User talk:DrunkenSquirrel

Welcome to the Order, DrunkenSquirrel!

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RE:Levantine Brotherhood page

DrunkenSquirrel, thank you for consulting me about the reverts. The reason why I could not explain my reasoning is because one can only undo the immediate edit not those before it unless you are an administrator with rollback which is what I used. However, rolling back does not allow an edit summary to provide an explanation.

As for why I reverted it, pardon me for not seeing that the original version was much more atrocious. However, your edit while much better, was still incorrect writing. In particular, you made abundant use of parenthesis as appositives and the like which is very unprofessional. Parentheses for additional clauses in a sentence should only be used in the utmost rarest of occasions, and I cannot even name one off the top of my head at this point. In those examples, a simple comma or an em dash (i.e. —) would've worked perfectly. Aside from this, there were other errors to your edits: 'native' and 'non-native' are vague terms especially in regards to a region whose population has long seen substantial admixing and was a hotspot for migration, and while we may be tempted to assume Altaïr is Arab just because he's Middle Eastern and spoke Arabic, we should be cautious about generalizing all northern Levantine people as Arab. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:11, June 23, 2018 (UTC)

I hope I am not being too blunt as I am really grateful that you corrected my reversion since I had indeed missed that your edit was an improvement. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:17, June 23, 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. I used parentheses in my edits because I don't know how to implement a long dash, and I wanted to avoid run on sentences. As for the terms "native" and "non-native", what I really had in mind was "indigenous" and "non-indigenous". For whatever it's worth, I am an ethnic Levantine myself and I specialize in the region's history. The Levant has been colonized many times over by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs (who are still the ruling majority in most Levantine countries), Crusaders, Ottomans, French, and British, and nearly all of the Levantine Assassins shown belong to one or more of those groups. Phoenicians are scarcely mentioned in AC lore, and most of its Jewish characters (sans figures like Jesus, Herod, and Moses, who were either aligned with the Templars or unaffiliated) are shown living in the Diaspora. That's why I feel the need to clarify. Should I put in "indigenous" and "non-indigenous" instead? Let me know, please.DrunkenSquirrel (talk) 08:56, June 23, 2018 (UTC)

It's really cool that you are from the Levant yourself. May I ask which country or what is your heritage? Lebanese? Assyrian? Israeli?

Actually, my point about "native" vs. "non-native" would have applied to "indigenous" and "non-indigenous" as well. The reason is because by the 12th century in the Levant, the population would have seen significant admixture from the Persians moving west, the Arabs moving north, the Hebrews scattered all about, the Phoenicians, the Turks which controlled much of the Middle East, the Byzantine Greeks moving east, and Armenians moving south. The novel Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade specifically describes the Saracen army consisting of Armenians, Nubians, Arabs, Assyrians, Turks, etc. which indicates the multi-ethnic nature of the region by this point. Who then is indigenous and who isn't? I do trust that you have a better idea of this.

Side-note, would you consider the Lebanese to be the descendants of the Phoenicians? I have read that genetic tests show that they largely are and that some Lebanese do follow-up on that claim by calling the Phoenicians their ancestors. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 18:20, June 23, 2018 (UTC)

My Levantine ancestry consists of Samaritan, Ashkenazi Jewish, and Assyrian, whereas my non-Levantine ancestors are Mexican and Ojibwe. I'm usually mistaken for Filipino. 

Anthropologists define indigenous status as tribal identity in conjunction with a traditional homeland, and recognition by that tribe as a member. Other factors include root culture, language, religion, blood quantum, and so on. Martinez-Cobo is the guideline most scholars and activists use, although there are some problematic clauses within it. Specifically, there are two pieces of criteria that not only require indigenous peoples to remain non-dominant on their ancestral territories, but also maintain a continuous, unbroken presence there. That poses significant problems for indigenous peoples who have undergone genocide or prolonged dispossession, if not both. 

Jews, Samaritans, Druze, Cypriots, Lebanese Arabs (especially the Christians), North Africans, and Italians (mostly southern Italians) all have significant quantities of Phoenician blood, but the Phoenicians themselves went extinct by the end of the 1st millennium BCE. The Jews and Samaritans are both Israelite populations, i.e. southern Canaanites who are closely related to the Phoenicians and intermarried with them often. Phoenicians also settled and colonized vast swathes of the Mediterranean, especially Carthage (present day Tunisia) and southern Italy. Arabs absorbed the remaining Phoenicians after they conquered the Levant in the Middle Ages.

I hope that makes sense.DrunkenSquirrel (talk) 06:31, June 24, 2018 (UTC)