and the Americas
The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures
by Tudor Parfitt
Kindle version
Posted on 10/08/2013 11:57:29 AM PDT by ek_hornbeck
The majority of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from prehistoric European women, according to study published today (October 8) in Nature Communications. While the Jewish religion began in the Near East, and the Ashkenazi Jews were believed to have origins in the early indigenous tribes of this region, new evidence from mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on exclusively from mother to child, suggests that female ancestors of most modern Ashkenazi Jews converted to Judaism in the north Mediterranean around 2,000 years ago and later in west and central Europe.
(Excerpt) Read more at the-scientist.com ...
You should meet Tonto Kowalski...
The Arabs arrived first; after some considerable period of time, mercenaries were hired by the Byzantines to drive them out. After that, some Normans arrived and carved out a short-lived kingdom in Sicily and if memory serves a small chunk of the Italian boot. Wanting the best for his kids, King Roger (”fweee Woger!”) hired Arab tutors and the whole thing went all kumbaya after that.
The (purported?) tomb of Hrolf the Ganger has a very-postmortem inscription referencing the various dynasties which had sprung from him, and the Sicily kingdom was one of them.
The story is basically hokum, was popularized by the polemical “The Thirteenth Tribe”.
Regarding gefilite fish, I can’t stand it but I will eat my mothers.
She will even make a little one for my kitteh, who yums it up. Kitty is also fond of her brisket, and her kasha with bowties.
P.S. love your name too!
I do not like gefiilte fish it but I do love my mother’s.
This past year she was ill, so she served the stuff in a bottle. It was horrible. My sister then went into Manhattan and brought some back from a Jewish deli, it was good, but not as good as my mothers.
I think mom’s special ingredient is love. I’m going to have to try the recipe a few numbers back,
Interesting. Thanks!
Findings by American anthropologist C. Loring Brace, University of Michigan, will surely be controversial in race conscious Japan. The eye of the predicted storm will be the Ainu, a "racially different" group of some 18,000 people now living on the northern island of Hokkaido. Pure-blooded Ainu are easy to spot: they have lighter skin, more body hair, and higher-bridged noses than most Japanese. Most Japanese tend to look down on the Ainu.
Brace has studied the skeletons of about 1,100 Japanese, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups and has concluded that the revered samurai of Japan are actually descendants of the Ainu, not of the Yayoi from whom most modern Japanese are descended. In fact, Brace threw more fuel on the fire with:
"Dr. Brace said this interpretation also explains why the facial features of the Japanese ruling class are so often unlike those of typical modern Japanese. The Ainu-related samurai achieved such power and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with royality and nobility, passing on Jomon-Ainu blood in the upper classes, while other Japanese were primarily descended from the Yoyoi." The reactions of Japanese scientists have been muted so. One Japanese anthropologist did say to Brace," I hope you are wrong."
The Ainu and their origin have always been rather mysterious, with some people claiming that the Ainu are really Caucasian or proto-Caucasian - in other words, "white." At present, Brace's study denies this interpretation.
http://www.khazaria.com/khazar-quotes.html
Koestler's claim that all or most Khazars became Jews is false. In fact it is refuted in the primary sources. But some Khazars did convert and according to Khagan Joseph, they intermarried refugees from the Caliphate and Byzantine Empires.
The last research showed the average IQ of Jews is 115. Their American voting record suggests an IQ of 80.
>>I can recall being intrigued by how many of the world’s most brilliant physicists were Hungarian Jews from Budapest.
>>It just about has to be genetics.
And why can’t the ability to acquire knowledge be as much a matter of culture and upbringing as using ones’ hands while speaking, saying “knock wood” for good luck, making a stranger feel welcome, etc.? The Florentine Renaissance, that little romp in a meadow that gave us 3-D rendering for blueprints, machine tool industry, modern astronomy and eventually the Industrial Revolution, happened in Northern Italy because of the creation of surplus value by the merchant class and the translation of lost Greek texts saved by Arab scholars, not by some indwelling knack for numbers. The Florentine Renaissance spawned the Elizabethan Renaissance, the French Enlightenment, the Prussian Education Reforms and, yes, the Philadelphian Renaissance centered around the printing press of Benjamin Franklin and others resulting in our American Revolution. If you are an oppressed minority and wish to survive, you begin to live by your wits and get smart as a culture. Conservatives will soon learn this.
Nobody disputes any of this. What is in dispute was A. whether conversion to Judaism spread beyond the royals and nobles of Khazaria to the general population and B. regardless of A, what fraction of modern day Jews are actually descended from Khazars.
There isn't much evidence of a Central Asian "genetic signature" among Jews. The male-inherited Y-chromosomes point of Middle Eastern origins (similar to Druze, Lebanese Arabs), the female-inherited mtDNA points to European origins (related to Italians). If most modern Jews were Khazars, you'd expect their haplotypes to cluster with Georgians, Armenians, etc, which they generally don't.
You're right that it can't all be genetics. The Arabs are a Semitic people related to Jews (at least to Sephardic Jews and to the paternal line of Ashkenazim), and there's a world of difference between Arab and Jewish achievement today. Even among Arabs, there's a world of difference in how much Christian Arabs (the Lebanese diaspora) achieve economically and their Muslim "countrymen", especially in immigrant communities. That difference - with the Christians successful merchants and the Muslims mostly poor in Lebanon, is almost certainly cultural.
However, isn't it reasonable to argue that the same pressures (ostracism, oppression) that selected for placing a cultural premium on achievement and education also created a biological pressure for higher intelligence and achievement through natural selection? Not that oppression and minority status always does this - there are plenty of "minority" groups in America and in Europe who aren't exactly known for being high-end achievers.
> Koestler’s claim that all or most Khazars became Jews is false.
That’s correct, and that’s what I’m saying — the idea that European Jewry has *no* Middle Eastern roots is Koestler’s real underlying bias.
Conversion to Judaism has been rare, but obviously has happened.
That “khazaria” site is an ethnocentric agitprop site — “Over a thousand years ago, the far east of Europe was ruled by Jewish kings who presided over numerous tribes, including their own tribe: the Turkic Khazars.”
As the saying goes, they earn like Presbyterians, but vote like Puerto Ricans.
Some guy named Richard McCulloch stated of the Jews that:
“All trace their pre-Diaspora (the dispersion of Jews outside of Israel) origins to the ancient Hebrews, who originally belonged to the Orientalid or Arabid subrace of the Mediterranid race. It is likely that by the beginning of the Diaspora they were already hybridized with Armenid elements. Racially, the Diaspora is largely a history of further hybridization with the populations of the different regions in which the various Jewish groups resided. The modern Ashkenazic branch associated with eastern Europe, by far the most numerous, is a primarily Armenid blend including lesser elements of Orientalid, Turanid, Ladogan, Alpine, Dinaric and Nordish origin. (Genetic studies of the Ashkenazic Jews have found that their ancestry is 60-70% Middle Eastern [i.e., Armenid and Orientalid] and 30-40% European, with the European elements derived primarily from the maternal lines.) The Sephardic branch is primarily an Orientalid-Armenid blend hybridized with West Mediterraneans. The Oriental branch remains basically true to the pre-Diaspora type.”
I think that the ancestors of the Jews were basically a Semitic-Caucasic (from the Caucasus) blend, with the Caucasic coming from the Hurrians, then Ashkenazi’s ancestors may have picked up more Caucasic along the trip to Europe.
Modern Jews are partly descended from the Hebrews, they were just mixed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
