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And Her Name Was Pomponia Graecina

The following excerpt is taken from Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Donald N. Yates, The Early Jews and Muslims of England and Wales:  A Genetic and Genealogical History (forthcoming Summer 2013 from McFarland & Co. Publishers).

If Roman Britain had cities, and we know it did, there were Jews in them. In fact, we have a tantalizing record of what may be the first British Jew. Pomponia Graecina was the aristocratic wife of the conqueror of Britain, the commander Aulus Plautius, who defeated the sons of Cunobelinus (Shakespeare’s Cymbeline), seized the Celtic or Belgic capital of Camulodunum (Colchester) in Essex and secured the conquest of Britain for the emperor Claudius in 43 ce. Plautius became the first governor of the new colony. It is reasonable to think his wife lived with him during his governorship (43-47).

Ten years later, Pomponia Graecina was put on trial in Rome for a crime of character described as a “foreign superstition.” She was a member of the imperial Julio-Claudian family. The same charge was brought about the same time against Poppaea, the future wife of Nero. Poppaea was rumored to be privately a Jewish convert and to favor Jews.[i] Although many commentators and fiction writers believe Pomponia Graecina’s crime was the practice of Christianity, in the year 57 this would have been extremely unlikely. There were at that time very few Christians anywhere outside of Galilee. The apostles Peter and Paul were not yet dead. No Gospels had been set down in writing yet. In Rome Christians were a rarity far into the second century. They were so exotic even in the East that around 112 ce Pliny the Younger, then governor of Pontus and Bithynia, wrote the emperor Trajan for advice on how to identify and deal with them.[ii]

The Christian epigrapher Giovanni Battista de Rossi in 1879 associated Pomponia with family members buried in the catacombs of St. Callistus in the third century. She was gradually transformed into the apocryphal St. Lucina, even figuring in the historical novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis. But a gap of over a hundred and fifty years seriously weakens de Rossi’s theory. Sand identifies Pomponia Graecina as a Jewish convert, not a Christian.[iii]  She survived her husband by twenty years and died about 83 ce.

            Christianity struggled for several centuries to differentiate and distance itself from Judaism. Many of Britain’s Jews around 300 were undoubtedly “semi-converts—people who formed broad peripheries around the Jewish community, took part in its ceremonies, attended the synagogues, but did not keep all the commandments.”[iv] After the legalization of Christianity by Constantine in 313, some Jews and “semi-Jews” presented themselves publicly as Christian, while thinking of themselves and their ancestors as still wholly Jewish. Sometimes families were divided in their allegiances. Timothy of the New Testament had a Jewish grandmother, Lois, and Jewish mother, Eunice, but a Greek father. When Timothy converted to Christianity in his native Anatolia, the apostle Paul performed a ceremony of circumcision on him (Acts 16:1-3). Most of Christianity’s early converts came from Jews. Paul made a habit of preaching in synagogues.

As the Christianization of the Roman Empire accelerated during the fourth century, circumcision was forbidden to males who were not born Jews, the practice of converting one’s slaves to Judaism or of owning Christian slaves was proscribed, Jewish women who were not born Jewish were barred from ritual baths and Jewish men of all persuasions were outlawed from marrying Christian women.[v] Endogamy—marrying cousins and other close relations—became ingrained among Jews attempting to hold themselves apart from Christians. All these developments tended to make secret Jews out of people who defiantly regarded themselves as Jewish and honored the commandments of Judaism to varying degrees, often without benefit of a rabbi, community, synagogue or Torah. It was not until the eleventh century that the Hebrew language was introduced to Europe, and its dissemination was spotty. Moreover, that Hebrew was no product of an autochthonous linguistic development, but the artificial creation of Jewish scholars.[vi] In the rift, which covered most of the Middle Ages, the vast majority of European Jews were totally ignorant of Hebrew and were probably also not acquainted with rabbinical Judaism as it took shape in Judea and Western Asia.

