Jewish people, where they are from?

This went beyond tribal preferences or even religious proscriptions.

In Europe marriages between Christians and Jews were prohibited by the state as well as by the Church until the 19th century. It was first banned by Constantius II in 339 AD. and was a capital offense. This arose out of the increasingly acrimonious disputes between Christians and Jews and is in the wider context of attempting to stop Jewish proselytizing and expansion. It's different, in that sense, from the "racial" nature of anti-intermarriage sentiment of the late 19th and early 20th century.

The bans were perpetuated in the Middle Ages. There's also some evidence that in certain places even conversion to Christianity didn't result in the attainment of equal rights and the ability to marry Christians. Here is a beaut from 13th century Germany:" “if a Christian fornicates with a Jewess, or a Jew with a Christian woman, they are both guilty of super harlotry and they should be put upon one another and burned to death." Nice symbolic touch, putting one on top of the other. Sometimes I wonder if the human race is just inherently insane.
http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2080&context=etd

The Napoleonic Code of the early 19th century did permit it in those countries which adopted it. The parties could marry in a civil union. In Germany such a law was only passed in 1865. That ended sixteen centuries of bans.

Prior to that time there was essentially no "civil" marriage. The only way it could happen is if one of the parties converted. In some periods, including that of the late Empire, the state passed laws prohibiting Jews from proselytizing, so, in effect, Christians really couldn't convert to Judaism or "marry into" the Jewish community.

Not that I can imagine many Christian people wanting to take on the discrimination and the restrictions and the periodic outbursts of mob violence. Not to mention that Jews were portrayed as "Christ killers", as people who sacrificed young Christian children during the Passover service, and other such abominations. Every Easter celebration was a time of fear for the isolated Jewish communities, because the Passion Plays produced at those times usually sparked a period of some mob violence. (I don't know if people remember the controversy over Mel Gibson's film , which was really a Passion Play. Jewish leaders opposed it so vehemently out of fear that it would happen again. They were wrong. Things have changed, at least in so far as Christians are concerned.)

So, the only real situation in which it could have occurred before the 19th century would have been in cases where a Jew wanted to "pass" into the Christian community by converting and then marrying. It may indeed have happened, but given that it would mean cutting your ties with all your family and friends I doubt that it happened very often. I think the closest analogy would probably be the minority SSA people in the US who "passed".

Most importantly, for the purposes of this thread, this would have resulted in gene flow from Jews into the Christian community, not the other way around.

As I said, that changed in the 19th century. There was a feeling in the Jewish community itself that perhaps if they assimilated into the larger "Gentile" community (while still maintaining their separate religion, the persecutions would stop. They were sadly mistaken.

I sometimes wonder if that experience, where it didn't matter if you had fought for the country of your birth, or even converted to Christianity, where Christian spouses would abandon the Jewish spouse in periods of persecution, or the often increased anti-Semitism of the early 20th century especially in Germany and eastern Europe is responsible for the attitude of Jews in the U.S. to intermarriage which was prevalent up until the last few decades. Many of my Jewish friends have told me that their grandparents and even parents sat shiva when a son or daughter "married out". (That's the ritual mourning for the dead, where you stay home for the week, covering all the mirrors with black cloths etc.)

Things are somewhat different now. Among non-Orthodox Jews the intermarriage rate in the U.S. is about 70%.
This is a statement from a conference of Conservative (not Orthodox, but not Reform) Rabbis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interfaith_marriage_in_Judaism

In the past, intermarriage... was viewed as an act of rebellion, a rejection of Judaism. Jews who intermarried were essentially excommunicated. But now, intermarriage is often the result of living in an open society... If our children end up marrying non-Jews, we should not reject them. We should continue to give our love and by that retain a measure of influence in their lives, Jewishly and otherwise. Life consists of constant growth and our adult children may yet reach a stage when Judaism has new meaning for them. However, the marriage between a Jew and non-Jew is not a celebration for the Jewish community.....[45]

Among the Orthodox, who constitute about of the Jewish population, absent traditional conversion intermarriage is strictly forbidden. If you do it you're excommunicated.

