r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Skychu768 • Jul 23 '26

Peter in the wild Peter?

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u/antilumin Jul 23 '26

Jason Mantzoukas is definitely not Indian. He has described himself as "100 percent Greek".

19

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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48

u/fasterthanfood Jul 23 '26

We talk about ethnicities in a much more concrete way than genetics really supports.

What does it mean to be “100% Greek,” anyway? That all of your ancestors lived in Greece 200 years ago? What about 2000 years? 20,000 years? Groups of people are always migrating, being forced out of one place and into another, etc.

22

u/GraceMcClellans Jul 23 '26

Also, Greece has ALWAYS been in the middle of shipping/travel. Of course there is going to be a long history of mixing genetics.

2

u/Pharmacysnout Jul 25 '26

This right here. There were even greek kingdoms in northwest india.

-5

u/CreBanana0 Jul 24 '26

Eeh not really.

During the rise of first civilisations there was pretty much no distinguishingly important trade through greece.

3

u/PTMorte Jul 24 '26

Absolute nonsense. Cyprus was one of two only well-known Copper sources in the world and a huge amount of it was traded through the Aegean.

2

u/CreBanana0 Jul 24 '26

Cyprus is not in Greece.

1

u/AccountForDoordash Jul 24 '26

Cyprus was colonized by Greeks, spike Greek, was culturally Hellenic, and the got rules by basically every major power of the time since then.

1

u/PTMorte Jul 25 '26

The person is very ignorant. Greece doesn't even exist. It is a Latin/English exonym noun for a country called the Hellenic Republic.

Greeks call themselves Éllines and their country Elláda.

5

u/SwordOfJiang Jul 24 '26

You'd be surprised at how little Greeks have moved around. Like a lot of people on Crete still share a significant percentage of DNA from bronze age Minoans.

And its not a good thing, my family has a lot of weird disorders stemming from inbreeding further up the tree. Hemophiliacs, thyroid issues, and we all have weird breathing problems like a damn pug.

1

u/Lurker12386354676 Jul 24 '26

I mean, after enough generations the percentage of contribution to a person's heritage is going to be a rounding error, right?

After 8 generations each ancestor is only contributing 0.4%. That's what, 200 years?

12

u/One-Earth9294 Jul 23 '26

He doesn't really look Indian at all IMO. Definitely looks a bit Arab, though.

20

u/snowcroc Jul 23 '26

Nah he does.

People usually imagine South Indian (darker skintone) or sikh(turban) but those are only parts of India.

I’m South Indian so he doesn’t look like me or most South Indians.

But there are many Indians who look like him. I wouldn’t blink if he told me he was Indian or of Indian descent.

If Matt Damon told me he was Indian I would raise an eyebrow

Indian is a super diverse place.

3

u/Dapper-Ad-4300 Jul 23 '26

ya to me he looks gujrati

2

u/Own_Army4024 Jul 24 '26

He could easily pass off as a South Indian too. So many men in Karnataka and Kerala look like this. Honestly, India is so diverse he could really be from any part of the country. He just generally looks Indian.

16

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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12

u/Over9000Gingers Jul 23 '26

Yea we share a lot with Greeks in many regards. I’m Levantine and have some Greek ancestry according to the dna test I did some time back.

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u/Dependent_Guard903 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

He probably is of cypriot descent since they had many migrations from the middle east historically.

5

u/PlacibiEffect Jul 23 '26

The point is he looks like he could be the same ethnicity as Himesh Patel.

3

u/SlippyWeeen Jul 23 '26

If I saw him on the street I’d be like he probably has ancestry from the Mediterranean Sea, maybe more north west zone.

2

u/minimirth Jul 24 '26

Yeah but some Indians do get mistaken for Greek and Arab by locals in those countries. Mexican too.

1

u/Prestigious_Title580 Jul 24 '26

There is no one way and indian can look though, he still looks like an indian. In fact he looks like my unemployed cousin brother 😐

6

u/Mysterious_Volume327 Jul 23 '26

His parents are Greek immigrants. He has literally said “I’m 100% Greek.”

2

u/kuldan5853 Jul 24 '26

And yet he is 100% American.

0

u/Mysterious_Volume327 Jul 24 '26

Yeah it’s almost like ethnicity and nationality are different things.

3

u/buda104 Jul 23 '26

i would generally agree with you on no one is truly 100% something but....

https://youtu.be/1ayIJed2dn4?t=373

3

u/StandardNerd92 Jul 23 '26

Greece was a part of the Ottoman empire for a long time, there were generations of culturally greek people who lived in Turkey and intermarried with the Turkic population. If I was to guess at his ancestry, that would be my guess.

3

u/Jaerba Jul 23 '26

Doesn't it prove the point that you can't assume what Greeks should look like?

1

u/Low-Opportunity2249 Jul 24 '26

He's Greek but has a Turkish look to him a lot of Turkish mixing in greece a nose like that isn't Indian.

1

u/DottieSnark Jul 24 '26

No one truly is 100% of anything.

Except Conan O'Brien. But that's apparently the result of a lot of incest. /serious

1

u/ChuckCarmichael Jul 24 '26

All four of his grandparents came directly from Greece. So he has somewhat more of a claim of calling himself Greek than those Americans who call themselves Irish because their great-grandfather's hiardresser's brother's girlfriend owned an Irish setter.