Christianity’s final triumph put an end to all proselytizing by Jews “and perhaps also prompted the desire to erase it from Jewish history.”[vii] In the centuries that followed, especially after the rise of Islam, rabbis and other keepers of the collective memory were pained by the apostasy of the Jewish people on such a continuingly large scale. They sought to deny what was obvious, considering anyone who gave up their Jewishness “dead.” “Zionist historiography . . . [turned] its back on any meaningful discussion of the issue,” writes Sand. “Abandoning the Jewish religion was generally interpreted by modern sensibilities as betraying the ‘nation,’ and was best forgotten.”[viii]

Photo:  A Roman crypto-Jewish family. Copyright The Trustees of the British Museum.

New Genetic Study Shows Rhineland Hypothesis False, 'Thirteenth Tribe' Theory Correct After All

In "Heretical History" and numerous other posts, we have argued that the contributions, genetic and cultural, of the Turkic-Iranic Khazars deserve much more attention than the cosseted theories of European Zionist Jews and the official views of the state of Israel on Jewish history. A new study by Eran Elhaik titled "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypothesis," (Genome Biol. Evol. 5.1:61-74) bears out our thinking with hard evidence that seems likely to settle that rancorously-fought-over question once and for all. 

According to Science Daily (Jan. 16, 2013), "Despite being one of the most genetically analysed groups, the origin of European Jews has remained obscure . . . but the new study . . . sets to rest previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry." Elhaik's findings strongly support the Khazarian Hypothesis, as opposed to the Rhineland Hypothesis, of European Jewish origins. 

Ashkenazi ("Germanic") Jews embraced a Western European origin myth not only because it presented Jews as very white, at the top of the race pyramid, but because of the prestige it brought them of being a spin off of the Roman Empire. 

The Khazarian thesis acknowledges that the most important element is Middle Eastern among "brown" peoples, and that the period of efflorescence of Judaism in Europe began in the late Middle Ages under the influence of migrating Khazars. 

That's an entirely different version of history, one much closer to Arthur Koestler's "Thirteenth Tribe" account, a theory for which he was castigated by fellow Jews and especially Zionists. 

The new study was not possible until recently, when many of the gaps in Caucasian and Jewish genetics were filled for the first time, using autosomal approaches rather than sex-linked haplotype surveys. Elhaik's masterwork examines a comprehensive dataset of 1,287 unrelated individuals in 8 Jewish and 74 non-Jewish populations genotyped over a range of half a million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or markers. These data were adapted from a study by Doron Behar and colleagues from three years ago.

The central role of Khazaria was also not wanted or wished for among Eurocentric scholars, who tended to denigrate Ostjuden or Eastern Jews. Few historians conceded even the fact that Khazaria was a Jewish state that lasted nearly a millennium, where Hebrew was spoken, preferring to think of it as a sort of travelers tale or land of religious fiction.  

Elhaik used seven measures of ancestry, relatedness, admixture, allele sharing distances, geographical origins and migration patterns to identify the Caucasus-Near Eastern and European ancestral signatures in European Jews' genome along with a smaller, but substantial Middle Eastern genome. "The results were consistent in depicting a Caucasus ancestry for all European Jews," according to Science Daily. 

Heresy in a Nutshell

Elhaik wrote:  "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 [a Hebrew-speaking Central Asian empire] was recorded as early as the late centuries BCE and reinforced due to the increase in trade along the Silk Road, the decline of Judah (1st-7th centuries), and the rise of Christianity and Islam. 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… The religious conversion of the Khazars encompassed most of the Empire's citizens and subordinate tribes and lasted for the next 400 years until the invasion of the Mongols. At the final collapse of their empire in the 13th century, many of the Judeo-Khazars fled to Eastern Europe and later migrated to Central Europe and admixed with the neighbouring populations."

According to Science Daily, Elhaik's findings explain otherwise conflicting results describing high heterogeneity among Jewish communities and relatedness to Middle Eastern, Southern European, and Caucasus populations not accounted for under the Rhineland Hypothesis. Although the study links European Jews to the Khazars, there are still questions to be answered. How substantial is the Iranian ancestry in modern day Jews (Khazars were themselves mixed)? Since Eastern European Jews arrived from the Caucasus, where did Central and Western European Jews come from, those usually called Sephardic?