This kind of thing is also hardly unique to Christians versus Jews. Look at Northern Ireland and the conflict between Catholics and Protestant. How many people "cross the line" in terms of intermarriage, at least up until very recently. They were killing each other until a few years ago, and how much genetic difference is there between them?

Anyway, in terms of our discussion, assuming that we find, when comparing the genome of Jews from Israel from around, say, the period of the Hasmoneans, to modern Jews of the early twentieth century that there is additional "European" introgression, there are a couple of options: classical era Greeks and Romans, Italy during the late Empire, the Rhineland, eastern Europe.

Despite the evidence for some IBD sharing with eastern Europeans, the low level of it, and the very small, if any, amounts of "eastern European" in Ashkenazim mitigates against eastern Europeans as the source of most of it. It's my understanding that there's no evidence of IBD sharing with Italians. That's certainly what the IBD analysis done by Dienekes showed. I don't know about Greeks.

Of course, I don't know how far back those algorithms go. Ralph and Coop claim to have been able to go back thousands of years, but I don't know of any study like that, that goes back that far, that has been done for Jews versus European ethnicities. My guess would therefore be eastern France and the Rhineland for a good chunk of it. The paper at the link above details how Jews and Christianity moved into that area around the same time. There would therefore not have been the entrenched church sponsored restrictions against intermarriage present at other places and times, nor the social stigma against some local women marrying Jewish traders and artisans. During the Crusade era it has to be said that male introgression into the Jewish gene pool could have occurred through rape.

Anyway, that's how I currently see it.

I would advise against putting too much credence in Wiki articles on some of these topics. The deniers and "white washers" have been very busy. As in most cases, it's much better to stick to academic studies by "neutral" parties.
 
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.

I'm always skeptical of "population" figures for ancient periods of history. That said, there are estimates that at the time of the Roman Empire, 7% of the inhabitants of that Empire were Jews, so, yes, the odds are that the vast majority of gene flow went from Jews into "Gentiles", not the other way around.
 
Are Armenians genetically similar to Ashkenazi Jews ??? I mean, are they easily distinguishable?

============================

BTW - here is what an ethnic Assyrian guy wrote on Anthrogenica forum:

http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?5258-Population-Size-and-Genetic-Diversity

ZephyrousMandaru said:
Many people often overlook the relationship between population size and genetic variation, whenever people speculate the origins of particular haplogroup or ethnogenesis of a population from nuclear DNA. They sometimes use modern populations to reconstruct the past, while not taking into account that some populations with high genetic diversity are often less likely to experience any factors that would result in a loss of genetic diversity. You see, whenever a population numbers are reduced either through war, genocide, famine, natural disaster, etc. the total genetic variability in that population decreases drastically. Given how often my ethnic group [Assyrians] was subject [to] massacres, genocide, war and famine. I sometimes wonder how genetically diverse Assyrians would be had none of that happened.

The last such event for Jews took place in years 1939 - 1945, when some 6 million Jews perished.

I gues that drastically reduced the total genetic diversity in the remaining population.

Perhaps we need "ancient DNA" samples from bones of pre-war Jews as well.
 
It would be impossible to get dna from pre-war Jews in Europe as their bodies were largely incinerated in the camps, but it's not necessary. The U.S., in addition to Israel, was the preferred destination for survivors of the camps. The synagogue in the town next to mine has, or rather, had, quite a community of them. They were quite active in speaking events at schools and churches. In addition, the American Jews with four Ashkenazi grandparents, or eight Ashkenazi great grandparents who immigrated to the US from eastern Europe in the early 20th century and who form a large part of the public testing population, preserve those genome signatures.

What we don't know is what the founding population of Ashkenazim was like before the bottleneck created by the butchery and forced conversions of the Crusader era.

