DNA Consultants Home of the DNA Fingerprint

Do You Have the DNA of Roman-British-Thracian Soldiers in Your Male Line?
Probably Not.

A member of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG) wrote an article online five years ago. Now a substantial number of listers on the discussion board DNA-Genealogy-L believe their male lines may go back to a Balkan legionnaire in Roman Britain. This theory has been enshrined in popular belief, thanks to ISOGG members, who contribute most of the material on Y chromosome DNA to Wikipedia articles.

Read our review from an appendix on Jewish DNA hot spots in England and Wales in our book-in-progress, New Jerusalem:  The Story of Britain's Earliest Jews and Muslims.

Steven Bird in “Haplogroup E3b1a2 as a Possible Indicator of Settlement in Roman Britain by Soldiers of Balkan Origin,” is, as the title makes clear, most interested in proving a Roman Balkan origin for the haplotype he investigates, now known as Elblbla, the most common type of the haplogroup Elblb (formerly denominated E3b) in Europe. The structure and subclades of this very ancient North African Caucasian lineage have only recently been resolved and overhauled, and the ink is not yet quite dry. But the data used by Bird with the sometimes confused or outdated nomenclature of older reports can still provide valuable clues for our purposes, although one must proceed with caution in making too many differentiations in the tangled branches of the E tree. We must bear in mind that the target haplotype E1b1b1a2 (also called E-V13) represents 85% of the parent haplogroup E1b1b (also denoted as the E-M78 clade) and keep simple E before us without being distracted.

            Bird’s study appeared in one of the first publications of the Journal of Genetic Genealogy, an online journal of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG), founded in 2005 by DNA project administrators of the commercial DNA testing company Family Tree DNA based in Houston, Texas, “who share the common vision of the promotion and education of genetic genealogy.” It is an ambitious work with a very small goal. It uses arguments not only from genetics and statistics but also archeology, geography, history, anthropology and linguistics, often involving such fine points as the epigraphy of a Spanish soldier’s diploma from the British Museum issued in 103 CE and the detailed movements of Thracian cohors II and VII in the Roman army. Where angels fear to thread. Bird’s theory about the origins of Elblb have been enshrined in popular belief. We do not wish to appear ungrateful but there are problems.

            Bird’s first mistake occurs in his review of the literature. He misreads Stephen Oppenheimer and represents the author of The Origins of the British as having British E “originating from the Balkan peninsula (26).” If we open Oppenheimer’s book to the page cited (207) we see a map illustrating “Near Eastern [British English for American English ‘Middle Eastern’] Neolithic male migrations via the Mediterranean of E3b [i.e. E1b1b] and J.” The vector standing for the migration of these types launches forth from the Peloponnese in Greece at the cropped lower right corner, obviously intending to suggest origins from that general direction, not “the Balkan peninsula.”  There is no mention of Balkan DNA in Oppenheimer except as part of the bigger picture. The archeological sites Bird adduces as evidence for E settlements in the Bronze Age are not necessarily associated “directly” or solely or chiefly with “proto-Thracian culture,” whatever that term may mean. Nova Zagora in Bulgaria is a Stone Age multi-site. Ezero Culture occupied most of Bulgaria and extended far north into the Danube region of Romania. Yunatsite, Dubene-Sarovka and the other “proto-Thracian culture” examples Bird mentions date to before the Thracians or even the Greeks. They cannot tell us anything about haplogroup E. If anything, all these sites vindicate Oppenheimer’s theory of the demic spread of Middle Eastern (read Anatolian) agriculture, which Bird calls “flawed fundamentally” (27). The center for the diffusion of E in the Balkans is not in Bulgaria or Thrace but northwestern Greece, Albania and Kosovo. The Balkan Peninsula does not have to be the only place from which Bird can manage to derive E and get it to Britain in time to become part of the historical record. It is also strong throughout Greece, Cyprus, the Greek parts of southern Italy, North Africa and even parts of Spain. In fact, its presence in many of those locations is acknowledged to be “due to a founder effect, i.e. the migration of a small group of settlers carrying mostly this lineage (but also a small amount of other North-East African lineages, notably E-M123 and T.” (See http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_E1b1b_Y-DNA.shtml.)

