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Originally Posted by freddie
On that point... I always wondered something. Aren't Persians today genetically much closer to Arabs than to Indo-european tribes? Inevitable mixing HAD to happen during the centuries. Or maybe they're a mix of the two.
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This is a very sensitive topic in Iran, officially Iranians consider themselves as of pure Indo-European descent, the country was renamed from Persia to Iran precisely to assert their Aryan origin. I doubt any Iranian government as ever allowed any genetic research to determine exactly the part of Indo-European heritage in modern Iranians.
That being said, modern Iranians are probably like modern Europeans, a mix-up of Indo-European tribes who came from the Indo-European homeland and prehistorical indigenous populations, the Semite influence seems relatively marginal to me as modern Iranians are physically rather close to Indians and don't exhibit the typical Semite facial traits.