As to the similarity to Armenians, this is still the best PCA for the Jewish populations, I think. Those few Armenians who seem to be floating toward eastern Europe are, so far as I remember, Russian admixed Armenians. If Arame is around and that is incorrect, perhaps he can post.

Going by this, it looks to me as if the closest actual Middle Eastern population specifically for the Ashkenazim is the Druse, but who knows.

nature09103-f2.2.jpg
 
Angela said:
It would be impossible to get dna from pre-war Jews in Europe as their bodies were largely incinerated in the camps

Those who died before the Holocaust were buried in graves in Jewish cemeteries, not incinerated in the camps.

Angela said:
The U.S., in addition to Israel, was the preferred destination for survivors of the camps.

An assumption that those few survivors were perfectly representative of the total pool is... just an assumption.

Also Jews emigrating from Europe in the 1800s and in the early 1900s were not necessarily representative.

Angela said:
As to the similarity to Armenians, this is still the best PCA for the Jewish populations, I think.

I asked because if Armenians were indistinguishable from Jews, then there could be a problem with distinguishing Armenian admixture from Jewish admixture in Poland-Lithuania. Because many thousands of Armenians were assimilated into the Polish nation throughout history:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON-MJw-7xtI


Throughout history, there were at least four major waves of Armenian immigration to Poland.

The first influx started in years 1045-1062 (after the conquest of Armenia by Seljuq Turks) and continued also after the 11th century at a slower pace (they were coming via Crimea, Bessarabia and Don River region) - those first immigrants settled mostly in Halychna and Podolia, areas which became parts of Poland in the 14th century. By 1630 Armenians fully integrated with Polish Catholic culture, which made assimilation and intermarriage much easier than in case of Polish Jews. Armenians who were descended from the first wave of immigrants became Polonized and melted into Polish people during the 17th century. The second wave of Armenian immigrants came during the 18th century from Moldavia and Wallachia - those became Polonized in the 19th century. As of year 1791 (already after the 1st Partition, but before the 2nd Partition) there were around 100,000 Armenians in Poland, according to Tadeusz Korzon (over 1% of the population living within the reduced borders). The third wave came as refugees after the Armenian Genocide. It wasn't very numerous (several thousand people). Armenians from the third wave became acculturated during the 20th century (since nobody exterminated them in gas chambers, as it happened to Jews). After the end of WW2, 99% of Armenians in what used to be Eastern Poland moved westward, and only 1% stayed in the Soviet Union. Despite Polonisation, many Armenians preserved their traditions, customs and memory about ancestors. Finally, the last wave of Armenian immigrants came after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At any given point in time, Armenians were never very numerous (probably those 100,000 before the 2nd Partition was the historical peak) - but that was because they were much more likely to get assimilated than Jews.

Some examples of ethnic Poles with partially Armenian ancestry:

Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski - 1/2 Armenian (Armenian mother) ----- he is the one speaking in the video posted above
Juliusz Słowacki - 1/4 Armenian (Armenian maternal grandmother)
Krzysztof Penderecki - 1/4 Armenian (Armenian paternal grandmother)
Zbigniew Herbert - 1/4 Armenian (Armenian maternal grandmother)
Jerzy Kawalerowicz - surname of Armenian origin (Armenian Kavalarian family)
Robert Makłowicz - 1/4 Armenian (Armenian great-grandmother)
Maja Bohosiewicz - surname of Armenian origin (Armenian Poghosyan family)
Sonia Bohosiewicz (sister of Maja Bohosiewicz)

Other Polish people with partially Armenian ancestry (but I don't know percentages):

Ignacy Łukasiewicz
Karol Mikuli
Anna Dymna
Szymon Szymonowic
Jakub Paschalis-Jakubowicz (enterpreneur)
Ignacy Nikorowicz (writer)
Ewa Stolzman-Kotlarczyk (actress)
Izaak Mikołaj Isakowicz (philanthropist, patriotic activist)
Teodor Axentowicz
Leszek Józef Serafinowicz
Łukasz Abgarowicz
Wojciech Mojzesowicz (politician)

And this one is actually 100% Armenian and born in Armenia, but lives in Poland:

Vahan Gevorgyan (footballer)

In the census of 2011 in Poland, 3623 people declared themselves as Armenians.

