Anti-racist racism

The ancestral European population went through a founding bottleneck (effective size 3,500–3,900) when diverging from ancestral Middle Easterners. We date this event to 20.4–22.1 Kyr, at around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum and preceding the Neolithic revolution (27; see Supplementary Note 6 and below for discussion). The ancestors of both populations underwent a bottleneck (3,600–4,100 founders) at 85–94 Kyr, likely corresponding to an Out-of-Africa event28.

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Previous explicit demographic models using genome-wide SNP arrays or low-pass sequencing data time-stamped a European bottleneck at ≈40–80 Kyr (recalibrated to the lower mutation rate estimate; Supplementary Note 6), with even the lowest estimates26,33,34 being higher than our point estimate of ≈21 Kyr. However, no previous study has employed deeply sequenced genomes of (partial) Middle Eastern ancestry; in addition, previous studies usually modelled the European founder event simultaneously with the divergence from East Asian populations. As modern humans had colonized Europe already by ≈40–45 Kyr35, our results (across all estimates of the mutation rate) support genetic discontinuity between that (hunter–gatherer) population and contemporary Europeans. A Middle Eastern European divergence time around ≈21 Kyr would also suggest (i) a near Eastern source for the repopulation of Europe at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum27,36 and (ii) that migration from the Middle East to Europe largely preceded the Neolithic revolution, suggesting that Neolithic population movements were largely within Europe37,38,39,40,41,42. These interpretations, however, strongly depend on the mutation rate: taking into account the uncertainty in the mutation rate, our divergence time estimate is between ≈12–25 Kyr, which can be reconciled with Neolithic migrations originating in the Middle East (Supplementary Note 6).

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(...) most Jewish communities were founded by relatively few women (...) and subsequent genetic input from surrounding populations was limited on the female side. In sharp contrast to this, the paternally inherited Y chromosome shows diversity similar to that of neighboring populations and shows no evidence of founder effects. These sex-specific differences demonstrate an important role for culture in shaping patterns of genetic variation (...) since Talmudic times (circa 200 b.c. to 500 a.d.), Jewish status has been defined, in the absence of conversion, by maternal descent (...)

Studies using both classical and molecular markers have provided evidence both for the common genetic origin of Jewish communities and for admixture between Jewish communities and their geographical neighbors (Mourant et al 1978; Livhorsehockys et al. 1991; Bonné-Tamir et al. 1992). Studies of the paternally inherited Y chromosome have indicated that Ashkenazic Jews, Sephardic Jews, and Lebanese all have high frequencies of haplogroup J (as defined by the Y Chromosome Consortium 2002), in contrast to the populations of central Europe (Ritte et al. 1993a; Santachiara-Benerecetti et al. 1993). Thomas et al. (1998) reported that a particular microsatellite haplotype (the “Cohen modal haplotype,” now known to be within haplogroup J) occurs at a high frequency in priests of Jewish groups that had been geographically separated for a long period. This led them to suggest that it could be a genetic signature of the ancient Hebrew population. Subsequent analyses have confirmed a substantial sharing of Y-chromosome haplotypes among different Jewish communities and also between Jewish and non-Jewish Near Eastern populations (Hammer et al. 2000; Nebel et al. 2000). (...)

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Out of the 611 subjects, 507 reported no Jewish ancestry, 55 reported 4 Jewish grandparents, 4 reported 3 Jewish grandparents, 37 reported 2 Jewish grandparents and 8 reported 1 Jewish grandparent. Of these, 23 reported that they were Ashkenazim, one reported four Sephardic grandparents, two reported three Ashkenazi and one Sephardic grandparent, and two reported two Sephardic grandparents. A further 62 provided European or Russian country-of-origin information for at least one grandparent and 14 were able to give no more information than 'European-American'.

(...)

Conclusions

Here we show that within Americans of European ancestry there is a perfect genetic corollary of Jewish ancestry which, in principle, would permit near perfect genetic inference of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. In fact, even subjects with a single Jewish grandparent can be statistically distinguished from those without Jewish ancestry. We also found that subjects with Jewish ancestry were slightly more heterozygous than the subjects with no Jewish ancestry, suggesting that the genetic distinction between Jews and non-Jews may be more attributable to a Near-Eastern origin for Jewish populations than to population bottlenecks.

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Domen said:

The bottleneck was 250 - 420 individuals (average is 335).

They were increasing in numbers at rate of 16% - 53% per generation

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Domen said:

Kyr = thousands of years ago

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Mouthwash said:

That probably makes sense if you look at how fast modern Haredim breed. 10 children per family isn't at all that uncommon.

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Angst said:

Why are we talking about Jews now?

