J-L70 - a much needed update

SUPREEEEEME

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Y-DNA haplogroup
J-L70
mtDNA haplogroup
HV1b2
Hi all!

I am a new member to this forum - but I am active on others. I feel that this forum would benefit from an up-to-date take on J-L70. For those interested, I do have threads dedicated to J-L70 on Anthrogenica that have evolved over time - but I'm not sure on the stance of posting links from other forums, so I will refrain from doing so.

As many of you are aware, J-L70 is a very widely spread branch of J2a. This has led to some controversy of where it originated, spread from, and so on.

So I'll start with where is J-L70 most common?

I have taken the liberty of gathering data from FamilyTreeDNA - and have reasonably large sample sizes, so these figures are likely a good reflection of J-L70's distribution in these regions. No surprise, J-L70 is most common in the Central-East Mediterranean and the Near East. These are the regions with the greatest frequencies:

Syria: 3.34% (12/359)
Italy and Malta: 3.19% (97/3040)
Lebanon: 2.12% (9/424)
Palestinian Territories: 2% (4/200)
Jordan: 1.64% (3/183)
Turkey: 1.53% (13/847) -- out of interest, quite a decent chunk are Armenians
Iraq: 1.52% (18/1184)
Greece: 1.47% (10/682)
Armenia: 1.25% (7/562)

As for which individual group has the most J-L70, it would be the Djerban Cohanim (~60%), limited to one subclade.

As we head away from these regions, we find the frequency of J-L70 drop dramatically, with most of Europe, North Africa, the Caucasus, Arabia, Central Asia etc... being <0.5%.

Within Italy, we do notice a trend of J-L70 being more common in Central Italy and Sicily/Southern Italy than the north - and there may be a reason for this, which I'll get to.

In J-L70, we find virtually all branches have a close Near Eastern relative.

The next question to address is where is J-L70 most diverse?

Here we find a pretty stark contrast between two regions and the rest of the world. The two regions with the greatest branch diversity by far are the Levant and Italy. Considering Italy's history, their diversity makes sense in context. As for the Levant, the diversity is striking given the lower levels of testing in this region, as compared to Italy and the rest of Europe

The next question to address is where did J-L70 likely originate and spread from?

The only thing we can say with utmost certainty is that J-L70 originated and spread from the Near East. Now as for specifically where, the two options that hold weight are the Levant (more so the north) and Anatolia (more so the east).

From what I have researched, a Levantine origin for J-L70 carries the most evidence, but should this not come to fruition (for whatever reason), an origin in East Anatolia would likely be the next best guess. A Levantine origin for J-L70 makes the most sense given the great branch diversity, higher frequencies than other regions, and presence of several layers of Basal branches (J-L70* in Jordan, J-FT340863 in an Sinai Egyptian and Palestinian, J-Z387* in several Sephardic Jews, and two different J-FGC35503* branches in Lebanon). Should J-L70 not originate in the Levant, this is all very coincidental. The nail on the hammer for a Levantine origin for J-L70 are the 15 distinct, distant Jewish branches. No similarly aged clade has as many distinct Jewish lineages - save for perhaps J-Y2919, but that's 600 years older. These Jewish branches are spread throughout J-L70's phylogeny, and are present in the following groups: Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews (Spain, Portugal, Italy), Sephardic Jews (Balkans, Turkey), Libyan Jews, Tunisian Jews, Djerban Cohanim, New World Conversos, Canadian Anousim, Moroccan Jews, Algerian Jews, Mountain Jews, Bukharan Jews, Italian Conversos, and Romaniote Jews. Not to mention that there are individuals from all 3 major branches of J-L70 (i.e. J-Z2177, J-CTS3601, J-PH3882) who are Cohanim. Considering Jews are a very endogamous group, and considering most conversions were on the female line, this suggests to me that the TMRCA of J-Z2148 was related to the ancestral population of all these Jewish groups in some way.

Now what about Anatolia? Anatolia doesn't display the same diversity as the Levant, nor the same level of Basal branches given similar levels of testing. The sheer number of Jewish branches contradicts an Anatolian origin. A notion of J-L70 originating in Anatolia, with some branches going to the Levant and some going to Europe isn't supported by the phylogeny we see.

What about J-Z387? J-Z387's TMRCA (7100 ybp) may be congruent with the first infusion of Late Neolithic Mesopotamians into the Levant or signals the adoption of Afroasiatic speech. An origin in Mesopotamia would make the most sense.

An origin for J-L70 amongst Romans or Greeks does not make any sense - especially given that the expansions of these civilizations occurred after J-L70's expansion period (when the greatest diversification of branches occurred). But that doesn't mean they weren't partially responsible for it's spread. Meanwhile J-L70's expansion period does correspond with the commercial prosperity of the cities of the northern Levant, with trade likely being key to J-L70's growth.

