Ashkenazi Jewish Origins Thread
#46
(05-28-2024, 02:24 PM)Piquerobi Wrote: An interesting article by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on the Erfurt study and the origins of the Ashkenazi Jews:

Quote:"The origins of Ashkenazi Jews are shrouded in mystery. We know that the first Ashkenazi communities emerged in the Rhineland at the height of the Middle Ages, around the 10th century. But how and when Jews first reached the Rhine Valley, developing the distinct, rich culture that would eventually spread across Europe and much of the world , is not clear.

The origins of Ashkenazim have also been of interest to geneticists because they carry a disproportionate amount of gene mutations, some of which can cause chronic or fatal diseases.

Now a DNA study sheds new light on the roots of the Ashkenazi population and its early history, which turns out to have been more complex than we thought, says Prof. Shai Carmi, a geneticist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem who led the research.

Carmi, his doctoral student Shamam Waldman, and an international team of researchers were able to extract DNA from the teeth of 14th century skeletons buried in the Jewish cemetery of Erfurt, in central Germany.

The study in itself is a rare feat. In the last decades, ancient DNA studies have been legion and revealed much information about the origins and movement of human populations in the past. But because disturbing human remains is a big no-no under Jewish religious law, it is not often that researchers get to extract DNA from the ancient bones of members of the tribe.

In fact, the new study, published Wednesday in the journal Cell, is one of the first two efforts to sequence ancient DNA from the remains of Ashkenazi Jews. In another such study, published in August, researchers extracted DNA from 17 bodies found buried in a medieval well in Norwich, only realizing these may have been the Jewish victims of a pogrom when they identified genetic mutations typical of Ashkenazim. In that case, the identification of the bodies as Jewish, while very likely, remains unconfirmed.

For the Erfurt study, there is little doubt of the identity of the subjects, as Carmi and colleagues obtained the DNA of 33 individuals buried in the town’s medieval Jewish cemetery.


Researchers collected 38 teeth from the medieval Jewish cemetery in Erfurt, from which they extracted ancient DNA from 33 individuals.

The Jewish community of Erfurt existed from the late 11th to the mid 15th century, with a short gap following a 1349 pogrom that all but wiped out the entire community.

After expelling the Jews in 1454, the city built a granary on top of their cemetery. Come the year 2013, when the granary was no longer in use, Erfurt converted it into a parking lot, which led to additional construction and an archaeological rescue excavation. Armed with recent rabbinical rulings that allow for ancient DNA research to be conducted on detached teeth, the researchers obtained permission from the local Jewish community to sample the remains, which were later reburied in the town’s 19th century Jewish cemetery.

Radiocarbon showed that the bodies, all but one buried with their feet facing Jerusalem according to Jewish custom, dated to the 14th century, though it is unclear whether they lived before or after the 1349 massacre, one of many perpetrated against European Jews during the Black Death. There were 19 females and 14 males, many of them children, and only one individual showed signs of a violent death: several blows to the head with a sharp object.

An ancient split

The analysis of their genomes showed that at least eight of these Jews carried the same pathogenic gene variants typical of Ashkenazim today, which can cause severe illnesses. These include retinitis pigmentosa, which degrades the retina; Gaucher disease, which causes a dangerous buildup of fatty tissues in organs or bone tissue; Usher syndrome, which causes deafness and blindness, as well as the BRCA1 variant that increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

The prevalence of so many specific mutations among Ashkenazi Jews has long been suggested as a sign that this group went through a bottleneck, or a “founder event.” In other words, for whatever reason – all Ashkenazim today descend from a single tiny group.

“We don’t know the nature of the bottleneck : whether it was a continuous decline over several centuries or a single event where, for example, a small group moved away from the main population, which is a classic founder event,” Carmi says.

The upshot would have been that the members of this small group married within their small group, leading to diminished genetic variation. In extremes, loss of genetic variation and isolation lead to speciation; in the case of Ashkenazim, it meant that even as the population grew, its members shared a lot of genes, including “bad” ones that, when inherited from both parents, cause illness or even death.

Another sign that all Ashkenazim extant today descend from a tiny founding population is the fact that 40 percent of modern Ashkenazim carry the same four sequences of maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA, meaning they descend from just four ancestral mothers. This was even more pronounced in the Erfurt Jews. More than a third of the individuals in the sample descended from a single woman through their mitochondrial DNA, the researchers report in Cell.

The singular finding of the Erfurt study is that while the DNA of modern Ashkenazim is fairly homogenous, in the Middle Ages this Jewish population could have been divided in two genetically distinct groups. One had greater Middle Eastern and Southern European ancestry and was genetically closer to modern Ashkenazim originating in France and Germany. The second had a similar ancestry mix with an additional genetic component typical of Eastern Europe, Carmi says.

Since both groups shared the typical “founder mutations,” the most likely explanation for this difference is that they both descended from the same small original population, which then split into two. One settled (or remained) in the Rhineland and one headed for Eastern and Central Europe.

Then, at the end of the Middle Ages, in places like Erfurt, the two communities began to mix anew as a result of migrations, and eventually coalesced into today’s homogenous Ashkenazi genome.

While it was known from historical records that Jews from Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia migrated westward into Erfurt at this time, it was not recognized that these two populations had been genetically distinct, Carmi says.

By the way, this Eastern European component should not be seized upon as a way to support the long-discredited “Khazar hypothesis” – that is, the claim that Ashkenazim have no link to the ancestral population of Judah but descend instead from the Khazars, an early medieval kingdom in the Caucasus where part of the population had converted to Judaism.

The Eastern European component found in some of the Erfurt Jews is only a minor fraction of their ancestry, and there were no major direct links to the Caucasus, Carmi tells Haaretz.

The Erfurt study doesn’t dispel all the mysteries surrounding the origins of Ashkenazim, but it does give us some hints. Firstly, it further confirms that the bottleneck started sometime in the early Middle Ages – certainly before the 14th century and apparently before the 12th century, the time of the putative Jews found in Norwich.

Carmi and colleagues also compared the DNA of the Erfurt Jews to modern genomes from around the Levant and the Mediterranean to figure out their ancestry. The most statistically probable model indicates that both groups of Erfurt Ashkenazim could trace 65 percent of their ancestry to southern Italy, 19 percent to the Levant and 16 percent to Eastern Europe.

The strong Southern Italian component versus the Levantine one may seem surprising. But it should be noted that previous research has shown that in antiquity, particularly during the heyday of the Roman Empire, there was a large population influx into Italy from the Near East, which injected a strong Levantine genetic component into the Italian genetic mix.

Carmi emphasizes that these numerical estimates may not be precise because they rely on comparison with the genomes of modern people, which may be genetically different from those living in the same regions hundreds of years earlier.

Anyway, by comparing the DNA of the Erfurt Jews with that of modern Ashkenazim, Carmi’s team created a model of the group’s progression over the centuries. According to this model, the Ashkenazi population only began expanding 500-600 years ago, just after the time of the people buried in the Erfurt cemetery.

Before that, the large number of common ancestors that the DNA shows suggests that the bottleneck was a protracted event, which began more than 1,000 years ago and kept the Ashkenazi population small for centuries. Specifically, for nearly 20 generations, or around 500 years, the so called “effective population size,” that is the number of people who reproduced in every generation, may have been only 1,000 to 2,000, this model says.

Interestingly, this range is based on the modern Ashkenazi population, but when the researchers calculated the effective population size for the Erfurt sample, they came up with a number three times lower, 300 to 700.

This means that the ancestors of the Erfurt Jews experienced a much longer or more severe bottleneck, notes Prof. David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard University and one of the other authors of the paper. It also suggests that back in the Middle Ages, there were even more Ashkenazi groups out there that haven’t been identified yet and who must have had a shorter bottleneck. When they eventually mixed up with the rest of the Ashkenazim, they produced the average result we see in the modern population, Reich says.

“So what we are seeing is an archipelago of populations, who then start to coalesce into the homogenous Ashkenazi population that we know today,” he says.

While each isolated group may have experienced the bottleneck differently, it does look like the number of Ashkenazim stayed very low for a very long time.

“There is evidence that the bottleneck was ongoing for several generations, starting around the year 800-900,” Carmi says.

While not providing conclusive evidence, all of this is consistent with a scenario in which the founders of the Ashkenazim were living within a larger community, likely in Italy or somewhere else in Southern Europe, and then left to establish their own communities in Northern Europe.

“To remain culturally distinct they had to marry within the community, so the population remained small for a long time,” Carmi concludes.

How and why the initial migration north happened remains obscure, as does the subsequent split between the two distinct Ashkenazi groups identified at Erfurt.

Of course, Carmi cautions that his team’s study is based on the DNA extracted from people who lived in a specific period in a single medieval town. Future studies, particularly from older Ashkenazi burials across Europe, may reveal further twists and turns in this complex chapter of Jewish history, he says.
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2022...ecc8940000

I believe someone uploaded the Norwich well Jews to GEDmatch and found them to be close to a mix of modern Ashkenazim and Sephardim.
Avatar: The obverse of a coin of Kanishka I depicting the Buddha, with the Greco-Bactrian legend ΒΟΔΔΟ.

Follow my attempt at reviving Pictish.
Romanes-lekhipen- the Romani alphabet.
Reply
#47
(05-19-2024, 08:20 PM)Pylsteen Wrote: My post from earlier in this thread is pretty much how I think about the origins of the Ashkenazim, summarized:
  1. Proto-Ashkenazim resulting from a bottleneck of Western Jews, likely between ca. 600-900 AD (probably Carolingian context)
  2. Spread of post-bottleneck Ashkenazim among France, Germany, England, Central+Eastern Europe where they heavily mixed with mostly Slavic women. In the meantime, Jews from IMO mostly Italy, but other places such as Iberia and the Byzantine empire as well migrated to Germany. This all created several subclusters of Ashkenazim.
  3. During the entire middle ages periods of expulsion and intermarriage led again to a fairly homogenous Ashkenazi population at the beginning of the modern era, with a cline from Germany in the west to Russia in the east. Some input from Sephardic (and Greek) jews in the early modern period, etc. The entire story of all expansions and expulsions is too extensive to write down here.

On the Y-DNA and the ancient samples we have

Probably interesting for your quest is the model Penninx ran to explain the current-day distribution of Y-dna frequencies among Ashkenazim. Especially his model 4 seems in line with what we see. In this model, there are 75 surviving lineages from 400 founder men, arriving during several periods in time. Following this model, I would say there may have been roughly 300 lineages that entered the Ashkenazi population from its beginning until the later middle ages, from both jewish fathers and European men, that have disappeared from the modern-day Ashkenazim. I imagine that several of these lineages are still present among other present-day jewish groups, and perhaps even among non-jewish groups (there's the possibility you are interested in - the only things I am cautious about are the social circumstances, indeed from both sides a conversion or mixed relationship was very much taboo but also the total lack of understanding of your lineage from 3500 BC to the 1600s).

That during the middle ages jews from other communities enriched the early Ashkenazi gene pool is IMO quite good visible from all the Ashkenazi Cohen-lineages below J1-Z18271: several of the Ashkenazi-specific branches have high medieval TMRCA's rather than "Carolingian", although of course the age of its entrance before the TMRCA cannot exactly be determined.

Can the ancient samples tell us something?

Among the Erfurt samples we have the following Y-DNA results:
Besides the Erfurt samples, we also have the earlier 12th century samples from Chapelfield (England). These English jews must have been descended from the French jews that William the Conqueror brought to England and are IMO likely similar to the Proto-Ashkenazim and Rhinelandic jews. They share the bottleneck with the Erfurt and modern Ashkenazim, they lack the Slavic admixture found in Erfurt-EU samples, as expected.

Y-DNA lineages found among them:
  • 1x E1b-PF6769, 1x J1-FT174623 (found in modern-day Sephardim, not in Ashkenazim, such as its larger sister lineages below J1-ZS4297), 1x T-Y125276 (seems present among Ashkenazim these days, but seems more prolific in Sephardim).

among the medieval samples we see indeed the lineages as found in modern Ashkenazim, but also (especially in Chapelfield) lineages that are more common in Sephardim today and seem to reflect a larger diversity among medieval Ashkenazi Y-DNA that was lost later on.
On MyTrueAncestry my top match is the Erfurt Jewish sample I13868.

What is causing this since I have no known Jewish antecedents?
Y-DNA R-Z36 (A7967)                                                                          mtDNA U6A7A1
Reply
#48
Possibly of interest, 23andMe recently rolled out additional ancestry communities for Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews and it seems like a number of fully Ashkenazi folks are getting distant matches to these populations (the ancestry communities are now categorized as very close, close, or distant).

Some of the connections, like those to Sephardic communities, are not that surprising, but some people have gotten matches to far flung groups like Adeni Jews and Bene Israel. I'm not sure how accurate it all is, how historically interconnected were these communities? As a half Ashkenazi Jew I got a distant match to the Georgian Jews community.

   
Reply
#49
Is there any material evidence for the Sitifis Roman era samples possibly being Jewish? They seem to be perfect for modeling both Turkish Jews and the Erfurt ME samples in qpAdm (two or pooled both seem to work). Ashkenazi Jews can also be modeled very well as mostly related to them with some Hungary_DanubeTisza_LSarmation_EHun or Slovakia_TesarkeMlynany_Germanic_MigrationPeriod.SG like Central European admixture.
Reply
#50
(05-17-2024, 09:46 PM)szin Wrote: Kevin Brook demonstrates that SOME Ashkenazim score small amounts of East Asian on DNA tests, POSSIBLY indicating roots in the Khazarian Empire but not necessarily. However, this amount of admix is minute, suggesting that the Khazarian impact on the Ashkenazi genepool is minimal- IF that's even the source.

Interestingly, Brook also demonstrates that some Ashkenazim score small amounts of SSA, and that some may have SSA-derived mtDNA haplogroups. SSA admix has long been conjectured based on historical and Biblical evidence (you may remember that Moses married a "Kushite"), but only now are we getting evidence that some Ashkenazim have it.

I've heard that the East Asian is probably from Silk Road, not Khazarians. But Jews have some Turkic or Ossetian Y-DNA on rare occasions. Old Jewish texts also report the conversion of Ossetians to Judaism IIRC
Reply
#51
(05-30-2024, 11:45 PM)DeParis Wrote: Possibly of interest, 23andMe recently rolled out additional ancestry communities for Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews and it seems like a number of fully Ashkenazi folks are getting distant matches to these populations (the ancestry communities are now categorized as very close, close, or distant).

Some of the connections, like those to Sephardic communities, are not that surprising, but some people have gotten matches to far flung groups like Adeni Jews and Bene Israel. I'm not sure how accurate it all is, how historically interconnected were these communities? As a half Ashkenazi Jew I got a distant match to the Georgian Jews community.

I've noticed they've added other communities, including Afro-Caribbean diaspora, and now list community matches as distant/close/very close.

This is a fair bit more thorough than before, but still doesn't make up for its failings in other regards!
Avatar: The obverse of a coin of Kanishka I depicting the Buddha, with the Greco-Bactrian legend ΒΟΔΔΟ.

Follow my attempt at reviving Pictish.
Romanes-lekhipen- the Romani alphabet.
Reply
#52
(05-19-2024, 07:05 PM)Pylsteen Wrote: Long story short: when speaking about the Sephardim, the first migration of Sephardim during the 16th century to Ashkenazi lands IMO were largely absorbed by the local Ashkenazi communities; it is not clear to me how large this group was and whether there are still paternal lineages from them left among the current-day Ashkenazim. The conversos of the 17th century however stuck more together in the larger cities and tended to keep a larger social distance from the Ashkenazim; their genetic influence on the Ashkenazim during the 17th and 18th century was very small IMO.

Next post more on the larger context.

I guess in my specific Frisian/North Dutch case these mix could also be the case in the 17 th century and beyond (before that no mentioning of Jews in Friesland).

Why 
My Y-DNA E-L1401 (part E-V22) is only present in the Levant. And in Europe only in my family. That is the current state of affairs in terms of samples. What is not yet may yet come. Nevertheless, E-V22 has a Semitic/ MENA background and it appears that E-L1401 came to NW Europe, to the Northern Netherlands, as a result of the Jewish diaspora. E-L1401 has no Ashkenazim connotation (info Wim Penninx). It's a line beneath E-PH2818 which contains more Sephardim.

Then the autosomal there is clearly a Jewish component in my father's autosomal DNA. Humanitas (top job) has further gene analyzed it. What I get out of it for myself is as follows. 

Jewish basic Semitic component MENA 2%:

> + pointing at Sefardim: Celtiberian 1.8 and Iberia Los Millares 1.2

> + pointing at  Ashkenazim: Slavic Medieval 1.4  (+ Italic Roman Imperial 0.4).

Could make the Jewish amount in my Dad potential 6-7%.


[Image: temp-Image-Ps-O9-A4.avif]
Reply
#53
This may be of interest. According to a redditor who spoke with Kevin Alan Brooks, author of "The Maternal Genetic Lineages of Ashkenazic Jews," there are a number of papers in the pipeline including DNA studies of ancient and medieval Jews, including:

1. Medieval Jews of Chateauroux, France
2. Medieval Jews of Spain
3. Ancient Jews of Sicily
4. Jews of Roman-era Israel

Link to original reddit thread here. There are a few more details specifically about the Chateauroux study here. I don't know any other specifics regarding these papers like the release dates, but I'm overall very excited that we'll be filling in gaps in the ancient Jewish DNA landscape!
Reply
#54
(05-19-2024, 06:48 AM)Pylsteen Wrote: I'll elaborate later today, there are some interesting insights from a.o. our friend Penninx.

I definite got a clue that the paternal line is Jewish and I even can pinpoint the most likely place it came into my lineage, in my tree.

1. My E-V22 subclade is E-L1401. It's a 5000 years old line which is basically MENA, more bold: (proto-) semitic. It's total exception in the Netherlands and the whole of NW Europe.
A few years ago Maarten Larmuseau at that that time working at the University of Leuven, did some tests with fare nephews of me. See the picture.
The lines cross at Joannes Boer (*1810). Keep that in mind because he is going to be the key figure.

