by Iran Neolithic and Central Asian is not a bad thing you know, I don't identify with the Natufians only, but also with my ancestors who migrated from the Zagros and Caucasus, our story is their story of migrating to their new homeland.

Your ancestors also come from the Caucasus and the Steppe.

 

[Angela]

I never meant to imply that it was a bad thing. I'm sorry if that's the impression I gave.

What I object to and have always objected to is this belief prevalent in anthrofora that somehow the descendants of the EEF are less "European" than people who have more WHG. It's absurd. Europeans as a group didn't exist until about 5,000 years ago, when all the major ancestral groups were present in Europe.

The related mantra is that the more ancestry you have from the Zagros and the Caucasus the less European you are. That's equally absurd. It's also in complete contradiction to the other belief that higher Yamnaya ancestry makes you more European, since Yamnayans were anywhere from 40-50% Caucasus like themselves. Intellect and logical thinking are not hallmarks of the anthrofora world.

My point to Boreas was simply that in terms of percentages of early Anatolian farmer, there's more of that ancestry left in Europe than there is in Turkey, not that there's anything wrong with having Zagros/Caucasus ancestry.

This is not the first time that he has tried to play this game where either Turks are Europeans or Greeks/Southern Italians are Turks. There are big genetic differences between the groups. Just look at any PCA. More importantly, being European is as much if not more about culture as it is about genetics. If some Turks want to align themselves with Europe that's fine, but you can't do that and retreat into medieval Islam and its values. They're going to have to choose.

 

[davef]

In the following PCA (Haber) you can see virtually all modern human populations. There's no projection to cause distortion.

It's like a tripod. You can see where admixture has taken place.

Clearly, Armenians and Caucasus people and some Middle Easterners are very close to Europeans. My impression is that they are one stock, but some of the Middle Easterners have some admixture from Central Asia and some from Africa. That's the only difference. (I hope you can enlarge it to see the labels.) It's the North Africans and the Central Asians who pull away from the triangle at the top, which makes sense, because then you're talking about significant admixture, 20% as an average for North Africans.

That one confuses me in many ways; like for example I don't know why Spanish are that close to Armenians. Never seen that before.

 

[Angela]

That one confuses me in many ways; like for example I don't know why Spanish are that close to Armenians. Never seen that before.

PCAs take shape depending on the samples included in the run. They show the total relationship between the samples. Every PCA we usually discuss is one either of only Europeans or of West Eurasians.

This is a "global" PCA, so the relationships will change. It's actually more accurate in a sense.

 

[Silesian]

As for height Europeans-I have met tall Iranian Kurds 183+/-cm. On the other hand, I have also seen a difference in build stature/ from Near East farmer types Iraq-Assyrian-Turkey-Egypt. One example comparing components- small men with big hearts like Otzi 5 ft 5"+/- cm for example to Yamnaya/Bell Beaker 6ft-6ft 2"range . Also I have seen Near Eastern farmer med component types with light skin- ranging from 5 ft- 5ft 7"with long Torso/ short legs/small hands and feet; might be an evolutionary advantage to hot dry farm like climates.

 

[davef]

PCAs take shape depending on the samples included in the run. They show the total relationship between the samples. Every PCA we usually discuss is one either of only Europeans or of West Eurasians.

This is a "global" PCA, so the relationships will change. It's actually more accurate in a sense.

Thanks. What confuses me still is how close Armenians are to Southern Europe, aren't they supposed to have a lot of Neolithic Iran and not much European farmer like genes (ok some, but not much)? What is it that binds them with Southern Europe?

 

[Angela]

Thanks. What confuses me still is how close Armenians are to Southern Europe, aren't they supposed to have a lot of Neolithic Iran and not much European farmer like genes (ok some, but not much)? What is it that binds them with Southern Europe?

It's the combination of Anatolian farmer genes, Neolithic Iran genes which started arriving in Europe in the late Neolithic, and steppe, which both groups share. The demographic history of the Near East is very complex. Ygorcs has posted a good comment on it but I can't find it at the moment. The Anatolian farmers moved east and north (before a return migration south and west carrying more CHG/Zagros like ancestry.) The Armenians then show steppe ancestry after a certain point. Don't forget, also, that the Armenians got their language from a migration from the Balkans, i.e. southeastern Europe.

The Caucasus groups are also very close to Europeans. The reason is the "Caucasus" ancestry which they share with Europeans. They also share some Anatolian Neolithic and some steppe.

The "Caucasus" ancestry in Yamnaya is very similar to Zagros ancestry, however unpalatable that is to certain people.

 

[Hauteville]

Sicilians are not a good reference about being European. Maltese West Asian admixture is far more then Central Asian admixture of Turks in Turkey also Sicilian same (they are just a little bit more European)

West Asian between 20-30%
https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/West-Asian-admixture.gif

South West Asian 15-20%
https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/Southwest-Asian-admixture.gif

Surely way more europeans than turks. At least Sicilians and Maltese are in the European side of PCA, while turks are in what they are, MENAs.

 

[davef]

Yes, I know they have Anatolian Neolithic, indo Euro and Iran neo genes, but what confuses me still is their overlap with people who have a lot more Anatolian neo genes (Spanish, Italian), than they do. This goes for the Lebanese who plot close to them as well. I would expect their levant Neolithic genes plus their Iran neo genes to pull them further away. I know there's Iran admixture in Europe, it came with the indo Europeans as well as later migrations from the Middle East but levantines/Caucasians have a lot more (as well as a lot more Neolithic Levant). I still don't get why certain levantines/caucasians plot where they do.

Just a footnote: I'm not "agenda" driven. The idea of caucasians/levantines plotting close to Europeans does not offend or disturb me in any way possible (I know for sure I would score high Caucasus in various tests, im a-ok with that). I'm just asking for clarification. Thank you.