Historical truth on the ancient Macedonians

If you stumble on Slavic Macedonist generated propaganda you might have come across some results generated by iGENEA over a decade ago. What the slav pseudo-Macedonians from North Macedonia (former FYROM) claim with this is that they are direct descendants of ancient Macedonians.

These particular DNA results were that North Macedonia (FYROM) population consisted of:

• 30% antic Macedonians
• 20% Teutons
• 15% Slavs
• 15% Hellenic people
• 10% Illyrian
• 5% Hunnian
• 5% Phoenician

If one looks carefully, one would get a good laugh, especially when looking at the second bullet: 20% Teuton!! But laughs aside, pseudo-Macedonians from North Macedonia (FYROM) have been using this information to claim their descendence from the ancient Macedonians, even though this Company is more of a private ‘marketing’ company rather than a reputable research institute that publishes peer reviewed papers. But anyway, let us make a few points:

1. iGENEA refers to antic Macedonia, not ancient. What does this mean? iGENEA did NOT claim that the modern Slavic inhabitants of North Macedonia (former FYROM) were related to the ancient Greek tribe of Macedonians of Alexander the Great from northern Greece. The company merely found ancient genetic markers (more likely “Paeonian”) in the geographic region of North Macedonia (FYROM), which they named “antic Macedonian”, only because the country calls itself “Macedonia” and iGENEA considered it to be politically correct to make use of the constitutional name of the country!!
2. The Company admitted their mistake and decided to remove data about North Macedonia (FYROM) from their website. They also said the following on their website:
   

   “Many nations [FYROMians] keep names [“Macedonia”] that do not totally fit their ethnic composition”. Roman C. Scholz, iGENEA.
   “Data has been removed because it is not useful for genetic genealogy”
   “Today’s ‘Macedonians’ [FYROMians] are a political folk, NOT genetic.” Inma Pazos, iGENEA, 26.06.2008

3. In 2008, iGENEA won the newly instituted Anthropology Blog award for Outstanding Achievement in Misleading the Public about Human Population Genetics. There was a copious amount of misleading information provided on their website (as of Oct 16, 2008). iGENEA’s studies showed that there is no haplogroup N in Finland, that there’s 30% R1b in Russia, 5% of haplogroup J in Armenia, but 10% in Germany. People were also pleased to know that Y-chromosome haplogroup J is associated with the Jews and mtDNA haplogroup H with the Vikings. But, wait, haplogroup I1a is associated with the Scythians (absent in most of Siberia and Central Asia, but who cares about details), while mtDNA haplogroup H with the Teutons. Also, the company not only asserted that Y-chromosomes of ancient Greeks and Macedonians have been tested (it arbitrarily considers them to be distinct peoples beforehand), pointing to completely irrelevant bibliography as “evidence”, but also lists the percentages of various ancient tribes in modern nations. Apparently, Bulgarians are 49% Thracian, while Albanians 18%, whereas Greeks and “Macedonians” 0%. Those Thracians must have evacuated from Greek Thrace and flown over Macedonia to settle in Albania … If one has any understanding of population genetics, no more needs to be said. But, if one is a newbie researching the field, one should spend some time to educate oneself, and don’t trust companies that offer the sky. If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t. [source: dienekes.blogspot.com]
4. “I have rarely seen such a pack of bullshit about Y-DNA as on iGENEA ‘s website (DNATribes isn’t recommendable either). I am not talking about … their assumptions about ethnicities based on haplogroups. People tested with iGENEA get their results that say something ‘You are R1b, therefore your ancestors were Anglo-Saxon’, or ‘You are J2, your ancestors can be traced back to ancient Phoenicia’. It’s like they do not understand the most basic aspects of population migration and history. I remember that DNA Tribes claimed that the Celts originated in Ireland and colonised Europe from there ! When the level of knowledge is so low (primary school level?) it makes you wonder how these companies arenot bankrupt yet. What is strange is that iGENEA is owned by FTDNA, and FTDNA never makes such weird assumptions on their website.” (Maciamo, geneticist at Eupedia) [source: www.scribd.com]

Now besides iGENEA, there is a six-year long DNA research of the Balkan peoples conducted by Skopje Forensics Medicine Institute which has showed that  residents of NOrth Macedonia (FYROM) have “the most similar DNA with Bulgarians and Serbs, …” according to the Forensics Medicine Institute’s Dr Zlatko Jakovski. [source: dnaconsultants.com]

This research has been published in the leading world forensics magazines. Jakovski pointed out that the research represented a very useful scientific work and that it had nothing to do with daily politics.

So there you have it, from their own Institute, not influenced by the Slavic Macedonist propaganda and politics: North Macedonia (former FYROM) residents’ DNA is most similar with that of Bulgarians and Serbs, i.e. no descendance from ancient Macedonians.