Razib Khan: The Origins of Ashkenazi Jews

It is interesting to me (y)
Since my own subclade is shared
With a sefhardi
With italian jewish surname
That might suggest his ancestor was in italy
And came to turkey in 16th centurey from italy
By explusion from the pope state:unsure:
 
kingjohn said:
It is interesting to me (y)
Since my own subclade is shared
With a sefhardi
With italian jewish surname
That might suggest his ancestor was in italy
And came to turkey in 16th centurey from italy
By explusion from the pope state:unsure:
Click to expand...

My subclade, G2a-Z1903, has both Jewish & non-Jewish branches, and has connections to both Etruria and Sardinia. I'm beginning to think I might carry some small fraction of Italian Jewish ancestry, as my Iberomaurusian component is higher than average. It could also reflect Phoenician ancestry. Or some other variable. Whether the ancestry is on my Y-line or simply autosomal, I can only speculate. The surname Simonetti appears in my family tree in the 1700s. Simonetti looks to my eyes like a Jewish surname, but it doesn't appear on any list of Italian Jewish surnames. So who knows.

I also wonder if the expulsion of the Jews from the Italian South led to its economic decline. Of course not every region with Jews prospers, so it's not a simple proposition.
 
Malaparte said:
My subclade, G2a-Z1903, has both Jewish & non-Jewish branches, and has connections to both Etruria and Sardinia. I'm beginning to think I might carry some small fraction of Italian Jewish ancestry, as my Iberomaurusian component is higher than average. It could also reflect Phoenician ancestry. Or some other variable. Whether the ancestry is on my Y-line or simply autosomal, I can only speculate.
Click to expand...

On Yfull the oldest ancient sample of G2a-Z1903 (formed 8300 ybp, TMRCA 4800 ybp) is from Sicily (I3125) and is dated 1500 BC, Middle Bronze Age. When does the ethnogenesis of the Jewish people begin? I do not know if any others have been found, likely more ancient samples will be found soon from other parts of Europe having G2a-Z1903 a TMRCA dating back to almost 3000 BC.

https://www.yfull.com/tree/G-Z1903/


The surname Simonetti appears in my family tree in the 1700s. Simonetti looks to my eyes like a Jewish surname, but it doesn't appear on any list of Italian Jewish surnames. So who knows.
Click to expand...

Simonetti is not considered a Jewish surname in Italy, even if it is derived from Simone-Shimeon, it is one of the many surnames ending with the suffix -etto (-etti is the plural), and has many variants: Simoni, Simonelli... In Calabria is more common Simonetta.

Italian surnames only began to "stabilise" after the Council of Trento, and were only finally fixed in 1800s, so they could also have changed spelling over the centuries. Among Italian Jews there are also families that have surnames that are also common among non-Jewish families. There are no rules, they are family histories.
 
kingjohn said:
a sefhardi
With italian jewish surname
That might suggest his ancestor was in italy
And came to turkey in 16th centurey from italy
Click to expand...

The Calabrian Jews who could afford to move (rather than convert) tended to head that direction, Corfu or Thessaloniki. Supposedly 4 of 30 synagogues in Thessaloniki were Calabrian exiles.
 
Pax Augusta said:
Simonetti is not considered a Jewish surname in Italy, even if it is derived from Simone-Shimeon, it is one of the many surnames ending with the suffix -etto (-etti is the plural), and has many variants: Simoni, Simonelli... In Calabria is more common Simonetta.
Click to expand...
To be clear, Simonetti is not on my direct paternal line. My surname is much more Latin-sounding. I just think it likely that I have Jewish ancestry. Or something closely akin. Seems the most plausible theory.


Pax Augusta said:
On Yfull the oldest ancient sample of G2a-Z1903 (formed 8300 ybp, TMRCA 4800 ybp) is from Sicily (I3125) and is dated 1500 BC, Middle Bronze Age. When does the ethnogenesis of the Jewish people begin? I do not know if any others have been found, likely more ancient samples will be found soon from other parts of Europe having G2a-Z1903 a TMRCA dating back to almost 3000 BC.
Click to expand...



