Antonio Arnaiz-Villena facts for kids

Antonio Arnaiz-Villena is a Spanish immunologist. He is known for his studies on the genetic history of different groups of people. He also has some ideas about ancient languages that are not widely accepted by other experts.

About Antonio Arnaiz-Villena

Antonio Arnaiz-Villena was the president of Spain's National Society of Immunology from 1991 to 1995. He has written over 300 scientific papers. These papers cover topics like immunology and the genetics of human and bird populations.

He used to lead the Department of Microbiology I (Immunology) at the Complutense University of Madrid. Today, he is the chairman and a full professor in the same department.

He has been invited to give important talks at famous places. In 2010, he spoke at The French Academy of Sciences. In 2011, he gave a lecture at The Royal Society in London. In 2014, Queen Sofía of Spain gave him and four other people an award. This award celebrated 35 years of the Law on Transplantations in Spain.

His Research on People's History

Arnaiz-Villena has done research on the genetic history of different groups of people. Some of his findings have caused a lot of discussion among scientists.

Studies on Jews and Palestinians

In 2001, Arnaiz-Villena published a paper about the genetic history of Jews and Palestinians. This paper suggested that Israeli Jews and Palestinians have strong genetic links. This idea caused a lot of debate. Some people felt the article had political messages. Because of many complaints, the scientific journal that published it took the article back. They even asked people who had copies to remove the pages. The journal's editor said the comments in the article were "extreme political writing." Arnaiz-Villena disagreed with this description. After this, he was removed from the journal's editorial board.

Some other scientists did not agree with the journal's decision. They said the article was not removed because of its science. They felt it was wrong to take back a scientific paper this way. One scientist said that if the paper had shown Jewish people were "very special" genetically, there would have been no complaints.

Ideas About Greeks and Sub-Saharans

Arnaiz-Villena and his team published several articles. In these, they claimed that the Greek population came from Sub-Saharan Africa. They suggested that many Sub-Saharans moved to Greece during Minoan times. This was before Classical and Mycenaean Greece. These ideas were part of a bigger discussion called the "Black Athena" debate.

Other scientists have disagreed strongly with Arnaiz-Villena's findings. For example, a big study in 1994 grouped Greeks with other European and Mediterranean people. Another study in 2003 also showed Greeks grouped with other European populations. A 2004 study, using a similar method to Arnaiz-Villena's, found no African genes in the Greek samples.

Many studies show that very few genes from Sub-Saharan Africa are found in the Greek population. This is similar to other parts of Europe. Only one study found a tiny amount (0.3%) of a specific African gene in a large group of Greeks.

Experts like Jobling and Karatzios have said that Arnaiz-Villena's ideas about Greeks and Sub-Saharans are based on wrong ways of doing research. They say his methods are not good for studying how populations are related.

Three well-known geneticists, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Alberto Piazza, and Neil Risch, also criticized Arnaiz-Villena's methods. They said that using only one genetic marker to figure out family trees of populations is not reliable. They pointed out that his results, like Greeks being very similar to Ethiopians but far from other Europeans, go against history, geography, and all other genetic studies. Arnaiz-Villena responded by saying that using single markers is common in his field.

More recently, a 2017 study looked at ancient DNA from Minoans and Mycenaeans. This study found no clear genetic influence from the Middle East or Africa in these ancient Greek groups. This finding goes against the ideas that Arnaiz-Villena tried to support.

Research on Meso-Americans

Arnaiz-Villena also wrote a paper about the origins of people in Mesoamerican areas. This paper suggested that the first people in the Americas came from many different groups. It said that the way people first settled the Americas was likely more complicated than previously thought.

Studies on Ethnic Macedonians

Arnaiz-Villena and his team published articles claiming that ethnic Macedonians are closely related to Mediterraneans. They suggested that ethnic Macedonians are most genetically similar to Cretan Greeks, but not to other Greeks.

Unusual Ideas About Languages

Arnaiz-Villena and Jorge Alonso-Garcia have made very unusual claims about ancient languages. They say they have used the Basque language to understand many ancient languages from the Mediterranean and Middle East. These languages include Egyptian, Hittite, Sumerian, and Phoenician. Most experts agree these languages are not related to Basque.

Arnaiz-Villena and Alonso-Garcia claim that other linguists have misunderstood and mistranslated these languages for a long time. They even say that Champollion, who famously deciphered the Rosseta Stone, was wrong about the name of Ptolemy. They believe their own Basque translations are correct. For example, they claim the Code of Hammurabi is not a set of laws but a Basque funeral text.

They also claim to be able to read languages that no one else has been able to fully understand, like Etruscan and Minoan. They believe these languages are all part of a "Usko-Mediterranean" group, which they link to a larger, speculative language family called Dené–Caucasian. They even include the Berber languages from North Africa in this group.

However, these ideas go against what many generations of linguists have learned. For example, Phoenician and Akkadian are clearly Semitic languages. Egyptian and Berber are known to be Afro-Asiatic. Experts have not found any connection between Basque and these language families. Also, Hittite is very important for understanding Proto-Indo-European, which Arnaiz-Villena agrees is not related to Basque.

Other experts have strongly criticized their work. Javier de Hoz said their work "lacks the slightest value" and goes against scientific methods and common sense. He called it a "disaster." He was also surprised that a respected university publisher would release their books. Another expert, Pichler, called their "decipherment" of some ancient writings "comic." He pointed out that some of the Basque words they used in their translations are actually modern words or words borrowed from other languages. This means they cannot be used to understand ancient connections.

See also

In Spanish: Antonio Arnaiz Villena para niños