In terms of their genetic make-up, are Assyrian people more closely resembling Greeks than they are Arabs?
In terms of their genetic make-up, are Assyrian people more closely resembling Greeks than they are Arabs?
Firstly, when you say Arab, that is an extremely genetically diverse classification because the affiliation with the Arab identity came through linguistic acquisition, not through the movement of individuals from one place to another. Arabs from Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Lebanon are as related to one another genetically as Scandinavians, Slavs, and Frenchmen.
Assyrians are rather related genetically to Arabs in Syria and in Iraq because the majority of those Arabs are actually Assyrians who have actually been culturally and religiously converted to becoming Arabs.
Check this Principal Components Analysis genes plot:
You’ll see the closest modern-day populations to Assyrians are Mandaeans, Eastern Mizrahi Jews, Northern Iraqi Arabs, and Armenians. You can see some overlap between Assyrians and Iraqi Arabs. The resemblances between Armenians and Assyrians has come through low-level intermarriage and comparable location origins (eastern Anatolia for Armenians and far north Iraq for Assyrians).
There is very little genetic cross-over, relatively speaking, between Assyrians and Greeks or Assyrians and Arabs from outside of Mesopotamia.