There are some theories floating around on the internets as to whether I am a bagel or even “a Turk of sorts and probably a muzzie actually.”
Now that I have finally become who I am, it is time to reveal who I am.
Actually I was always an open book on this matter, but still, it would be useful to lay it all out in one place for easy reference.
My paternal side is pure Aryan R1a master race. They were mostly farmers, and occasionally priests.
Despite Karlin’s Judaic connotations, I have been unable to identify any Jewish ancestors there, and 23andme confirmed it. One possible version is that the Karlins were non-Jewish residents or neighbors of the village Karlin near Pinsk, modern Belarus. A more exotic possibility is that there was a Swedish or German “son of Karl” in the distant past.
My paternal-maternal ancestors hailed from the Bryansk-Kaluga region that neighbors Belarus and Ukraine.
My maternal side is more… “cosmopolitan.”
The paternal side there are Dagestani notables (Lak to be precise).
On the maternal side, one half are mostly or purely Slavic. One ancestor was ennobled under Alexander III on attaining the requisite military rank; the extended family still has the letters patent signed by the Tsar.
The other half from the maternal side hails from Tsarist Odessa, and is a mixture of Russian, Italian (yes, 23andme is accurate on that!), and Jewish stock. They moved to Moscow soon after the Revolution.
PS. Now that I’m in Russia, I am thinking of taking the opportunity to properly research and record my family tree, especially since many of my relatives are advancing in age.
If you have experience with geneology, is there any particular software you’d recomment?
I expect to work with ~100-200 people, at least initially, so it doesn’t need to support huge databases or native support for research. It also needs to have a good, reliable export function, just in case I later decide to switch software. Cost is not a factor, within reasonable bounds (<$100, no subscriptions).
I have been looking at some of the following programs: Family Historian; Ahnenblatt; GRAMPS; The Next Generation; Brothers Keeper; Ancestral Quest; RootsMagic (Family Tree Maker is tied to Ancestry.com, and Legacy Family Tree has bad user reviews, so they’re probably out of the running).
My current (weak) preference is to go for Family Historian, but I remain open to other suggestions.
I am interested in what happened to your ancestors in WW2, how many died during the war, did any ever end up in the Gulags. And a really thorny question, was the topic of the mass rapes in Germany ever raised by those that fought in the frontlines ?
I think that in Western Europe all births were recorded starting in the 16th century. So you could probably trace your Italian side really, really far back.
I think that within the Russian empire the recording of all births started much later. I’m assuming the 19th century, though I don’t know for sure.
Even though Jews had high literacy, they didn’t use it to record any of this. So the earliest ancestors of mine that I’m aware of are two great-great-grandparents who were probably born in the 1840s or 1850s. And this is only because a cousin of my mom’s spent some time researching this.
I know so little about my ancestry that I’ve never needed software. Instead I have a standard-sized piece of printer paper on which I drew a tree, and which I put in a photo album.
I’ve seen a database of the recipients of Great Patriotic War orders (not medals). They’ve got scans of hand-written citations. It actually says there what this or that order was given for.
I remember reading that the raw data of the 1897 census of the Russian Empire only survived for one or two governorates. Outside of those, only officially published summaries are available, and those are useless for genealogy.
The Mormons, familysearch.org, has a tree maker for free. I haven’t used it but the one they had for years before this one was great. I haven’t found anything wrong with ancestry.com, but there is the yearly fee. Whatever you chose make sure that it will export to a gedcom file. This is the standard and has been forever.
So, your mom has some Northeastern Caucasian ancestry, like Yelena Isinbayeva.
What type of mitochondrial DNA do you have?
Carlin can also be an Irish or Scottish name. As is well known, there were considerable numbers of Scots in 17th and 18th Century Russia, often in prominent positions. Good luck with your researches !
At least you’re clean. I still believe Robert Mcnamara to be the closest personality I can associate you with; while he wasn’t Jewish he was a numbers man.
Chances are you’re still Jewish. My reasoning is obvious…
Just go to your local synagogue and pretend you’re Jewish. If doors to greater opportunities open up easily chances are you might be a son of Abraham. Get me a job if you can. Good money in that department.
More like 9/10 spuds, 1/10 humus?
I know that from a Western perspective, “Diversity is our strength” is a demonstrable lie. But in Russian context there might be something to do that das stärkere Ostvolk who really are the most Darwinian selected Tough Guys in the world. That you guys are also world leaders in symphonic music, literature, philosophy, computer science, metallurgy and rocketry etc etc is really something your weaker, stupider enemies should keep in mind. Славься Отечество!
Diversity is our strength
Depends on the “our.”
” Good money in that department.”
Morris Dees has been using this ploy for decades to very lucrative effect.
Similar combinations like yours are found among Balkan Slavs, though only Slovenes and NW Croats are predominantly R1A Slavs. The non-Slavic part in Balkan Slavs is at least partially a result of Middle-Eastern migrations (and Turkish rape, coughSerbscough: http://www4.pictures.gi.zimbio.com/2nd+Annual+Celebrity+Poker+Challenge+Benefiting+9RDlYOAnwOnl.jpg).
We should, however, not forget that we all probably have some illegitimate ancestry as well. In my case, my father is so dark, that with his pure Slavic ancestry, I’m willing to bet the nearby Roma settlement had something to do with it… (Before you scoff, Roma’s ancestors were among the most developed in the world some 5.000 years ago when Slavs’ achievements consisted of milking cows and burying chariots.)
We should, however, not forget that we all probably have some illegitimate ancestry as well.
Always the possibility of a non-cau in the woodpile at some prior time for everyone. 🙂
Depends on the “our.”
And the hour.
I was rather hoping that AK was going to reveal his Tatar ancestry, but not to be. Are Volga and Crimean Tatars distinguishable from their Slavic neighbours, Mr K ?
Even if you are a ( Quarter ) Kebab Boy, you have a very sensible view of Muslims and their relations with Russia. You don’t think like the Saker who absurdly regards Muslims as natural supporters of Russia.
Lastly, I had always thought that, like the Saker, Anatoly Karlin was a pseudonym. Humblest apologies.
I think that the non-Slavic ancestry in the former Yugoslavia is ancient Illyrian.
So Dagestanis genetically cluster with the MENA region? Seems counterintuitive to me.
Anyway, good luck with your genealogical studies, your family history seems to be more interesting than is the case for most people.
If I were Russian and 23andme didn’t give me my Neanderthal and Denisovan percentages,
I’d want my money back. Anatoly is obviously a very easily contented boy.
AK: Yes this doesn’t mean any sense. Neanderthal/Denisovan ancestry is separate from ancestry composition. Neanderthal results are rarely very interesting. Eurasians (and Australasians) mixed with them in the Near East around 60,000 years ago on leaving Africa, and consequently mixed little with them afterwards, so the percentages are similar from Europe to China and the Australian aborigines. My own Neanderthal results are absolutely average for Eurasians.
I thought Denisovan DNA turned up only in some Asian populations like Tibetans, not in Russians…and some Neanderthal ancestry is found in all non-Africans, isn’t it?
But then I don’t really understand how those DNA tests work anyway and how they come up with those percentages (don’t intend to take one myself anyway).
I must admit I was mistaken about your name. I didn’t dig deep enough, just looked in a couple of places including Wikipedia and a dictionary (https://books.google.com/books?id=vG7MZ9J6dAgC&q=Karlin), and that was enough for me to put two and two together. It indeed sounds too suspicious and too non-Russian, and coupled with your name it is not too hard to suggest your Jewish origin. Moreover, the fact that you emigrated in the 1990s make it even more suspicious: I would not exaggerate to say that half of Soviet and post-Soviet emigrants are in fact Jews, a quarter are Volksdeutsche, Poles, Ukrainians, Armenians, and who not, and maybe only a quarter or less are really Russians.
However, I was just recently looking through a WWI casualty list and found out enough people with your surname, but Christian Orthodox and sounding quite very well Russian (http://1914.svrt.ru/extsearch.php?surname=Карлин). So it might be that your surname has nothing to do with the village of Karlin, but instead came from some other source. Allegedly it might be a nickname like Karla or Karlya, or a corruption of Kralya, or even Karelin, or whatever. Obviously, your surname is rare, but still exist(ed) among Russians. Of course, if you’re really sure, because there were enough baptized Jews in the 19th century, it might just happen too long ago that all the ends are lost.
