Ancestors

Ancestors

Chapter 1

Origins and Identities

When people leave their homelands, do they leave their identity? Do they need to acquire a new one?

Why do people move? How do they adapt? And how do they identify with one another around the globe? When people leave the place of their birth, when they leave the neighborhood where they grew up, some take with them images of olive orchards, mountains of pine and cedar trees, and a soothing smell of the land. Personally, my first approach to characterizing identity is a nostalgic one. An identity is a basket of memories and collectibles, and wherever you go, you take them with you, and you keep on adding more and more to this basket. Identity is not a static concept; it is a state of perpetual evolution, shaped by events, exposure, and interactions. At an early age, you identify with faces that you see on a daily basis—your family, your friends, then the neighborhood—and the community. It is people and places, cultures, habits, and expressions with which one identifies. Communities are identifiable units that form the basis of cultural identities. Then you leave, like many of us do, and now there are new places, faces, habits, and expressions with which you may or may not initially identify. But your identity evolves, you adapt and/or adopt. The more you share with others the more you identify with them, and you collect new memories that continue to shape your identity.

I grew up on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, in the heart of the Levant, the land of Phoenicia. With the genetic information that I have gathered over the last decades on the Levantine populations, I felt compelled to write about the richness of these Levantine identities and cultures that are often lost in translation or stolen by religious and political ideologies. I have summarized in the pages that follow, not without difficulties, in a few thousand words, several thousand years of rich and complex Levantine history. In doing so, I wanted to give a historical perspective that can provide a context for the events that led to the major human mobilities that populated the Levant. But I also wanted to mix my knowledge of genetics with my own interpretations and share my own experiences of identities, cultures, and origins, using the Levant as my playing field. I wanted to free the Levantine identity from its historic hijackers. I wrote the following chapters for those who ask questions about their origins, heritage, and identity.

The Semitic language and its people

Several years ago, a student asked me how to define a “Semitic population.” I initially thought that this was a straightforward question that deserved a simple answer, so I told her that the word Semitic has two meanings, a biblical meaning and a linguistic one. All the descendants of Shem (Sem), one of the three sons of Noah, are referred to as Semites and that is according to the Bible, hence the biblical definition. The linguistic definition states that Semites are all those who speak a Semitic language. My student seemed quite satisfied with my answer at the time, but the more I thought about my answer, the more perplexed I became, and now more than a decade later I am even more perplexed that I cannot answer this seemingly simple and straightforward question. The Semitic language designation refers to the same biblical figure Shem, and, while the two definitions I gave my student share the same denominator, they are drastically different when translated effectively.

It was the German historian August Ludwig von Schlözer who first introduced the term Semitic in 1771 to describe a language family that was spoken by a group of people who occupied the Levant. Since then, the term has been used to designate both peoples and languages.

Linguists argue that the Semitic language originated in the northeastern Levant around five thousand years ago, expanded east with the Akkadian culture into Mesopotamia, and then dispersed farther south into the rest of the Levant, to Arabia and from there to Ethiopia. There are many groups and populations living today, in total around half a billion, who speak a Semitic language. The Semitic language family is divided into several branches based on geographical distribution: East, West, South, Central, and Ethio Semitic. Except for Hebrew, most of the East and West Semitic languages are extinct, like Akkadian and Ugaritic, or nearly extinct, like Aramaic. The remaining include Arabic, and the many languages and dialects spoken in Ethiopia and other parts of East Africa, like Amharic and Tigrinya.

Language dispersal, however, does not necessarily correlate with genetic dispersal. When I was recently asked the same question about Semitic populations during a presentation that I was giving on Levantine genetics, my answer was: Genes and languages seldom coincide, and defining populations based on linguistic attributes is the “apple” while defining populations based on genes is the “orange.” Therefore, I am not sure whether all the populations that speak Semitic today share more genetic ancestry (or other attributes) with themselves or with non-Semitic speakers.

The term anti-Semitism is not related to our discussion here. This term was introduced by the German Wilhelm Marr in 1879 to label prejudice and discrimination against Jews and their Jewish faith.

Origins and identities

At an early age, one identifies with faces that one sees daily—family, friends, then the neighborhood, and later the community in general. It is people and places, cultures, habits, and expressions with which one identifies. Communities become identifiable units and form the basis of cultural identities. Where does origin fit in one’s identity?

When the great Levantine novelist Amin Maalouf was asked why he used the word origins instead of roots as his 2004 book title that he wrote about his family and his ancestors, his answer was: “Roots is not a word that exists in my vocabulary.”

The concept of “roots” is not a human characteristic—it corresponds to a place, a site that is fixed in time and space. “Origin,” on the other hand, while it relates to a beginning, is not only the beginning and cannot be confined to one space. People move, and with them they carry their origins deep inside.

One is born with a set of specific genes that makes one unique. Genetic studies and testing provide information about one’s genetic heritage and genetic ancestry. However, there is no test, genetic or other, that defines or explains origin.

I was born in Lebanon, the Land of the Cedars, purple dye, and the Phoenician alphabet. When I took a genetic ancestry test, the results I was given stated that my maternal ancestors came from Western Europe. I conducted additional analyses and concluded that my maternal ancestors came with the Crusades around 1100 CE (Common Era) and my paternal ancestors (I’m less sure about them—they’re a bit more complex) came from Central Asia or perhaps the Caucasus. So what does that make me? My DNA tells me that my ancestors arrived in Lebanon from the Caucasus or Central Asia, that I have Crusaders’ genes, most likely French (from additional analyses), but what about my origins? I am neither French nor Central Asian. The Phoenician culture runs in my veins—they were my real ancestors and the ones I claim. Being Arab, Lebanese, English, French, Phoenician, or American has nothing to do with genetics.

While genetics confirms one’s ancestry, which is undoubtedly part of one’s identity, it does not verify one’s identity.

Origins, ancestry, and identity

How does one reconcile DNA ancestry with origins? I simply don’t. I learned a lot of exciting information from my genetic ancestry testing. I now have many more stories to share about my ancestors and how I arrived at my birthplace. None of this information had any impact on how I feel about my origins.

If two monozygotic (identical) twins were separated at birth and reared far apart (it is rare, but it happens), would they still share the same origins? If they were to take a genetic test, they would figure out their common genetic heritage. But does this really tell them about their origins? They will share the same genes, they may develop similar habits, and they will have few genes imprinted (with their own on or off switch, irrespective of the environment). They will certainly look very much alike, but their environment and how they and their genes interact with it will shape many aspects of their behavior, their actions, and who they become as individuals. Studies that have been conducted on twins reared apart invariably show many similarities in behavior, but these similarities remain at the level of statistical significance, which is expected given the important role of the environment.

While genetic ancestry derives from allele frequencies in given geographical areas, those frequencies were established well before we were born. Origins are much more complex. They derive from a lifetime of experiences. They take their first form at birth and get molded with time.