Jewish people, where they are from?

[Drac II]

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.

We have paintings of Syro-Palestinians going as far back as Pharaonic times, quite a lot of centuries before Islam even existed. They were already characterized by the Egyptians as having traits that people nowadays still think of as "Semitic" features. They looked hardly much different from how the Arabs portrayed themselves in the Middle Ages.

[Drac II]

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

Apparently he ignores that the area in question was already inhabited long before any Greek or Roman minorities had showed up. Or maybe he is confusing "Hellenization" and "Romanization" with actually being Greek and Roman. But then again it is hard to accept this confusion as an explanation for his bizarre claim since he seems to be well aware that "Islamization" and "Arabization" do not really make anyone real "Arabs" either.

[Angela]

Angela,


Yes, that was my question. Thanks for answering!


Are there maps showing "Ashkenazi admixture" ???


I think this is grossly exaggerated (though of course it also depends how long ago was that bottleneck).

Dr Eran Elhaik wrote the following about that supposed extreme and recent bottleneck: "(...) Because such an unnatural growth rate, over half a millennia and affecting only Jews residing in Eastern Europe, is implausible - it is explained by a miracle. Unfortunately, this divine intervention explanation poses a new kind of problem - it is not science. (...)"

And Elhaik actually writes about a founder population of 50,000 people (not a couple of hundred people):

http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/1/61.full

Has anybody tested whether such a rapid growth is even physically possible?:

What growth rate would it require (I'm not familiar with all the data - i.e. when exactly was that bottleneck, etc.)?:

Such a useful calculator: http://www.metamorphosisalpha.com/ias/population.php

How long could that growth from a small founder population to circa 6 million in 1880 possibly last ???

What maps? The Behar et al PCA that I posted? That shows how Jewish geneomes plot in relationship to each other and to European and Near Eastern populations, as I'm sure you know, so I guess that was a rhetorical question? :)

Different tools tell us different things. Some tools are terrible for the purpose of discovering Ashkenazi ancestry in other groups, like the "J" calculator created by Eurogenes. Some are very good, like AC at 23andme, because it's tracking IBD segments.

If that tells you that you have AJ ancestry you have it, in my opinion. If it tells you that you don't, you don't. Tests for precision show 97% accuracy at picking out AJ ancestry. You can see the statistics in their White Paper detailing their methodology. You can even figure out pretty closely when it entered your family tree. Of course, given the algorithm 23andme uses, it can only trace IBD sharing back so far. Research groups like Ralph and Coop could perhaps track it back to 2500 BC.

One way that the accuracy is proven is that when people get that AJ percentage in Ancestry Composition they at the same time get LOTS of distant Askenazi cousins, so many that it can overwhelm the 1000 relative limit and stop you from seeing other kinds of matches. That happened to a woman I know who is only 1/8 Ashkenazi. People have a lot of complaints about that, but it's a function of the fact that so many AJs test. Believe me, there have been plenty of people who, for obvious reasons, didn't want to believe some of these results, but they can't deny all those segments that they share with AJ people. When they re-check their paper trail, they almost inevitably find the "hidden" AJ ancestor, and in the generation predicted. (This can't be done with the Sephardim, by the way.) So, if a Pole tests at 23andme, and it says that Pole is 3% AJ, he or she can take it to the bank, as far as I'm concerned.


I'm sorry, but Elhaik is a crank and a quack whose paper has been totally discredited by subsequent papers. The Khazar Theory is dead. I don't know of any researchers who take it at all seriously any more. Just put his paper into google scholar and check the citations which mention it and you'll find all the papers that tear it to shreds.

Oh, the bottleneck is dated to somewhere around 800 years ago, so around 1200 AD, which is right around the massacres in France and the Rhineland at the time of the Crusades.

There were huge gains in population in Europe in general in the 19th century, due to improved nutrition, but also due to clean drinking water, the construction of sewage systems etc. However, Jewish increases in population were even higher. Somewhere I've seen that there were not only very large families, but their infant mortality rate was lower.