As for your maternal side: No wonder you have a Med or Mideastern-like phenotype, and no surprise I misinterpreted it. Though it still would be funny to undergo the “Synagogue test”, as suggested above. Or the “Mosque test”, for your Lak ancestry, just don’t shave for some time for more authenticity. Heck, you have even a full incentive to turn into a real Muslim as a coming back the “roots”. Not Nathan, but Anas Ali, hehe?
Congrats!
As for 23genes or whatever, my personal opinion that all such guys are charlatans who exploit modern frenzy about genetics. I sincerely do not understand how they’ve come up with their methodology and what the amount of data they are using to do their doubtful calculations. I have a suspicion that they just take your Y-hg and mDNA and do their probability calculations. You paid for what you already knew, you knew you have R1a and you knew it is most widespread in Eastern Europe, so the highest probability you came from there, you just did not the exact numbers and those guys just gave it to you, though you still do not know how they’ve come up with it.
But there are enough criticism about assigning the current DNA distribution to the past or to ethnic groups.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/25644-Why-it-is-wrong-to-assume-that-a-haplogroup-originated-where-it-is-most-frequent-now
P.S. I always thought that a lot of Ashkenazi have R1a, so having it neither proves nor disapproves anything. Just that one of your paternal ancestors (among thousands) sprang up several thousand years ago somewhere in the Middle East (or wherever they put now its origin).
Anatoly has said that his parents are scientists. Lots of scientists of many backgrounds, including ethnic Russians, left the former USSR in the 1990s to work at Western universities. This was because the Yeltsin-oligarchic regime didn’t pay them salaries and didn’t care about science.
One of my childhood friends was an ethnically-Russian son of biologists who ended up in the West for this reason.
I think Nina “Byzantina” of Twitter fame is of that background too.
I haven’t taken the test and it’s unlikely I’ll do it just for a reason that all my paternal ancestors came from a region which have one of the highest proportion of R1a, so the likeliest chance I have it either. Unlikely I will know something new with a test. Do we turn out to be distant relatives then, he? VERY distant, though.
Just a side note. We have had a lot of arguments and we’ve trolled each other a lot and I disagree with you in about half of things, but I have always had a positive view on you, otherwise I wouldn’t read and comment. So you would be wrong if you thought I’m your adversary or even enemy. I just like arguing just for the fun of it.
I actually thought you were 1/4 laz, so I was confused why you didn’t substitute georgian in for kebab. But does dagestani really count for kebab, since they themselves have high amounts of northern euro descent and distinct caucasian component from the middle eastern component? I mean, even on the 23 and me only part of that ancestry gets mapped to middle eastern.
I had been led to believe that White Europeans and East Asians were meant to have 2-5% Neanderthal ancestry. I had been led to believe that DNA tests could show this as well as Denisovan ancestry. If they can’t, then the tests aren’t very effective.
This is one reason I’m not going to take the test.
Also, AK is categorised as being 0.2% East Asian and <0.1% Oceanic ( Aborigine ? Ainu ? ). If they can't categorise his Neanderthal ancestry, how are they likely to be right on this ?
But as it always happened in the Soviet wonderland a great deal of scientists were Jews (surpirsing for a country with “state anti-Semitism”, heh). So I have had some justification for my suspicion. Though as I said a quarter of emigres must be indeed Russians. Most didn’t emigrate, though, even because of Yeltsin. So people mostly hear names like Brin or Geim, just to name few.
They have regular censuses (ревизии) since Peter I. I have an acquaintance who could have dug down as long ago as the end of the 17th century. And they weren’t nobility, just mere peasants. Though you won’t know much from those censuses, just names, age, family, and some other basic info.
Much of it, yes. Especially in the Western parts of the Balkans (Albanians are the most Illyrian), so probably Dalmatians, Herzegovinians, and Montenegrins. There’s definitely ME genetics there as well, though.
Since presumably very few Dagestanis get tested by 23andme, I’d assume it struggles to characterize them; hence, presumably, that component being split between “Balkan” 11% + MENA 8% + “Broadly South European” 6% = conveniently round 25%.
