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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2007-04 > 1176477472


From: Bonnie Schrack <>
Subject: [DNA] Cohen does not equal CMH,CMH does not equal Cohen -- only in J1 do they coincide
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:17:52 -0400


I feel really tired of this debate, which seems to be never-ending, no
matter how many times it's discussed clearly -- baseless assertions are
brought up over and over. But it looks as though I had better try
again, since my name gets dragged into it. :-( It seems to be my
responsibility, since as administrator of the J project, I have easier
access than some to a lot of information.

As Ellen pointed out,

>
>
>>We've debated on the List before whether the
>>CMH as it associated with the Cohamin caste are
>>
>>Actually within haplogroups J1 and J2. Again,
>>listers, you can check the archives.
>>
>>I believe I have previously asserted that the strong suspicion is that
>>it is in J1. I think Bonnie also suggested this, as
>>well as some other researchers of haplogroup J.
>>
Thanks, Ellen -- and I haven't just suggested it, I've stated the fact:
In J1, there is a very large, well-studied and definitely known cluster
of ancestrally related Cohanim -- in the traditional, religious sense --
who have both the old 6-marker CMH and FTDNA's newly refined 12-marker
CMH, with a YCAII value of 22-22. They can be seen in our J Haplogroup
Project results table with their own category. I should note that there
are probably others in the project who could be put in this category,
but I have just started out by placing those there which fit the strict
definition of the 12-marker CMH.

Please note that I don't consider FTDNA a great authority based on their
being the largest company in the field; rather, because they work with
the very scientists who discovered and defined the original CMH, and
have continued their research, with access to a vast amount of relevant
data, so they are in the best position to make these definitions, at
this point. Bennett Greenspan is deeply involved in Jewish genealogy,
he attends many large conferences and knows the world's leading
researchers, and he certainly is aware of which families are true
Cohanim. It would be completely illogical for him to propose a
12-marker haplotype that was not found in religious Cohanim. And this
12-marker haplotype is found frequently in J1, specifically among Jews,
and is virtually never found in J2.

>But others pointed out that the question is not yet settled, and both
>options are possible.
>
>
The question is not settled only in the sense that Sasson and a few
others insist on claiming that it isn't.

Ellen also wrote:

>>The bottom line is that CMH is not mainly found in J2a1b as you have asserted.
>>
>>
Sasson wrote:

>CMH is mainly found in J1.
>But outside of J1, it is mainly found in J2a1.
>
>
Why should it be of any interest where else the old 6-marker CMH is
found, when the people carrying those marker values are NOT COHANIM in
the religious sense? See my further comments below.

Ellen asked,

>>Please cite the DNA studies that support this contention.
>>
>>
Sasson replied:

>
>It was mentioned by Bonnie and Al on this List.
>
OK, if you're going to try to cite me as the source for various
misleading assertions, I hope you are ready for me to refute them.

One aspect that bugs me is this lingering sense of some kind of a
mystical connection between the 6-marker CMH in particular, and being a
real Cohen, as if merely having these marker values somehow endows a
person with a priestly status. I keep suspecting that somewhere, people
are invoking numerology.

The reality is that in J2, there are some true Cohanim, yes; and there
are people who have the old 6-marker CMH, yes. But THEY ARE NOT THE
SAME PEOPLE! They are two totally *separate and distinct groups*, who
belong to different haplogroups. Somehow, you all are going to have to
break down this mental link between having a few Y DNA markers, and
having a religious status. There is no inherent connection! I should
think this would go without saying for any religious person.

And without any religious feeling at all, a person who studies DNA even
a little bit can see that a 6-marker CMH can be found in different
contexts, surrounded by other quite different marker values -- pick any
6 marker values, and you can find them scattered about in many
haplogroups and clusters. Simply finding those 6 values in someone says
nothing about the rest of their haplotype, or what phylogenetic clade
they may belong to.