[Image: KUL-Larmuseau.png]

2. My father's autosomal reveals according to an analysis of Humanitas: 1,6% MENA. Jews in Europe have about 50% MENA and 50% added mostly South and/or East European. My  assumption is that he is about 3,2% Jewish. Ergo: 1/32.
My heritage new 2.0 genetic groups underlines a distant connection with the Ashkenazim genetic group in NW Europe.

3. That's not the only autosomal thing, there is a real Jewish match with my father (and I). In my heritage we have a connection with a Jewish Danish woman Cille Lewinsky.
My heritage has really some nice features with regard to pinpoint the relationship between matches. Chapeau!

I combined the knowledge of point 2 (Jewish %)  and 3 (Match Lewinsky) with my pedigree:
[Image: Match-Lewinksy-kruisende-lijnen.png]

So the lines come together at Joannes Boer *1810, he was most probably 50% Jewish. And my assumption is that seen the MENA Y-DNA that on the place of my gggg father by the paper trail called Freerk Fokkes Boer, there was a Jewish NN. That was at Napoleon/ French rule in the Netherlands, when Jews got emancipated. And in the hometown of my fatherly line a jewish community was founded in 1801. That was in times of the conception of Joannes in 1809 about 124 persons. Among them my real proband, my real Jewish gggg grandfather?

4. The knowledge that Joannes Boer was half a Jew is unknown in my family. But there are also social indications that this was the case. He had three sons who, completely against the naming rules - which were strictly applied in the family tree before and after! - were only named after their mother's side!  When the names on his mother's side ran out after two sons, the third son was given the name Sebastian Christian. No names related to family members, but names that underline in Roman Catholic circles  (the family was the oldest RC family in the district) that the child was primarily Christian rather than Jewish: Sebastian after a martyr of the Christian faith. Christian needs no explanation. By the way, in everyday life he was called by his "actual" Frisian name Fokke (also listed in the population register) Wink 

Taken together I pretend to have solved the genetic/genealogy puzzle. I seek confirmation through autosomal test of the fare nephews.

And it stays also a puzzle if the Jewish proband was a Ashkenazim or a Sephardic Jew, or a mixture of both. Lewinsky is a Danish Jew, and the other matches of my father give some clues of a Danish connection at the same entré point.

But that are matters of near research!
Reply
#55
I don't have that much time these days, so let's keep it brief; as you know, I might be strict, but I'm open to be convinced when I consider the evidence as good.

Quote:1. My E-V22 subclade is E-L1401. It's a 5000 years old line which is basically MENA, more bold: (proto-) semitic. It's total exception in the Netherlands and the whole of NW Europe.
A few years ago Maarten Larmuseau at that that time working at the University of Leuven, did some tests with fare nephews of me. See the picture.
The lines cross at Joannes Boer (*1810). Keep that in mind because he is going to be the key figure.

He is indeed the key figure for your paternal line, still, I'm repeating what I wrote before: in order to know whether the MENA-ancestry of your father is from your strict paternal lineage, you need matches from that side overlapping with those segments.

Quote:2. My father's autosomal reveals according to an analysis of Humanitas: 1,6% MENA. Jews in Europe have about 50% MENA and 50% added mostly South and/or East European. My  assumption is that he is about 3,2% Jewish. Ergo: 1/32.
My heritage new 2.0 genetic groups underlines a distant connection with the Ashkenazim genetic group in NW Europe.
3. That's not the only autosomal thing, there is a real Jewish match with my father (and I). In my heritage we have a connection with a Jewish Danish woman please don't post names of living people

Don't you think you're stretching it a bit? At 1/16 jewish (both ashkenazi and sephardi) myself I have hundreds, even a thousand matches through the jewish side. IMO, it would be a paradox if your father's segments are both of jewish origin, but lacking many jewish matches. One or two is not enough sorry!

Quote:My heritage has really some nice features with regard to pinpoint the relationship between matches. Chapeau!
I combined the knowledge of point 2 (Jewish %)  and 3 (match) with my pedigree:
So the lines come together at Joannes Boer *1810, he was most probably 50% Jewish. And my assumption is that seen the MENA Y-DNA that on the place of my gggg father by the paper trail called Freerk Fokkes Boer, there was a Jewish NN. That was at Napoleon/ French rule in the Netherlands, when Jews got emancipated. And in the hometown of my fatherly line a jewish community was founded in 1801. That was in times of the conception of Joannes in 1809 about 124 persons. Among them my real proband, my real Jewish gggg grandfather?

Have you been able to locate the match on a segment that is surely from this paternal lineage? If not, then go look for it!!
And in my experience, the relationship levels MyHeritage and also other companies suggest are often way to optimistic! You might check out the shared cM tool (including distribution charts) at  DNA Painter | Shared cM Project 4.0 tool v4 with relationship probabilities .