“Egghead Emigres.”
23andme isn’t just ancestry, it gives health reports as well (or did: The FDA decided peons couldn’t be trusted with it and told 23andme to stop doing it. Though as I recall that decision has recently been reversed).
Anyhow, the people who had 23andme done before that ruling kept their health reports, and I have to say their assessments are actually remarkably accurate and correlate to what we know of family medical history very well.
Thank you for clarifying your intentions. Realistically speaking, it is impossible for any minimally independent-minded person to find someone they agree with 100% or even close. The best we can do is triangulate.
The best we can do is triangulate.
I thought this was patented by the liberals. I was unaware of it being open source and available to the dark side.
(((they))) want ur genetic fingerprint for future use and u give to them for free? goood goy
What is triangulating in this context?
Virtually every day I look up some argot, especially initialisms, … I look up in this-and-that encyclopedia, & search engine, the Urban dictionary … and my sense is that there is an excess of jargon use. In the past few days, even an abnormally pedantic reader like me ended up puzzled 2-3 times.
There is no evidence that Serbs are “Turkish rape babies”. The Middle Eastern haplogroups present in the Balkans arrived there a very, very long time ago, with G2a showing up during the Neolithic, and the J1 and J2 variants showing up anywhere between the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age.
There was no mass settlement of Anatolian Turks anywhere near Serbia nor North or West of it. Small numbers were settled in today’s Greece and Bulgaria, but most self-identified Turks in the Balkans were simply locals who had converted, thus leaving legacy populations in today’s Macedonia and Bulgaria. Turks in Greece were sent to Turkey after WW1 if they hadn’t already left previously.
Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, and Ottoman occupied portions of today’s Croatia had no Turkish settlers as the Ottoman officials in these places were all converts from local populations. Many of these chose to move to other parts of the Ottoman Empire (all the way to Istanbul and Izmir/Smyrna in many cases) when these lands kicked the empire out.
How did a Muslim Lak, presumably female, marry into a Christian family before the revolution? Just curious.
AK: No, the Lak is my maternal grandfather. Much more recent than the Revolution.
I wonder how your 23andMe would compare with the averages of
(1) All citizens of Russia
(2) self-identified Ethnic Russians (I am quite certain you identify as an ethnic Russian)
The Eurogenes K15 test on Gedmatch is probably the best overall at pinpointing genetic ancestry. They have a Oracle program there that models your results as a mixture of many different populations. I think it’s especially good for mutts. Results look like this:
http://i.imgur.com/BC1ZYqc.jpg
You should also consider uploading your results to DNA Land. Their ancestry reports break down East European and Middle Eastern ancestry in a more detailed way than 23andMe.
Thanks! I’ll make a note to check this out.
Good reply.
But see, I just happen to know A LOT of Serbs with different cheekbones that I see in other Slavs, and these facial structures look a bit central Asian, so I assumed Turkish origin. You see, unlike other invasions in these parts, Turks were known for mass rapes and butchery while at war (although pretty civilized when finally in power). Let’s wait until we have huge studies, but I’m sure Serbs do have at some legacy of Turkish invasions (like SE Russians do of Tatar ones).
You look at someone like Novak Djokovich and you see the typical Illyrian body type and head. You look at Branislav Ivanovich, and you see the strong Slavic influence (plus a bit of the Balkan).
But while I know genetics does not always equal appearance, faces such as this Slovenian rapper of Serbian origin do look a bit Central Asian, don’t they?
I think a better or the real way to get a health report is to go to hospital. Moreover in Russia it’s (in theory) free and in the USA you must be covered.
I suppose the only thing they could do is to do simple checks for some genes which make you liable to some diseases.
What drives me off is their calculation. How is it possible to get percentage? Imagine I got a report stating 50% EE[urope], 25% SE, and 25% EA[sian]. What does it mean? I know for sure I’m 100% EE. If they suggest I’ve got some ancestors from NE, SE, or EA, they would be wrong as I know not only where my grandparents were from, but my great-grandparents as well. They weren’t for sure from Japan or the Balkans. That is I’m not even 1/8 other than EE. I’m not some American mongrel with a whole bouquet of ancestries from all around the world and who wants to know the exact “percentage”.
