POLITICS-BALKANS: Croat Minister Makes a 22,000-Year-old Case

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Oct 4 2004 (IPS) - A dubious joint venture between science and politics has resumed with new claims that Croats are the oldest people in the Balkans.

Croatian Health Minister Dragan Primorac says new DNA research proves that Croats are among the oldest nations in Europe, together with Germans and some Nordic nations.

Primorac made the announcement amidst expectations that he will be the presidential candidate of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party later this year. HDZ and its late leader Franjo Tudjman led the country into the war of independence from former Yugoslavia in 1991.

That campaign was fought on the back of Croat nationalistic sentiments. Tudjman died in 1999 and the country has since been led by pro-democracy president Stjepan Mesic. He could now face a challenge from Primorac, considered the most serious HDZ candidate. A revived Croat nationalism can be good for HDZ.

Primorac has not officially announced his candidacy yet. “It is not necessary to speculate about names,” he told journalists. “Until the official confirmation, it is only a guessing game.”

Primorac said the research indicated the presence of a strong ‘I’ DNA marker among Croats. “Croats should not be traditionally classified among Slav nations because besides Croats, such a high percent of the marker exists only among the Germans and Lapps.” Lapps was a reference to the indigenous Sami people living in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia.

“We studied some 250-260 blood samples of Croat men, targeting the research on the specific group of genetic markers within the DNA that date 22,000 years back into human history,” Primorac told media in Belgrade. The research produced a “clear genetic particularity of Croats.” Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a substance present in living organisms that carries genetic information stored within chromosomes, a thread-like structure of nucleic acids and protein.

Primorac said the “research is not aimed at any other than scientific purposes,” knowing that such claims were the stuff of the propaganda machinery through the wars of the 1990s.

Tudjman often claimed that Croats are the oldest nation in the Balkans. Serbian propaganda machinery hit back with studies that tried to prove that Serbs were the region’s oldest nation.

“Croatia began its war for independence (in 1991) with the propaganda that its people differ from the rest of former Yugoslavia,” human rights activist Zarko Puhovski told IPS from the Croatian capital Zagreb. “It was something many Croats would like to forget, but are now being reminded of.”

Under Tudjman dozens of books were written claiming German or Iranian origin for Croats. The Institute for Studies of Origin of Croats based in Zagreb concentrated its research on the Iranian thesis.

The wars that broke former Yugoslavia spread from Croatia into Bosnia-Herzegovina and took the lives of more than 250,000 people – Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. They all speak a variation of the same language. For decades they were considered to be of the same Slav origin. History books said they all originated from tribes that settled in the area in the 7th century.

Primorac said “similar languages shared by people do not mean that they share a common background and origin.”

Primorac’s claims were immediately challenged. “The latest research did show some differences, but to claim that such differences have ethnic or regional background, there must be more research,” Damir Marjanovic, a genetics scientist in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo told IPS.

Nikola Tucic who teaches the genetics of evolution at Belgrade University told IPS that “the method of establishing the origin of a nation is extremely complicated and highly unlikely to be related to a single marker.”

Tucic says that “determining the origins and age of a nation cannot be easy in the Balkans at all. The area can be considered a recycle bin in genetic terms due to its turbulent history and the hordes of different armies that have crossed it since time immemorial.”