Did you read who published that article on Ashkenazim? It's Shai Carmi's 'The Ashkenazi Gene Consortium' at Hebrew University. It's also common knowledge whether you're aware of it or not. If you don't believe me or them, google it. Gene heterogeneity means exactly what it says. Let's take an easy example. For trait X, you have two alleles, yes? One from your maternal line, and one from your paternal line. In the case of Poland, in a lot of cases the alleles will be the same. In Ashkenazim, one might be from the Middle East, and one from Poland, for example.
As far as the effective population size for Slavic expansion, I only remember this:
"
One of the striking patterns we see is the relatively high level of sharing of IBD between pairs of individuals across eastern Europe, as high or higher than that observed within other, much smaller populations. This is consistent with these individuals having a comparatively large proportion of ancestry drawn from a relatively small population that expanded over a large geographic area. The “smooth” estimates of Figure 4 (and more generally Figures 5 and S17) suggest that this increase in ancestry stems from around 1,000–2,000 ya, since during this time pairs of eastern individuals are expected to share a substantial number of common ancestors, while this is only true of pairs of non-eastern individuals if they are from the same population. For example, even individuals from widely separated eastern populations share about the same amount of IBD as do two Irish individuals (see Figure S3), suggesting that this ancestral population may have been relatively small.
This evidence is consistent with the idea that these populations derive a substantial proportion of their ancestry from various groups that expanded during the “migration period” from the fourth through ninth centuries [51]. This period begins with the Huns moving into eastern Europe towards the end of the fourth century, establishing an empire including modern-day Hungary and Romania, and continues in the fifth century as various Germanic groups moved into and ruled much of the western Roman empire. This was followed by the expansion of the Slavic populations into regions of low population density beginning in the sixth century, reaching their maximum by the 10th century [52]. The eastern populations with high rates of IBD are highly coincident with the modern distribution of Slavic languages, so it is natural to speculate that much of the higher rates were due to this expansion."
See: Ralph and Coop et al
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001555
Yes, there are increasing numbers of half-Ashkenazi. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of full Ashkenazi people around. I think it's an example of unmitigated gall to think you know what they look like when I doubt you've ever met one in your life, much less been around groups of them. My husband's partner is Ashkenazi and his family has become like our own family. Many of our colleagues are Ashkenazi as well. I've gone to as many Jewish weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs as I have Christian weddings and baptisms and communions. While sitting in the upper sitting area of the shul I've seen girls who look totally Slavic, others who look German, others sort of Italian, and some absolutely Middle Eastern. My best friend, more than a sister to me, lost too early and tragically to breast cancer was Ashkenazi. Her daughters are like my daughters. Through her I know dozens of Ashkenazi families. You have no idea what you're talking about.
As for Slavs, no, I don't think they
all look Uralic. Both when I moved here and now I lived/live close to where Polish people moved when they came from Europe. I even told you once that many of the potato farms near me are still owned by Polish families. My favorite cousin in law is Polish, from a Polish farming family in Connecticut. Growing up, one of the closest Catholic churches was a St. Adalberts, where they still said a few masses a week in Polish. I'd occasionally go there with one of my friends. One of my friends now is from a small town on the Czechoslovakia/Poland border and has a lot of Polish ancestry. People often tell me we look like sisters; we don't...her face is flatter. It's the pigmentation and the long nose. I'm very familiar with eastern European looks, although not the more exotic "Russian" looks. There is absolutely not the extremes of appearance among Poles that there is among the Ashkenazi.
You just don't understand how it is here. We meet people from all sorts of ethnic groups. Not only do we learn to see patterns in appearance, if we're good at that, but we learn that they're people just like us. Do certain groups have certain "quirks"? Yes, they do actually, but the individual character, soul, if you will, is what's important. My parents taught me from earliest childhood to judge each person "fresh", as an individual, and to treat each person, no matter from what group, as I would like to be treated. That's it. I stand by it, and I would recommend it to you. When I read some of the garbage put out by these anti-Semitic groups in Europe threatening to kill them all over again and I think of my Ruth and her girls, or Joel and his family, I want to rip their heads off. All of you out there who subscribe to this crap are monsters, the real sub-humans.
No, I'm not going to spend hours looking for where I said there was a pool of WHG somewhere, perhaps in the north, which was added to the admixture in the early Bronze Age. Anyone who has read my posts knows I said it. You even indicated you were aware of it. Nor do I claim undue brilliance for that hypothesis, the way some others do. For goodness sakes, that extra WHG that shows up had to come from somewhere; there wasn't enough left in the unattractive lands in the west. Nor was I the only one to make that prediction. The only ones who vehemently denied it, to my recollection, are the usual suspects who try at every turn to enlarge the influence of the steppe people.