            Despite these failings relating to statement of thesis and validity of arguments, Bird’s work is based on useful data. Three population surveys with frequencies for E in Britain were available to him, the data sets of Capelli, Weale and Sykes. Notwithstanding the nomenclature confusion, only the Sykes data set has true shortcomings, as the Oxford Genetic Atlas Project at the time contained only forty E haplotypes, too small for a valid sample. There are problems comparing them, as Bird realizes, but trends and general conclusions are certainly possible. Before attempting to analyze the haplogroup E variation in Britain, though, we must address the matter of time depth.

            We have no quarrel with geneticists’ and genetic genealogists’ methods of gauging coalescence times. Thus, Bird reiterates that the “time to most recent common ancestor” or TMRCA of Cruciani and others led to the “important finding . . . that E-V13 [read 85% of E] and J-M12 [read J] had essentially identical population coalescence times (27).” E and J are companion types that expanded from their Middle Eastern homelands together in the same fashion and probably reinforced each other in multiple phases of gene flow. But who is to say in any specific case of a haplotype that it arrived in Britain 4,000 years ago (TMRCA) or at any subsequent time, including the time when our grandfathers lived. The TMRCA sets a haplotype’s time of origin but not its place of origin, except by inference. We hypothesize that from a host of other factors, chiefly present-day clusters, genetic distance between types and high concentration of haplotype diversity.  Using TMRCA, Bird argues that a specific form of E “could not have arrived in Britain during the Neolithic era (6.5-5.5 kya) if it had not yet expanded from the southern Balkans (27).” We prefer to believe that it came to the British Isles at several critical times, first in Neolithic times but later with the Phoenicians, Jews, Egyptians, Iberians and related peoples.    

            Bird cherry-picks the data to support his Roman Balkan or what might be called Diocletian thesis, but data are data; these are amenable not only to bearing out the general storyline we present but also to supporting, within the same historical context, the existence of certain hot spots for Jewish and Middle Eastern DNA in England and Wales.  We agree somewhat with Bird the Welsh cluster for E is “underestimated by an arbitrary division by Sykes into two geographic regions (‘Wales’ and ‘Northern England’) . . . [creating] an impression of a large number of ‘Eshu’ haplotypes located throughout Northern England, when in fact the Northern English cluster is linked to Welsh cluster geographically (29).” Only, we would see in that Northern English cluster the remains of the historical Welsh Old North (chapters 1 and 7). We would not necessarily see in the Wales-to-Nottingham cluster the fading footprints of “the Ordovices, the Deceangi, the Cornovii, the Brigantes and the Coritani tribes (30),” about whom little is known in any event, but a belt of pre-existing Mediterranean culture reinforced by Roman occupation and somewhat resistant to Anglo-Saxon and Viking intrusions. Another shrinking pocket of the old British culture is shown in the elevated frequencies for both E and J in Strathclyde and Cumbria, part of the Welsh Old North.

            Bird has an informative map of Britain illustrating E1b1b distribution according to the Kringing method (34). In this we can trace all the major pockets of Mediterranean and Jewish DNA. Leaving aside Scotland, and aside from the Midlands pocket already mentioned, our eye is drawn to North Wales (along with a clear wall of high incidence surrounding it as though beating back the forces of history on all sides), Dorset, London and East Anglia. It cannot be coincidence that these are the very regions where we have diagnosed the presence of Jews and picked up their trail through the chapters of our book.