Finally, if there was no mass migration out of Palestine at the 7th century, what happened to the ancient Judeans? --Shlomo Sand, the author of The Invention of the Jewish People, has maintained that there never were any expulsions or exoduses out of Palestine, only wholesale conversions to Islam. Thus, the true heirs of Judah are the persistent inhabitants who still occupy Jerusalem and the Holy Land, that is, Palestinians. 

It is ironic, to say the least, that these ancient Judeans are dispossessed by a nationalist colonial power with roots no deeper than nineteenth century Europe which exercises a force majeur based on mistaken notions of genetics and history. 

Photo above:  Arthur Koestler, the arch-heretic and persona non grata in the eyes of Jewish authorities, was unorthodox politically, religiously and sexually. 

The question of ancestry has been of human concern in virtually all cultures and over all times of which we have any knowledge. Whether it be a story about the origin of a particular tribe or nation and its subsequent mixture with other groups, or curiosity about a family history, there is always the implication that we understand ourselves better if we know our ancestors and that we, within ourselves, reflect properties that have come to us by an unbroken line from past generations. As treasurer of the Marlboro Historical Society in Vermont, I am the recipient of requests for printed copies of the Reverend Ephraim Newton’s mid-eighteenth-century history of our town, 70 percent of whose pages consist of “Genealogical and Biographical Notes” and a “Catalog of Literary Men.” Over and over our correspondents write of the “pride” they have in descending from these early settlers.

Surely pride or shame are appropriate sentiments for actions for which we ourselves are in some way responsible. Why, then, do we feel pride (or shame) for the actions of others over whom we can have had no influence? Do we, in this way, achieve a false modesty or relieve ourselves of the burdens of our own behavior? As a descendant of late-nineteenth-century Eastern European immigrants I cannot depend on Reverend Newton’s pages to explain my frequent contributions to The New York Review, but neither have the extensive “begats” in Genesis 10 or Matthew 1 been more enlightening.  Read More...

Behind the Numbers:  Elizabeth Hirschman

  (Part Two of a Series)

We interviewed Rutgers marketing professor Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman, author of several books and articles incorporating DNA in her research, to hear her personal story in our continuing series about the people behind the scenes in the field of DNA testing.

Elizabeth Hirschman with MBA students at Rutgers in December 2009.

When did you first get interested in DNA?

ECH: I got interested in DNA testing around 2000 when I discovered I was Melungeon after reading Brent Kennedy's 1994 book. Brent suggested several different ancestries that possibly contributed to the Melungeon population and I wanted to find out which of these were correct and which ones I had. I already suspected Jewish ancestry because of the naming patterns in my family over the past 300 years, as well as some of their habits --e.g., not eating pork, getting married in a home instead of a church, cleaning house on Friday afternoon, no eggs with blood spots, washing all meat, etc. We also had some genetic anomalies -- shovel teeth (sinodonty), palatal tori and large rear cranial extensions, as well as polydactylism.

Tell us more.

ECH:  Over the course of the past decade I have been found to have Native American, Spanish, Ashkenazi Jewish, African, Mediterranean and Gypsy/Northwestern India ancestry. My Dad turned out to have substantial Gypsy and African ancestry. He and I share a large cranial rear extension that I believe likely comes from the African ancestry -- the photos I have seen of the !Kung Bushmen look just like our head shapes. My Mom has Native American and/or Sino-Siberian ancestry. She also possessed the Asian teeth and palatal tori found in this group.

You've written several books and articles with Donald Yates; how did that come about?

ECH:  We shared ancestry from the Coopers, a prominent pioneer family in Daniel Boone’s time. In 2000, I wrote him out of the blue when he was a professor in Georgia and introduced myself and asked if possibly the Coopers were Jewish. We began to correspond by email. I told him I was sure one of the reasons I was working so hard to figure out the Melungeon story was because I had to figure out who I am. “Up until last year,”  I remember telling him, “I thought I was Scotch-Irish, English , white and Presbyterian.” It was a big transition to Sephardic, brown and Jewish. It turned out that we were distant cousins and had numerous links in our Melungeon ancestry.