If they suggest my distant ancestors from a thousand or more years ago came from some distant land, so I would ask them how do they know what genes the people in particular regions had back then? And what is their database to draw such conclusions? Have their company made a thorough study of the full genomes of the world population and created a global genetic database? I doubt that anybody did that. They rather have only Y-hg. They check your Y-hg against the well-known world distributions and thus they got their strange numbers. Yes, if you have R1a, and R1a is 50%-60% in EE, 10% in SE and 1% in EA, so you’re most probably 50%-60% EE, 10% SE and 1% EA. How dumb simple.
Here we go:
“But see, I just happen to know A LOT of Serbs with different cheekbones that I see in other Slavs, and these facial structures look a bit central Asian, so I assumed Turkish origin. You see, unlike other invasions in these parts, Turks were known for mass rapes and butchery while at war (although pretty civilized when finally in power). Let’s wait until we have huge studies, but I’m sure Serbs do have at some legacy of Turkish invasions (like SE Russians do of Tatar ones).”
I’m a Croatian from Hercegovina and grew up around a lot of Serbs from various regions.
Your mistake is in your assumptions and resting on visual clues. I just found a study of 85 Serbs from Aleksandrovac which is in Central Serbia and serves as a good case study for Serbs in Serbia in general.
Check out the table at the bottom here – https://s6.postimg.org/rl0ehxpkx/aleksandrovac_003.png
The only haplogroup there that isn’t European is Q and is found at a frequency of 1.17% in Aleksandrovac in this study. The Serbian site Poreklo.rs has many, many more samples from Serbs from all over the ex-YU and the same frequencies largely hold. Q is also found on the island of Hvar in Croatia, a place where Turks never reached. Q is probably a legacy haplogroup from Avars or Pechenegs or in the Serbian case, Kumans from the Medieval era. There is a city in Northern Macedonia called Kumanovo (Place of the Cumans) where this tribe’s soldiers were settled by the Byzantines during the Medieval era. We won’t know the source of this Q until more corpses are exhumed and tested from that era.
The evidence so far in Turkey is that only certain parts of Central Anatolia have any genetic input from Central Asia. I think one of the regions has something like 14% of its haplogroups showing derived from the Central Asian Stans. The rest of Turkey largely being those groups that were there prior to the arrival of the Seljuks which is why today’s Turks cluster most closely with Armenians, Kurds, and Greeks and not with Uzbeks, Tajiks, or Kyrgyz.
Anatoly, Karlin is not an uncommon ethnic Russian surname, as you can see here: https://www.obd-memorial.ru/html/search.htm?f=%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD&n=&s=&y=&r=&p=1
The root of the name is the dialectal word “karla” – which is basically the same thing as karlik (someone who is very short, a dwarf, etc). Also, a “son of Karl” would be Karlov, not Karlin, though in fact most Russian Karlovs have nothing to do with any Karls and have essentially the same name root as Karlins – the word “karlo” (same thing as “karla”).
“the village Karlin near Pinsk” – err, what? Unless you know your ancestors were from around that area, wouldn’t it be more reasonable to look at places like Karlino, Tula oblast? Or the river Karlinka and adjacent settlement Karlinskoye in Ulyanovsk oblast?
Thanks man, excellent reply.
Good for you to be cool and not anti-Serb, being a Croat from Hercegovina. But you still didn’t give me your personal opinion regarding physical characteristics.
I’d like to see skull measurements, but if you say these features come from native Balkan people (I2a??), I have to believe you for now as evidence points to your claims being true.
Interestingly, almost all of the Serbs I know that have that appearance, are very bellicose, even more than other Balkan peoples, famous for not being fans of non-violence.
Ok, it makes sense. Still, your mother is technically Muslim and yet married a Christian . Were Muslim customs and laws totally overruled by Communism?
Can you be a bit more specific about “that appearance”? I am curious to know what appearance you have in mind. Were you referring to different cheekbnes, Central Asian? Or something else? Best if you could provide several known people (athletes, musicians, etc.) as examples.
Thanks for the detailed info. Now I feel like I want to send my sample to 23andme and figure out at least part of the family history, beyond about 250 years for which we have the records.
Despite the fact that you have never had anything even remotely positive to say about either of those groups?
