mito study: half of Ashkenazim descend from only 4 women

[Martin]

http://www.ftdna.com/pdf/43026_Doron.pdf

 

this study was published recently (2006) in the JOURNAL OF HUMAN GENETICS

 

it is a small study with only on the order of 1000 people as sample and it needs to be confirmed with much larger samples. also it should be scrutinized and criticized

 

however it has an astonishing conclusion which we should consider as a serious possibility

 

they looked a MITOCHONDRIAL dna of Ashkenazim and non-Ashkenazim.

 

MITO dna is only passed down matrilineally----from the mother

 

you have the MITO dna of your mother's mother's mother's mother----unmixed with dna of any of your other many ancestors

 

this study is barely credible to me, it is so weird, but anyway the conclusion is that ABOUT HALF OF ALL ASHKENAZIM DESCEND MATRILINEALLY FROM JUST 4 WOMEN

 

the genetic history of the Ashkenazim is very interesting, even if this scientific finding is later shown to be wrong there is still a lot of interesting genetics to be found out about this group of people

 

but anyway, what do you think of the conclusion in this article? Are you inclined to believe it?

[ecoli]

You're talking about Ashkenzi Jews? This seems to suggest that only several families travelled to Eastern europe in the second diaspora. Interesting.

[Martin]

You're talking about Ashkenzi Jews? This seems to suggest that only several families travelled to Eastern europe in the second diaspora. Interesting.

 

I think it suggests that (and this is only one possibility) only several families traveled to the RHINELAND around 800-1000 AD.

 

around 800 AD the emperor Charlemagne unified and stabilized northern Europe and joined it with southern Europe and Italy----communication opened up and some Jews moved to northern Europe (germany+france)

 

THEIR LANGUAGE BECAME A FORM OF GERMAN

 

they only moved East, to what is now Poland and Ukraine, when they began to be expelled from the Rhineland and surrounding Northern and Western Europe.

 

"Ashkenazi" comes from an old word for GERMANY (according to the Wikipedia article)

 

===================

 

if you want to imagine the genetic choke-point, think of the 4 women as arriving at Charlemagne's capital city of AACHEN sometime around 800-1000 AD. Aachen (called Aix by French-speakers) is now in Germany but in those days there was no separation between Northern France and Northern Germany---the people there spoke a Germanic language rather than Latin.

 

these 4 women (if you chose to imagine them) would then be the mothers of the Jews who adopted a form of German as their language.

 

some of these German-speaking Jews went to England after the 1066 Norman conquest, but they were expelled by around 1290.

this was, I believe, the first in a series of expulsions from Western Europe which drove them East into places like Poland and Ukraine----where their numbers multiplied.

 

then there was in later years a migration back to Western Europe during periods of liberalization

==================

 

part of this is what I gather from the Wikipedia article

 

also I don't consider this stuff as verified, it could be only partly correct.

[Mokele]

This seems to suggest that only several families travelled to Eastern europe in the second diaspora.

 

Not necessarily; it means that only 4 women had an unbroken chain of daughters. If, in this diaspora, 200 families went, but at some point in the past centuries all but 4 had a generation of all sons, the results would be the same.

 

It's the same reason we know the 'mitochondrial Eve' wasn't the only human female of the time. Other females existed, but at some point, all of their descendants were male, so the mitochondrial genetics were lost.

 

Mokele

[Martin]

here is the Wiki article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews

 

==quote===

Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim ...,are thought to be descended from the medieval Jewish communities of the Rhineland.

 

Many later migrated, largely eastward,...

 

Although in the 11th century they comprised only 3% of the world's Jewish population, Ashkenazi Jews accounted for (at their highest) 92% of the world's Jews in 1931 and today make up approximately 80% of Jews worldwide.[5] Most Jewish communities with extended histories in Europe are Ashkenazim, with the exception of those associated with the Mediterranean region. A significant portion of the Jews who migrated from Europe to other continents in the past two centuries are Eastern Ashkenazim, particularly in the United States.

===endquote===

 

this is very interesting. in the 11th Century------the 1000s, like 1066----they were STILL ONLY 3 PERCENT of total Jewish population (according to this article at least)

 

so their numbers were still quite small

 

remember that only about half of Ashkenazim are descended from those 4 women (according to that study)

 

to me this suggests that the Rhineland was colonized by an extended "CLAN" of descendents of those 4 women. those 4 women may have lived back in the Levant or some Mediterranean region----but it happened that their matrilineal descendents, in a fairly large group already, moved to what is now North Germany.

 

it suggests that maybe this "clan" of descendents of those 4 women could have gone to the Rhineland (say the capital city Aachen) around 800 and started multiplying, and their descendants could have been joined by further migration from Mediterranean lands to the south----until you had a German speaking population in North West Europe that was about half descended from those women----but still small, still only 3 percent of world Jewish population.

 

maybe you can think of some other scenario. for me this is how I think easiest to get the numbers to work out. it is only guesswork anyway.

===============

 

of course one could imagine these 4 women THEMSELVES all moving to, say, Aachen or somewhere in the Rhineland, and then having lots and lots of babies, so that inside of 200 years their descendents were 3 percent of the world Jewish population. but that seems extreme.

===============

 

the next set of important events would be the expulsions which forced them to go East.

 

===quote from Wiki===

Ashkenazi migrations throughout the High and Late Middle Ages

 

Historical records show evidence of Jewish communities north of the Alps and Pyrenees as early as the 8th and 9th Century. (Cochran et. al., p.11) By the early 900s, Jewish populations were well-established in Northern Europe, and later followed the Norman Conquest into England in 1066, also settling in the Rhineland. With the onset of the Crusades, and the expulsions from England (1290), France (1394), and parts of Germany (1400s), Jewish migration pushed eastward into Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. Over this period of several hundred years, some have suggested, Jewish economic activity was focused on trade, business management, and financial services, due to Christian European prohibitions restricting certain activities by Jews, and preventing certain financial activities (such as "usurious" loans) between Christians. (Ben-Sasson, H. (1976) A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.)

 

By the 1400s, the Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Poland were the largest Jewish communities of the Diaspora.[15] ...

===endquote===

[Martin]

Hi Mokele, I just saw your post. Yes there are several ways to make the numbers work out reasonably. It could have been 200 families (the number you chose for illustration)

 

interesting to see how modern DNA testing can help trace history

even tho still very sketchy