Jovialis
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I'm creating this thread, because there seems to be a contingent of surly and dubious posters on Anthrogenica, misrepresenting similarities between Western Jews and Greeks. I would like to open a discussion here, without it being muddled or shouted down.
Of course West Eurasians share similarities with one another, such as Anatolian_N, and Iran-like ancestry. However, there are non-trivial differences, that are worth examining, and distinguishing.
It is true that there has been some southeastern European admixture into the Levant, during the Iron and Classical age.
As well as Greek-like admixture via the Philistines, though this seems to have been replaced by native Levantine populations over time.
Firstly, the Ancient Greeks examined in Lazaridis et al 2017, have zero connection to the Levantines of their time. Furthermore, the article asserts that there has been genetic continuity since then, with only some dilution of early neolithic ancestry:
As for the trajectory Ashkenazi Jewish genetic history, Xue et al 2017 provides this:
Furthermore, prior to their arrival in Europe, the Levant had experienced a trajectory markedly different from that of Greece. Even since the Holocene, the Levant has been distinguished by 27% admixture with Ancestral North Africans, giving rise to Natufians:
As for culture, and experience as a people, Jews and Greeks have had stark differences as well. Greeks have an Indo-European culture, while Jews have a Semitic one. Throughout history, they have had different experiences as a people. For example, the Romans, despite conquering Greeks, raised their culture to unprecedented heights. While with the Jews, they banished them from Israel, and named the land after their mortal enemies. They vehemently despised the Semitic Carthaginians, and considered them foreigners from Phoenicia, then facilitated a genocide against them. Because of this, Greek culture has been celebrated throughout history in Europe, by preceding super-powers, while Jews were shunned, and vilified.
All in all, I think both groups deserve the respect of having their own history, and not have it obfuscated.
Of course West Eurasians share similarities with one another, such as Anatolian_N, and Iran-like ancestry. However, there are non-trivial differences, that are worth examining, and distinguishing.
It is true that there has been some southeastern European admixture into the Levant, during the Iron and Classical age.
As well as Greek-like admixture via the Philistines, though this seems to have been replaced by native Levantine populations over time.
Firstly, the Ancient Greeks examined in Lazaridis et al 2017, have zero connection to the Levantines of their time. Furthermore, the article asserts that there has been genetic continuity since then, with only some dilution of early neolithic ancestry:
The origins of the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean cultures have puzzled archaeologists for more than a century. We have assembled genome-wide data from 19 ancient individuals, including Minoans from Crete, Mycenaeans from mainland Greece, and their eastern neighbours from southwestern Anatolia. Here we show that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically similar, having at least three-quarters of their ancestry from the first Neolithic farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean1,2, and most of the remainder from ancient populations related to those of the Caucasus3 and Iran4,5. However, the Mycenaeans differed from Minoans in deriving additional ancestry from an ultimate source related to the hunter–gatherers of eastern Europe and Siberia6,7,8, introduced via a proximal source related to the inhabitants of either the Eurasian steppe1,6,9 or Armenia4,9. Modern Greeks resemble the Mycenaeans, but with some additional dilution of the Early Neolithic ancestry. Our results support the idea of continuity but not isolation in the history of populations of the Aegean, before and after the time of its earliest civilizations.
...
Other proposed migrations, such as settlement by Egyptian or Phoenician colonists 22, are not discernible in our data, as there is no measurable Levantine or African influence in the Minoans and Mycenaeans, thus rejecting the hypothesis that the cultures of the Aegean were seeded by migrants from the old civilizations of these regions.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23310
As for the trajectory Ashkenazi Jewish genetic history, Xue et al 2017 provides this:
The Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population is important in genetics due to its high rate of Mendelian disorders. AJ appeared in Europe in the 10th century, and their ancestry is thought to comprise European (EU) and Middle-Eastern (ME) components. However, both the time and place of admixture are subject to debate. Here, we attempt to characterize the AJ admixture history using a careful application of new and existing methods on a large AJ sample. Our main approach was based on local ancestry inference, in which we first classified each AJ genomic segment as EU or ME, and then compared allele frequencies along the EU segments to those of different EU populations. The contribution of each EU source was also estimated using GLOBETROTTER and haplotype sharing. The time of admixture was inferred based on multiple statistics, including ME segment lengths, the total EU ancestry per chromosome, and the correlation of ancestries along the chromosome. The major source of EU ancestry in AJ was found to be Southern Europe (≈60–80% of EU ancestry), with the rest being likely Eastern European. The inferred admixture time was ≈30 generations ago, but multiple lines of evidence suggest that it represents an average over two or more events, pre- and post-dating the founder event experienced by AJ in late medieval times. The time of the pre-bottleneck admixture event, which was likely Southern European, was estimated to ≈25–50 generations ago.
Furthermore, prior to their arrival in Europe, the Levant had experienced a trajectory markedly different from that of Greece. Even since the Holocene, the Levant has been distinguished by 27% admixture with Ancestral North Africans, giving rise to Natufians:
As for culture, and experience as a people, Jews and Greeks have had stark differences as well. Greeks have an Indo-European culture, while Jews have a Semitic one. Throughout history, they have had different experiences as a people. For example, the Romans, despite conquering Greeks, raised their culture to unprecedented heights. While with the Jews, they banished them from Israel, and named the land after their mortal enemies. They vehemently despised the Semitic Carthaginians, and considered them foreigners from Phoenicia, then facilitated a genocide against them. Because of this, Greek culture has been celebrated throughout history in Europe, by preceding super-powers, while Jews were shunned, and vilified.
All in all, I think both groups deserve the respect of having their own history, and not have it obfuscated.
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