            As a final note, a 2005 paper by Robert Tarín provides phylogenetic analyses of E1b1b haplotypes that cast serious doubt on Bird’s assertions and confirm our reading of the evidence. Tarín used 290 individual Y chromosome results to characterize “a separate cluster of mostly Iberian haplotypes which seem to represent a North African entry into Iberia distinct from the E3b [E1b1b] in Europe that may have arisen from Neolithic or other migratory events.” He wrote that “it is unknown whether this finding reflects relatively recent gene flow from the Islamic rule of Spain or an older influx possibly from the Phoenicians”—the same quandary about time frame and coalescence we see above. Utilizing the Y Chromosome Haplotype Reference Database (YHRD), Tarín found levels of the Iberian E haplotype as high as 61% in one Tunisian population (Zriba, near ancient Carthage), while Andalusian Arabs and Tunisian Berbers both showed frequencies of about 7%. We believe this Iberian haplotype is a small, but important Jewish lineage that expanded from Tunisia to the Iberian Peninsula with the Berbers who aided Arab armies in conquering Spain. Interestingly, it accompanied Spanish Jews to Mexico and other places in the diaspora following the events of 1492.  Its distribution in Britain should reveal an implantation originally under the Phoenicians reinforced by periodic migrations of North African and Spanish or French Jews throughout the medieval and early modern periods of British history.

2011 has gone down as the year of faked scholarship, but what if sound (if undaring) research is the victim of scientists' golden dreams of glory?

The prestigious journal Human Immunology first published the article "The Origin of Palestinians and Their Genetic Relatedness with Other Mediterranean Populations," then yanked it, instructing their subscribers to rip out the offending pages because they showed that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical. As of today, we still found the article online along with the editor's retraction and protests, but you'd better hurry if you want to read it. The censors who guard the scientific fables about Jewish DNA may discover a way to rewrite World Wide Web history as well as world history.

In the meantime, you can read about the whole lamentable mess in The Guardian in a story by Robin McKie, "Journal Axes Gene Research on Jews and Palestinians."

It used to be thought that the Sorbs, a medieval East German Slavic population, formed the core of a group of Jews who ended up as the dominant element of Ashkenaz, Eastern Jews in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Silesia and Russia. No longer.

According to an article published in European Journal of Human Genetics (2011) 19, 995-1001, "Genetic Variation in the Sorbs of Eastern Germany in the Context of Broader European Genetic Diversity," by Veeramah et al., the Sorb "population isolate" is not that isolated but was "less than that observed for the Sardinians and French Basque," true isolates. Sorbs are in reality part of the larger population of West Slavs, including Poles and Czechs, and scarcely distinguishable from them.

Histories of Judaism will have to revise their accounts of the genesis of Ashkenazim accordingly. The story of European Jews is more diversified and dynamic than most history or coffee-table type books allow.

Abstract.

For an example of a research article on Ashkenazi roots overemphasizing Sorbs, see Behar et al. who theorizes they were a leading constituent of Levites.



Charlemagne subjugates pagans in Germany.

DNA Consultants' fourth Jewish marker, Tatar/Khazar, has been renamed Jewish IV, bringing it into line with European, Asian and Sub-Saharan African marker groups. All these populations have four markers in acknowledgment of their complexity, age and diversity.

Native American has only two markers.

Jewish IV can be expected to be more sensitive following the addition of Altai Turkic, Caucasus, Southern Russian and Khazak population data to the company's computer program atDNA.

The four Jewish markers may be described as follows:

JEWISH I. This is the most common of the three markers. It can occur without known Jewish ancestry for a variety of reasons including an ancestor’s conversion to Christianity during the centuries of persecutions against Jews in Europe. Its frequency is highest in Poles, Russians, Germans, Hungarians, Romanians and Slavic peoples who intermarried with Ashkenazi Jews. It also appears in Spanish, Portuguese and Moroccan Jews (Sephardim).

JEWISH II. This marker is the strongest. It is found in Jewish families who have intermarried with other Jews down through the centuries. It is characteristic of Ashkenazi Jews.

JEWISH III.  This marker is an indication of Middle Eastern roots. Preserved by Jews, it is also borne by Kurds, Syrians, Arabs, Berbers, Basques, Turks, Greeks, Italians and other populations from the ancient world.

JEWISH IV. A marker indicative of Tatar or Khazar heritage. Khazars were a Central Asian people of Turkic, Hunnish and Iranian elements that arose in the Caucasus region. After converting to Judaism in the early Middle Ages, they moved westward into Russia and the Ukraine under pressure from Islam, eventually becoming a large component of Eastern and Central European Jewry. Many Ashkenazi Jews now find they have some Khazar (or intermingled Tatar) ancestry.