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A major difficulty with the Rhineland Hypothesis, in addition to the lack of historical and
anthropological evidence to the multi-migration waves from Palestine to Europe (Straten 2003;
Sand 2009), is to explain the vast population expansion of Eastern European Jews from 50
thousand (15th century) to 8 million (20th century). The annual growth rate that accounts for this
population expansion was estimated at 1.7-2%, one order of magnitude larger than that of
Eastern European non-Jews in the 15th-17th centuries, prior to the industrial revolution (Straten
2007). This growth could not possibly be the product of natural population expansion,
particularly one subjected to severe economic restrictions, slavery, assimilation, the Black Death
and other plagues, forced and voluntary conversions, persecutions, kidnappings, rapes, exiles,
wars, massacres, and pogroms (Koestler 1976; Straten 2003; Sand 2009). Because such an unnatural
growth rate, over half a millennia and affecting only Jews residing in Eastern Europe,
is implausible - it is explained by a miracle (Atzmon et al. 2010; Ostrer 2012). Unfortunately,
this divine intervention explanation poses a new kind of problem - it is not science. The question
how the Rhineland Hypothesis, so deeply rooted in supernatural reasoning, became the dominant
scientific narrative is debated among scholars (e.g., Sand 2009).

The most parsimonious explanation for our findings is that Eastern European Jews are of Judeo-
Khazarian ancestry forged over many centuries in the Caucasus. Jewish presence in the Caucasus
and later Khazaria was recorded as early as the late centuries BCE and reinforced due to the
increase in trade along the Silk Road (Figure 1), the decline of Judah (1st-7th centuries), and the
uprise of Christianity and Islam (Polak 1951). Greco-Roman and Mesopotamian Jews gravitating
toward Khazaria were also common in the early centuries and their migrations were intensified
following the Khazars’ conversion to Judaism (Polak 1951; Brook 2006; Sand 2009). The
eastward male-driven migrations (Figure 7) from Europe to Khazaria solidified the exotic
Southern European ancestry in the Khazarian gene pool, (Figure 5) and increased the genetic
heterogeneity of the Judeo-Khazars. The religious conversion of the Khazars encompassed most
of the Empire’s citizens and subordinate tribes and lasted for the next 400 years (Polak 1951;
Baron 1993) until the invasion of the Mongols (Polak 1951; Dinur 1961; Brook 2006). At the
final collapse of their empire (13th century), many of the Judeo-Khazars fled to Eastern Europe
and later migrated to Central Europe and admixed with the neighboring populations.
Historical and archeological findings shed light on the demographic events following the
Khazars’ conversion. During the half millennium of their existence (740-1250 CE), the Judeo-
Khazars sent offshoots into the Slavic lands, such as Romania and Hungary (Baron 1993),
planting the seeds of a great Jewish community to later rise in the Khazarian diaspora. We
hypothesize that the settlement of Judeo-Khazars in Eastern Europe was achieved by serial
founding events, whereby populations expanded from the Caucasus into Eastern and Central
Europe by successive splits, with daughter populations expanding to new territories following
changes in socio-political conditions (Gilbert 1993). These events may have contributed to the
higher homogeneity observed in Jewish communities outside Khazaria’s borders (Table 1). After the
decline of their Empire, the Judeo-Khazars refugees sought shelter in the emerging
Polish Kingdom and other Eastern European communities where their expertise in economics,
finances, and politics were valued. Prior to their exodus, the Judeo-Khazar population was
estimated to be half a million in size, the same as the number of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian
kingdom four centuries later (Polak 1951; Koestler 1976). Some Judeo-Khazars were left behind,
mainly in the Crimea and the Caucasus, where they formed Jewish enclaves surviving into
modern times. One of the dynasties of Jewish princes ruled in the 15th century under the tutelage
of the Genovese Republic and later of the Crimean Tartars. Another vestige of the Khazar nation
are the "Mountain Jews" in the North Eastern Caucasus (Koestler 1976).