What was a typical publication?

ECH: One article was called “Suddenly Melungeon! Reconstructing Consumer Identity Across the Color Line.” This was published by Routledge in 2007 in a handbook on consumer culture theory edited by Russell Belk.  

How did the Jewish findings play out?

ECH:  On a personal level, both Don and I, as well as his wife Teresa, returned to Judaism, he and Teresa in Savannah and I in New Jersey. On a professional level, we started the Melungeon Surname DNA Project, which focused on Scottish clan and Melungeon surnames (i.e., male or Y chromosome lines), and later included Native American mitochondrial DNA.  Initially, many people in the genetic genealogy community were frustrated that the incoming Jewish DNA results were not originating in the Middle East, as they had strongly believed and hoped, but were showing a lot of Khazar, Central Asian, Eastern European and Western European/Spanish/French input.

Can you elaborate?

ECH:  Critics were not happy that DNA was proving a wider and more inclusive picture of the Jewish people. Where Don and I have performed a service, I believe, is by just following the DNA trail and accepting new findings (e.g., the Gypsy/Roma) when they come in, instead of clinging to an a priori theory/belief/wish, for instance, the claim of a Middle Eastern origin for the majority of Jews.

What tests have you ordered from DNA Consultants?

ECH: I ordered every test as they became available over the years, first the Y chromosome and mitochondrial or male-line and female-line tests and later the autosomal or DNA fingerprint tests that analyze your total ancestry.  I helped organize the first autosomal Melungeon study by contributing samples from my mother and brother and obtaining samples from well-known Melungeons like Brent Kennedy and his brother Richard. Increasingly, our testing took on the aspect of a family group study. For instance, I was able by comparing multiple results from relatives to reconstruct my father’s ancestry quite satisfactorily, even though he died many years ago. I took the Rare Genes from History for all available family members. There is a streak of the Thuya Gene and First Peoples Gene in all of us, as well as the Sinti Gene (which is Gypsy), while my brother Dick got our father’s Khoisan Gene, which is African. Incidentally, it has the same source as the !Kung people and head shape I mentioned before.

If you had H. G. Wells' time machine where would you go?

ECH: I would love to be able to visit my ancestors and see what they looked like, where they lived, how they lived and learn how they got to Appalachia from such disparate parts of the world. I wish I could talk with them. My project now is to visit all the places they are known to have come from and see what the architecture, climate, food, and people are like. That is about as close to "meeting" them as I will be able to get. So far, I’ve traveled to Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England, Spain, Tunisia and Morocco on the trail of my Sephardic Jewish ancestors. I am trying to get to the Silk Road to see Central Asia, Turkey and Northwest India in the near future.

Authentic sequences from the ancient human past are a rarity in the world of DNA testing. But when a team of archeologists put the mummies of King Tut and his immediate family on the operating table in 2010, they were successful in deriving almost complete DNA profiles for the boy king and others in the Amarna dynasty that ruled Egypt more than three thousand years ago. Now three of the DNA signatures of Egyptian pharoahs from that famous forensic study by Zahi Hawass and the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo--plus others newly discovered--are available as part of a commercial direct-to-the-consumer autosomal DNA testing panel.

In October 2012, DNA Consultants launched its Rare Genes from History Report. Based on a customer's DNA fingerprint or autosomal profile, the additional analysis sells for $289. It compares your laboratory results with 26 rare alleles or ancestry markers whose trail has been traced through world history and evolving population changes by the company's statisticians. 

Take the Thuya Gene, for instance. Like most of the other Rare Genes from History, it has an African origin in deep time. But it experienced its greatest expansion in ancient Egypt, where it was carried by the queens of Upper and Lower Egypt and High Priestesses of the temples. It was reported in the profile of Queen Thuya's mummy, and we can see that she passed it to her children, grandchildren and descendants. King Tut was a great-grandson and has it, according to the new forensic evidence.

Today, as many as one-fourth of all people on earth would test positive for the Thuya Gene. It is twice as common in Somalia as outside Africa and is found in 40% of Muslim Egyptians.