I don’t know if there any any Jews left in Russia, but American Jews of Russian Jewish descent love to brag that they are “Russian”. My own mother is big on that. This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of pre WWI Russian Jews never set foot in Russia proper and by all accounts disliked Russians and Russian culture, although not as much as they disliked Ukrainians and Poles.
Secular American Jews get angry if you say they aren’t Russian, religious American Jews get angry if you say they are Russian.
I’ve never had any genetic testing done because I really just don’t want to know what I really am.
Hi, Mark.
I’m guessing about 10 percent Serbs I know personally here in Slovenia look a bit different than other Southern Slavs I know (which are many), but I can’t post any of their photos for obvious reasons. I only know about 10 famous Serbs, though, and the closest to what I had in mind would likely be the rapper from post. 39 in this thread…
Different, but still somehow more Serbian than say Croatian would be Vlade Divac – photo in the post No. 10 in this thread.
As I said, those could simply be elements of Balkan genetics that are very rare and didn’t spread towards NW parts of the Balkan… And quite possibly, these 2 might not look foreign in Macedonia or Bulgaria as those are the Balkan nationalities I know the least (numerically at least).
p.s. We sometimes joke about Balkan jaws here in Slovenia (well, not me really). Compared to Slovenes or Poles, Czechs etc, it does seem there’s some stronger chewing power there (Is sheep meat difficult to chew? 🙂
I understand and accept that Jewish economic success is primarily due to their superior average IQ, as opposed to ZOG or whatever. This along makes me far more philo-Semitic than most Russian (and European) nationalists, and even quite a few Leftists.
I don’t go on about Anglo-Zionists, like one columnist on this website. In general, I do not care for Israel (or Palestine) one way or the other.
I praised Russian-American Jews for supporting Trumps.
In my experience, Russian-American Jews (“Sovok Jews”) tend to be very anti-Russian; my impressions don’t sync with yours.
Are we talking about Soviet Jews or old stock American Jews of Russian Jewish decent? Secular American Jews of “Russian” (really Lithuanian, Latvian, Belarussian and Ukrainian) decent are usually moderately anti Russian while being proud of their (non-existent) Russian ancestry. Similar to how Haitians like to brag about their non-existant white blood despite the fact that they hate white people.
Religious American Jews, actually religious Jews period, tend to get offended whenever it is suggested they have any non Jewish descent.
Soviet Jews in the US are usually big time Russophiles so I don’t know what you are talking about there. Even in Israel you have some Russophilic Soviet Jews like Lieberman and Sharansky and their type used to be the norm before the Russian Jews assimilated into Israeli culture and adopted the traditional Jewish Russophobia.
Also, are you admitting that you have never said anything positive about Muslims?
You’re being very naive if you believe a superior IQ was enough, while dismissing quite banal facts of ethnic nepotism and entryism.
Jews of North African descent, whose measured IQs are closer to average, still enjoy disproportionate economic footprint and influence in France. On the other hand, you can find sub-groups with high measured IQs in the US, like Episcopalians, whose economic dominance or political primacy barely register.
Most Soviet Jews are anti-Russian. I’m not representative.
Historically most minorities assimilated into majority populations. How does a group become an exception to that rule, how does it stay coherent as a minority for many centuries? By disliking the majority. There are other examples: Gypsies, Armenians to some extent. I’m curious about the Hakka in China because they seem to have gone in some of the same directions as Jews, completely independently. It’s possible that any complex society would have that sort of a niche. Nature abhors a vacuum and tends to fill niches.
If you randomly take a thousand minority groups, some of them will be more ethno-nationalist than others. It’s the kind of trait for which you’d expect to see some natural variation.
I said primarily due to superior average IQ.
There also seems to be some kind of “Mediterranean factor” at play – apart from Jews, Greek Americans and Christian Arab Americans also have far more in the Forbes 400 than their demographics + IQ would indicate.
A few years ago I speculated that is because those areas have had a couple millennias’ worth more experience of urban life than Germanics, and are more adept at wheeling-dealing their way into riches.
When judging the exoticism of some individual from some other ethnic group, it’s helpful to ask somebody from said ethnic group. In this case, Divac might look unusual for a Serb to a foreigner, but perhaps not to another Serb.
