[Marduk]

"Think the Khazar BS is over?"

Firstly this study only deals with the Y-chromosome. This only affects the direct male line of ancestors. So racial mixing between Jews and Gentiles is not disproven by this in the least. It is possible for instance, that Jewish men moved to "Khazaria" and took "Khazar" women as wives and then rased their children as Jews.

For example, I bet that if someone did a Y-chromosme study of the mestizo population in Mexico the result would show that the mestizo Y-chromosome is very similar to the Y-chromosome of Spaniards. But this doesn't prove that Mexican mestizos are of the same race as the Spaniards and it most certainly couldn't be used to "prove" that the mestizos are actually racially "pure".

Secondly it doesn't give the statistics of relative purity with the Y-chromosome. Surely the purity is not 100%. So we can only conclude that the Jewish groups studied are genetically related in their male lineage. But we cannot conclude that they have a 100% pure male lineage. We cannot conclude that there was no mixing in the male lineage. And most certainly this isn't proof that Jews have not mixed with non-Jews.

The fact that mixing and conversions happened is self-evident just from looking at the lighter Ashkenazi Jews and then looking at some of the black African Jews.

[Sabramerican]

This only affects the direct male line of ancestors

LOL. Guess you thought that out very clearly except for the fact that Judaism is only from the mother.

[Lent]

We cannot conclude that there was no mixing in the male lineage. And most certainly this isn't proof that Jews have not mixed with non-Jews.

There is not a claim that there is no mixture. However, the claimed mixtures for Ashkenazi Jews for example is much smaller then typically has been suggested. Note the following from the National Acad. of Sciences:

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Published online before print May 9, 2000, 10.1073/pnas.100115997;
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 97, Issue 12, 6769-6774, June 6, 2000

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Medical Sciences
Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes

M. F. Hammer^*,,, A. J. Redd^*,, E. T. Wood^*,, M. R. Bonner^*, H. Jarjanazi^*, T. Karafet^*, S. Santachiara-Benerecetti^¶, A. Oppenheim, M. A. Jobling^**, T. Jenkins, H. Ostrer, and B. Bonné-Tamir^§

^* Laboratory of Molecular Systematics and Evolution, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; ^¶ Department of Genetics, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Pavia 27100, Italy;  Hadassah Medical School, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91120, Israel; ^** Department of Genetics, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, England;  SAMIR, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2000, South Africa;  Department of Pediatrics, New York University Medical Center, New York, NY 10016; and ^§ Department of Human Genetics, Sackler School of Medicine, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel

Communicated by Arno G. Motulsky, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, March 15, 2000 (received for review November 17, 1999)

	Abstract

	Top Abstract Introduction Subjects and Methods Results Discussion References

Haplotypes constructed from Y-chromosome markers were used to trace the paternal origins of the Jewish Diaspora. A set of 18 biallelic polymorphisms was genotyped in 1,371 males from 29 populations, including 7 Jewish (Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Ethiopian) and 16 non-Jewish groups from similar geographic locations. The Jewish populations were characterized by a diverse set of 13 haplotypes that were also present in non-Jewish populations from Africa, Asia, and Europe. A series of analyses was performed to address whether modern Jewish Y-chromosome diversity derives mainly from a common Middle Eastern source population or from admixture with neighboring non-Jewish populations during and after the Diaspora. Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. Admixture estimates suggested low levels of European Y-chromosome gene flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.

	Introduction

	Top Abstract Introduction Subjects and Methods Results Discussion References

Jewish religion and culture can be traced back to Semitic tribes that lived in the Middle East approximately 4,000 years ago. The Babylonian exile in 586 B.C. marked the beginning of major dispersals of Jewish populations from the Middle East and the development of various Jewish communities outside of present-day Israel (1). Today, Jews belong to several communities that can be classified according to the location where each community developed. Among others, these include the Middle Eastern communities of former Babylonia and Palestine, the Jewish communities of North Africa and the Mediterranean Basin, and Ashkenazi communities of central and eastern Europe. The history of the Jewish Diasporathe numerous migrations of Jewish populations and their subsequent residence in various countries in Europe, North Africa, and West Asiahas resulted in a complex set of genetic relationships among Jewish populations and their non-Jewish neighbors. Several studies have attempted to describe these genetic relationships and to unravel the numerous evolutionary factors that have come into play during the Diaspora (2-11). Some of the key arguments in the literature concern the relative contributions of common ancestry, genetic drift, natural selection, and admixture leading to the observed similarities and differences among Jewish and non-Jewish communities.

Given the complex history of migration, can Jews be traced to a single Middle Eastern ancestry, or are present-day Jewish communities more closely related to non-Jewish populations from the same geographic area? Some genetic studies suggest that Jewish populations show substantial non-Jewish admixture and the occurrence of mass conversion of non-Jews to Judaism (2, 3, 10, 12). In contrast, other research points to considerably greater genetic similarity among Jewish communities with only slight gene flow from their respective host populations (5, 7, 9, 11, 13). Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the degree of genetic similarity among Jewish communities and between Jewish and non-Jewish populations depends on the particular locus that is being investigated (4, 8, 11). This observation raises the possibility that variation associated with a given locus has been influenced by natural selection.

All of the aforementioned investigations used "classical" genetic markers such as blood groups, enzymes, and serum proteins, as well as immunoglobulins and the HLA system. More recently, restriction fragment length polymorphism studies were initiated by using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), the nonrecombining portion of the Y chromosome (NRY), and other nuclear loci (14-20). An advantage of nucleotide-level studies is that they circumvent some of the complications associated with selection; however, these studies have not fully resolved many of the key issues in the earlier literature.

Analyses of mtDNA and the NRY are especially relevant to studies of Jewish origins because, according to ancient Jewish law, Jewish religious affiliation is assigned maternally (1). In particular, studies of paternally inherited variation provide the opportunity to assess the genetic contribution of non-Jewish males to present-day Jewish genetic diversity. This research represents one of the first comparisons of biallelic variation on the NRY in Jewish and non-Jewish populations from similar geographic areas. We surveyed 18 biallelic polymorphisms in 7 Jewish and 22 non-Jewish populations from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to assess the relative contributions of common ancestry, gene flow, and genetic drift in shaping patterns of NRY variation in populations of the Jewish Diaspora.

Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes