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#1
01-20-2008, 11:36 PM
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Are Croatians European or Iranian?
According to this article Gromovnik & Pasdaran are most likely long lost relatives.
Are Croatians European or Iranian? I recently came across a symposium on the Internet entitled “The old Iranian origins of Croats” (1). The symposium was held in Zagreb on June 24th 1998 and what caught my attention was a section called “Genealogy of Old Croatian tribes”. Naturally, I was intrigued to know how tribes can be compared genealogically. On examining the titles of the speakers who described these Croatian tribes it was obvious that they did not agree on a common ancestor since locations of these Croatian tribes ranged from Afghanistan, to the Carpathians Mountains, to ancient Syria. The titles of these symposium papers did not offer any agreement as to a definitive Croatian origin or genealogy. The Pre-Slavists But why would anyone think that Croatians are descendant from Asian tribes? The answer was partly addressed in the premise for the 1998 symposium in Zagreb (1). Sakac and Mikoczy are names that abound when an Asian origin is suggested for Croats. These individuals began the study of Asian origins for Croats in the previous centuries and such studies continue today to be a part of the scientific examination of Croatian origins. Josip Mikoczy-Blumenthal (born in 1734 and died in 1800) wrote a 1797 doctoral dissertation in Zagreb entitled, “Croats of Slavic group originated from Sarmatians descending from Medians”. He determined that the Croats originated during the time of the ancient Greeks from the Sarmatians, a people who lived on the Eurasian steppes which stretch from the Ukraine to the Caspian Sea. Later on, Stjepan Krizin Sakac (born 1890; died 1973) put forward the idea that the Croats had been separate from other Slavic peoples and that they descended from the Harahvati tribe which was Iranian in origin. The premise is that the Croats are originally non-Slavic people with an Iranian heritage, who later adopted the Slavic language. The proponents of this view can be called Pre-Slavists. They find a Croatian identity stretching from Iran/Afghanistan to present-day Croatia. A major part of this thesis is based on the similarity of ancient Indo-Iranian names with the modern Croatian term for Croats “Hrvati”. One of the summaries from the symposium offers clues to the connections and a rough outline follows. The Huywuhe are recorded in 1375 BC; the Harahvaiti from the Iranian province of Harauvatya existed in the 6th to 4th centuries BC; the Horothaoi are found around the Black Sea in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, while the Aryan Hrwts are mentioned in Crimea in 559 AD. We know from Byzantine texts of the 6th and 7th centuries AD, that the Croats, along with other people, migrated into the Balkans at this late date. The Pre-Slavists, therefore paint a picture of progressive migrations from Iran to the Balkans. This oriental and somewhat exotic view of Croatian origins is one that appears more and more in modern Croatia post-1991. It appears in scientific literature and it is found in maps and historical accounts of Croatian history suggesting that it is factual and an up-to-date account of the Croatian early beginnings. Its implications for Croatian history and origins, if correct, would be profound. As such, I thought there must be other scientific information that backs up the Pre-Slavist view of Croatian history. The 1998 Zagreb symposium offered a few hints that were based on information other than the use of similar sounding names to Hrvati. M.H. Milekovic and A.Z. Lovric present a paper that states Croatian was an Indo-Iranian language. Since I did not have access to the full text of their paper, I assume that Milekovic and Lovric based their conclusion on linguistic similarity between Croatian and ancient Iranian or Persian languages. The outline of the symposium states that sub-dialects of Croatian, such as Cakavian found along the eastern Adriatic coast, contain remnants of an Old Iranian language. The Istrian peninsula and the islands of Krk and Vis are singled out as depositories of ancient Iranian terminology. A biogenetic explanation is offered by M. Kac and S. Budimir, which claim that third quarters of Croats are different than other Slavs and that Croats are closer to Kurds and Armenians. Not having the full text, made me wonder what biogenetic information they were relying on. Croatian Genetic Data If the Pre-Slavist theory was correct, I knew genetic data would corroborate the premise that Croatians are more closely related to Iranians than they are to other Slavs such as Slovenians, Czech, or Poles. Genetic markers from European and Asian populations have been determined. There is genetic data from a variety of sources such as the Y-chromosome, other nuclear DNA, and mitochondrial DNA. DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid and forms the basic building block of genetic identity. Geneticists use the small differences between the DNA of one person, compare it to other individuals to determine the number of differences, and this allows them to determine how old the ancestry is between them. The same applies to groups of people, which can be compared to indicate ancestry. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA for short) will be used in this discussion, since it has been determined for most populations on a global scale. MtDNA is a short strand of DNA found as multiple copies in each cell of our bodies and located in the mitochondria, small biological factories which produce energy for many of our physical-chemical functions. We inherit our mtDNA from our mothers and it is only inherited on the maternal side. A person and his siblings inherit their mtDNA from their mother, who in turn inherited it from her mother, and so on. A father does not pass on any of his mtDNA to his children which he inherited from his mother. After many generations a single change can occur in the coding of the mitochondrial DNA and it is these changes that geneticists use to construct ancestry between people, or ethnic groups. In the 1980’s Antonio Torroni and Douglas Wallace began to classify the different mtDNA found in people into groups using the letter of the Roman alphabet. Since the first groups studied were North American native populations the first groups were referred to as A, B, C, or D. The groups turned out to have counter parts in East Asia and help show that American aboriginal people had Asian ancestry. When geneticists later looked at European populations they used group names such as H, I, J, and so on to describe the mtDNA in people of European ancestry. Later ***** Sykes of Oxford University popularized European mtDNA groups in this book “The seven daughters of Eve” where he gave them names such as Usula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine, and Jasmine. Helena was a personalized name for the H group, which is found in about 50 per cent of European populations. Sykes places the origins of these groups between 10,000 to 45,000 years ago. In fact no ethnic group or regional population usually has one mtDNA group, but rather contains a number of different groups. What are important are the groups found and the percentage of each within a population, which can be used to compare any different populations. Examination of mtDNA of European ethnic groups and regional populations show that there is no significant difference between Croats and other Europeans. Malyarchuk and his researchers found populations in Bosnia and Slovenia show small differences but no major difference from other Slavic groups such as Poles and Russians (2). These small differences suggest two migratory movements of Slavonic speaking people starting in the 5th century. One group migrated into the Balkans from the Carpathians while another crosses into the western Balkans. There is no genetic information that has been found, so far, that distinguishes the later groups of Southern Slavic groups: Slovenians, Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, and Bulgarians. A recent study of Croatian mtDNA by Tolk and other researchers examined only Adriatic Island populations and found the basic mtDNA groups were those of other European populations, with a few minor exceptions. They found a high amount of group F on the island of Hvar of about 8 percent, a very small amount of group A which is under 1 percent on the island of Krk, and a large amount of group K on the island of Brac of almost 10 percent (3). Craniometric studies of modern day Croatians and Bosnians show a large variety of differences between them (4) which can be attributed to recent population movements in the last few centuries. When craniometric studies have been carried out on medieval Croatian populations there are only minor differences between populations in Dalmatia, on the Adriatic coast and Pannonia, which includes Slavonia and parts of Bosnia (5). Since there appears to have been continuous contact between interior and coastal Slavic communities, no major population differences would be expected. The modern differences between Bosnians and Croatians has been attributed not to environmental or geographic factors, but rather to genetic isolation brought on by culturally imposed separation based on religion (4). Such a separation between Muslims and Christians began in the latter half of the 15th century following the Turkish conquest of Bosnia, and even intermarriage between the differing religious groups in Bosnia during the last half century has not been able to erase the differences that have developed over half a millennium. The populations of Iran have a high rate of group M, D, A, and B with 5 percent of group M. There is a large difference between western and eastern Iran. The western Iranians are closer to Slavs while the eastern Iranians are closer to populations of northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and central Asia. Both areas contain a high percentage of group H. This data indicates that there is no genetic connection between Afghanistan and Croatian populations. Group M is under two percent in Slavic populations including Bosnians and Slovenians, and is not found in the Croatian populations studied on the Adriatic islands. This makes for a very weak genetic link for Iranians and Croatians. What follows is further background on the people of the Adriatic Islands, particularly Krk, Brac, Vis. http://www.durham.net/facts/crogen/newsltr9.html 
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#2
01-20-2008, 11:53 PM
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#4
01-21-2008, 12:40 AM
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#6
01-21-2008, 02:43 AM
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__________________
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#7
01-21-2008, 11:30 AM
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European. I think Croatia's cultural indebtedness to the Iranians is tenuous at best.
__________________
'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.' - George Orwell, 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' 'Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats' - Henry Louis Mencken 
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#8
01-21-2008, 12:42 PM
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#9
01-21-2008, 01:00 PM
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I guess we will never be able to speak for great amount of certainty for any of them.
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