Jewish people, where they are from?

Yes, both R1b-U106 and R1a-Z284 were found in Nordic Bronze Age:

RISE61 who lived around 2650-2300 BC - R1a1a1b1a3 (Z284)
RISE98 who lived around 2275-2032 BC - R1b1a2a1a1 (U106)

Also two samples of I1 (including one I1a), RISE175 and RISE207.

Z280 does seem to be more prominently associated with Baltic speakers

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Not really - it is widespread among virtually all Slavs as well.

For example among Lusatian Sorbs ca. 37% have M458, and ca. 28% have Z280.

Among Poles proportions of M458 and Z280 are roughly equal.

Z280 is present in high percent also in places where Baltic-speakers never lived.

So it was obviously being spread by both Balts and by Slavs.

Semitic Duwa said:

I doubt U106 was a common haplogroup in the Iron Age Celts

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It could be present in Ancient Belgae, who were probably neither Celtic nor Germanic, but related to both groups.

Some of the Belgae settled also in Britain, so we might find Pre-Anglo-Saxon U106 in Britain in the future.

Semitic Duwa said:

we'd need to know which subclades of M458 are found in Crete to start with.

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Indeed.

Tomenable said:

Sub-Saharan Africans also have various different types of hair.

For instance, Khoisan Bushmen have their own specific variant.

Then you have variance between West Africans & East Africans.

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BTW - as far as I know, the percent of Neanderthal admixture in Non-Africans was calculated as 3% by comparing Non-Africans to Yoruba or Khoisan as reference populations, under an arbitrary assumption that they have 0% of Neanderthal admixture.

But how is this possible considering all the prehistoric and historical back-migrations to Africa which took place ???

I find it doubtful that Sub-Saharan Africans have no Neanderthal admixture at all despite those back-migrations.

More likely, Non-Africans have 3% more of Neanderthal admixture than Sub-Saharans, but Sub-Saharans also have some. If Yoruba people have, for example, 1% of Neanderthal admixture, then it means, that Non-Africans have 4% of it, not 3%.

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Sub-Saharan Africans have around 0.3-0.6% Neanderthal. I've seen it somewhere recently but don't remember where.

Tomenable said:

Ancient Jews were probably like Assyrians and Armenians - that is, close to 0% of North_European.

Ancient Italians and Greeks - part of whom converted to Judaism - had much less of North_European than do modern ones.

That's because Italians and Greeks were admixed by Germanic and Slavic tribes in the Middle Ages.

Thus it was only during the Early Middle Ages, when percent of "North_European" among Greeks and Italians increased.

So modern 15% of North_European in Jews doesn't come from Ancient Italians and Greeks, at least not mostly from them.

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As Semitic Duwa has pointed out, the only way to actually settle these issues is through ancient Dna. However, the data we have from modern populations doesn't support your conclusions.

In terms of the Germanic invasions, one way of tracing them is through yDna U-106 and I1, which are commonly viewed as modern "Germanic" markers. The numbers in Italy are very low as can be seen in Maciamo's compilation of modern European yDna. Even in northern Italy, which includes the Veneto, where we have the most archaeological evidence for them, the total is 7% for I1 and it's even lower for U-106 based on Maciamo's maps. R1a is 4.5%.
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/european_y-dna_haplogroups.shtml
http://cdn.eupedia.com/images/content/Haplogroup-R1b-S21.gif

You can also check Boattini et al.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0065441
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2015138a.html

Anyone who is interested can go to the supplement here and click on Table S2 for the lineages by city.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0065441#s6

There are discussions here at eupedia which can be found through the search engine.


Then there is the IBD analysis by Ralph and Coop:
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001555

"There is relatively little common ancestry shared between the Italian peninsula and other locations, and what there is seems to derive mostly from longer ago than 2,500 ya.. An exception is that Italy and the neighboring Balkan populations share small but significant numbers of common ancestors in the last 1,500 years."

"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."

"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."

