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[Update: please read my 2012 independent analysis of Western Jews, Palestinians and other populations of West Asia, which adds some interesting nuances but in essence confirms what is said here].
This does not seem just another paper on Jewish genetics but more like The Paper. While it is pay per view and hence I haven't been able to read it in full , the material I could see at Dienekes' blog (same as in the supplementary material) is most revealing. I think this research will mark a before and after in Jewish genetics and also gives some interesting hints on other populations, specially in West Asia and North Africa.
Doron M. Behar, Bayazit Yunusbayev, Mait Metspalu et al. The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people. Nature, 2010. Pay per view but supplementary material freely accessible.
One of the good things is that finally comparison with Turks and other populations from that area where early Jewish Diaspora in the Hellenistic-Roman era is known to have lived, rather than in Palestine, in a time when Judaism (several sects including eventually Christianism) was still actively proselytizing.
Unlike what I used to think, Western Jews (Sephardi and Ashkenazi) do not cluster too well with the Turkish sample but they cluster almost perfectly with Cypriots and Lebanese. They seem to have no particular relation with Palestinians (nor Druze nor Negev Bedouins) but these also appear clearly different from other Arabs and in general any other sampled population.
This K-means analysis is for me the answer to all these endless discussions on the origin of Jews and Palestinians. Western Jews seem essentially to have coalesced in the Cypriot-Phoenician area probably by, essentially, conversion. Palestinians seem to be a uniquely distinct population, albeit somewhat admixed with their neighbors, which may well originate with the local Neolithic and certainly must have been there in early historical times.
In other words: Palestinians are most likely to be the true descendants from the Jews of the Biblical period, rather than modern Western Jews who seem more as originating from a Phoenician-Cypriot population which converted to Rabbinic Judaism for whichever reasons.
Other Jewish populations also seem to originate in conversion episodes but from different genetic pools. Hence Yemeni Jews appear as genetically Arab, Ethiopian Jews as Ethiopian, Indian Jews as Indian and Iraqi-Iranian Jews as Iranians. There may be some fine threading to enrich this overall picture but the essentials seem very clear in any case.
Anyhow, Moroccan Jews appear as just another branch of Western Jews (no particular relation with Moroccans is apparent) and I have not been able so far to identify the closest population to the small sample of Uzbek Jews. Also Turco-European Jews seem at least somewhat admixed with Europeans, something that was already well known.
As for other populations, I find interesting that an specific autosomal component of NW Africans has been detected (for the first time as far as I can tell). Many specific clusters have obviously not been detected because of the relative shallowness of the K-means analysis.
The supplementary materials have other interesting graphs, PC analysis of autosomal, Y-DNA and mtDNA genetics and a global K-means analysis of relevance when observing some peripheral Jewish populations specially but also providing some general hints on other populations (a very wide sample, specially in Eurasia).
I must cheer and congratulate the authors of this research for finally addressing the debate on Jewish (and Palestinian) origins with a worthy extended sample of many many populations, including key ones such as Turks, Cypriots and Lebanese (among others). The wording of the abstract doesn't say things as clearly as I do but their data speaks volumes.
Update: A reader, Joe, tells me that H.G. Wells already suggested this Phoenician true origin of Jews. In his book A Short History of the World, chapter XXII, he wrote, speaking of Semitic peoples, once all powerful but then defeated by the Indoeuropeans (Persians, Greeks, Romans):
Is it any miracle that in their days of overthrow and subjugation many Babylonians and Syrians and so forth, and later on many Phoenicians, speaking practically the same language and having endless customs, habits, tastes and traditions in common, should be attracted by this inspiring cult [Judaism] and should seek to share in its fellowship and its promise? After the fall of Tyre, Sidon, Carthage and the Spanish Phoenician cities, the Phoenicians suddenly vanish from history; and as suddenly, we find not simply in Jerusalem but in Spain, Africa, Egypt, the East, wherever the Phoenicians had set their feet, communities of Jews.