That's not so rare after all, but unsurprising. Egyptian civilization lasted for three thousand years and sowed the seed of its peoples and ideas throughout the world. We can imagine that Autosomal Thuya started out in East Africa about 100,000 years ago, and that her descendants were prominent in the first out-of-Africa group as well as in the Middle Easterners who helped spread agriculture, animal husbandry, religion and settled town life to Europe. 

The spirit of Thuya lives on in 27% of Jews who have been tested in academic studies. Extrapolating to world population figures, that's nearly 400,000 people, about evenly divided between the United States and Israel.

See also "Prelaunch of New Autosomal Products" (August 26, 2012)
"Rare Genes from History" (webpage)
"Rare Genes from History Panel Now Available for $289.00"

The classic DNA study by the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, Egypt is: Hawass Z, Gad YZ, Ismail S, et al. Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family. JAMA. 2010;303(7):638-647. The feat by scientists has also been featured on Discovery Channel. 

The Cherokee called them the Moon People. The Utes and Paiutes spoke of a hideous race of cannibals ten feet tall living in caves. And the Choctaw also have an account of the race of giants that first colonized the Ohio Valley. 

From Old World Roots of the Cherokee, chapter 5, "America's Middle Ages," pp. 78-79, we read:

What kind of Indians lived in the territory the Choctaw and Chickasaw carved out for their new home? According to their traditions, reports Cushman, as confirmed by excavations of bones in Tennessee, it was a “race of white giants”:

[T]he tradition of the Choctaws . . . told of a race of giants that once inhabited the now State of Tennessee, and with whom their ancestors fought when they arrived in Mississippi in their migration from the west, doubtless Old Mexico. Their tradition states the Nahullo (race of giants [literally, wizards]) was of wonderful stature; but, as their tradition of the mastodon [which used to be found on the Great Plains], so this was also considered to be but a foolish fable, the creature of a wild imagination, when lo! Their exhumed bones again prove the truth of the Choctaws’ tradition (151).

These giants could have been Rafinesque’s Atlans.

Cushman then recounts the discovery in 1880 at a burial mound site near Plano, Texas, of human bones “of enormous size . . . the femoral bones being five inches longer than the ordinary length, and the jaw bones . . . so large as to slip over the face of a man with ease.” Cushman goes on to identify them with the older occupants of North America called Allegewi or Taligewi (Talegans). Many historians, moreover, speculate they were the builders of the Adena mounds.

As for the Chickasaw, Cushman notes that they have no record of their history before the colonial period, although it is assuredly "the same as the Choctaws, being one tribe and people until the division made by their two chiefs Chikasah and Chahtah many years after their arrival and location east of the Mississippi River" (p 358). Of the Natchez, Cushman records that they, "if tradition may be believed, also came from Mexico where they had lived for centuries" (p 440).

A story was told by the Comanches in 1857: 

Innumerable moons ago, a race of white men, ten feet high, and far more rich and powerful than any white people now living, here inhabited a large range of country, extending from the rising to the setting sun. Their fortifications crowned the summits of the mountains, protecting their populous cities situated in the intervening valleys. They excelled every other nation which was flourished, either before or since, in all manner of cunning handicraft—were brave and warlike—ruling over the land they had wrested from its ancient possessors with a high and haughty hand. Compared with them the palefaces of the present day were pygmies, in both art and arms. They drove the Indians from their homes, putting them to the sword, and occupying the valleys in which their fathers had dwelt before them since the world began. At length, in the height of their power and glory, when they remembered justice and mercy no more and became proud and lifted up, the Great Spirit descended from above, sweeping them with fire and deluge from the face of the earth. The mounds we [i.e. the speaker Chief Rolling Thunder and his Spanish listener] had seen on the tablelands were the remnants of their fortresses, and the crumbling ruins that surrounded us all that remained of a mighty city.[i]

The word Nahoolo or Nahullo “is now emphatically applied to the white race and no other . . . The Nahullo were of white complexion, according to Choctaw tradition, and were still an existing people at the time of the advent of the Choctaws to Mississippi,” concludes Cushman (p 153) . In agreement, the Indian trader Adair often refers to the Nani Ishtahoolo as departed white ghosts vested with spiritual powers whose descendants were priests and magicians. Their cries and magic spells could still be heard in the mounds like those at Ocmulgee.[ii] These references contribute to the suspicion that the “Indians” who preceded Asiatic tribes from Mexico were, as we would say today, Caucasian.