But this only a drop in the sea of Armenian immigrants absorbed into ethnic Poles (perhaps also into Ukrainians) over many centuries of history. Historically, Armenian communities were always concentrated in southern parts of Poland and in what is now Western Ukraine.
 
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.

what are you talking about?............as an example, If a muslim albanian with E-v13 marrys a Jew and enters the jewish religious society his E-v13 around the world does not become a jewish marker......your being silly


the only subclades I can recall which are proven jewish subclades from BC times are K1a1b1a, K1a9, and K2a2a which are ashkenazi and T2e which is sephatic ( all are mtdna subclades )
 
If a muslim albanian with E-v13 marrys a Jew and enters the jewish religious society his E-v13 around the world does not become a jewish marker

Well - he will pass his E-V13 to his children, and their children will pass it to their children, and so on.

It will become permanently established among the Jewish community, Jews will carry it in their DNA.

If an Albanian converts to Judaism and has 20 sons - all Jewish - then his Y-DNA will spread fast.
 
Those who died before the Holocaust were buried in graves in Jewish cemeteries, not incinerated in the camps.



An assumption that those few survivors were perfectly representative of the total pool is... just an assumption.

Also Jews emigrating from Europe in the 1800s and in the early 1900s were not necessarily representative.



I asked because if Armenians were indistinguishable from Jews, then there could be a problem with distinguishing Armenian admixture from Jewish admixture in Poland-Lithuania. Because many thousands of Armenians were assimilated into the Polish nation throughout history:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON-MJw-7xtI


Throughout history, there were at least four major waves of Armenian immigration to Poland.

The first influx started in years 1045-1062 (after the conquest of Armenia by Seljuq Turks) and continued also after the 11th century at a slower pace (they were coming via Crimea, Bessarabia and Don River region) - those first immigrants settled mostly in Halychna and Podolia, areas which became parts of Poland in the 14th century. By 1630 Armenians fully integrated with Polish Catholic culture, which made assimilation and intermarriage much easier than in case of Polish Jews. Armenians who were descended from the first wave of immigrants became Polonized and melted into Polish people during the 17th century. The second wave of Armenian immigrants came during the 18th century from Moldavia and Wallachia - those became Polonized in the 19th century. As of year 1791 (already after the 1st Partition, but before the 2nd Partition) there were around 100,000 Armenians in Poland (over 1% of the population living within the reduced borders after the 1st Partition). The third wave came as refugees after the Armenian Genocide. It wasn't very numerous (several thousand people). Armenians from the third became acculturated and integrated during the 20th century (since nobody exterminated them in gas chambers, as it happened to Jews). After the end of WW2, 99% of Armenians in what used to be Eastern Poland moved westward, and only 1% stayed in the Soviet Union. Despite Polonisation, many Armenians preserved their traditions, customs and memory about ancestors. Finally, the last wave of Armenian immigrants came after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At any given point in time, Armenians were never very numerous (probably those 100,000 before the 2nd Partition was the historical peak) - but that was because they were much more likely to get assimilated than Jews.

Some examples of ethnic Poles with partially Armenian ancestry:

Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski - 1/2 Armenian (Armenian mother) ----- he is the one speaking in the video posted above
Juliusz Słowacki - 1/4 Armenian (Armenian maternal grandmother)
Krzysztof Penderecki - 1/4 Armenian (Armenian paternal grandmother)
Zbigniew Herbert - 1/4 Armenian (Armenian maternal grandmother)
Jerzy Kawalerowicz - surname of Armenian origin (Armenian Kavalarian family)
Robert Makłowicz - 1/4 Armenian (Armenian great-grandmother)
Maja Bohosiewicz - surname of Armenian origin (Armenian Poghosyan family)
Sonia Bohosiewicz (sister of Maja Bohosiewicz)

In the census of 2011 in Poland, 3623 people declared Armenian ethnic identity.

