Ahed Tamimi at a conference on the role of women in the Palestinian popular struggle, February 3, 2006. (Alberto Hugo Rojas/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Archive for February 21st, 2018
Solving the 2,000 Year Old Mystery of the Druze
Note: I don’t mind posting controversial articles and letting the reader apply their reflective minds. I sense this article falls within the hasbara or Zionist propaganda to lure the Druze in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon to engage in spying for Israel’s interest.
The origins of the Druze people and their religion have fascinated historians, linguists and geneticists for centuries.
Druze farmers. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
It is in what we now call the Middle East that humans domesticated plants and animals, built the earliest cities, devised the first alphabet, and wrote the first literature.
But while many of the mysteries in the region’s history still abound, few have attracted more varied speculation than the origin of the Druze people and their religion. Modern genetics gives us powerful new tools to decipher the origin of the Druze.
Much like the Ashkenazic Jews, the origins of the Druze people and religion have fascinated historians, linguists and geneticists.
For nearly a millennium, travellers and their neighbours have wondered and hypothesised about the beginnings of this enduring people, and their exclusive religion in the mountains of Israel, Syria and Lebanon.
Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveller who passed through Lebanon in 1165, was one of the first European writers to refer to the Druze by name. Even then, they were known as mountain-dwellers, and Benjamin described them as fearless warriors who favoured the Jews. But he could not state their origin, and he was not the only one to be mystified. Over the years, people have proposed that the Druze have Arabian, Persian or Near Eastern origins.
Reports from Cairo’s ruler, Al-Hakim (996-1021 CE), give us the first glance into the Druze and Druzism.
Al-Hakim had sent missionaries throughout Arabia, to win new believers. His missionaries claimed the Druze had splintered from Isma’ili Islam, a branch of Shia Islam. (Sects opposing the Caliphs’ institution)
After Al-Hakim’s sudden disappearance, the new ruler eradicated the faith in Cairo.
The Druze who took residence in the mountains of what is now Lebanon, Syria and Palestine not only survived, but flourished.
Since the 11th-century Crusades, the Druze have played a distinctive role in the region. (How distinctive? any details?)
Also in the 11th century, the Druze closed their faith to new adherents. You cannot become a Druze. This exclusivity also means that modern-day Druze people contain the genetic signature of the their Druze ancestors.
The Geographical Population Structure (GPS) technology, which works in a similar way to the satnav geolocation system, uses DNA instead of satellites to predict the most recent geographical origins of a DNA sample. To infer the origin of Druze ancestors, my lab at the University of Sheffield has applied the GPS technology to the DNA of Israeli Druze. (Meaning Palestinian Druze?)
Most of the Druze, we have found, can be traced to the highest mountains in Turkey, northern Iraq and southern Armenia, and to the Zagros Mountain belt bordering Mount Ararat – very close to ancient Ashkenaz.
By comparing the DNA of contemporary Druze to DNA dated 1,000-4,000 years ago from the Levant, Turkey and Armenia, my lab confirmed these findings.
This means that, genetically, the Druze really are different from their neighbours.
Unlike Palestinians, Bedouins and Syrians who share between 36-70% of ancient Levantine ancestry, the Israeli Druze have only a minor Levantine component of 15% and a significantly higher (80%) ancient Armenian ancestry.
Ashkenazic Jews, by contrast, had a major ancient Anatolian ancestry (96%) and a residual Levantine one (0.5%), in support of their non-Levantine origins.
The Druze have long preferred to live among high mountains, which has helped them maintain their close social structure, as well as providing them with protection. Our results indicate that the Druze habitation in high mountains is an ancient practice, one that their ancestors brought with them from what is now Iraq, Armenia and Turkey.
But why did they come to the Middle East? Can DNA help us answer that?
Fortunately, since the Druze maintain a close-group social structure, each group preserved a different aspect of the Druze history.