There's Z1903 among the Etruscan samples in the Cosimo Posth paper, which I'm pretty confident you and King John know better than me, so perhaps I misunderstand your remark?
MAS001Marsiliana d'Albegna (Grosseto, Tuscany)350-100 BCEC.Italy_Etruscan_MAS001 T2h2 G2a2b2a1a1c1a1CTS5990/Z1903
TAQ023Tarquinia (Viterbo, Lazio)396-216 BCEC.Italy_Etruscan.Afr U5b2a3 G2a2b2a1a1c1a1CTS5990/Z1903


There was one found in Moots from the Imperial Era:
136-326 CE CTS342>Z724>Z1903>CTS7045>Z3408>Z3428>YP4752>Z6434


Z1903 was also found in one Tiszapolgar and in two Baden samples from Lipson 2017:
I2354 4500-4000 BC Pusztataskony-Ledence I. Hungary Tiszapolgar_ECA G2a2b2a1a1c1a L30>P303>L140>CTS342>Z724>Z1903
I2369 3367-3103 BC Budakalász-Luppa csárda Hungary Baden_LCA G2a2b2a1a1c1a L30>P303>L140>CTS342>Z724>Z1903
I2368 3300-2850 BC iBudakalász-Luppa csárda Hungary Baden_LCA G2a2b2a1a1c1a L30>P303>L140>CTS342>Z724>Z1903
See https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/sites/reich.hms.harvard.edu/files/inline-files/LipsonM_Nature24476_2017.pdf


Z1903 flies under the radar because it's not L497. I only keep track of it because it's my subclade. Oddly the Z1903 in Sicily from 1500 BC had very little Steppe ancestry. I have it in my head that Olalde also found it in Bell Beaker Spain, but I'm not sure. Maybe it was just CTS342.


Regardless, Khan's interlocutor in the interview, another Lipson, believes that certain Jewish lineages have a West Mediterranean origin and are partially descended from Etruscan populations. I would put certain subclades of Z1903 in this group. See my comment #29 upthread.

 
Malaparte said:

Lipson believes that certain Jewish lineages have a West Mediterranean origin and are partially descended from Etruscan populations
Click to expand...

I might be over-stating the Etruscan part of Lipson's argument. But I think that populations carrying Etruscan haplogroups (not necessarily Etruscan descended) mixed with populations similar to "Punics" at various points throughout the Western Mediterranean to give rise to Jewish populations that we might describe as "indigenous" to the West. Calabria, Sicily, Sardinia, North Africa, Murcia region of Spain.

Yes, I made a tactical retreat from the "La Tene to Model Italians" thread, where I took a bit of a drubbing, to raise similar concerns here
 
King John -- Those are fascinating charts. It's amazing that the Expulsions were sustained over such a long period, beginning in 1492 in Spain and then continuing for another 50 to 70 years in a kind of geographic sweep through Sicily and the South and then up through the Papal States.

Adding complexity to this matter is that many Italian Jews were in fact "newcomers" fleeing the Inquisition from Spain & Portugal to Sicily and then to the mainland, where they stayed for maybe a generation or two, before moving again to the Ottoman East. What was the ratio of Sephardic to native among Jews in Southern Italy circa 1500? Were Sephardics more likely than native Italian Jews to seek exile, yet again, in Constantinople, Adrianople, Salonica? Or did both groups flee in comparable number?

Put differently, how many of the Italian Jews arriving in Constantinople were truly Italian and how many were basically Spanish? Is it a simple correspondence of non-Sephardic synagogues = Italians and Sephardic synagogues = Spanish?

And among the Neofiti who remained in Italy and eventually mixed with the wider population, the same question must be asked. Were native Jews more likely to become Neofiti than the Sephardics because they could blend-in more easily?

Another wrinkle in the story is that many Jews may have arrived in Calabria with either the Moors or the Normans, circa 900 to 1100, whereas others may have descended from ancient indigenous communities.

Finally, what was the proportion of Jew to non-Jew in Southern Italy? The historian Vincenzo Villella has evidently made the claim that roughly half the population of Calabria was Jewish circa 1500.

I don't expect anyone knows the answers to these questions. Certain things remain a mystery.
 
Great presentation by Dr. Beider. He notes that by 1660 the Romaniote population had merged with the Sephardic & Italian populations, at least in Constantinople. My impression is that none of these populations survive in a "pristine" pre-1492 form for genetic testing.

I wonder about the origin of the Sephardic and Italian Jewish populations, how much of their ancestry was local to Spain & Southern Italy, and how much could be traced to specifically Levantine lineages (or separated from Carthage).
 
Malaparte said:
Great presentation by Dr. Beider. He notes that by 1660 the Romaniote population had merged with the Sephardic & Italian populations, at least in Constantinople. My impression is that none of these populations survive in a "pristine" pre-1492 form for genetic testing.

I wonder about the origin of the Sephardic and Italian Jewish populations, how much of their ancestry was local to Spain & Southern Italy, and how much could be traced to specifically Levantine lineages (or separated from Carthage).
Click to expand...

yes informative
and very interesting lecture (y)
 
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