But this only a drop in the sea of Armenian immigrants absorbed into ethnic Poles (perhaps also into Ukrainians) over many centuries of history. Historically, Armenian communities were always concentrated in southern parts of Poland and in what is now Western Ukraine.

"Between the last two decades of the nineteenth-century, and the first quarter of the twentieth-century, there was a mass emigration of Jewish peoples from Eastern and Southern Europe.[41] During that period 2,800,000 Jewish Europeans immigrated to the United States, with 94% of them coming from Eastern Europe.[42] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_United_States

In 1881, it's estimated there were only 6,000,000 Jews in Europe. Whatever the actual number, this was not a migration by a minor specialized sub-group. They came from all over eastern Europe, from areas now part of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, etc. Plus, these people had been prohibited by both their own laws and the laws of the government and church authorities of the countries where they were living from marrying anyone other than each other for at least six to seven hundred years, and on top of that, they derive from a founder population of a couple of hundred people. How different could they have been?

As to the Armenian migration into Poland, I'm not sure I understand the relevance to the ethnogenesis of the Ashkenazim, unless you're talking about Armenian ancestry in Poles showing up as Ashkenazi?

European Jews are not descendants of Armenians. European Jews don't plot anywhere near Armenians. You can't mistake an Ashkenazi genome for an Armenian genome. Even Slavic admixed Armenians don't plot anywhere near Ashkenazim. The calculators might get confused, but if a Polish person gets 1.5% Ashkenazi on 23andme, it's Ashkenazi, not Armenian. The Ashkenazi genome is that distinct because of that horrific bottleneck. Such a Pole will get numerous Ashkenazi very distant "cousin" matches to prove it.

There is some IBD sharing between Ashkenazim and Eastern Europeans. However, that doesn't tell us the direction of gene flow. Also, the amount of IBD sharing is very low. If any of the calculators which some people so love to post tell us anything, it's that the "eastern European" in Ashkenazi Jews is almost always under 3%. That seems pretty suggestive to me that there was very little gene flow from eastern Europeans into "Jewish" genomes.

Something might come out tomorrow that will change all of this, but for now that's what it looks like to me.



 
Last edited:
Angela,

unless you're talking about Armenian ancestry in Poles showing up as Ashkenazi?
Yes, that was my question. Thanks for answering!

European Jews are not descendants of Armenians. European Jews don't plot anywhere near Armenians. You can't mistake an Ashkenazi genome for an Armenian genome. Even Slavic admixed Armenians don't plot anywhere near Ashkenazim. There's no IBD sharing between them. The calculators might get confused, but if a Polish person gets 1.5% Ashkenazi on 23andme, it's Ashkenazi, not Armenian. The Ashkenazi genome is that distinct because of that horrific bottleneck. Such a Pole will get numerous Ashkenazi very distant "cousin" matches to prove it.

Are there maps showing "Ashkenazi admixture" ???

Angela said:
they derive from a founder population of a couple of hundred people

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 ???
 
Why don't you look at the definition of "wooly" before making your claims? It simply means very curly or matted. It's is not only what black people look like.

You are the one who should do just that, as the man whom you posted does not have "wooly hair".
 
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.
 
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,


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."
 
An interesting case are the Lemba Jews of South Africa:


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:

sat_24_-_lemba_494_300_80auto_s.jpg


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: :grin:

http://israelitishworldwide.blogspot.com/2014_07_01_archive.html

bhi.jpg
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.

nature13673-f2.jpg
 
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.
 

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