Quote:4. The knowledge that Joannes Boer was half a Jew is unknown in my family. But there are also social indications that this was the case. He had three sons who, completely against the naming rules - which were strictly applied in the family tree before and after! - were only named after their mother's side!  When the names on his mother's side ran out after two sons, the third son was given the name Sebastian Christian. No names related to family members, but names that underline in Roman Catholic circles  (the family was the oldest RC family in the district) that the child was primarily Christian rather than Jewish: Sebastian after a martyr of the Christian faith. Christian needs no explanation. By the way, in everyday life he was called by his "actual" Frisian name Fokke (also listed in the population register) Wink 

Are you sure of that? A quick google/wieiswie search informs me that Johannes' eldest son was called Fredericus G (born 1834 Hoogezand), perfectly named to his paternal grandfather. 

To repeat what I commented before, to have a solid case, you need:
1. To paint these MENA-segments of your father on a chromosome painter (use something like admix tools or gedmatch chromosome painter for that, or perhaps 23andme).
2. To paint your autosomal matches (preferably relatively close matches), for example with DNA Painter or by hand in excel and see in what ways they may overlap with those MENA-segments. That's the only way to see whether these segments are from your direct paternal lineage.
3. Solve the paradox! If your father is 1/32 (or even 1/64 or 1/128) Jewish, I would expect, also at MH, a lot, perhaps hundreds, of jewish matches, overlapping with each other at specific segments.
Reply
#56
(07-06-2024, 02:29 PM)Pylsteen Wrote: I don't have that much time these days, so let's keep it brief; as you know, I might be strict, but I'm open to be convinced when I consider the evidence as good.

Quote:1. My E-V22 subclade is E-L1401. It's a 5000 years old line which is basically MENA, more bold: (proto-) semitic. It's total exception in the Netherlands and the whole of NW Europe.
A few years ago Maarten Larmuseau at that that time working at the University of Leuven, did some tests with fare nephews of me. See the picture.
The lines cross at Joannes Boer (*1810). Keep that in mind because he is going to be the key figure.

He is indeed the key figure for your paternal line, still, I'm repeating what I wrote before: in order to know whether the MENA-ancestry of your father is from your strict paternal lineage, you need matches from that side overlapping with those segments.

Quote:2. My father's autosomal reveals according to an analysis of Humanitas: 1,6% MENA. Jews in Europe have about 50% MENA and 50% added mostly South and/or East European. My  assumption is that he is about 3,2% Jewish. Ergo: 1/32.
My heritage new 2.0 genetic groups underlines a distant connection with the Ashkenazim genetic group in NW Europe.
3. That's not the only autosomal thing, there is a real Jewish match with my father (and I). In my heritage we have a connection with a Jewish Danish woman please don't post names of living people

Don't you think you're stretching it a bit? At 1/16 jewish (both ashkenazi and sephardi) myself I have hundreds, even a thousand matches through the jewish side. IMO, it would be a paradox if your father's segments are both of jewish origin, but lacking many jewish matches. One or two is not enough sorry!

Quote:My heritage has really some nice features with regard to pinpoint the relationship between matches. Chapeau!
I combined the knowledge of point 2 (Jewish %)  and 3 (match) with my pedigree:
So the lines come together at Joannes Boer *1810, he was most probably 50% Jewish. And my assumption is that seen the MENA Y-DNA that on the place of my gggg father by the paper trail called Freerk Fokkes Boer, there was a Jewish NN. That was at Napoleon/ French rule in the Netherlands, when Jews got emancipated. And in the hometown of my fatherly line a jewish community was founded in 1801. That was in times of the conception of Joannes in 1809 about 124 persons. Among them my real proband, my real Jewish gggg grandfather?

Have you been able to locate the match on a segment that is surely from this paternal lineage? If not, then go look for it!!
And in my experience, the relationship levels MyHeritage and also other companies suggest are often way to optimistic! You might check out the shared cM tool (including distribution charts) at  DNA Painter | Shared cM Project 4.0 tool v4 with relationship probabilities .

Quote:4. The knowledge that Joannes Boer was half a Jew is unknown in my family. But there are also social indications that this was the case. He had three sons who, completely against the naming rules - which were strictly applied in the family tree before and after! - were only named after their mother's side!  When the names on his mother's side ran out after two sons, the third son was given the name Sebastian Christian. No names related to family members, but names that underline in Roman Catholic circles  (the family was the oldest RC family in the district) that the child was primarily Christian rather than Jewish: Sebastian after a martyr of the Christian faith. Christian needs no explanation. By the way, in everyday life he was called by his "actual" Frisian name Fokke (also listed in the population register) Wink 

Are you sure of that? A quick google/wieiswie search informs me that Johannes' eldest son was called Fredericus G (born 1834 Hoogezand), perfectly named to his paternal grandfather. 