Italy is one of "the regions of continental Europe thought to have been least affected by the Slavic and Hunnic migrations. These regions were, however, moved into by Germanic tribes (e.g., the Goths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals), which suggests that perhaps the Germanic migrations/invasions of these regions entailed a smaller degree of population replacement than the Slavic and/or Hunnic, or perhaps that the Germanic groups were less genealogically cohesive. This is consistent with the argument that the Slavs moved into relatively depopulated areas, while Gothic “migrations” may have been takeovers by small groups of extant populations."

There are various graphics illustrating these points.

Ancient dna may prove this information is misleading, but for now this is what we have.


These things have been posted here at Eupedia and elsewhere. It's not new information.

In terms of Slavic input, an IBD analysis has shown that there was some sharing but it is extremely minimal. That is not the source of the "Northern European" in Ashkenazi Jews.

Tomenable said:

Johannes,

You claimed that Ancient Jews "were probably similar in appearance to Arabs". But why do you think so ???

After all, Arabs were not present in the Levant in Ancient times. So Arabs were not neighbours of Ancient Jews.

Arabs started expanding out of Arabia during the 600s, mixing with locals and converting them to Islam. Modern Palestinians are not "pure Arabs", but are descended from such mixed local people (locals who lived in Ancient Levant + Arab immigrants).

On the other hand, Jews aren't mixed with Arabs, because they were no longer in the Levant when Arabs came.

There is no reason why Ancient Jews would be similar to Arabs in appearance. They lived far from each other.

Maybe some groups of Jews are mixed with Arabs, like Mizrahi Jews or Ethiopian Jews - but not Ashkenazim:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Israel

Ancestors of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews had long been gone from the Levant by the time of Arab conquests.

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You need to go back before the 7th century AD to find their origins and relationship with the Hebrews. Hebrews and Arabs are a Semitic people. Arabic language is similar to Hebrew (both Semitic). Arabs either originated in Arab peninsula or in the Levant. I personally think they originated in the Levant and spread into the Arab Peninsula during the Bronze Age. Even the Bible attest to this when the Jewish writers mentioned Abraham as marrying Hagar (an Egyptian?? perhaps a Berber?) and producing Ishmael, the father of all Arabs. So even in the 5th century BCE, when the Bible was being written, the Jews were aware of their filial relationship with the Arabs. Therefore we can infer that Arabs and Hebrews were related by race and ethnicity to the Hebrews. And thus they must have looked exactly or very similar in appearance. We can go a bit further by claiming that perhaps the Arabs were Canaanites who remained a nomadic people. The Hebrews were originally Canaanites before they became "Israelites." It was only when the ancient Hebrews went to Egypt that they adopted the monotheistic religion and then reintroduced it into Canaan. Either way, Semites were basically the same people.

After the 7th century the term "Arab" become more a linguistic/cultural construct rather than ethnicity. Many people in the Middle East and North Africa became "Arabs" only because they adopted Islam and Arab language. In Syria, for example, most people were of Greek or Italian origin before they became "Arab." During the Roman and Byzantine times the Arabs were considered backward and lived in the fringes of the Roman borders. But fast forward several centuries and then they are all "Arab." This is because they mixed. Either way most of the peoples who lived in the Middle East were all related one way or another. All have significant amounts of J1, J2, and E1b1.

The reason why Ashkenazi Jews don't look exactly like Arabs is because they mixed extensively with Europeans. But if you look at Sephardic Jews there is a lot of similarity in appearance.

There is substructure in the area from Saudi Arabia up to Turkey and the Caucasus, however the area is labeled. It can be seen in all the amateur calculators with which people should be familiar. You can also see it in results at private testing companies like 23andme.

The question is whether that cline existed in the Classical and Roman eras, or whether it is largely a product of the Arab invasions of the early medieval period and associated SSA.

The answer will be found through ancient dna.

