BAMAD-139

Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update (10 January 2016, 29 Tevet, 5776)

Contents:
1.  [Jews] Genes Reveal by Jon Entine
2. Amnon Goldberg:  Devolution Not Evolution. Ape-Men a Hoax!
3. Recent Expansion of European Peoples
4. Ancient DNA sheds light on Irish origins - BBC By Paul  Rincon from "eastern periphery of Europe"
5. Did Modern Jews Originate in Italy? By Michael Balter
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1. [Jews] Genes Reveal by Jon Entine

Charity Henry
http://forward.com/culture/155742/jews-are-a-race-genes-reveal/
   I saw this article about a geneticist who says there there is a genetic element linking Jews together and that they are not just a religion. I thought I would send it along. It's interesting because most scientists say that the Jews don't share a genetic link and that it is just a religion. I think that they don't want to see racism creep into the equation again so they try to play down genetics as much as possible.
 
  Hope you are well,
 
  Charity

 Jews Are a 'Race,' Genes Reveal by Jon Entine
 http://forward.com/author/jon-entine/#ixzz3wqWJwWVn
http://forward.com/culture/155742/jews-are-a-race-genes-reveal/#ixzz3wqSV4fjl

Extracts:

Although Jews make up less than 3% of the population, they have won more than 25% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to American scientists since 1950. Jews also account for 20% of this country's chief executives and make up 22% of Ivy League students. Psychologists and educational researchers have pegged their average IQ at 107.5 to 115, with their verbal IQ at more than 120, a stunning standard deviation above the average of 100 found in those of European ancestry. Like it or not, the IQ debate will become an increasingly important issue going forward, as medical geneticists focus on unlocking the mysteries of the brain.
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2. Amnon Goldberg:  Devolution Not Evolution. Ape-Men a Hoax!
my letter in today's London Jewish News on "apemen":

http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk//launch.aspx?eid=5e9c133d-0bf2-4151-838a-8d82e03e4ac8

Dear Sir     

Years ago anthropologists at Tel Aviv university showed that 'Lucy' (JN, Torah for Today, 31 December) was a regular gorilla and that she should be consigned to join all the once-sensationalised, now discarded "missing-links" such as Cro-Magnon Man, Peking Man, Neanderthal Man, Java Man, Orce Man, Fontechevade Man, Wadjak Man, Grimaldi Man, Olduvai Man, Foxhall Man, Nutcracker Man, Swanscombe Man, Leaky's 1470 Man, Heidelberg Man, Galley Hill Man, Piltdown Man etc.etc., who have turned out to be either 100% ape, 100% homo sapiens or 100% hoax! 

No human bone, artifact or record can be positively dated as being older than 10,000 years. There is no evidence that our ancestors were apes or ape-like creatures, and no fossils have ever been found to link human beings with anything other than human beings.  

After years of careful study, top researchers like Lord Solly Zuckerman and Professor Duane Gish concluded that the entire concept of man's evolution from an ape-like creature is a phantasm.                                           

According to Jewish tradition (Sanhedrin 109) the punishment of one-third of the builders of the Tower of Babel was their miraculous transformation into apes: devolution not evolution!                                   
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3. Recent Expansion of European Peoples
From: Mark Williams
"Bronze Age Forefathers' Genetics Live Out In 2 Out Of Every 3 European Men
http://www.medicaldaily.com/bronze-age-forefathers-genetics-live-out-2-out-every-3-european-men-333996

More DNA stuff

Bronze Age Forefathers' Genetics Live Out In 2 Out Of Every 3 European Men
By Susan Scutti
http://www.medicaldaily.com/bronze-age-forefathers-genetics-live-out-2-out-every-3-european-men-333996

Exracts:

Historians categorize ancient societies into three distinct ages based on their tool-making abilities: the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age.
.... the Bronze Age includes invention of the wheel, increased knowledge of navigation, creation of the ox-drawn plow, changes in burial practices, spread of horseback riding, and expansion of weaponry. Continued use and exploration of metals during this time quite naturally led to the Iron Age and further articulation of the new skills developed during the years of bronze.

The configured tree had three very young branches, which accounted for the Y chromosomes of about two-thirds (64 percent) of the men studied. Importantly, the shape of the branches indicated recent explosions of population, falling within the Bronze Age. Populations from the Balkans to the British Isles, say the researchers, underwent an explosion between 2,000 and 4,000 years ago.

Source: Batini C, Hallast P, Zadik D, et al. Large-scale recent expansion of European patrilineages shown by population resequencing. Nature Communications. 2015.

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4. Ancient DNA sheds light on Irish origins - BBC By Paul  Rincon from "eastern periphery of Europe"

From: Mark Williams
Shalom Yair

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35179269

New science stuff.

Ancient DNA sheds light on Irish origins - BBC
By Paul Rincon
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35179269
Extracts:
Scientists have sequenced the first ancient human genomes from Ireland, shedding light on the genesis of Celtic populations.

The genome is the instruction booklet for building a human, comprising three billion paired DNA "letters".

