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Sile said:What the hell has Religion got to do with Genetics?
Angela said:There you can learn, should you be interested, which famous people are Jews, half-Jews, quarter-Jews and barely Jews.
Fire Haired14 said:I thought they were descended of German and Polish converts.
There were large statistical differences in eye and hair colours between Jews and host populations, though.
For example according to pre-war data from Virchow on pigmentation of Jewish and Christian school-children in four provinces of Germany, among Jews dark-haired school-children were consistently (no matter in which of those four regions) ca. 4 times more common than light-haired ones. By contrast, among Christian school-children, the proportion of light-haired to dark-haired individuals was between 3 to 1 (in Prussia) and around 1 to 1 (in Bavaria and Baden).
In Poland there were similar differences. According to Polish-Jewish author Henryk Szpidbaum, among Polish Jews only 20,59% had light eyes. While among Polish Christians according to various other sources, between 68% and 72,4% have light eyes (by comparison among ethnically English Christians about 74% or more).
You're right and those stats are consistent with DNA. SNP data says about 70% of Ashkenazi Jews have Dark eyes, while 40% of Germans and Poles do.
I have noticed that there is a considerable variation of skin colour among Syrians. Even among Palestinians too.IMO, it's most likely because many SW Asians look more white than we think.
I think the most logical explanations are: They have a lot of Southern European admixture and or some West Asians look more similar to Europeans than we think (like Angela was saying).
I guess they are really descended mostly from those Ancient Jews/Israelites of the Roman province of Palestine.In my D-stat admixture spreadsheet using ancient West Eurasian outgroups, Ashenazi Jews can fit as 55% Tuscan and 45% Druze. Ashkenazi's relationship to EEF is too weak to simply be converts from Greece or Rome-area. They also clearly have East African admixture, which makes it impossible for them to be South European converts(Not Sicily either, because Sicily has North African admixture not East African). IBD stats would be needed to confirm recent common ancestry with an ethnicity/region in South Europe. I saw IBD stats between Ashkenazi, Italian, and Greek, and it doesn't suggest any recent common ancestry.
Gross had a hypothesis, that mostly "Aryan-looking" Jews survived the Holocaust (they had a greater chance to pass as Non-Jews). However, the vast majority of Jewish-Americans descend from Eastern & Central European Jews who emigrated to America between 1800 and 1939, before the Holocaust. So this hypothesis is baseless, at least as far as American Jews are concerned.
Check this thread - Eran Elhaik (who used to be a supporter of the so called Khazar hypothesis), now has a new theory, about Eastern Anatolian origins of Ashkenazi Jews: http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/32082-Guess-the-ethnicity-of-this-lady?p=476359#post476359
Proposed homeland:
According to a Polish Jew, Henryk Szpidbaum, the most common phenotype among Polish Jews was Armenoid (or Hither Asiatic or Anatolid). This hypothetical Eastern Anatolian homeland corresponds well to prevalence of Armenoid phenotype.
But Armenoid / Anatolid / Hither Asiatic phenotype is common in all of West Asia, not just in Eastern Anatolia.
A population of Ancient Levantine origin could also have a high percentage of this phenotype.
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As for light skin of Ashkenazi Jews:
Maybe in Ancient times, before Arabic expansion and Muslim Sub-Saharan slave trade, Middle Easterners were "whiter"? Some Non-Muslim populations of the Middle East still tend to be light, even if they never moved out of the region (e.g. Samaritans).
Or, alternatively, it could be that Ancient Jews had swarthy skin pigmentation until relatively late in time, but after that the same selective sweep favouring light skin tone made them light, which had made everybody else in Europe white before.
These results are so accurate it's scary. I didn't manipulate the data . Modelling Europeans as Yamnaya+HungaryNeolithic+CHG+WHG.
South Europe EN_Hungary Yamnaya WHG CHG @ D Sardinian 89% 1% 6% 4% 0.0045 Tuscan 71% 21% 2% 6% 0.0056 Bulgarian 62% 30% 2% 6% 0.0055 BasqueSpain 61% 18% 18% 3% 0.002 WestSicily 77% 12% 0% 11% 0.0148 North Europe EN_Hungary Yamnaya WHG CHG @ D Lithuanian 36% 44% 20% 0% 0.0031 BeloRussian 43% 44% 13% 0% 0.0064 Cornwall_England 45% 44% 11% 0% 0.002 Hungarian 53% 39% 8% 0% 0.0056 French 56% 34% 9% 1% 0.0033 Ancient Europe EN_Hungary Yamnaya WHG CHG @ D Spain_MN 76% 0% 24% 0% 0.0157 Sintashta 36% 55% 5% 4% 0.0075 HungaryBA 46% 28% 22% 4% 0.0049
Now this can be considered a large and representative sample:
This crowd picture where we can't even see the faces clearly, and of the minority of Hasidic Jews to boot is supposed to tell us what exactly?
A ridiculous video on how Jewish people supposedly look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Reh8GPFLG64
But before clicking the link above, watch this video below:
We have a lot of new genomes from the Middle East now (Lazaridis 2016 paper about farmers etc.). What happens if we model Ashkenazi Jews as a mixture of Bronze Age Levant + Europeans? Samples from Bronze Age Levant are for example I1705, I1706 and I1730. After all, Jewish ancient ancestors were Iron Age Hebrews, and it is believed that Hebrews descended from Bronze Age Canaanites, who had lived in the Levant. Some scholars also believe that Hebrews were new immigrants to the region, who replaced Canaanites. But we don't have Iron Age samples yet, so let's examine BA_Levant.
We have a lot of new genomes from the Middle East now (Lazaridis 2016 paper about farmers etc.). What happens if we model Ashkenazi Jews as a mixture of Bronze Age Levant + Europeans? Samples from Bronze Age Levant are for example I1705, I1706 and I1730. After all, Jewish ancient ancestors were Iron Age Hebrews, and it is believed that Hebrews descended from Bronze Age Canaanites, who had lived in the Levant. Some scholars also believe that Hebrews were new immigrants to the region, who replaced Canaanites. But we don't have Iron Age samples yet, so let's examine BA_Levant.
A) I love discussing jewish genetics!
B) given that european jews don't have any whg ancestry to start with, this in my mind eliminates any theory regarding them as a mixture of the original diasporics plus north euro. The Polish and the Germans have tons of whg ancestry. If they originally plotted with Lebanese and other levantines and mixed with south italians and sicillians, they would plot far south of sicillians as opposed to along side of them (they would be half sicilian half Levant in most calculators instead of half north italian half Levant). They would also show a lot more ibd with South Italy than they do in reality. I can only logically conclude without evidence (I'll admit) that the Middle East was a bit more south euro like. I may be wrong bc I'm a big time amateur.
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