However, for what it is worth, the results for modern people at 23andme show that Saudi Arabians cluster with North Africans. Typical Saudi Arabians show around 90% "North African". People from Armenia, on the other hand, score around 90% "Middle Eastern", which should probably be labeled "Northern Near Eastern", since it is modal in the Caucasus and surrounding areas like Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Iran.

I have seen Palestinian scores that show about 55% "North African" versus 35% Middle Eastern". Others are even higher in "North African" (Of course, we're talking here about correlations between modern populations, not ancient ones.)

As I said, we don't know what the results would have been for the ancient Jews at the period before the diasporas. I've only seen one result for a Samaritan at 23andme (I don't have it at my finger tips), but he is 1/4 Ashkenazi. The Druse might be an interesting comparison since they are a Levantine population that has not admixed very much if at all with the incoming Arabian groups. Unfortunately I didn't keep any results from them, if, indeed, any were posted.

However, any of the calculators will show the differences between the Druse and the Palestinians.

Of course, as I said, the only way to know for sure is to get our hands on an ancient sample from the Jewish Levant from the immediate pre-Diaspora period and compare it to modern populations.

Phenotype is a terrible indicator of genotype.

Curly hair, in particular, is absolutely not an indicator of SSA ancestry. Red hair, in particular, often has a curl. Nicole Kidman, before she straightened and changed the color of her hair:


Sephardic Jews have less North Euro than Ashkenazim, but their phenotypes can also vary.

Hank Azaria:


The Carvajals:


Spinoza:


Benjamin Cardozo-Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court-one of my heroes



Sephardic Chief Rabbi in Israel...

On PCAs they cluster close to Cypriots.

Let's try to focus on genetics, archaeology and history, shall we?

Another proof that Eastern Euro admixture in Ashkenazi Jews can be valid.

This map shows frequency distribution of CCR5-Delta32 mutation in modern populations. Highest % of this mutation is among Balts, Baltic-Finns, Poles, Swedes, and Russians (note the high-frequency red-coloured area in Poland - it reaches southern Poland):

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/scoeovq78ezxivjkwnay.png



I have found info, that Ashkenazi (but not Sephardi) Jews also test rather high for the Delta32 mutation.

It is possible, that Ashkenazi Jews acquired this mutation while living in Poland-Lithuania.

I would be shocked if the Slavic intrusion into the Ashkenazi gene pool is more than 4-5%.

Angela said:

I would be shocked if the Slavic intrusion into the Ashkenazi gene pool is more than 4-5%.

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Actually it is shocking if they are not. 600 hundred years living among Slovs with not much intermarriages to happen? It is actually sad if it is true.

LeBrok said:

Actually it is shocking if they are not. 600 hundred years living among Slovs with not much intermarriages to happen? It is actually sad if it is true.

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For many of those years, it was customary for Jews and non-Jews to live in separate communities and intermarriage was discouraged (though, obviously, it did happen sometimes). Compare this to the British Isles, where Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking lineages have been mixing for centuries. I suspect that religion had a big part to play in that - after the introduction of Christianity, there was a long period of time in which there were no significant religious differences between the groups. So if you were living in an 11th century Celtic village and your daughter told you that she wanted to marry a Viking, your primary concern would probably be over how wealthy he is, not whether he follows your family's religion (since he probably did). After the introduction of Protestantism, there were massive conversions among all ethnicities, and those ethnicities actually split, to some extent, along religious lines. The important question of the day, therefore, became "Are you Catholic or Protestant?", not "Are you Celtic or Germanic?".

RobertColumbia said:

For many of those years, it was customary for Jews and non-Jews to live in separate communities and intermarriage was discouraged (though, obviously, it did happen sometimes). Compare this to the British Isles, where Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking lineages have been mixing for centuries. I suspect that religion had a big part to play in that - after the introduction of Christianity, there was a long period of time in which there were no significant religious differences between the groups. So if you were living in an 11th century Celtic village and your daughter told you that she wanted to marry a Viking, your primary concern would probably be over how wealthy he is, not whether he follows your family's religion (since he probably did). After the introduction of Protestantism, there were massive conversions among all ethnicities, and those ethnicities actually split, to some extent, along religious lines. The important question of the day, therefore, became "Are you Catholic or Protestant?", not "Are you Celtic or Germanic?".