Is it any miracle that in their days of overthrow and subjugation many Babylonians and Syrians and so forth, and later on many Phoenicians, speaking practically the same language and having endless customs, habits, tastes and traditions in common, should be attracted by this inspiring cult [Judaism] and should seek to share in its fellowship and its promise? After the fall of Tyre, Sidon, Carthage and the Spanish Phoenician cities, the Phoenicians suddenly vanish from history; and as suddenly, we find not simply in Jerusalem but in Spain, Africa, Egypt, the East, wherever the Phoenicians had set their feet, communities of Jews.
See also the discussion on Atzmon 2008.
Update Nov 21: a free copy of the paper is available here (PDF).
Update Nov 21: a free copy of the paper is available here (PDF).
57 comments:
Thanks very much Maju for interpreting these scientific results and translating them into language non-genetic experts like me can understand.
all the best
You're welcome. Of course, it's MY interpretation and others may want to think otherwise but the Cypriot connection is coincident with Atzmon's data (posted about it on Monday) although more obvious.
The distinct Palestinian cluster is also very revealing, specially because it evidences that Palestinians can't have arrived from anywhere else as has been argued once and again by the Zionist wishful thinking.
Cheers.
Just out of interest,
a fellow member of a messege board has pointed out that H.G. Wells put forward a similar idea in his Short History of the World,
here -
Priests and Prohpets in Judea , p 77
Google Books
all the best
ps
Here is Nature magazine on the matter -
Genes link Jewish communities, take 2 - June 09, 2010
The Great Beyond blog
Nature
09 June 2010
Thanks for the links, Joe. The first one is very very revealing for me, as I had not read Wells' book and the link to Lebanese and Cypriots first of all surprised me a bit. On one side, it was coincident with my earlier hypothesis of a largely non-Palestinian origin of modern Jews but, on the other side, I was surprised by this one not being actually to be found in Anatolia but in the Cyprus-Syria area.
I am a bit frustrated that nobody of name is seemingly willing to put the finger on the quite evident conclusions that must be derived from this data and instead use the vagueness of "Levant", when it's clear that Southern Levant and Northern Levant are very much different.
Of course it's some sort of taboo, considering the hegemony of the Zionist discourse, which has sought legitimacy on purported ancestral links of Jews to Palestine, for which this is a huge blow. So I guess that gradually the acceptance of that this is what the evidence says, and not the Zionist wishful thinking discourse, will penetrate only gradually but ultimately this truth cannot be avoided and I am quite persuaded that the more they look at it, the more obvious it will be.
I have always been an admirer of Phoenicians, maybe in part because I tend to like the underdog rather than the winner but also because they had great achievements: from Hanno's journey and the likely first circunnavigation of Africa to the military genius and dare of Hannibal. I once argued that if Phoencians would have defeated Rome, America would have been discovered much earlier and history would have been very different (Germanics would have conquered Gaul, Christianity and Islam would surely never have arisen at all).
A fascinating discovery, really.
Btw, who will tell Helen Thomas (who has Lebanese ancestry)? :D
"Anyhow, Moroccan Jews appear as just another branch of Western Jews (no particular relation with Moroccans is apparent)"
interesting !
one of the first jewish communities in Morocco, was established in Ifrane in the deep south (anti-Atlas)...
from what I remember, the story on how did they get there, is that they come by sea (phoenician connection ?)....
on the other hand, it is apparent now that the previously judaised berbers, have reversed course and converted to Islam......
Terry, obviously not. She's someone well into her 80s who probably does not have any good grasp, if any at all, of modern population genetics, no matter how brilliant and lucid she is. And there was no evidence of such connection (for lack of specific research) a couple of weeks ago.
What she said, anyhow makes total sense, from a viewpoint of the 1960s or 1970s. Nowadays there are just too many born Israeli Jews to keep such a stand probably (though Algerian French had been for longer and still they had to leave).
I just meant it as a joke... but whatever.
Alex: I would say that the matter of Moroccan Jews surely deserves an specific research, which could well be integrated in a research of overall North African genetics from an autosomal viewpoint, of interest on its own, specially since some clearly North African specificity has been detected.