I believe J-L70 originated in Syria.

How did J-L70 spread?

There are likely many sources attributable to J-L70's spread. The primary force to Europe was likely the Syrian Auxiliaries. Much of the J-L70 we find in continental Europe and the British Isles is more than likely attributable to them. The regional trends we see do correspond with where these groups wound up. The other forces were likely less significant, being the Jewish Diaspora (for the branches surrounding existing Jewish branches), the Phoenicians (we see similar trends with other clades associated with the Phoenicians), the Greeks (via Anatolia), and the Aghlabid Dynasty (responsible for J-FGC32147 in Sicily) to name a few. Most of the J-L70 in Europe likely arrived during the Roman Period, with Rome seeing the branches spread throughout.

When it comes to Italy, I mentioned earlier that we see clear spikes in Central Italy and Southern Italy. Central Italy is likely attributed to an influx of Near Eastern ancestry during Imperial Rome. As for Sicily, J-Z387 is the highest in areas of Phoenician settlement (Mazara del Vallo and Trapani) but does display higher frequencies on the rest of the island as well. As mentioned J-FGC32147 in Sicily is more than likely attributed to the Bani Tamim (Aghlabid Dynasty).

As more how it spread throughout the Near East (which occurred before it spread to Europe), I imagine groups like the Hittites, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Amorites are all responsible for it's spread throughout.
 
On Y-full in addition to Italians and Greeks, among the J-L70 there are also English, Irish, Scottish, Polish, Bulgarian, Swiss-German, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Albanian, Austrian, Ukrainian, Swedish, Belgian, Dutch, French, Lithuanian, Belorussian, Czech users. Actually, the area of its distribution in Europe is wider than the Roman Empire, I have doubts all of J-L70 can be attributed to the Roman imperial era. Since many areas of Europe are not yet heavily sampled, it is possible that it is a bit more widespread in Europe than we think. A Viking (VK42) from Sweden is also J-L70.
 
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Everything is to prove that some Jews or other Middle Easterners settled in Italy and left some y Dna behind. Whoop-de-doo. Can you imagine obsessing over crap like this?

Get a life, boys, if there is even more than one of you. Find a girl or a boy or another hobby. This is SO BORING! I come here less and less frequently because there's hardly anybody producing interesting content, or intelligent discussion. Pretty soon it's going to be like theapricity around here, with Sickeliot and his socks talking to each other and upvoting each other. :)
 
Just a comment in the interests of science and the reputation of this site.

Since when are samples which are collected by some unknown hobbyist from anthrogenica with who knows what agenda from consumer sites which can in no way be considered representative samples because they are self-selected be used to prove absolutely anything???

You want a "REVIEW"; you want a DISCUSSION??

Fine, then present data from scientific papers, which means scientific samples of representative data which can be TRUSTED, not this junk. That is, if you even know what scientific sampling is all about and why it's all that can be trusted.

Until then, prepare to be ignored by everyone except your socks.
 
Interesting (y)
I could not ignore the connection in %
Between syria and italy/malta :unsure:
You can also add greek cypriots 31/629 4.9% :cool-v:
From this paper:
P.s
I recognized j-L70 by j-z387 downstream
And dys445=6

Thanks - I have seen this paper before!

The issue that arises, is that most of these studies test for DYS445=6, which is a characteristic of all of J-Z387. So when a study does present data, it is reasonable to assume we're looking at a mix of J-L70 and J-FGC35503 - whereas my data is exclusively J-L70. Unfortunately in FTDNA's case, they don't have an adequate number of Cypriots tested.

Generally most of these studies have pretty small sample sizes (not the case for your Cypriot figure!), which is an additional limitation.
 
On Y-full in addition to Italians and Greeks, among the J-L70 there are also English, Scottish, Polish, Bulgarian, Swiss-German, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Albanian, Austrian, Ukrainian, Swedish, Belgian, Dutch, French, Lithuanian, Belorussian, Czech. Actually, the area of its distribution in Europe is wider than the Roman Empire, I have doubts all of J-L70 can be attributed to the Roman imperial era. Since many areas of Europe are not yet heavily sampled, it is possible that it is a bit more widespread in Europe than we think. A Viking (VK42) from Sweden is also J-L70.

Indeed, J-L70 is found throughout Western Eurasia. One of the noticeable things we see is that there are Near Easterners, Mediterranean, and non-Mediterranean Europeans at virtually all levels of the phylogeny. This suggests that J-L70 diversified amongst a certain culture, or in a certain region, before spreading. The majority of J-L70 in Eastern Europe is Ashkenazi Jewish (since Ashkenazim are a heavily tested population). However, I'm pretty confident that most of Europe's J-L70 would have arrived during the Roman Period. I'm not sure how else a young, widespread MENA clade would spread to Europe otherwise.