"Jewish populations in Eastern Europe had the highest rate of natural increase of any European population in the nineteenth century, with a natural increase of 120,000 per year in the 1880s and an overall increase within the Russian Empire from one to six million in the course of the nineteenth century."

[Tomenable]

An interesting case are the Lemba Jews of South Africa:

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

Some papers about them:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1914832/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288118/

The results suggest that > or = 50% of the Lemba Y chromosomes are Semitic in origin

The results reported above suggest a genetic history of the Lemba that is not incompatible with their oral tradition.

Clearly, there has been a Semitic genetic contribution

Yet they look just like locals - photo of two Lemba men:



Also:

http://haruth.com/jw/JewishLemba.html

Who is a "kohen"?
The scientists found that 45 percent of Ashkenazi priests and 56 percent of Sephardic priests have the cohen genetic signature, while in Jewish populations in general the frequency is 3 to 5 percent. The Bhuba (priestly) tribe of the Lemba have 53 percent. [!!]

And:

http://israelitishworldwide.blogspot...1_archive.html

[Kardu]

The fact that Georgian Jews, after 2,500 years in the country, are genetically so far away from non-Jewish Georgians signifies to me that their non-Jewish Georgian sample is flawed. And, while Behar finds signals of Eastern European admixture in AJ, I feel that their sampling could have focused closer on those regions where we know sizeable Jewish populations to have existed, e.g. Galizia.

While for the last 2 centuries there were cases (very infrequent but still) of intermarriage of Georgians and Ashkenazi Jews, no single case of a marriage between a Georgian and Georgian Jew comes to mind. While culturally very integrated with the general population, in marital aspect they always kept apart.

[John Doe]

While for the last 2 centuries there were cases (very infrequent but still) of intermarriage of Georgians and Ashkenazi Jews, no single case of a marriage between a Georgian and Georgian Jew comes to mind. While culturally very integrated with the general population, in marital aspect they always kept apart.

Well naturally, until a very short time ago, religious borders were held very strongly, a Christian would be encouraged to marry other Christians, a Jew Jews etc. Even today it is considered the norm in many parts of the world.

[Johannes]

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".

Sorry: I meant to say "many". During Hellenistic times many Greeks settled primarily in Syria (Antioch) and Egypt (Alexandria). They formed the ruling class. During the Roman Era many Romans, Greeks, and other Europeans also settled in Syria (Antioch). Syria was the most important province in the Middle East for both Greek/Macedonian and Roman Empires. Greeks continued to colonize Syria during the Byzantine Era. Even during the Crusades many Northern Europeans settled and married Syrian women. This is why Syrians tend to look more "European" than other Middle Easterners (also the Lebanese).

There are very few differences between Cypriots and Arabs. They are similar in race.

[Auld Reekie]

What maps? The Behar et al PCA that I posted? That shows how Jewish geneomes plot in relationship to each other and to European and Near Eastern populations, as I'm sure you know, so I guess that was a rhetorical question? :)

Different tools tell us different things. Some tools are terrible for the purpose of discovering Ashkenazi ancestry in other groups, like the "J" calculator created by Eurogenes. Some are very good, like AC at 23andme, because it's tracking IBD segments.

If that tells you that you have AJ ancestry you have it, in my opinion. If it tells you that you don't, you don't. Tests for precision show 97% accuracy at picking out AJ ancestry. You can see the statistics in their White Paper detailing their methodology. You can even figure out pretty closely when it entered your family tree. Of course, given the algorithm 23andme uses, it can only trace IBD sharing back so far. Research groups like Ralph and Coop could perhaps track it back to 2500 BC.