Anyhow what is clear is that at least a good share of Moroccan Jewish ancestry must have originated in Iberia, as Morocco was the main destiny of Muslim Iberian exiles and also of at least many of Iberian Jews in the 1492-93 expulsion episode.
Moroccan Jews (Shen et al. 2004)
1/20 = 5.0% E1b1b-M215(xE1b1b1a-M78, E1b1b1c-M123)
3/20 = 15.0% E1b1b1a-M78(xE1b1b1a1a-M224)
6/20 = 30.0% G2a-P15
2/20 = 10.0% J2-M172(xJ2a4a-M322, J2a4b-M67, J2a4d-M319, J2a4h1a1b-M289, J2a4h1a1c-M318, J2b-M314)
2/20 = 10.0% J2a4d-M319
2/20 = 10.0% J1-M267
2/20 = 10.0% T-M272(xT1-M320)
2/20 = 10.0% R1b1b2-M269
I wonder where the patrilineal ancestors of all those G2a-P15 carriers might have come from.
Does the present study by Behar et al. include any new data regarding the Y-DNA of Moroccan Jews?
Maju,
I think a link with Phoenicians is nothing new.
We have very little rests of Phoenician texts as Romans and others saw to it to destroy as much as they could. Still, we can fairly say Phoenician and Hebrew were incredibly close languages, perhaps like Galician and Spanish or closer.
Still we know there was an Israeli entity that was on a war with Phoenicians. We also know that by the X century BC Israelis were avoiding pigs, unlike the Coast people (mostly Phoenicians and on the South from Ashkelon to South of what is Gaza now the Philistines, who may have taken over a Semite language very soon), promoting monotheism, etc.
Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein says the Israelites came up from a very mixed population, although mainly Canaanites.
Please, take a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaanite_languages
I would recommend the book Bible Unearthed. Take a look at the Wikipedia article.
Specially, read about "Hezekiah and monolatry" and Israeli migration towards Juda. And remember: all these were extremely similar tribes.
"I wonder where the patrilineal ancestors of all those G2a-P15 carriers might have come from".
Not sure but G2 in general is a most complicated haplogroup to understand. In a recent email discussion re. Iberian G2 I recall having found that it is relatively high in Cyprus, which may be an explanation, because Cyprus is not only linked to historical Phoenicians and now also to Jews but it was surely important in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age East-West Mediterranean connections.
The most common Euro-Med clade of G, G2a3a has some significant frequencies in the Eastern Mediterranean, from Greece to Palestine, but it's not possible to me to identify a single source.
I would think in any case that, whatever the exact origin, it was surely amplified by founder effect in this particular community.
"Still we know there was an Israeli entity that was on a war with Phoenicians".
But that was long before the Jewish expansion process (in the context of which Christian origins are to be understood too). I bet that ancient Jews would not have minded to see their former rivals converting to their religion (and not the opposite, as was it seems common in some Biblical periods, when Phoenicians were still highly successful and Jews were a mere backwater theocracy).
Also some ancient Jews seem to have participated in some of the Phoenician commercial enterprises, as would seem obvious from the Biblical reference to the Tarshish ships.
"We also know that by the X century BC Israelis were avoiding pigs, unlike the Coast people"...
Yes but, unlike circumcision, I don't think this is any major barrier. Unlike the Iberian ham, which stands as an absolute cultural and culinary barricade against anti-pork sects, nobody has ever heard of the Phoenician ham, right?
"Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein says the Israelites came up from a very mixed population, although mainly Canaanites".
I can't but agree with that. However that says nothing about the origin of Medieval and Modern Jews.
"Take a look at the Wikipedia article.
"Specially, read about "Hezekiah and monolatry" and Israeli migration towards Juda".
Must have been edited since you read it because now it's a very short article on mere linguistic classification.
However, Kepler, there's some intriguing stuff in the grammar section:
The Canaanite languages, together with the Aramaic languages and Ugaritic, form the Northwest Semitic subgroup. Some distinctive features of Canaanite in relation to Aramaic are:
* The prefix 'h-' used as the definite article (whereas Aramaic has a postfixed -a). This seems to be an innovation of Canaanite.