The work shows that early Irish farmers were similar to southern Europeans.

Genetic patterns then changed dramatically in the Bronze Age - as newcomers from the eastern periphery of Europe settled in the Atlantic region.

Team members sequenced the genomes of a 5,200-year-old female farmer from the Neolithic period and three 4,000-year-old males from the Bronze Age.

Opinion has been divided on whether the great transitions in the British Isles, from a hunting lifestyle to one based on agriculture and later from stone to metal use, were due to local adoption of new ways by indigenous people or attributable to large-scale population movements.

The ancient Irish genomes show unequivocal evidence for mass migration in both cases.

DNA analysis of the Neolithic woman from Ballynahatty, near Belfast, reveals that she was most similar to modern people from Spain and Sardinia. But her ancestors ultimately came to Europe from the Middle East, where agriculture was invented.

The males from Rathlin Island, who lived not long after metallurgy was introduced, showed a different pattern to the Neolithic woman. A third of their ancestry came from ancient sources in the Pontic Steppe - a region now spread across Russia and Ukraine.
In contrast to the Neolithic woman, the Rathlin group showed a close genetic affinity with the modern Irish, Scottish and Welsh.

"Our finding is that there is some haplotypic [a set of linked DNA variants] continuity between our 4,000 year old genomes and the present Celtic populations, which is not shown strongly by the English," Prof Bradley told BBC News.

"It is clear that the Anglo-Saxons (and other influences) have diluted this affinity."

 Today, Ireland has the world's highest frequencies of genetic variants that code for lactase persistence - the ability to drink milk into adulthood - and certain genetic diseases, including one of excessive iron retention called haemochromatosis.

One of the Rathlin men carried the common Irish haemochromatosis mutation, showing that it was established by the Bronze Age. Intriguingly, the Ballynahatty woman carried a different variant which is also associated with an increased risk of the disorder.

Both mutations may have originally spread because they gave carriers some advantage, such as tolerance of an iron-poor diet.

The same Bronze Age male carried a mutation that would have allowed him to drink raw milk in adulthood, while the Ballynahatty woman lacked this variant. This is consistent with data from elsewhere in Europe showing a relatively late spread of milk tolerance genes.

Prof Bradley explained that the Rathlin individuals were not identical to modern populations, adding that further work was required to understand how regional diversity came about in Celtic groups.

"I think that the data do show that the Bronze Age was a major event in establishment of the insular Celtic genomes but we cannot rule out subsequent (presumably less important) population events contributing until we sample later genomes also."
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5. Did Modern Jews Originate in Italy?
By
Michael Balter
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2013/10/did-modern-jews-originate-italy
Extracts:

Most mainstream historians regard Ashkenazim as the descendants of Jews who moved into central Europe from the Middle East sometime before the 12th century C.E. Ashekenazim, like most members of this religious, cultural, and ethnic group, traditionally trace their ancestry to the ancient Israelites. The Israelites, in turn, arose between 3000 and 4000 years ago in the Middle East, according to both Biblical sources and archaeological evidence. They dispersed after the Romans destroyed their Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E.

Recent genetic work has supported this traditional view. Two studies, one led by geneticist Harry Ostrer of the New York University School of Medicine, and the other by geneticist Doron Behar of the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, Israel, traced the three main Diaspora groups: Ashkenazim, Sephardim from Spain and Portugal, and Oriental Jews from the Middle East to people who all lived in the Middle East about 2000 years ago.
The Ostrer study used DNA from the nucleus of the cell in its analyses, and the Behar study used both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA); the latter comes from tiny bodies in the living cell that provide it with energy. Many other researchers considered these results to be definitive at the time.

..a different team of scientists, led by geneticist Martin Richards at the University of Huddersfield in the United Kingdom, embarked on a new search for the origins of these four founder groups. The team focused on mtDNA, which is often employed in genetic studies because it is easier to sequence and allows analysis of huge population samples. However, mtDNA is inherited through the mother and not the father, so it reveals the history of maternal lineages only.

...more than 80% of Ashkenazi mtDNAs had their origins thousands of years ago in Western Europe.... The closest matches were with mtDNAs from people who today live in and around Italy.


Richards acknowledges that the work is likely to be controversial. 'I'd anticipate some resistance to our conclusions in certain quarters' he says. One way to reconcile his team's findings with those of other researchers, he says, is to assume that the founders of the male Ashkenazi lineages were indeed originally from the Middle East, but that the maternal line arose in Europe much earlier. The European women then converted to Judaism after male Jews moved into the continent, establishing the Ashkenazi lineages that we see today. That suggestion fits with the contention of some historians that many women converted to Judaism across Mediterranean Europe during the so-called Hellenistic period between about 300 B.C.E. and 30 B.C.E.


Behar remains unconvinced. He says it's 'clear that Ashkenazi maternal ancestry includes both [Middle Eastern] and European origins,' but he does not agree that the deepest roots of the Ashkenazi Jews can be found in prehistoric Europe. He says that he and his colleagues will be submitting their critique of the Richards study soon to a peer-reviewed scientific journal.