One way that the accuracy is proven is that when people get that AJ percentage in Ancestry Composition they at the same time get LOTS of distant Askenazi cousins, so many that it can overwhelm the 1000 relative limit and stop you from seeing other kinds of matches. That happened to a woman I know who is only 1/8 Ashkenazi. People have a lot of complaints about that, but it's a function of the fact that so many AJs test. Believe me, there have been plenty of people who, for obvious reasons, didn't want to believe some of these results, but they can't deny all those segments that they share with AJ people. When they re-check their paper trail, they almost inevitably find the "hidden" AJ ancestor, and in the generation predicted. (This can't be done with the Sephardim, by the way.) So, if a Pole tests at 23andme, and it says that Pole is 3% AJ, he or she can take it to the bank, as far as I'm concerned.


I'm sorry, but Elhaik is a crank and a quack whose paper has been totally discredited by subsequent papers. The Khazar Theory is dead. I don't know of any researchers who take it at all seriously any more. Just put his paper into google scholar and check the citations which mention it and you'll find all the papers that tear it to shreds.

Oh, the bottleneck is dated to somewhere around 800 years ago, so around 1200 AD, which is right around the massacres in France and the Rhineland at the time of the Crusades.

There were huge gains in population in Europe in general in the 19th century, due to improved nutrition, but also due to clean drinking water, the construction of sewage systems etc. However, Jewish increases in population were even higher. Somewhere I've seen that there were not only very large families, but their infant mortality rate was lower.

"Jewish populations in Eastern Europe had the highest rate of natural increase of any European population in the nineteenth century, with a natural increase of 120,000 per year in the 1880s and an overall increase within the Russian Empire from one to six million in the course of the nineteenth century."

I tested with Ancestry and Familytree (not 23andMe because of NY state laws) and with Ancestry I tested 2% European Jewish, Familytree 0% but with Eurogenes either gives me 25% Lebanese, Syrian or Jewish of some sort. I have about 25-30% southern Italian ancestry.

[Angela]

Sorry: I meant to say "many". During Hellenistic times many Greeks settled primarily in Syria (Antioch) and Egypt (Alexandria). They formed the ruling class. During the Roman Era many Romans, Greeks, and other Europeans also settled in Syria (Antioch). Syria was the most important province in the Middle East for both Greek/Macedonian and Roman Empires. Greeks continued to colonize Syria during the Byzantine Era. Even during the Crusades many Northern Europeans settled and married Syrian women. This is why Syrians tend to look more "European" than other Middle Easterners (also the Lebanese).

There are very few differences between Cypriots and Arabs. They are similar in race.

We have absolutely no ancient dna from these places in this time period, so there is no objective scientific evidence for your claims. We try not to engage in unsupported flights of fancy on this site.

Cypriots and Arabs may be the same "race" to the extent that they are both West Eurasians, but that's such a broad comment as to be virtually meaningless. They are most emphatically NOT the same "ethnic" group, which is probably what you meant to say.

You might want to acquaint yourself with the concept of genetic distance. PCAs are a good way to start.

Please observe where Cypriots plot in relationship to where Saudis plot.

[Angela]

I tested with Ancestry and Familytree (not 23andMe because of NY state laws) and with Ancestry I tested 2% European Jewish, Familytree 0% but with Eurogenes either gives me 25% Lebanese, Syrian or Jewish of some sort. I have about 25-30% southern Italian ancestry.

Of the three I would personally go with Family Tree and then with Ancestry. I would ignore the amateur calculators that purport to give you "Jewish" percentages.

You don't normally see even full southern Italians getting Ashkenazi percentages on 23andme unless they have actual documented Ashkenazi ancestry within the last couple of hundred years. That holds true even for southern Italians who on calculators that actually work for them, like the Dodecad ones, get Ashkenazim as their third or fourth closest population in terms of the Oracle results.

Based only on the results I've seen, there is one small town where some of the people get .1 to around .4 Ashkenazi, but they're the exception rather than the rule. It might come down to one Ashkenazi or part Ashkenazi who wandered into that town a couple of hundred years ago, and then because of endogamy the genes spread throughout the families, and got diluted, of course, through recombination.

Europeans who get 2% Ashkenazi are more likely to come from eastern Europe or Germany, areas that had high concentrations of Ashkenazim, some of whom chose to "pass" in the 18th and 19th century when they had more mobility.