About exactly a year ago on this blog, we published a post about "Neanderthals in America," mentioning also the peculiar archaic skeleton that is now a roadside attraction in Arizona, called The Thing. In the meantime, we acquired a copy of Fritz Zimmerman's book, The Nephilim Chronicles, which reproduces over 300 historical accounts of Giant skeletons. Many are associated with the earliest mound sites in America, but Zimmerman's survey of this worldwide phenomenon ranges from the Hunter-Fisher People of northeast Europe and Red Paint People whose movements were circumpolar to the giants of the Bible, noted by the Babylonian Talmud as having double rows of teeth, and "Giants' Remains in the British Isles" (pp. 157-65).

Navajo legends speak of the Starnake People, a regal race of white giants endowed with mining technology who dominated the West, enslaved lesser tribes and had strongholds all through the Americas. They were either extinguished or "went back to the heavens." The name may be a corruption of the Biblical race known as Anakim (Num. 13:33, Deut. 1:28). The name Og (Hebrew "chief") appears to be characteristic (see Zimmerman, pp. 188-91). The ogham alphabet is attributed to this cultural founder. 

Certainly, many of the mound sites uncovered in the nineteenth century tell a story of constant warfare by incoming Asiatic tribes  against the giants occupying the land. One grisly scene showed thousands of skeletons, male, female and young heaped in a mass grave, with warriors' skulls pierced by arrows. It would appear that as these aboriginal inhabitants of the Ohio Valley were gradually displaced, some members of their society went over into the ranks of the new conquerors, bequeathing a strain of great stature still noticeable, for instance, in the Mobilian chief Tuscaloosa and DeSoto's Indian queen Cofitachiqui, both of whom were said to be seven feet tall.

We are struck by the following traits of this giant race or ethnic group from human prehistory:

• Mother Goddess religion
• Copper (not bronze) axes 
• Polished slate tools including fishing plummets, which were apparently regarded as sacred
• Belief that the Grandmother Moon was the repository of souls
• Diet emphasizing shellfish (for which the double row of teeth probably was selected as an evolutionary advantage in their beachcomber origin out of Africa?)
• Building of fish weirs in North American rivers to trap migrating eels
• Certain vegetarian habits (wild rice, for instance)
• Inscriptions on artifacts, especially pipes, often buried with the dead
• Use of coal and petroleum
• Weaving and looms
• Knowledge of seafaring, mathematics and engineering, including canals and irrigation
• Burying of a dog with a child to guard the latter in the afterlife
• A language apparently Afro-Asiatic and close to Semitic tongues
• Kingcraft:  nobles were buried in seated positions on thrones surrounded by a coterie of their retainers

Science, it seems, has been "the new religion" for a long time. And by the same token, it has always had its apostates and heretics, even its unremarkable and quotidian sinners. In an article titled "Disgrace," Charles Gross, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University, reviews the whole subject of contemporary and historical scientific misconduct (The Nation, Jan. 9/16, 2012, pp. 25-32). He finds nothing new in the shocking case of Harvard's Marc Hauser, who was exposed two years ago for scientific misconduct, in of all fields, the biological basis of morality and genetic inheritance of doing evil.

Hauser apparently was guilty of the very venial sin of fudging facts. The three ways to do that, all frowned upon, are by fabrication (making data up), falsification (altering or selecting data, cherry picking) and sheer plagiarism (which all but entering Freshmen understand).

In 1830, computer science pioneer Charles Babbage published a book in which he distinguished "several species of impositions that have been practised in science...hoaxing, forging, trimming, and cooking."