The remarkable close proximity of European Jews and populations residing on the opposite ends
of ancient Khazaria, such as Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijani Jews, and Druze (Figures 3, S2-
3, 5), supports a common Near Eastern-Caucasus ancestry. These findings are not explained by
the Rhineland Hypothesis and are staggering due to the uneven demographic processes these
populations have experienced in the past eight centuries. The high genetic similarity between
European Jews and Armenian compared to Georgians (Figures 5 and 6, Table 1) is particularly
bewildering because Armenians and Georgians are very similar populations that share a similar
genetic background (Schonberg et al. 2011) and long history of cultural relations (Payaslian
2007). We identified a small Middle Eastern ancestry in Armenians that does not exist in
Georgians and is likely responsible to the high genetic similarity between Armenians and
European Jews (Figure S6). Because the Khazars blocked the Arab approach to the Caucasus, we
suspect that this ancestry was introduced by the Judeans arriving at a very early date to Armenia
and was absorbed into the populations, whereas Judeans arriving to Georgia avoided assimilation
(Shapira 2007). Similarly, the relatedness between European Jews and Druze reported here and
in the literature (Behar et al. 2010) is explained by Druze Turkish-Southern Caucasus origins.
Druze migrated to Syria, Lebanon, and eventually to Palestine between the 11th and 13th
centuries during the Crusades, a time when the Jewish population in Palestine was at minimum.
The genetic similarity between European Jews and Druze therefore supports the Khazarian
Hypothesis (...)

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Our results fit with evidence from a wide range of fields. Linguistic findings depict Eastern
European Jews as descended from a minority of Israelite-Palestinian Jewish emigrates who
intermarried with a larger heterogeneous population of converts to Judaism from the Caucasus,
the Balkans, and the Germano-Sorb lands (Wexler 1993). Yiddish, the language of Central and
Eastern European Jews, began as a Slavic language that was re-lexified to High German at an
early date (Wexler 1993). Our findings are also in agreement with archeological, historical,
linguistic, and anthropological studies (Polak 1951; Patai and Patai 1975; Wexler 1993; Brook
2006; Kopelman et al. 2009; Sand 2009) and reconcile contradicting genetic findings observed in
uniparental and biparental genome data. The conclusions of the latest genome-wide studies
(Atzmon et al. 2010; Behar et al. 2010) that European Jews had a single Middle Eastern origin
are incomplete as neither study tested the Khazarian Hypothesis, to the extent done here. Finally,
our findings confirm both oral narratives and the canonical Jewish literature describing the
Khazar’s conversion to Judaism (e.g., “Sefer ha-Kabbalah” by Abraham ben Daud [1161 CE],
and “The Khazars” by Rabbi Jehudah Halevi [1140 CE]) (Polak 1951; Koestler 1976).
Although medical studies were not conducted using Caucasus and Near Eastern populations to
the same extent as with European Jews, many diseases found in European Jews are also found in
their ancestral groups in the Caucasus (e.g., Cystic fibrosis and α-thalassaemia), the Near East
(e.g., Factor XI deficiency, type II), and Southern Europe (e.g., Non-syndromic recessive
deafness) (Ostrer 2001), attesting to their complex multi-origins.

Because our study is the first to directly contrast the Rhineland and Khazarian Hypotheses,
a caution is warranted in interpreting some of our results due to small sample sizes and availability
of surrogate populations. To test the Khazarian Hypothesis, we used a crude model for the
Khazar’s population structure. Our admixture analysis suggests that certain ancestral elements in
the Caucasus genetic pool may have been unique to the Khazars. Therefore, using few
contemporary Caucasus populations as surrogates may capture only certain shades of the
Khazarian genetic spectrum. Further studies are necessary to test the magnitude of the Judeo-
Khazar demographic contribution to the presence of Jews in Europe (...)

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Genetic support for Professor Shlomo Sand's historical thesis, has come from University of Sheffield geneticist Dr. Eran Elhaik. In 'The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses' published in the journal, Genome Biology and Evolution, by Oxford University Press, Dr. Eran Elhaik, claims to present a complete analysis of the comprehensive genetic data published in preceding studies. He states that "My research refutes 40 years of genetic studies, all of which have assumed that the Jews constitute a group that is genetically isolated from other nations".

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The Invention of the Jewish People has now been translated into more languages than any other Israeli history book. The book was criticized for being a far cry from a ‘real’ work of scholarship and being plodding and dull,[19] for contradicting current DNA studies and test results,[20] and more.[21]

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New Genome Study Destroys Zionist Claim To Palestine!

To this you can add Dr Elhaik’s findings that in both Jewish groups mentioned above their genome is predominantly of Western European origin.
Surprise, surprise!

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Do you think theres much merit to these fringe theories relating to Jews you've just happened to mention in passing?

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linguist Paul Wexler has hypothesized that Knaanic is indeed the direct predecessor of Yiddish and that the language later became Germanized.[3] In other words, the Knaanim, that is, the people speaking the Judaeo-Slavic languages, were the main cause of changes within the Yiddish language.[4] Such views contrast with the theories of Max Weinreich, who argued that the Slavic loanwords were assimilated only after Yiddish was already fully formed.[5][6]

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Domen said:

Dr Eran Elhaik is apparently one of supporters of Shlomo Sand's thesis, that Jews are "the invented people":

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Traitorfish said:

what is happening in this thread

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