That ban in New York was due to the fact that 23andme used to provide information on health traits and susceptibility to certain diseases. They no longer do. At that time, I know that there were people who got around the statute by driving to Jersey or Connecticut to mail the sample or mailed it from a friend's house in another state. The results can be mailed anywhere, including New York. Some people are obsessed. :)

I'm not, of course, recommending that you engage in any such shenanigans to get around the statute.

[Auld Reekie]

Of the three I would personally go with Family Tree and then with Ancestry. I would ignore the amateur calculators that purport to give you "Jewish" percentages.

You don't normally see even full southern Italians getting Ashkenazi percentages on 23andme unless they have actual documented Ashkenazi ancestry within the last couple of hundred years. That holds true even for southern Italians who on calculators that actually work for them, like the Dodecad ones, get Ashkenazim as their third or fourth closest population in terms of the Oracle results.

Based only on the results I've seen, there is one small town where some of the people get .1 to around .4 Ashkenazi, but they're the exception rather than the rule. It might come down to one Ashkenazi or part Ashkenazi who wandered into that town a couple of hundred years ago, and then because of endogamy the genes spread throughout the families, and got diluted, of course, through recombination.

Europeans who get 2% Ashkenazi are more likely to come from eastern Europe or Germany, areas that had high concentrations of Ashkenazim, some of whom chose to "pass" in the 18th and 19th century when they had more mobility.

That ban in New York was due to the fact that 23andme used to provide information on health traits and susceptibility to certain diseases. They no longer do. At that time, I know that there were people who got around the statute by driving to Jersey or Connecticut to mail the sample or mailed it from a friend's house in another state. The results can be mailed anywhere, including New York. Some people are obsessed. :)

I'm not, of course, recommending that you engage in any such shenanigans to get around the statute.

Very interesting. Familytree doesn't recognize any of my British heritage but Ancestry gets it on the money. The NY law is so frustrating! I am between Canada and Pennsylvania, maybe I should take a little drive, to see the country...no shenanigans of course. :)

[Johannes]

Angela: Why do you think I meant Saudi Arabs? Is Saudi Arabs = Arabs in general? You have some fixation about how Arabs looked like and it has to be Saudis? OK: so the Cypriots might not correlate exactly with Saudi Arabs in your plot but they still correlate with Turks, Lebanese, Syrians, and the Druze. Aren't the Syrians, Druze and Lebanese Arab? The term "Arab" is more of a cultural construct but they still have genetic similarities.

[dominique_nuit]

I haven't read the entire thread (or the many other ones on this site, save in part), so forgive me if this has already been covered ----->>>>

What do people on this forum think about Shlomo Sand's argument that, after the fall of Carthage in 146 BC, Carthaginian populations converted to Judaism en masse?

For Sand, the diffusion of Judaism across the Mediterranean reflected not the violent dispersal of populations from Judea, but rather the widespread adoption of Judaism by Phoenician (and Carthaginian) communities that already existed throughout the Mediterranean, especially North Africa (modern day Tunisia and points west), western Sicily and Spain. Judaism spread via proselytization among sympathetic Semitic groups, followed by Berbers as a secondary audience.

Even if Sand is wrong about the Khazar origin of Ashkenazi groups, could he not be right about the Punic origin of Sephardic Jews? And perhaps the Mediterranean component in today's Ashkenazi might also be in large part Carthaginian (allowing for the fact that Carthaginians likely mixed with local populations wherever they founded colonies)?

[Angela]

His opinions are complete and utter nonsense, imo. Everything is against it: genetics, archaeology and history. It's a pipe dream.

Someone should send him a ticket to Rome so he can see the Arch of Titus for himself. :)

I've actually always questioned his sanity.

[Angela]

Erroneous opinions are based on the study of false sources of information. Finding out whether the source is telling the truth is quite simple - you just need to drive that query into the search engine. on which you are looking for information, and compare the content of at least those sites that are on the first page in the search results. But some don't. They saw or heard some kind of nonsense and, instead of checking the information, immediately begin to convince others that they are right, ignoring reliable sources of information.

