How to break down MENA ?

[PaleoEuropean]

TIL Armenia and Georgia are Iranian countries.

Also Geographically they are the same area

[WeirdLookingFellow]

Lebanon + Algeria + Morocco - North Africa

Egypt - N.A + M.E

Saudi Arabia + Yemen + Jordan + Iraq = M.E.

Turkey = Europe + West Asia + M.E.

Iran + Azerbaijan = Iranic + West Asia + Central Asia

Caucus is a place for itself

Pakistan is just M.E. + India + Central Asia IMO.

In total MENA is only the North African Med coast + Arabian peninsula. Maybe Iran as well.

[Nassbean]

They are mixed, lots of different people settled NA before and after the Islamic Conquest.

no middle easterners are way more mixed than north africans for example :

"No genetic differentiation has been observed between all Algerian Berbers discarding any geographical or ethnic effect. Comparative analyses based on Fst genetic distance did not show significant affinities between North Africans and either South Europeans and Middle Easterners except genetic proximity between Algerians and Iberians. The amount of genetic diversity among Algerians and North African populations detected by the distance to the centroid model was significant compared with other North Mediterranean populations.
CONCLUSION:A strong genetic homogeneity has been found between Algerian Berbers. Global genetic diversity based on Alu markers is following the isolation by distance model except for some European populations"

Don't take some extreme cases as average for north africans. Berbers are probably one of the most homogeneous group in the whole mediterranean area

[Jana]

Is Libya closer to Egypt than to rest of Maghreb ?

[Tigranes]

Not in recent history but their native populations have common ancient origins. They are more Caucasian but they are noticeably both less slavic, Asiatic or WHG.

No we don't have common ancient origins with Iranians, the present-day Armenians are an amalgam of the Indo-European groups with the Hurrians and Urartians.

[Nassbean]

Is Libya closer to Egypt than to rest of Maghreb ?

it depends western libya ( the coastal part and region around the djebel nefussa) are genetically more berber than anything else but suprisingly eastern libya is mainly arabic ( there was a real replacement there) but so yes i suppose eastern libyans are closer to egyptians than western libyans and maghrebis

[Mingle]

Arabia
Levant
Caucasus
Iran
Anatolia
Mesoptamia
Egypt
Maghreb/Tamazgha

The Maghreb should probably be divided further into a coastal and desert zone as well as probably a few more geographic zones to maintain consistency with the large number of divisions in West Asia but nobody ever divides it (including Maghrebis) and all Maghrebis have a uniting characteristic (Arabized Amazighs/Amazighs), so I just left it as one region.

Most of the Armenian population historically lived in modern day Turkey and their most important sites are there (Mount Ararat) so it should probably be grouped with another region like Anatolia or its own region but recently it's been more closely tied to the Caucasus and they lost most of their western territories so it's probably better to include them with the Caucasus nowadays in the regions listed above.

[Kivan]

Arab World + Indo-Iranians + North-Africa.


If people include Turkey in it, i don't see reason to not include Cyprus and Caucasus as well since they are geographically more close to Levant and Iran respectively, than most of territory of Turkey:

[Cristiano viejo]

All the same for me (Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, Turks, Jordanians, Iranians, Irakis, Afghans, Pakis).
Probably Israelis are in that bag too.

[21993]

- Caucasus
- Anatolia
- Levant
- Iran
- Iraq
- Arabian peninsula
- Egypt
- Maghreb