As can be seen, these divisions reflect the three major convert populations of Judaism, Sephardim, Ashkenazim and Khazars (often referred to as "the thirteenth tribe") in addition to the original Middle Eastern Israelites and related people of the Bible (Jewish III), which forms the core genetic element of solidarity.

Khazar rabbis.

"There are already many fine books on the history of the Jews in the Middle Ages," writes Theodore L. Steinberg, an English professor at State University of New York, in the preface to his Jews and Judaism in the Middle Ages (Wesport:  Praeger, 2008). So why another one?

"All of those other studies, as excellent as they are, presume a certain degree of knowledge on the part of the reader--knowledge of Jewish customs and traditions and beliefs, as well as a general knowledge about the Middle Ages," he continues.

If you have never been to a synagogue service, don't know many observant Jews and perhaps just discovered an interest in Judaism after finding Jewish ancestry in your family tree, this is the book for you. Beginning with the first chapter, "Jews and Judaism, What Are They? and continuing with "Talmud and Midrash," Steinberg skilfully guides the reader through a crash course on Jewish history since the advent of Christianity. He introduces us to the rabbinical traditions of Judaism, Mishan, Gemara and all the flowering branches of halakah or Jewish law. We learn why Jews were blamed, and tolerated, by the Church. We learn about everyday life in cities where Jews, Christians and Muslims mixed, Jewish occupations, their literature, philosophy and the Cabala, all major areas of intersection with Christian society. 

Appendix I has a good chronology of important events, from the life of Rabbi Akiva, which overlapped with that of Saul/Paul to the infamous date of 1492.

Singular Figure of Joseph Jacobs

Another masterwork on Judaism intended primarily for non-Jewish readers is Joseph Jacobs' Jewish Contributions to Civilization. An Estimate (Philadelphia:  Jewish Publication Society of America, 1919). This began life as the Australian Judaic scholar's Studies in Jewish Statistics, published in an anthropology journal in 1891, at the height of his fame. It was to be the first volume in a trilogy, the second book devoted to individual, rather than collective, contributions to European culture, the third a philosophical answer to anti-Semites about the value of Jews in the modern secular state. Alas, Jacobs died in 1916, leaving only notes for the second book and nothing at all of the third.

For Jacobs the watchword is always "judicious." He never exaggerates Jewish influence, emphasizing again and again that the number of Jews at no time, probably, rose above one-half of one percent in Western Europe, outside of countries where Jews were tolerated such as Moorish Spain and Poland/Lithuania under the Jagellon dynasty.

Did Jewish thinkers transform medieval philosophy from the stale dogmas of the theologians into more modern ideologies? Maybe, but they were only part of the movement.

His considered assessment of the Jewish contribution to medieval fables and folklore, one of his academic specialties, is "about one-tenth" of the material. There are those today, however, who would go so far as to say all of troubadour poetry and half of courtly love romances were inspired by the Judeo-Arabic tradition of Spain and southern France, with deeper roots in Arabia, Egypt and Babylon.

Did the Radanite ("From Persian rah dan, knowing the way") merchants plying the Silk Road in the early Middle Ages introduce all the choice import goods and enlightened ideas we associate with the East?

Europe owes to the Jewish Radanites the introduction of oranges and apricots, sugar and rice, Jargonelle pears, and Gueldre roses, senna and borax, bdellium and asafoetida, sandalwood and aloes, cinnamon and galingale, mace and camphor, candy and julep, cubebs and tamarinds, slippers and tambours, mattress, sofa, and calabash, musk and jujube, jasmine and lilac " (p. 203)

But their influence was limited. Beginning in the twelfth century, Venice took away the monopoly on the Levantine trade, just as Lombard merchants replaced Jews as bankers and moneylenders throughout most of Europe. The transition to a moneyed economy, according to Jacobs, was not due to Jews.