Genetic testing is thereby able to determine that the Druze DNA experienced its last major admixture event, where Druze mixed with local Levantines (Syrians), between the early ninth century and the early 12th century. The date overlaps with the expansion of the Seljuk Turkish Empire into the Levant during the 11th century to fight the Crusaders.
We know that after pushing away the invaders, the Seljuks settled in Iran, Anatolia and Syria, and that the Druze were first recorded in that region around 150 years later.
The genetic similarity between Druze and Armenians supports speculation that they had Seljuk ancestors.
Most likely, the Seljuks would have, upon their arrival in the Levant for the Crusades, mixed with the native population. Some of them would have likely adopted the Druze faith.
The Druze genome is therefore like a very long museum with separate rooms for Near Eastern and Levant exhibits, and including rooms for mixed inheritances that could not be sorted. Now, we can put together the remaining evidence to reconstruct the Druze’s history.
The Near Eastern ancestors of the Druze emerged near the Fertile Crescent, in the region that saw the rise of domestication and agriculture.
Unsurprisingly, it was also a major convergence point on the Silk Road, with trade routes leading to Constantinople and Antioch. This is when the Druze likely encountered the Ashkenazic Jews who played a key role in global trade.
The genetic similarity between Druze and Ashkenazic Jews is very high, although they emerged from different ancient founding populations (Anatolians and Armenians). However, although they started at the same place, they went their separate ways.
By the eighth century, Ashkenazic Jews had abandoned ancient Ashkenaz and moved north to Khazaria and west to Europe. (Read my note). Two centuries later, the Druze ancestors began descending to the Levant to fight in the Crusades.
When the Druze re-encountered Ashkenazic Jews in Palestine centuries later, neither population recalled its Near Eastern origins, and both peoples developed a rich heritage based on their experience over the previous millennium. (Now the propaganda or hasbara starts)
However, as both populations, to a large extent, favoured marriage within the community, each retained Near Eastern relics in its DNA museum, which allowed us to tell the end of this 2,000-years-old odyssey.
This article originally appeared in Aeon.
Note: The Khazaria “kingdom” was over-run by the Russian Ivan in the 11th century and the Ashkenazic dispersed in the neighboring regions. Many of them transferred to eastern Europe. The Ashkenazic adopted the Jewish daily customs and rituals, as many early Christian sects did in proselytizing in the Near East and onward to the Caucasus and even toward China. Jesus and his disciples (from the province of Tyre and Galilee) were Not recognized as Jews by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, even though they also followed the daily Jewish practices and customs.
Invisible Bike Helmet?
Posted on: February 21, 2018
Invisible Bike Helmet?
You know what kind of sucks about riding a bike? Other than all that pedaling? Bike helmets.
Sure, they keep that overrated “brain” from getting splattered, but they take a lot of the open-air-joy out of things, and they’re not comfortable.
A pair of Swedish women have developed a remarkable solution: the invisible bike helmet.2P
Jason Torchinsky posted this Nov. 7, 2013
Ad here I thought it was all that drug testing, after having one testicle taken away.
Tired of strapping ugly, uncomfortable styrofoam-and-plastic turtle shells to their heads, the pair came up with a pretty revolutionary solution that does manage to give you full head protection without, remarkably, wearing anything on your head.P
SExpand
I’d like to just come out and tell you the secret of how their Hövding helmet works, but this video does such a nice job of building suspense I kind of don’t want to ruin it.
So I won’t post any pictures showing the operation, and don’t follow that link to their site if you don’t want to spoil a minor surprise.P
Once you see how it works it all makes sense, and is a very clever solution that draws from a number of technologies that are well-established and familiar.3P
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Good call, I’m glad I watched the video.
If you’re so jaded that the tiny joy of a mild surprise doesn’t appeal to you, click away.4P
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Or if the video plays <10 seconds and stops, like it does for me 😦
Regardless of how wrong they are about discounting cars in the future, they’ve done a pretty impressive job with the design and engineering of this, and I wish them all sorts of luck.P
(via TravelingGreener)P
Adonis Diaries 