To repeat what I commented before, to have a solid case, you need:
1. To paint these MENA-segments of your father on a chromosome painter (use something like admix tools or gedmatch chromosome painter for that, or perhaps 23andme).
2. To paint your autosomal matches (preferably relatively close matches), for example with DNA Painter or by hand in excel and see in what ways they may overlap with those MENA-segments. That's the only way to see whether these segments are from your direct paternal lineage.
3. Solve the paradox! If your father is 1/32 (or even 1/64 or 1/128) Jewish, I would expect, also at MH, a lot, perhaps hundreds, of jewish matches, overlapping with each other at specific segments.

I guess I don't get your approach on the whole. 

Basically my approach is that the assumption is that the Y-DNA E-V22/ E-L1401 is MENA. I guess there are little doubts about that.

A MENA Y-DNA (certainly one with no show in NW Europe) probably brought in by a migration stream which has in autosomal sense also a MENA component. When this MENA component was brought in during Roman Times or during the Middle Ages it had left no visible trace in the autosomal. But in my father's case the 1,6% MENA is a visible trace. So this reveals a pretty recent not ancient influx. 

Is there another migration stream that could be responsible for 1,6% MENA in my father? That would be total speculative, because there is NO migration, no single migrant, other than from the Jewish one who could be responsible for that. That's simply a historic reality. 

But most of all: my heritage already did the segment work! And revealed this result:

[Image: temp-Images-Kbww-J.avif]


So a MENA Y-DNA and an autosomal MENA percentage (beyond noise) and most of all an attested link with the Ashkenazi genetic group.....what could be a reason to doubt this?
Reply
#57
(07-06-2024, 02:29 PM)Pylsteen Wrote:
Quote:2. My father's autosomal reveals according to an analysis of Humanitas: 1,6% MENA. Jews in Europe have about 50% MENA and 50% added mostly South and/or East European. 

Don't you think you're stretching it a bit? At 1/16 jewish (both ashkenazi and sephardi) myself I have hundreds, even a thousand matches through the jewish side. IMO, it would be a paradox if your father's segments are both of jewish origin, but lacking many jewish matches. One or two is not enough sorry!

No I don't exaggerate you don't find a European Jew who is 100% MENA. It is always admixed.
[Image: temp-Imagee-Mfl-Vr.avif]

By the way the autosomal admixture also reveals Slavic ME 1,4% (and besides that some Iberian/ Italian percentages which I don't count, but could still be relevant). So that's already 3 %. So not exaggerated.

Lack of hundredths of matches could be seen as a thing. But as said there are lots of Danish matches (on the whole even 6,7% in the 2.0 My heritage ethnicities!) which some have the same kind of entre level (Joannes 1810-1900)  in my tree like the Danish Jewish match. Do they have some Jewish influx under the hood?

Besides that I can't exclude that it belongs to an obscure/ extinct line in the Jewish world. I consider this even very likely.  That could explain the lack of  many matches. From the North Dutch Jews nearly all went to-and only a few returned from- the Holocaust (contrair to the Danish Jews!). So an obscure/extinct line is in this respect not far fetched. 

Taken the other way around the sum of evidence with regard to the Y-DNA, au-DNA and the real matches, genetic groups in my heritage, can't be flushed away by stating no hundredths of matches. So doesn't count as Jewish. That would be an exaggeration of the first order from your side....
Reply
#58
@Pylsteen, on second thought and a kind of summary:

A few things that I'm certain of....kind of black/white, yes/no

1. E-L1401 is a MENA Y-DNA and a total exception in NW Europe.
2. On autosomal level with regard to nowadays living persons, we can find traces autosomal in the pedigree tree from the modern periode let's say  (max) 1650>  an autosomal trace from the middle ages or Roman times is negligible, would not be detectable. On that level: is there a visible Jewish trace beyond noise or not, it is: yes. So present. And therefore modern influx.

So fare so good, based on point 1 and 2, I would say there is without doubt Jewish ancestry in my tree.

Then begins the more uncertain part. That's the part of autosomal analysis and matches etc. That's the part when we can discuss was it in generation 5 or still 7 etc. I consider that this is most likely  the case that Joannes had a Jewish NN father, because the my heritage match and the analysis by MH is pointing (in the case of the Danish Jewish match) with 65% certainty at crossing the lines via the father of Joannes. Of course 65% is not 100%. So we have to take in account that it was a generation later or earlier. All possible. But NOT seen 1,2 (the certainties) it wasn't a Jewish match.