On the subject of Jews and capitalism, including stock exchanges and paper money, Jacobs takes a Ciceronian position. He denies that any Jews were involved with the South Sea Bubble, Mississippi Scheme of John Law or other experimental business models of the day. He does not even think that Jews fostered acceptance of bills of exchange or letters of credit. He points out that even with the Dutch East India Company, Jews had only very moderate ownership (although we wonder if like the silent partner behind the usurious kings of medieval times the partners named Coen and Hendricks and the like chose rather to have their names out of it), while the Jewish presence was absent at the first exchanges in Antwerp and London, and later minimal.

We think he might be too circumspect here. The Jewish role in the discovery, exploration and development of the American colonies is set forth in detail in Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Donald N. Yates, Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America (Jefferson:  McFarland, forthcoming this fall). 

Jacobs is particularly harsh toward his contemporary Werner Sombart, who wrote an enthusiastic and eulogistic apology for the Jews in economic history (Die Juden und das Wirschaftsleben, Leipzig, 1911, trans. by M. Epstein, 1913, The Jews and Modern Capitalism). Jacobs calls the European professor of economics' work a "farrago of fantasies about Jewish life and religion" (259). The dour Victorian explicitly rejects Sombart's equation of the American way of business with Jewish practice and influence ("what we call Americanism is nothing else than the Jewish spirit distilled"). Again, however, we think Jacobs is bending over backward not to appear partisan. His objections to Sombart's arguments seem academic and petty if Sombart was on the right track, as most people concede today.

Prudent or Prudish?

In the same way, we feel that Jacobs' inability to detect any Jewish influence in the Puritans, or indeed the entire Reformation, is willfully blind.  "It cannot be by chance," he writes, "that the three most prominent voices among the Politiques [advisors to French king Henri IV], who laid down the principles which were to result in the Edict [of Nantes, granting toleration to Protestants, 1598]-- Michel de l'Hopital, Jean Bodin and Michel de Montaigne--were all partly of Jewish race" (p. 281). But what he gives with one hand Jacobs takes away with the other, for he goes on to say that the influence of these men stopped with the borders of France, while "freethinkers" in other countries like Spinoza certainly did not meet with much success.

And of course, looking ahead to the eventual playing out of these policies, we cannot attribute either the American Bill of Rights or French Revolution to Jews, can we?  Jacobs has a bowdlerized version of Jewish influence. He is willing to take modest credit for the good things Jews introduced, while letting their Christian imitators line up in the limelight and get the glory, but he doesn't want to admit that Jews might have been responsible for or at least complicit in some evils in modern society, such as communism, the militaristic state and free love ("the sexual vagaries of Enfantin," p. 308).

This posting will review some of the material we have previously made available about the science behind our three Jewish markers in the autosomal 18 Marker Ethnic Panel. First, it may be worthwhile to recount the chronology of our testing innovations in this area.

2006 - DNA Consultants introduces the DNA Fingerprint Test, one of the first simple autosomal ancestry tests based on population databases

2009 -Donald N. Yates, Ph.D., principal investigator, makes the discoveries in July that lay the foundation for the DNA Fingerprint Plus, rolled out in early September. The enhanced product includes simple autosomal markers for Native American, European, Jewish, Asian and African ancestry, based upon their frequencies of occurrence in these ethnicities.

2010 - Several important studies on Jewish genetics appear; DNA Consultants introduces Jewish DNA Test

2011 - DNA Consultants releases version 2.0 of its autosomal population database atDNA, marking the addition of the population Melungeon (n=40).

One of the first of the Jewish markers to be blogged about was Jewish II, characteristic of Ashkenazi Jews. Theodor Herzl, the nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian Zionist thinker-organizer who helped inspire the founding of the State of Israel, is an example of a famous Ashkenazi Jew. There was another post titled Jewish Marker II Statistical Notes.

A post on Jewish I soon followed, together with a discussion about its European connections. There has been an ongoing discussion on the Jewish Forum on DNA Communities.

Jewish III has been the slowest to emerge. Its Middle Eastern nature has been explored and expanded upon in several threads on DNA Communities.

