Roxana Cooper Wrote:
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> My best guess would be the people of Ancient Sumer
> were pretty much identical with the people who
> currently live in the lower Mesopotamian basin.
> That's how it usually works.

Good suggestion RC!


I wonder if the Ma'dan (Marsh Arabs) are the descendants of Sumerians?

The origins of the Maʻdān are still a matter of some interest. British colonial ethnographers found it difficult to classify some of the Maʻdān's social customs and speculated that they might have originated in India.[13]

Many scholars have proposed historical and genetic links between the Marsh Arabs and the ancient Sumerians based on shared agricultural practices and methods of house-building. There is, however, no written record of the marsh tribes until the ninth century, and the Sumerians lost their distinct ethnic identity by around 1800 BCE, some 2700 years before.[14] Others, however, have noted that much of the culture of the Maʻdān is in fact shared with the desert bedouin who came to the area after the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate, and that it is therefore likely that they are descended from this source, at least in part.[15]

Genetic Evidence

A 2011 Study showed that Marsh Arabs have a high concentration of Y-chomosomal Haplogroup J-M267 and mtDNA haplogroup J having the highest concentration, with haplogroups H, U and T following.[16] According to this study, Marsh Arabs have the following haplogroups.

Y-DNA haplogroups:
E1b1b 6.3%(-M35* 2.1%, -M78* 0.7%, -M123* 1.4%, -M34 2.1%)
G-M201 1.4%
J1 81.1%(-M267* 7.0%, -Page08* 72.7%, -M365 1.4%), J2-M172* 3.5%
L-M76 0.7%
Q-M242 2.8%(Q1a1b-M25 0.7%, Q1b-M378 2.1%)
R-M207 4.2%(R1-L23 2.8%, R2-M124 1.4%)
Mt-DNA haplogroups:
West Eurasia(77.8%): R0 24.1%(R0* 0.7%, R0a 6.9%, HV 4.1%, H 12.4%), KU 15.9%(K 6.2%, U 9.7%), JT 22.7%(J 15.2%, T 7.6%), N 15.1%(I 0.7%, N1 8.2%, W 4.8%, X2 1.4%)
North/East Africa(2.8%): M1 2.8%
Sub-Saharan Africa(4.9%): L 4.9%
East Asia(1.4%): B4c2 1.4%
Southwest Asia(10.4%): M* 0.7%, M3 2.1%, R2 2.8%, U7 4.8%
Others(2.8%): N* 0.7%, R* 2.1%


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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2016 02:53PM by Hans.