Besides that it is also quit a condition that the Jewish ("the MENA provider") was there, the flowers and bees! Wink  No actual MENA-DNA presence "no show", so to say.  In 1809 contrair to a previous period (before 1800). The 'founding fathers'  of the Jewish  started a community in 1801 (during Napelon/ French rule, so emancnipation of Jews). There was within 10  years time a fast growth in my ancestors home town (Sappemeer) of the Jewish community(124 persons)! So the potential GGG father was there. I guess the chance that we would a person who is NOT Jewish but still contains MENA DNA in Sappemeer in 1809 is quit negligible....

And as said there the sons of Joannes didn't bear a name from his family only from mother's side. At that time in the Netherlands this was only the case when an extramarital situation was at stake... So I guess an entre in the tree was with (the father of) Joannes (1810-1900). But of course this is interpretation, other scenario's are not excluded (but imo less likely).

Stays the point that it doesn't belong to the given set of Ashkenazim Y-DNA lines. I think we most consider that it came from Sephardim side, or through a Sephardim mix with Ashkenazim. And we also must take in account that nearly all North Dutch Jews went to the holocaust and only a very few came back. So it's possible that a small subclade like E-L1401 went extinct because of this....And E-L401 only survived because it became part of a RC family....
Reply
#59
(05-19-2024, 07:05 PM)Pylsteen Wrote: Ok, first a post about specifically the Sephardic migrations out on top of my head... as you know it is close to my heart since my jewish gg-mother was a quarter Portugese-jewish.

So, what may Sephardic migrations have meant for the Ashkenazi populations? First, it is important IMO to distinguish between two groups of Sephardic migrants:
  1. The older group, leaving Iberia already in 1492. This group remained religiously jewish, and migrated mainly to Portugal, North Africa, places in Italy, the Ottoman Empire and central Europe; one example may have been the family of my ancestor Nathan Spanier (an Ashkenazi from lower Saxony, but note the surname). In both Poland and Germany these are assumed to have been absorbed by the larger Ashkenazi populations.
  2. The conversos (new christians). Those that remained in Iberia and converted to catholicism after 1492, during the early 16th century also including those jews that had fled to Portugal. During the 16th century, a diaspora started, caused by IMO both trading opportunities and the rise of the inquisition, first in places such as Antwerp, from the late 1590s Amsterdam and Hamburg, and also in typical places such as Venice, Livorno, Bordeaux, Brazil, and later London communities emerged. They tended to be involved in trade over sea, such as with Africa and the Americas (especially Brazil and the Caribbean), in which they utilized their large network of relatives. Often they had family and friends still in Portugal and in other places of the diaspora. When they had come to Antwerp, Amsterdam and Hamburg, they were initially not accepted as jews, but they were as Portugese catholics. In the Dutch Republic, they were welcome in Amsterdam, Middelburg (temporarily), The Hague and Rotterdam. Smaller communities were present in Naarden and Maarssen. Outside of these places, they were generally not found during the 17th and 18th century: why leave the large cities where your network was? Only singletons may have left. There is no clear evidence for conversos in Leeuwarden during the 17th century; IIRC, there were one or two families in Emden. The conversos tended to be (obsessively) proud of their Iberian heritage. Ashkenazim were seen as foreign people, speaking a different language (Yiddish) and had a lower prestige. In Amsterdam, the Portugese were the landlords, Ashkenazim the tenants. Marriages between both groups were frowned upon and were very rare before the late 18th century; in the cases that they did occur, the groom was often Italian/Venetian rather than Iberian jewish. From the late 18th century onwards, mixed marriages became more common due to the impoverishment of many Sephardic families and emancipation of the Ashkenazim. Besides that, there exist stories during the 17th and 18th century of Portugese men who had fathered children by their Ashkenazi maids. A small stream of conversos also went to Poland.

Long story short: when speaking about the Sephardim, the first migration of Sephardim during the 16th century to Ashkenazi lands IMO were largely absorbed by the local Ashkenazi communities; it is not clear to me how large this group was and whether there are still paternal lineages from them left among the current-day Ashkenazim. The conversos of the 17th century however stuck more together in the larger cities and tended to keep a larger social distance from the Ashkenazim; their genetic influence on the Ashkenazim during the 17th and 18th century was very small IMO.

Next post more on the larger context.

I doubt the last conclusion. I guess Razib Khan gives the right clue here:

[Image: temp-Image9-Uf-C3o.avif]

Imo this means that the MENA here the Ancient Near Eastern Jews component (autosomal and Y-DNA!) is overlapping in Sephardic and Ashkenazim Jews.
Reply
#60
Years ago there was a huge consensus regarding Western Jews tracing most of their non-Levantine and non-Slavic ancestry to Ancient Greeks?
I think nowadays Italic people seem to be a more appropriate source?
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)