In the Fall of 2010, our project administrator tabulated results for more than 450 people who had ordered a Jewish Ancestry Test through our partner Jewish Voice. It was found that 99.97% showed at least one Jewish marker, that is, had some Jewish ancestry.  Some had all three markers while others had a combination of the three in some way.  The informal study indicated 74% of Jewish Ancestry Test takers had Jewish I, 30% had Jewish II and 82% Jewish III.

Then:  Genes of Old Testament Priests (Cohanim)
Now:  Genetic Traces of Religions in Lebanese and Iranians

Then:  Rare Genetic Disorders in Finnish Mitochondrial Haplotypes (U)
Now:  Genome-Wide Association Studies in Saami

The whole business of direct-to-the-consumer DNA tests was founded upon the revelation in 1997 that Jewish men with the last name Cohen ("priest" in Hebrew) or something similar often preserved the genetic signature of Old Testament priests in the Y chromosome type handed down from father to son. Last year at long last, the so-called Cohen Modal Haplotype was completely pinned down and defined to everyone's satisfaction ("Does He or Doesn't He?"). Now similar genetic traces are being sought, and found, for other religions from the Middle East.

In response to customers asking whether being a Jew was a matter of ancestry or culture, genes or religion, I used to say, "Genes don't have religion, genes are older than religions, your DNA doesn't know what religion you are." But the increasingly adept methods of populations genetics are changing that pat response. The key tool is a program that uses advanced statistics to estimate population differentiations, BATWING. Standing for Bayesian Analysis of Trees With Internal Node Generation, this software can calculate the effective population sizes and growth rates from microsatellite data, assuming there was a split into several populations in the past. It is a little over 10 years old. The following article is likely to become a classic in this regard:

Influences of history, geography, and religion on genetic structure: the Maronites in Lebanon

Marc Haber et al.

European Journal of Human Genetics (2011) 19, 334–340; doi:10.1038/ejhg.2010.177; published online 1 December 2010

Abstract

Cultural expansions, including of religions, frequently leave genetic traces of differentiation and in-migration. These expansions may be driven by complex doctrinal differentiation, together with major population migrations and gene flow. The aim of this study was to explore the genetic signature of the establishment of religious communities in a region where some of the most influential religions originated, using the Y chromosome as an informative male-lineage marker. A total of 3139 samples were analyzed, including 647 Lebanese and Iranian samples newly genotyped for 28 binary markers and 19 short tandem repeats on the non-recombinant segment of the Y chromosome. Genetic organization was identified by geography and religion across Lebanon in the context of surrounding populations important in the expansions of the major sects of Lebanon, including Italy, Turkey, the Balkans, Syria, and Iran by employing principal component analysis, multidimensional scaling, and AMOVA. Timing of population differentiations was estimated using BATWING, in comparison with dates of historical religious events to determine if these differentiations could be caused by religious conversion, or rather, whether religious conversion was facilitated within already differentiated populations. Our analysis shows that the great religions in Lebanon were adopted within already distinguishable communities. Once religious affiliations were established, subsequent genetic signatures of the older differentiations were reinforced. Post-establishment differentiations are most plausibly explained by migrations of peoples seeking refuge to avoid the turmoil of major historical events.

Meanwhile, in Autosomal DNA

A like expansion and intensification of research interests has also transformed the field of Finnish DNA. In the old days it was well appreciated, through the work of Finnila and others, that the people of Finland, Estonia, Sweden and neighboring regions in Russia had a peculiar genetic history. Strangely, at least on the basis of mitochondrial DNA, they were more closely related to the Berbers of North Africa than the neighboring Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians and Russians. Female haplogroups UK were associated with a risk of occipital stroke, migraine and other neuro-deficiencies. On another level, their unique genetic history was approached through the study of male haplogroup N, common among Laplanders and Saami.

The focus has now shifted from haplotyping and sex-linked genes to population genetics and autosomal DNA just as it has in consumer tests. After 10 years, an important autosomal study of the Saami has revolutionized the subject and shows promise of becoming the pilot to a new series of genome-wide disease association studies.

A genome-wide analysis of population structure in the Finnish Saami with implications for genetic association studies

Jeroen R Huyghe et al. 

