JerseyPerson14

Are the inhabitants of north africa, the levant, iraq, etc arabic in ethnicity? Or are they berber, egyptian, phoenician, and babylonian? Meaning are they descended mostly from the ancient inhabitants or the arab invaders.

heikstheo

I'm sure there's been considerable intermixing over the centuries?

Eyza

JerseyPerson and all:

The entire Middle East, however you define this geographical area, has been a crossroads of various cultures and civilizations for --- well, ever since the earliest Homo erectuses wandered out of Africa! That was nearly 2 million years ago. Basically, people of various kinds have been wondering in and out of the Middle east ever since. Most people in North Africa speak some version of Arabic, as they do in other parts of the Middle East, but, particularly in Algeria and Morocco, there are a lot of Berber-speakers as well, and though considerably mixed, they have some culturally distinct features(or so I understand). And even in areas where everybody, more or less, speaks Arabic, there are other cultures and people there. Iraq, for example, has Kurds, who can speak Arabic to communicate with Arabic speakers, but Kurdish is more closely related to Persian(an Indo-European language), and the Kurds consider themselves culturally distinct. One can go on and on, but I think you folks probably get the point here.
Anne G

Belisarius

The bulk of the native populations at the time remain the same today ethnically. The only real difference is a change in religion, some customs\laws, and an increased use of Arabic. The same could have been said about the Roman Empire of the past.

Eyza

Belisarius:

Well, yes and no. As the Arab empire spread, so did the Arabs. The present-day Egyptian population, for instance, has cultural roots that go back to Pharaonic times, and Egyptians are very proud of these connections. But "genetically", most Egyptians are either "mostly Arab", or "mostly Arab and African" in the south(the Nubians). Things are similar in Iraq, although there are any number of "ethnic groups" there. It is true, however, that the common "glue" for many of these peoples is the Arabic language, and (mostly) Muslim religion.
Anne G

Belisarius

Fair comment, but you can say the same for Turkish influence in the same areas due to centuries of Ottoman rule.

JerseyPerson14

Then what happened to all the descendants of the ancient egyptians? Did the arabs kill them off?

Belisarius

No. They are still there. What may answer your question [although nothing to do with the middle east, it covers a similar theme] is a BBC programme called Blood of the Vikings, if you can get hold of a DVD or it crops up on an American TV channel. British scientists carried out a DNA survey throughout Northern GB to determine that happened to the native population of Celts and Saxons when the Vikings took over the northern half of Britain. The results were surprising. I've left the address for the article about the series below which goes into more detail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1689955.stm

Eyza

Belisarius:

Well, there are Coptic Christians in Egypt, who claim to be descendants of ancient Egyptions. I don't know if any DNA studies have ever been done on them to determine whether they are "still there", or they might be something else. Blood of the Vikings may address a somewhat different issue, in a way. Because, from the historical records, we know that the "Danes" or whatever these invaders called themselvs, left their calling cards, in various ways, but they sure didn't wipe out the local population. They needed that population for various things, among other things.
Anne G

PADDYBOY

What was interesting about, Blood of the Vikings, was (If accurate) it showed that many people are not quite, from the racial group, they thought they were ?The southern English, are more Celtic than had been originaly thought and the Scots had more Germanic blood in their veins, than had been originaly thought.