The Truth About Ethnic Identity in the Balkans: Debunking Nationalist Myths with Scientific Evidence

2024-03-04 10:52:14

A new study shows that ethnic groups in the Balkans share the same gene pool. But nationalists continue to spread the opposite theory to this day. The general population is still vulnerable to the dangerous propaganda.

The President of Croatia, Zoran Milanovic, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, and the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, are cut from the same cloth.

Montage NZZ on Sunday with material from Imago

Adam and Eve were Serbs. Or Croatians. Definitely Albanians, Bulgarians or Bosniaks. There is one question in which today’s nations in the Balkans do not differ: the belief prevails everywhere that they are the oldest people in southern Europe – each for their own, of course. The view that shared ethnic identity is based not only on culture, language or religion, but on biological ancestry is also widespread.

This ethno- or “genetic nationalism,” as it is also called, was one of the reasons why a bloody civil war broke out in the republics of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The mindset was: We were here first, we are worth more than the others, and we are completely different, so we can dominate and drive the others away. Or it is claimed that the others actually come from your own ethnic group and that this is the original people. This thinking is still widespread today.

Archaeogenetics clarify

The Serbian journalist and later Minister for Families and Demography, Ratko Dmitrovic, stated around 2018 that Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins all have the same origin: they are Serbian. «It is not difficult to admit the truth. It doesn’t hurt,” he tweeted. According to him, the other ethnic groups are actually Serbs who have just betrayed their Serbness.

Former Croatian Education Minister Dragan Primorac, a doctor and geneticist, believes that “more than three quarters of today’s Croatian men are descendants of ancient Europeans who lived in the last ice age 20,000 years ago in the territory of modern-day Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina survived».

The DNA institute from Houston, the most respected in the world, established that Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins have identical genes and that they are the oldest in Europe. They wonder HOW, where did it come from?
That’s why they ALL have the same origin, SERBIA. There is nothing new there.
IT IS NOT DIFFICULT TO ADMIT THE TRUTH. It doesn’t hurt.

— Ratko Dmitrović (@RatkoDmitrović) October 30, 2018

Such talk is scientific nonsense. This is also proven by a new study from Harvard. “If you gave me DNA from a person and I had to tell you whether that person was Croat or Serb, it would be extremely difficult. Croats, Serbs and others are cultural terms, but they do not reflect very old differentiation in their demographic-genetic history,” says archaeogeneticist Iñigo Olalde, one of the authors of the study “A genetic history of the Balkans from the Roman border to Slavic migration », which was published in December. It deals with the cosmopolitan history of Southeastern Europe and the migration flows in the first millennium of our era.

The study evaluated DNA data from 146 skeletons of people who lived in the first millennium AD and were excavated from 20 different locations in the Balkans – Croatia, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Albania.

The results are illuminating: firstly, the gene pool of all of these individuals is similar and, secondly, almost identical to the gene pool of today’s Southeast Europeans. “Regardless of modern national borders, the populations in our study area were shaped by similar migration and change processes,” says Olalde. This suggests that important demographic events that contributed to the formation of today’s groups occurred as early as 1000 AD.

Migration flows can also be traced via DNA. Between 250 and 550 AD, people came to southeastern Europe from central and northern Europe and from the Pontic Steppe (this area from northern parts of the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, stretching from modern-day Bulgaria to Kazakhstan). After the end of Roman rule, between the 6th century and the 10th century, an increasing number of Slavic-speaking migrants came from northeastern Europe. According to the study, their DNA can now be found in 30 to 60 percent of the population in the Balkans.

These migrants did not replace the people who lived in the region during the Bronze or Iron Ages, but rather mixed with them. The genetic makeup of these Iron Age and Bronze Age people can be found at around 22 percent, and that of the Western Anatolian ancestors at 23 percent, in today’s population, says Olalde in an interview with “NZZ am Sonntag”.