The J-L70 Viking, from the supplementary data of the paper, was around ~20% Southern European. I think it would be reasonable to assume his line arrived from the south.
 
My closest k12b ancient
is R136 late antiquity:unsure:
Thanks to your thread i now see
He falls in j-L70 branch :cool-v:
https://yfull.com/tree/J-BY242*/

P.s
I understand your remarks on the cyprus study
 
Just a comment in the interests of science and the reputation of this site.

Since when are samples which are collected by some unknown hobbyist from anthrogenica with who knows what agenda from consumer sites which can in no way be considered representative samples because they are self-selected be used to prove absolutely anything???

You want a "REVIEW"; you want a DISCUSSION??

Fine, then present data from scientific papers, which means scientific samples of representative data which can be TRUSTED, not this junk. That is, if you even know what scientific sampling is all about and why it's all that can be trusted.

Until then, prepare to be ignored by everyone except your socks.

All samples, whether it's those from FamilyTreeDNA, or from a scientific paper, will face sampling risk. It's inherent. Since there is a limited amount of data for J-L70 in terms of frequencies (most studies test for J-Z387, since DYS445=6 isn't exclusively J-L70), I took it upon myself to at least make some progress for this understudied branch. As of yet, we don't have a study that sets out to find an unbiased origin for J-L70, but should a paper come out that specifically looks at J-L70 in all of it's aspects(which would be great!), they will similarly face the risk that their sample is not representative. I just simply found all the publicly available J-L70 members from specific countries (via match lists, projects, and the haplotree) which is currently the "best" data we have about J-L70's distribution.

Another thing worth mentioning, is that I posted the figures I have merely for everyone else's benefit, due to the lack thereof regarding J-L70. The conclusion of an origin for J-L70 in the Levant is largely unaffected by it's frequency - we're mostly focusing on it's diversity, Basal branches, and large Jewish presence (not to mention certain historical events and periods do coincide with the dates we see) which provides far more evidence than a frequency ever could (given limitations such as lack of representation, founder effects, and so on).

Given your reservations, could you kindly link existing Eupedia threads relating to J-L70 that meet your scientific standard, so I can get a sense of what you consider to be "interesting content, or intelligent discussion".

Thanks
 
My closest k12b ancient
is R136 late antiquity:unsure:
Thanks to your thread i now see
He falls in j-L70 branch :cool-v:

Yes! Given where he falls and those surrounding, I wouldn't be too surprised if his line made it's way north into Anatolia, and was then picked up from there, making it's way to Rome.
 
Indeed, J-L70 is found throughout Western Eurasia. One of the noticeable things we see is that there are Near Easterners, Mediterranean, and non-Mediterranean Europeans at virtually all levels of the phylogeny. This suggests that J-L70 diversified amongst a certain culture, or in a certain region, before spreading. The majority of J-L70 in Eastern Europe is Ashkenazi Jewish (since Ashkenazim are a heavily tested population). However, I'm pretty confident that most of Europe's J-L70 would have arrived during the Roman Period. I'm not sure how else a young, widespread MENA clade would spread to Europe otherwise.

The J-L70 Viking, from the supplementary data of the paper, was around ~20% Southern European. I think it would be reasonable to assume his line arrived from the south.


J-L70 is older and predates the Ashkenazi Jews, the Semites, and the Roman Imperial period.
 
The MRCA does not predate Semites.

There is no consensus on the location of the Proto-Semitic Urheimat and its dating as there is no consensus that J2a is Proto-Semitic. So J-L70 may have arrived there later and not be part originally of the Proto-Semites.
 
J-L70 is older and predates the Ashkenazi Jews, the Semites, and the Roman Imperial period.

I describe J-L70 as young, since given it's wide distribution, a TMRCA of 3800 ybp is indeed young for such a distribution to be achieved.
 
There is no consensus on the location of the Proto-Semitic Urheimat and its dating as there is no consensus that J2a is Proto-Semitic. So J-L70 may have arrived there later and not be part originally of the Proto-Semites.

It wouldn't be too surprising for *J-Z387 to have been associated with Proto-Semitic, Proto-West Semitic, or Proto-Central Semitic.
 
There is no consensus on the location of the Proto-Semitic Urheimat and its dating as there is no consensus that J2a is Proto-Semitic. So J-L70 may have arrived there later and not be part originally of the Proto-Semites.

well we know of 2 Semitic branches that have been found in many sites, J1-Z1853 and J2b-M205, the tmrca of those branches suggest a Proto Semitic timeframe to be anywhere from 7100-5900 ybp.
 

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