confers sufficient knowledge to understand and be understood by a speaker of the other; otherwise, they are said to be different languages. By this criterion, the variety commonly known as the Arabic language is indeed considered by linguists to be not a single language but a family of several languages, each with its own dialects. For political reasons, it is common in the Arabic-speaking world (a.k.a. the Arab world) for speakers of different Arabic varieties to assert that they all speak a single language, despite significant issues of mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. Aramaic language For nearly a thousand years before the spread of the Arab-Muslim conquests in the 7th century AD, Aramaic was the lingua franca and main spoken language in the Fertile Crescent. Among the Maronites, traditionally, Western Aramaic had been the spoken language up to the 17th century, when Arabic took its place, while classical Syriac remained in use only for liturgical purposes, as a sacred language (also considered as such in Judaism, alongside Hebrew). Today the vast majority of people in Lebanon speak Lebanese Arabic as their first language. More recently, some effort has been put into revitalizing the Western Neo-Aramaic as an everyday spoken language in some ethnic Lebanese communities. Also, the modern type of Eastern Neo-Aramaic has an estimated 2–5 million speakers, mainly among Assyrians, an ethnic group related to but distinct from the Maronites of Lebanon. Genetics According to genetic studies performed on the Lebanese populace, the Lebanese people share more than 90% of their genetic makeup with the ancient Canaanites who lived 3,700 years ago. Religion Proponents of Phoenician continuity among Maronite Christians point out that a Phoenician identity, including the worship of pre-Christian Phoenician gods such as El, Baal, Astarte and Adon was still in evidence until the mid 6th century AD in Roman Phoenice, and was only gradually replaced by Christianity during the 4th and 5th centuries AD. Furthermore, that all this happened centuries before the Arab-Islamic Conquest. Representation in the government Among political parties professing Phoenicianism is the Kataeb Party, a Lebanese nationalist party in the March 14 Alliance. It is officially secular, but its electorate is primarily Christian. Other political parties which profess Phoenicianism include the National Liberal Party and the Lebanese Forces. Criticism Josephine Quinn, associate professor in ancient history at Worcester College, University of Oxford, writes that: Geographer and historian Jack Keilo criticized Phoenicianist claims