The question is whether the study will also find its way into the consciousness of the general public in the Balkans. Because here some “scientists” contribute to nationalist and racist historiography. In Croatia these were the theories of Franjo Racki. He claimed that “the Croats” arrived in a “partially empty house” during the migration, so they did not mix, and that the current population is directly descended from the Slavic-speaking immigrants.

The head of the Center for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, Florian Bieber, says that a critical view of the ethnic groups is not widespread. “Rather, sanitized historical narratives prevail that neglect mixtures and connections,” says Bieber.

There are now also research results from genetics that show that, in a genetic-biological sense, these ethnic groups do not even exist in the Balkans. In recent years, archaeogenetics have been able to use diamond cutters to sequence genetic material that is sometimes thousands of years old from the teeth and jaws of skeletons and to document migration flows into the Balkans that affected the gene pool. Nevertheless, the idea of ​​homogeneous ethnic groups is widespread, especially in the young nation states in Southeastern Europe.

Genetics for propaganda purposes

The radical right-wing Bosnian Serb politician Biljana Plavsic, former vice president of the pseudo-republic Republika Srpska, declared around 1993 that she and other Serb nationalists were unable to negotiate with Muslims for genetic reasons. “It was genetically deformed material that embraced Islam. And now, of course, it becomes more concentrated with each successive generation. It’s getting worse and worse. “Over the centuries, the genes continued to deteriorate,” says the biologist. The Bosnian Serbs were ethnically and racially superior to the Bosnian Muslims, she believed.

Archaeologist Mario Gavranovic from the Austrian Academy of Sciences warns once morest pseudo-scientific theory of origins for propaganda purposes and points out that this racist ideology is still being spread today.

For example, the Serbian association “Origin” collects DNA samples to track down “Serbian heritage”. People from “Origin” claim that “the Serbs” are certainly not mixed with “Turkish blood”. A Montenegrin club with the same name claims that “the Serbs” have completely different genes than the Albanians.

In recent years, commercial DNA testing has become increasingly popular. It is often suggested that one can discover ethnic origins with a simple DNA test. So people are led to believe that by sending in their saliva sample they are determining their “ethnicity” and that ethnicity is based on ancestry and not cultural affiliation. This is particularly dangerous in the Balkans, says Southeastern Europe historian Bieber. Because the pseudoscientific DNA tests postulate a continuity of an allegedly “old nation”.

One of the widespread ideas is that the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks descended directly from immigrant “Slavs” from northeastern Europe in one line and without mixing with others. Some Albanians believe that they are direct descendants of the Illyrians, some Greeks believe that they are descended from ancient Greeks. A bubbling broth of superstition, racism and supremacy thinking.

“There is no genetic basis for differences between ethnic groups,” emphasizes Naris Pojskic from the Institute of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Sarajevo, a calm man who says that at the end of the 19th century the Austrian Augustin Weisbach tried to find out with “head measurements”. whether there is a difference between Orthodox, Catholic or Muslim Bosnians. Weisbach found none.

«We all belong to the same gene pool. “We always knew deep down that there was no difference,” says Pojskic. Right-wing ideologues who nevertheless claim that the groups are biologically different ignore DNA research, he says.

A biopolitical understanding of a “national body” led to genocide and expulsions in Central Europe under the Nazis. In the Balkans, these racist theories include a blood-and-soil ideology, such as that represented by the right-wing radical Bosnian Serb politician Milorad Dodik. He always emphasizes that this is “Serbian land” where Serbs have always lived. Dodik wants to destroy the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina and create a Greater Serbia.

In fact, there are three major religious groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina: people of Orthodox, Catholic and Islamic faith. But unlike in other European countries, these religious members are referred to as “ethnic groups” and even “peoples” due to rampant nationalism.

Bieber thinks that results from archaeogenetic studies might be a good counterargument to “simple nationalist narratives” because they reveal that people differ less than they often believe.

Liberation from the narrowness of ethnic group thinking would require a process of social enlightenment. If one can think that the decision of whether and to which ethnic group one wants to belong is something personal and private – just like belief in a religion – then right-wing ideologues would no longer be able to turn people once morest each other.

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