European Journal of Human Genetics (2011) 19, 347–352; doi:10.1038/ejhg.2010.179; published online 8 December 2010

Abstract

The understanding of patterns of genetic variation within and among human populations is a prerequisite for successful genetic association mapping studies of complex diseases and traits. Some populations are more favorable for association mapping studies than others. The Saami from northern Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula represent a population isolate that, among European populations, has been less extensively sampled, despite some early interest for association mapping studies. In this paper, we report the results of a first genome-wide SNP-based study of genetic population structure in the Finnish Saami. Using data from the HapMap and the human genome diversity project (HGDP-CEPH) and recently developed statistical methods, we studied individual genetic ancestry. We quantified genetic differentiation between the Saami population and the HGDP-CEPH populations by calculating pair-wise FST statistics and by characterizing identity-by-state sharing for pair-wise population comparisons. This study affirms an east Asian contribution to the predominantly European-derived Saami gene pool. Using model-based individual ancestry analysis, the median estimated percentage of the genome with east Asian ancestry was 6% (first and third quartiles: 5 and 8%, respectively). We found that genetic similarity between population pairs roughly correlated with geographic distance. Among the European HGDP-CEPH populations, FST was smallest for the comparison with the Russians (FST=0.0098), and estimates for the other population comparisons ranged from 0.0129 to 0.0263. Our analysis also revealed fine-scale substructure within the Finnish Saami and warns against the confounding effects of both hidden population structure and undocumented relatedness in genetic association studies of isolated populations.

The key to emerging triumphs of research here is the international HapMap project.

On two fronts--religious history and rare diseases--genetics has brought more advances in the past decade than in the previous century before that. That consumers can take part in these exciting developments by ordering an affordable autosomal analysis of their entire ancestry or confirming the paternity of their child with a simple test purchased at their local drugstore is a tribute to the present golden age of American science and industry. 

A Change of Biblical Proportions Strikes Mideast Archaeology

Or at Least One of Its Kings

The royal mound cemetery at Taillten, modern Telltown in County Meath, houses the burials of numerous kings and nobles from early Ireland. These begin with Ollamh Fodhla, whose death occurred in 1277 B.C.E., and run to just before Conchobar Mac Ness, who died in A.D. 33 according to the Annals of Tighernach, written in Old Irish and Latin in the early Middle Ages. Pronounced "CON ah war," Conchobar is the first of the name Connor or O'Connor in Irish annals. His mother was Queen Ness, and his nephew Cuchulain, the famous hero of the Ulster cycle of stories.

"Our oldest and most trustworthy authorities state that Taillten ceased to be used as a cemetery on the death of Conchobhor," wrote Irish antiquarian (the term used before "archeologist") William F. Wakeman in The Handbook of Irish Antiquities in 1891, drawing on field reports dating back to 1848 (London:  Studio, 1995). What made Conchobar's burial unusual was that, unlike the previous kings of Ulster entombed at Taillten, he "wished that he should be carried to a place between Slea and the sea, with his face to the east, on account of the Faith which he had embraced" (p. 94).

It seems obvious that Conchobar converted from pagan druidism to a new religion, one that emphasized burial facing east. The new religion could not have been Christianity, although Irish myths claim, anachronistically, that Conchobar died upon being told by druids that Jesus had just been killed "by the Jews." Christianity was not widespread until the fourth century of the Common Era. Jews, like Christians, are buried facing east.

According to Celtic tradition, Conchobar was one of the two men who believed in God in Ireland before the coming of the Faith, Morann being the other man. Such a statement can only mean that Conchobar and his advisor Morann were monotheists or Jews.

In Conchobar's day, Judaism attracted millions of converts. Eventually between one-tenth and one-quarter of the inhabitants within the limit of the Roman Empire professed Judaism. Often it was a syncretistic form combined with other rites and beliefs.

The story of a king converting to Judaism with many of his subjects and descendants following him is a phenomenon documented from more than one historical time point associated with mass conversions. The Hellenized Hasmonean dynasty established under Judas Maccabeus ruled the Kingdom of Israel for over a hundred years, spreading Jewish religion to many others in the Middle East. Bulan was a Khazar king who led the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. The Babylonian prince Machir, also known as Todros, Theodore, Theodorich, Dietrich, William and by other names, converted most of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Narbonne/Septimania in southern France.