Gross classifies the Piltdown man as an example of hoaxing. This fossil combining parts of an ape and human skull was discovered in 1911 and not discredited until the 1950s. Most hoaxes are intended to poke fun at the public's credulousness, but the Piltdown hoax was undertaken by well-meaning British imperialists who hoped their construction would fill an awkward gap in the record. Like God, if the missing link did not exist, we should have to invent one. Pip pip for the Royal Society!

Babbage believed that forging was uncommon. Rarely are results completely counterfeited and pulled out of thin air.

"Trimming" is probably a form of scientific misconduct that few scientists confess to their most exacting monitors such as the National Science Foundation but rather quietly cover up in bland hypocrisy. It consists of "eliminating outliers to make results look more accurate, while keeping the average the same." Who has not committed that little white sin? Let him who is without self-assurance cast the first chad.

"Cooking," on the other hand, the purposive selection and distortion of data, might be a real concern for all of us.

Gross goes on to inspect the career of Harvard's "war crimes professor" Richard Herrnstein, who became a co-author after his death of the book The Bell Curve about racial differences in intelligence. It is not a very pretty kettle of fish.

Charles Darwin essentially stole the idea of natural selection from Alfred Russel Wallace, the father of biogeography, did he not, and if he didn't, certainly failed to credit some of his predecessors in his rush to fame and self-glorification.

In genetics, we are reminded that the saintly Gregor Mendel probably falsified the suspiciously exact 1:3 ratio he "observed" in comparing pure dominant with hybrid peas (p. 26).

Alarmingly, we learn that "the modal scientific miscreant is a bright and ambitious young man at an elite institution," just the sort of role model worshiped by the popular press.

Maybe our society should be examining a few of science's feet of clay rather than pompously setting more laurels on the heads of its exalted heroes.

--Bob Dylan

Will the archeological establishment's obtuseness about prehistory and the religion of the Great Goddess ever falter? In an article titled "Pieces of a Bronze Age Puzzle" in the current issue of Archaeology Magazine (Sept/Oct 2011, p. 15), Jessica Woodard discusses the "enigma" of thousands of broken Cycladic figurines from the tiny, uninhabited island of Keros near Naxos. Summarizing the decades long work of Cambridge archeologist Colin Renfrew, she dates the site to 2800 to 2300 BCE and (are you ready for this) speculates there was a lot of "social activity as well as ritual activity...relating to beliefs about life, death, and perhaps the hereafter."

This is tantamount to saying that the deliberately broken figurines were broken by people, human beings who lived a long time ago, on purpose. But what kind of rituals and "beliefs"? The word "religion" is mentioned nowhere. Evidently, since archeologists profess no religion themselves they cannot detect it in any of the people whose graves and relics they dig up.

Greek mythology tells how Venus, the eldest of the Fates, was born at sea and stepped ashore on several islands, where her cult continued, notably at Cythera, Crete, Naxos and Cyprus. All the "enigmatic" broken figures clearly relate to the worship of the Mother Goddess. Marija Gimbutas covers the featureless face, arms crossed over breasts and other unmistakable signs of the Goddess or Magna Mater in her voluminous writings, including The Language of the Goddess. We suggest if Colin Renfrew cannot bring himself to read Gimbutas he at least dip into Pausanias, the second century CE author of a guidebook to Greece in ten volumes. There he will find many descriptions of these votive offerings to the Goddess.

Archeologists may also want to acquire at least a bowing acquaintance with Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade. Both Gimbutas and Eisler describe three invasions of the warriors of the steppes with their male gods following the year 3000 BCE that spelled an end to the long period of female-based life-celebrating religion in the Middle East and Old Europe. Only the Minoans, Etruscans and certain other peoples from Asia Minor and the Greek Islands were able to retain the Mother Goddess in the new mostly male pantheon, which was focused more on death than rebirth.

The only puzzling part of the Keros Hoard is how archeologists could overlook its abundant testimony to the Mother Goddess religion.


Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" depicts the Goddess' first coming ashore. (No, this is not the famous original in the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence. This is a cheap reproduction hanging on the walls of a Rome pizzeria.)

"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).

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.