I have been researching this in great detail for at least two years, and
there is no question about it. We have investigated it with families
who have very good knowledge of their family history. The group in
J2a1b who have the 6-marker CMH are devoid of any Cohen traditions in
their families, which Jeff Schweitzer, my co-administrator and a member
of this large group, who is very knowledgeable about Jewish history and
genealogy, has searched for systematically among them. I don't believe
there is any tradition of a Levite status, either. There are no Levites
mentioned as close matches in their RAO or Haplogroup pages. Even if
there were Levites among them, this would not fit with your assertions,

> The Jewish Cohanim are said to come from the Tribe of Levi, so the null
> hypothesis would be that the Tribe of Levi is almost as high in CMH as the
> Cohanim themselves.
>
> The fact that - among the J2 lineages - CMH is mostly found in J2a1b was
> stated on earlier in one of the discussions on this List.

>The abundance of CMH points towards J2a1b (old J2f) as the Tribe of Levi.
>
Since you appear to take the Bible as literal truth, I gather you are
trying to find two haplogroups that would be in an ancestor-descendant
relationship, as the tribe of Levi and the Cohanim lineage are said to
be. However, this won't work if you're trying to do it in J2a1b, where
neither Cohanim nor Levites have been found! If you ever find any,
please bring the specific information to the list -- not just, "they
must exist." And by all means, please send me their surnames or Ysearch
IDs, if you can actually find any.

The J2 group who *do* have a Cohen religious tradition and are proud of
it, are *NOT* *in J2a1b*, and *do not have the 6-marker or any other
CMH*. They belong to a unique, small offshoot of J2a1* which I believe
to be a predecessor of the J2a1k clade. They may be seen in the
category in our test results chart labeled, "Pre-J2a1k." I will not go
into the technical explanation at this moment, but it's very
interesting. There are a good number of Ashkenazi Jewish members of
this cluster, who have a well-organized project of their own, and so
they have not all joined our J haplogroup project. ( Note that one of
our members listed here is from India, and is Christian. He is a
descendent of ancient Jewish settlers on the Malabar coast of Kerala.)

In case you are wondering, there are some Jews in J2a1k proper, but the
families do not know of any Cohen tradition.

Also, there is a large group of Jewish families who I have been known
for some while, as I've been assisting Herb Huebscher, who has done such
an excellent job of studying and coordinating their group, and has been
giving presentations on them at international Jewish genealogy
meetings. Many of them do have Levite traditions, and they are in the
later-arising haplogroup, J2a1b1 (J2f1). I don't know of any other such
group of Levites in the J haplogroup.

J2a1b1 (J2f1) is considered by scholars to be the most recently formed
branch of the J haplogroup. It has the further M92 SNP in addition to
the M67 SNP that defines J2a1b. So it cannot be ancestral to the J2a1b
people who have the CMH -- who are not Cohanim, anyway.

Sasson also wrote:

>
> >From the fact that they are not all CMH but some are just close to
> CMH, in
> conjunction with the assumption that they all are from the same family, we
> can deduce that they are in J2,
> because in J1 CMH is much tighter. So 50%-80% are in strict CMH-6, but
> there
> are many in close haplotypes.
>
> If the Cohanim sampled back in ninties where mostly in J1, they would form
> much more tight network. We can conclude that if the sampled Cohanim
> were mostly from haplogroup J2.


I'm sorry, but this makes no sense whatsoever. There are a great number
of Jews -- and non-Jews for that matter -- who have haplotypes that are
slightly, or a good ways, off the CMH in J1. I can't fathom by what
logic you could try to claim that a broad network of related haplotypes
would imply J2 rather than J1. This kind of broad network is exactly
what we see in J1 around the Cohen cluster.

The scientists who did those studies you cite, themselves, are the ones
who are saying the Cohen group is in J1, not J2. Hammer and other
colleagues work for, or are friends of FTDNA. The 12-marker CMH which
FTDNA is definining, is distinctively a J1 phenomenon.

In conclusion, let me say that rather than seeking to equate haplogroups
with tribes or peoples, a person who respected the knowledge and
information accumulated by all the work of anthropology and human
population genetics, would realize that the Jewish people, like any
other people or large tribe, were formed by a gathering of families from
different haplogroups that were present in the region. If they had been
exclusively members of one haplogroup, in the ancient times when they
were small in number, it would have been very unhealthy, genetically!
There is no major ethnic group yet found in the world that has only one
haplogroup in it. People have long been aware of the dangers of
inbreeding, and have made efforts to maintain a healthy level of genetic
diversity, with a few exceptions.

Bonnie




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