DNA Confirms Lebanese Christians are Direct Descendants of Crusaders….
Posted on March 29, 2008
This is awesome. I’ve always admired Lebanon’s Christians for being the only substantial Christian population in a sea of Muslims. As the Crusaders made their way to the Holy Land they set up outposts in Syria and Lebanon after defeating Muslims in battle. It’s always been legend that Lebanese Christians are their ancestors. National Geographic has confirmed this is true…..
A new study has found genetic traces of both the arrival of the Crusades and of the expansion of Islam in Lebanon.
The findings not only confirm well-documented history but also present a rare genetic trail showing the movement of two major religions into Lebanon, scientists say.
The distribution of genetic markers at first appeared virtually indistinguishable across the Christian, Druze, and Muslim populations of Lebanon. But a closer look at the Y chromosomes of 926 Lebanese men sampled in the study revealed something intriguing.
“We noticed some interesting lineages in the dataset. Among Lebanese Christians, in particular, we found higher frequency of a genetic marker—R1b—that we see typically see only in Western Europe,” said Spencer Wells, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence.
The study matched the western European Y-chromosome lineage against thousands of people in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Wells said the lineage was seen enriched to a higher frequency only in the Christian populations in Lebanon and was not seen in the Muslim population.
“It certainly doesn’t undermine the similarities among the various Lebanese communities, but it does agree with oral tradition—that some Lebanese Christians are descendents of Crusaders—and points to a genetic connection to the Crusaders,” he added.
ZIP
Crossposted via Weasel Zippers….
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You said “It’s always been legend that Lebanese Christians are their ancestors.”
I believe you meant descendants