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It is a pretty much human condition to be, well, tribal. Religion being a strong "tribal" designation, a division. I'm just saying that it saddens me.

LeBrok said:

It is a pretty much human condition to be, well, tribal. Religion being a strong "tribal" designation, a division. I'm just saying that it saddens me.

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Most people prefer what they know. It gives them a feeling of security or identity.

What's wrong with that?

Johannes said:

In Syria, for example, most people were of Greek or Italian origin before they became "Arab."

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Where are your sources that Syrians were primarily Greek or Italian before the Arab invasions.

Also, the Sephardi Jews pictured above look more Eastern Mediterranean (Cypriot etc) than "Arab".

Jews and non-Jews to live in separate communities and intermarriage was discouraged (though, obviously, it did happen sometimes).

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Modern inter-religious marriages can be arranged in such a way, that both spouses stay with their previous religion, then children choose. But in the past, it was impossible I think. Either husband had to convert to wife's religion, or wife to husband's religion. So only children born to couples in which non-Jewish spouse converted to Judaism would enter Jewish gene pool. Children of couples in which Jewish spouse converted to Christianity were no longer members of the Jewish community. Apart from intermarriage there are of course also out of wedlock births and non-paternity events. And rapes.

Tomenable said:

Modern inter-religious marriages can be arranged in such a way, that both spouses stay with their previous religion, then children choose. But in the past, it was impossible I think. Either husband had to convert to wife's religion, or wife to husband's religion. So only children born to couples in which non-Jewish spouse converted to Judaism would enter Jewish gene pool. Children of couples in which Jewish spouse converted to Christianity were no longer members of the Jewish community. Apart from intermarriage there are of course also out of wedlock births and non-paternity events. And rapes.

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a non-Jew marrying a Jew does not make your marker a Jewish marker

A non-Jew marrying a Jew introduces his marker to the Jewish community.

A Jew marrying a non-Jew introduces his marker to the Christian community.

Vallicanus said:

Most people prefer what they know. It gives them a feeling of security or identity.

What's wrong with that?

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It is just a feeling and tribal instinct. It doesn't make it right or wrong. It doesn't make your ethnicity more important than others.
To put things in perspective, we have different ethnicity now in Europe than we had 2,000 years ago, and there were different in 2,000 BC. Ethnicity that you belong to will be gone in a thousand or two years. This is how important is ethnicity in grand scheme of things. No go and die for it.

Tomenable said:

A non-Jew marrying a Jew introduces his marker to the Jewish community.

A Jew marrying a non-Jew introduces his marker to the Christian community.

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I wonder if by aDNA of Poles one can calculate number of Jews who mixed into Polish community. It might be the case that all of the surviving Ashkenazi were rather from conservative isolated communities, and they are telling the genetic story now. We don't know about the thousands or hundred of thousands, who went to general public to marry and mix, changed culture and religion too. After few generations nobody remembers his name, but his aDNA still speaks. For example my wife is 1.5% Ashkenazi. I wonder if statistically we can determine level of Jewish genome, number of possible crossings, in locals, Polish people in this case.

LeBrok said:

It is just a feeling and tribal instinct. It doesn't make it right or wrong. It doesn't make your ethnicity more important than others.
To put things in perspective, we have different ethnicity now in Europe than we had 2,000 years ago, and there were different in 2,000 BC. Ethnicity that you belong to will be gone in a thousand or two years. This is how important is ethnicity in grand scheme of things. No go and die for it.

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Whatever.

I never claimed my ethnicity was more important than any other.

We are all entitled to our own opinion.

Frankly I can think of nothing more sterile than being a "citizen of the world".