Clannish people do well in business. In Europe, the South has remained more clannish, more similar to Semites in some ways. That’s probably the explanation for Greeks doing well.
Even in India, the most clannish trader castes are much richer than the national average. Although, every population with a long history of trading does usually well financially.
Of course, if you add Ashkenazi IQ and nepotism in the mix, it’s a win-win combination. Slavs or Germans don’t capitalize on their IQs too well (especially Slavs historically).
The opposite extreme from Jews would be Albanians and Chechens – strong clannishness, but combined with low IQs and sheep tending instead of trade – resulting in blood feuds and poverty.
Thanks for the examples.
To me, Divac’s face looks more Gypsy than anything else, although his size would be extremely unusual for a Gypsy, as they tend to be on a small side. I agree that his phenotype is unusual for Serbs.
Regarding the rapper, I can see why he looks Central Asian to you. Disregarding the beard, his combination of a long nose and small, shallow-set eyes makes him look Central Asian. Again, not a typical Serbian phenotype, in my experience.
From my observations of the Serbs and other West Balkan peoples, it’s relatively common to find people with big brows and deep-set eyes, which make some look more Neanderthal. That’s the one thing that, to my eyes, makes Serbs visibly different from Russians. Russians often have shallow eye sockets, to the point that some look like blond Chinese.
Also comparing Southern Slavs (Balkans) to the Northern Slavs (Czechs, Poles, etc.), to me the southerners’ faces seem more angular, while the northerners’ look softer and more rounded. Which would work in favor of northern women and of southern men. Just my opinion, though.
Here is my result – https://s6.postimg.org/71wbldww1/cap1.png
I tested around two years ago and will be doing a Y-67 at FTNDA soon to get a deeper read on my paternal line, which is J-M241 (aka J2B2*) which is Balkan as fuck and has its highest frequencies in Aroumanian (Cincar) people of Southern Albania and the Greek Pindus Mountains that form the border between Epirus and Thessaly, and among Albanians, particularly the Hoti Tribe of Montenegro along their border with Albania.
A friend of mine from my county in Hercegovina and who is from the same parish as I am (7 villages away), tested J-M241 as well and he did his Y-67. He and I aren’t related (unless we go back a good distance, is my gut feeling) and this clade isn’t all that common. What he found is that his most recent common ancestor with any Albanians who have this clade is well over 2,000 years old, and the closest Serb to him genetically (who coincidentally is from Glamoc, right next door to us, just on the other side of the mountain) shares a most common recent ancestor dating back 3,900 years.
I am working under the assumption that he and I will have a much, much closer date for the simple reason that is paternal line comes from further south in Hercegovina, just like my paternal line (who made a couple of stops in Dalmatia along the way).
“Good for you to be cool and not anti-Serb, being a Croat from Hercegovina. But you still didn’t give me your personal opinion regarding physical characteristics.”
There’s no point in being reflexively anti-Serb as the Serbian problem in Croatia no longer exists, except for a couple of shitheads on both sides seeking to keep themselves employed/in the public spotlight.
As for physical characteristics, the Balkans have seen so many people pass through here and settle here, so certain odd appearances do pop up. Recall also that significant waves of assimilation have happened here over and over and over again. The Principality of Serbia (and later Kingdom) during the mid-19th century passed a law declaring that anyone who lived in Serbia for at least 10 years was automatically declared a Serb and would have to adopt a Serbian name and surname. This had the effect of rapidly assimilating many minorities of the time, particularly Cincars/Aroumanians, Greeks, Armenians, Vlachs, Bulgars, and yes, gypsies. Any settlement from Asia Minor/Anatolia in that smaller part of Serbia was mainly up in Belgrade and consisted of Greek and Armenian merchants and traders.
I have an idea that Jewish success in all spheres including business comes down to three big factors: high intelligence, mania for achievement, and hyper-curiosity.
A new media craze. As I said all those percentages are money-making para- or pseudo-scientific fraud schemes, waste of your money. You cannot be “X% of somebody” unless you know it for sure for yourself (multiple-of-2 fractions like “3/4 borscht, 1/4 kebab” is OK by me, but you knew it long before any tests).
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