It is likely the Irish high king Conchobar inspired many of his people to accept Judaism. The introduction and early spread of Christianity in Ireland could have been facilitated by the pre-existence of Jewish institutions in the country.



King Ollamh Fodhla's Throne at Taillten, covered with tifinagh (North African) inscriptions. Conwell, On the Cemetery of Taillten (1879).

Jews and Muslims in Colonial America

After more than eight years in development, a book contract was awarded to Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and Donald N. Yates for their collaborative study of Crypto-Jews and Crypto-Muslims in the settlement of British North America. Titled Star, Crescent and Cross:  Jews and Muslims in Colonial America, the work will be published next year by McFarland, a leading U.S. publisher of scholarly, reference and academic books.

Among original investigations by the authors are genealogical studies of the West Country Gentlemen and others who proposed and promoted England's first colonies. From Sir John Hawkins (Sephardic Jewish surname Haquines, "physician" in Arabic) and Sir Francis Drake (whose family coat of arms bore a six-pointed star until it was air-brushed out by later historians) to Stephen Parmenius (a Jew from Turkish-held Hungary) and Captain John Smith, the principal players in England's colonization efforts are revealed to be far different from the white Anglo-Saxon Christian buccaneers American schoolchildren are taught about.

"England's reliance on Iberian Jews to promote its interests abroad goes back as far as the Tudors," according to Star, Crescent and Cross. "Henry VIII used Spanish Jewish lawyers to justify his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. One of them, an Italian banker tapped for his shrewdness and knowledge of international law, was the ancestor of Oliver Cromwell, Protector of the Commonwealth."

The book presents a series of colonial documents, contemporary firsthand accounts, records, portraits, family genealogies and ethnic DNA test results which fundamentally challenge the national storyline depicting America’s first settlers as white, British and Christian. The authors postulate that many of the initial colonists were of Sephardic Jewish and Muslim Moorish ancestry, usually arriving as crypto-Jews or crypto-Muslims.

Names Ordinary and Illustrious

The footnotes in the study document origins and meanings of over 5,000 surnames previously assumed to be sturdy English ones of ancient bearing. The authors' research casts a sidelight on celebrated Jewish Americans who can trace back to colonial forebears. These range from the Massachusetts Kennedys to the Byrds of Virginia, from actors Johnny Depp and Adrien Brody to actresses Roseanne Barr and Gwyneth Paltrow, from writers Louise Glück and Neil Simon to politicians Barbara Boxer and Bernie Sanders and jurists Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

"We hope that the remarkable stories of the men, women and families in Star, Crescent and Cross will serve as a reminder of America’s early diversity and stimulus for rewriting some of the inaccurate and injudicious portions in the country's history," said Yates.

Among the famous colonial figures discussed (and usually illustrated with a portrait) are William Byrd II, Patrick Henry, William Bradford, William Penn, George Mason, George Washington, Richard Lee II, Thomas Paine, Paul Revere, Peter Stuyvesant, Luis Gomez, Jacob Troxell, Anthony Ashley Cooper Lord Shaftesbury, Tench Tilghman, Christopher Gist, John Skeen, Sir Philip Sidney, Walter Raleigh, Humphrey Gilbert, Virginia Dare, Don Luis de Carvajal, Daniel Boone, William Cooper, the Salem Witches, Christopher Gist, Lord Saye and Sele, and various Lowells, Cabots, Lodges, Livingstones, Delanceys and Roosevelts.

Chapter 2, "Sephardim in the New World" is a survey of Crypto-Jews in North America, especially the Caribbean and Atlantic Islands. It includes autosomal DNA data proving the Melungeons are probably descended from Jews mixed with American Indians, Africans and Gypsies/Romani, as recently reported in this blog. 

There are chapters and name-lists devoted to each of the original colonies. The book will contain over 50 illustrations.

English navigators and explorers included many West Country gentlemen. Most were from intermarried Crypto-Jewish families. New York Public Library.