You can tell a lot just from the dates of the material people like that use. For years t-rolls were using the writings of an amateur "historian" from the 19th century to explain Greek genetics.

If you think about it for more than a second you realize what they're doing is finding any source, no matter how outdated, no matter how lacking in actual evidence, which supports their agenda against some group or other, or supports their own feelings of grandiosity.

Part of it is also that they don't have the education to understand genetics papers.

Or in some cases they don't understand that you have to have "data" of some sort to support a hypothesis. You can't just make up a story and expect it to be taken seriously.

It's best in a lot of cases to just ignore them. Eventually, the actual evidence becomes overwhelming and they're exposed. Look at what's happened to Elhaik, and he even threw some data at the issue. He's a joke now. How could anyone take something seriously which proffers not one shred of evidence, but says well, it could have happened this way.

[New Englander]

Seems they were Iranian like, and later on took in some Levantine, and then European Med before moving into the Baltics. You could say they are 40% Iranian (CHG), 25% Levantine (Basal Eurasian), 30% Italian (EEF), and 5% Baltic/Germanic (EHG) excluded in non-Ashkenazi.

[Angela]

Levantines were mostly Levantine Neolithic. They weren't Anatolian farmer like. The EEF were Anatolian farmer like with some additional WHG. Italians aren't all EEF. Personally, I'm 30% steppe.

I think you're confused.

[New Englander]

Im using generalizations. Here are the results in Vahadoo for an Ashkenazi, and a Mountain Jew with all Jewish templates removed including Ash. and Mountain.

Target: Ashkenazi Distance: 2.2343% / 2.23425618
51.0	Lebanese_Druze
16.4	Swiss_Italian
14.8	Sardinia
10.7	Latvian
4.9	Tunisian
1.6	Egyptian
0.3	East_Greenlander
0.2	Tujia
0.1	Japanese

Target: Mountain_Jew_Chechnya Distance: 0.4122% / 0.41222362
42.0	Mandean
16.4	Assyrian_West
9.9	Assyrian_North
9.4	Greek_Caucasus
8.3	Kurd_Iran
5.9	Laz
3.5	Lebanese_Druze
2.4	Armenian_East
1.8	Parsi_India
0.4	Karitiana

Most other Jewish groups should fall between these two.

[New Englander]

Here is an Iraqi Jew done with the same idea.

Target: Iraqi_Jew Distance: 2.6134% / 2.61343008
41.6	Mandean
30.8	Assyrian_North
25.6	Lebanese_Christian
2.0	Lebanese_Druze

[Angela]

40% European isn't out of the question for the Ashkenazim, although it may be more.

As European Jews have European ancestry, so do Middle Eastern Jews have Middle Eastern ancestry.

I think we know all that.

You can get these things to show widely varying percentages depending on the samples you use.

The only thing that will really advance what we know are indisputably Jewish samples from the late Hellenization period and the early Roman period, both from Judea and Galilee and from Asia Minor, Greece etc.

[Silesian]

Have we ever discussed here about Khazaria, the Eastern European state, and its Khazar rulers that converted to Judaism in the VIII century?

I find Yfull's R1b_L584 basal tree interesting, just saying. And now we have more Hunter Gatherer from the Northern Caucasus around 27k+/- that should prove interesting.

[New Englander]

Anyone that brings up Khazaria in these subjects should be banned immediately

[kingjohn]

Anyone that brings up Khazaria in these subjects should be banned immediately

Freedom of speech

P.s
Even a little kid who knows
Nothing about haplogroups
Can see that modern jews are not
Descendents from khazars if that
Was the case than r1a would be the dominant
Haplogroup among them.. (instead of j1,j2, e1b1b)
The few jews who belong to r1a
Belong to r1a-z93 the more indo-iranian
Rather than r1a-z280
Nethaniau among them.....