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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2008-02 > 1201908244


From: ellen Levy <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Jewish History
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 15:24:04 -0800 (PST)
In-Reply-To: <015501c86521$fbb61740$6400a8c0@Ken1>


Ken:

Yes, this is really the more interesting discussion.

First, I don't think you can view haplogroup J among
Ashkenazi men (or any other population) as single,
cohesive haplogroup. I know you already know the
basics of this, Ken, but to break it down for some
other newbies perhaps, you have a "super" clades J1
and J2, which are then broken down themselves into
smaller sub-clades. Some of these clades may indeed
derive from Middle East Judean ancestors, but which
ones? And which likely derive from later,
post-Diaspora European ancestors?

Thus, I don't think it is completely accurate to view
all J results as a "robust surviving signal" of Jewish
roots in the Levant over 2000 years ago. I think the
same can be said for E3b as well. Some may be
reflective of European ancestry, some of an earlier
Judean ancestry.

And we need to be clear here that these "robust
surviving signals" are primarily confined to some
Ashkenazi Y results. Ashkenazi mtDNA results strongly
suggest that Jewish founding mothers were originally
of non-Jewish European origin.

Your question is an important one, Ken. Very little
is known about post-Diaspora Jewish history and how
(or when) the Ashkenazi community began to coalesce
around the Rhine - or where these Jews originated. So
I think it is going to be difficult to provide you
with a clearer picture. Or whether there were Jewish
settlements in Eastern Europe as far back as 2000
years ago. Or to what extent Sephardim have
intermixed with Ashkenazim over the centuries.

I wanted to emphasize a few other important points
here. We don't really know what the early Israelites
looked like genetically or what haplogroups they were
comprised of, so that complicates the examination of
Jewish DNA. Genetic researchers seem to think that
Jews should be genetically closest to contemporary
Middle Eastern groups like Syrians and Palestinians,
as if these populations have not undergone genetic
change over the last few thousand years, which we know
is simply not the case.

The archaeological evidence indicates that the Iron
Age Israelites derived in large part from the earlier
Bronze Age Canaanites. But we don't really know what
they looked like either. The variety of artifacts in
the archaeological record in terms of burial customs,
architectural styles, etc., indicates that the
Canaanites should not be considered a single
ethnicity, but a mixture of peoples. The same can be
said about the early Israelites, though clearly this
changed over time. Problematically, the Israelites as
a people incorporated a lot of peoples who we don't
really think about much and who were probably not
Middle Eastern in origin, such as the Philistines. We
also don't think about the impact of later converts,
proselytes, and "God-fearers," many who originated in
the areas around the Balkans, Greece, Turkey and
Italy. These are regions that also have very high
frequencies of haplogroups J and E.

Additionally, some of the very high frequency of
haplogroups like J that you have noted, Ken, have been
significantly impacted by severe bottlenecks and
genetic drift among Ashkenazim.

I wanted to mention one other point. The constant
emphasis by researchers like Hammer (ie, statements
like "we are single ethnic group coming from the
Middle East") is not only misleading, inaccurate and
grossly over-simplified, but it disenfranchises a
whole lot of Jews from their ancestry and from
appreciating the complexity and diversity of their
genetic heritage. I hear from Ashkenazim all the time
with Q or R1b results, for example, who are confused,
disappointed, and mystified as to why their results
are ignored, forgotten, pushed-aside, etc., in favor
of emphasizing results that seem to suggest more of a
Judean background (ie, they look more like
contemporary Middle Eastern results).

Ellen Coffman






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