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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2005-05 > 1115436221


From: ellen Levy <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Cousin with Haplogroup G
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 20:23:41 -0700 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: 6667


I think your overreacting here, Brian. The previous
posts were not meant as a personal attack on you. I
didn't "scold" you. I would like to think that no one
on this List is in the position of "Master of
Knowledge" that entitles them to scold anyone else. I
did, however, disagree (in a hopefully professionally
courteous manner) with your interpretation of the DNA
results.

First of all, let's clue people in to what are talking
about here. The reference in question is Doron
Behar's study, "Contrasting Patterns of Y Chromosome
Variation in Ashkenazi Jewish and Host Non-Jewish
European Populations," 2004, Hum Genet 114:354-365. I
believe you can access this study for free on the
internet, but the data we are referring to is Behar's
supplementary data, which unfortunately is generally
not available. I had to write to one of the author's
of the study - Karl Skorecki - and ask for the
supplementary material, which he graciously provided.

As for the Ashkenazi G results, Behar finds two
sub-branches. He lists one as "G* (xG2)" (or "G-M201*)
and the other as "G2" (or G-P15).

I cannot comment on whether Behar's allele value of
marker 439 is "funky" or not, though I would agree it
seems unconventional. Basically, Behar just adds 4 to
the values as reported by FTDNA. Thus, if your "11"
at 439 as reported by FTDNA, Behar reports this as
"15."

Brian, I haven't closely read your website in awhile,
but I'm sure you've made a remarkable effort
documenting one of the rarer European haplogroups. I'd
be happy to go back and reread it more closely.

I do recall you referring to Jewish G2 as "Middle
Eastern" (or Israelite??) versus "European." This is
where I disagree with you. This is the common mistake
that many researchers make when examining Ashkenazi
results - assuming that Ashkenazi results always
reflect their Israelite rather than their European
ancestry. And this, in my opinion, is the glaring
mistake that Behar makes throughout his study.

You ask me to explain why I believe Ashkenazi G* is of
Israelite origin.

I'm not going to do the homework here for you. You
have immense experience examining haplogroup G
results. You also know how common G* (or G1) versus
G2 is among non-Jewish Europeans.

The answer to this little riddle can be found by
examining Behar's G results (and reading my previous
post on Haplogroup G from a week or two ago). It
doesn't even require a close examination, but it does
require a basic understanding of Ashkenazi migratory
patterns. This isn't a test, I'm just pretty pooped
out from a long week. Can you distinguish the
differences between G* and G2 that might lead me to
conclude one is of Israelite origin while the other is
more likely from European admixture? If not, I"d be
happy to clarify, but only in the morning when I'm
feeling a bit more rested and coherent.

Ellen Coffman

--- "Brian D. Hamman" <> wrote:
> Ellen,
> There are NO G*'s in the Behar et al. paper. G*
> means that BOTH G1 and
> G2 and G3 were tested and came out negative. Behar
> only tested for G (M201)
> and G2 (the P15 SNP) and therefore lists only GxG2
> (M201-positive, but NOT
> P15 positive) and G2 (BOTH M201 and P15 positive) in
> their tables. In fact,
> while I'm at it, I recall Dennis saying that they
> must've tested for G1 and
> therefore the GxG2 are most likely not G1; however,
> Dennis, they DID NOT
> test for G1 (M285, M342, or P20) so we are still in
> limbo regarding whether
> their GxG2 were G1 or G* or G3 or something else. I
> do not know why Behar
> et al. (including Hammer) decided not to test for
> G1?
> Ellen, I would not list Behar's funky
> nomenclature for DYS439, that will
> just confuse people. Also, earlier you scolded me
> for saying that any of
> these haplotypes were of "Israelite origin" (or
> Middle Eastern) as opposed
> to admixed Western Europeans, please explain why you
> now think the GxG2 (but
> not the G2) are of probable Israelite origin. Your
> comments at the end
> regarding most common allele values at key markers
> look very similar to what
> I state at my website, so I'm in full agreement with
> you there (except you
> need to replace G* with GxG2).....
> Brian Hamman
>
>
>

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