* The first person pronoun being 'ʼnk' (אנכ - anok(i)) (versus Aramaic - ʼnʼ/ʼny) - which is similar to Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian and Berber.
Oddly enough Basque shares some of these features (more with Aramaic than Canaanite though).
Basque 1st person pronoun is ni/nik (also neu/neuk), with nik being used only when it is the subject of transitive sentences (nork-nor, nork-nori-nor) and ni in all other cases (intransitive subject, direct object). This -0/-k suffix distinction is a grammatical feature of the Basque declination system, shared with all other nouns and pronouns.
Also the determinate article in Basque is the suffix -a (or -ak), just as in Aramaic.
No idea what it means but it would seem yet another obscure hint re. a once widespread Vasconic substrate. It may also imply that Basque language has Neolithic origins after all. :?
Actually, the article DOESN’T imply that the Jews are Phoenicians. If
anything, there is less overlap between Jews and Cypriots than between Jews and Druze.
If you read the article properly, it shows that Palestinians, Bedouins, Saudis, and Jordanians form a very tight cluster, which also includes Yemenis.
Since we know that modern Arab populations originated in southern Saudi (and migrated north during 1st millennium AD), the only possible conclusion from the article is that Palestinians arrived around that time.
The article actually implies that Jews, Druze, Samaritans, and Cypriots co-originated and probably were an indigenous population that was displaced by Palestinians/Arabs.
Whether or not the Jews, Druze, Samaritans, and Cypriots were Phoenician, Canaanite, or admixture is not possible to say from the article (since they didn’t examine Phoenician and Canaanite DNA).
Neither can you conclude from the article that the Palestinians were the original population.
Be that as it may, the article supports the notion that both populations
(Jews/Druze/Samaritans/Cypriots and Palestinians/Bedouins/Saudis/Jordanians)
have a shared origin (probably around 5000 years ago, in southern Saudi).
"Actually, the article DOESN’T imply that the Jews are Phoenicians. If
anything, there is less overlap between Jews and Cypriots than between Jews and Druze".
What Jews? And what graph are you looking at? PC analysis can only provide so much information (maybe equivalent to a K=4) and I'm drawing my conclusions from the West Eurasian K-means analysis, which is the only graph I bothered posting here, because it is the key graph, where the evidence is revealed.
However, I can concede that the Cypriot-Lebanese-West Jewish clustering can need of greater resolution and research to be totally conclusive. But it's highly suggestive in any case.
Also the key evidence is in the distinctiveness of the Palestinian-specific cluster (not found in Jews but at very low levels, just as among so many other peoples) anyhow, which clearly demonstrates that Palestinians are not fundamentally immigrants (no source populations are apparent in spite of the extensive sampling) and that modern Jews are not of Palestinian origin.
"Be that as it may, the article supports the notion that both populations
(Jews/Druze/Samaritans/Cypriots and Palestinians/Bedouins/Saudis/Jordanians)
have a shared origin (probably around 5000 years ago, in southern Saudi)".
Even if can tentatively agree with these two clusters being real (roughly the same as the J1/J2 Y-DNA divide), these are very loose clusters.
And also all the archaeological and genetic evidence (in particular Abu Amero 2008) clearly determines that peninsular Arabians are (mostly) descendant from Crescent Fertile populations and not the other way around.
This is only logical because, before the domestication of the camel (very recent) deserts could not be journeyed and the great demographic expansion caused by Neolithic and related developments (civilization, irrigation...) happened in the Fertile Crescent and not in the Arabian deserts and semideserts. That now and then some groups of semidesert pastoralists have managed to subjugate the sedentary peoples, does not mean that they replaced them, because this is simply impossible considering the numbers that must have been involved and also because such conquerors invariably expected to get an aristocratic lifestyle at the expense of the conquered ones, not to become farmers (workers) themselves.
So I'm rather inclined to think that there were (at least) two distinct populations in the Neolithic: Highlanders and Palestinians. Actually the Highlander group has two subgroups (Taurus and Zagros areas) but is not really relevant for our discussion. The Southern Palestinian group was surely dominated by Y-DNA J1 and shows clear connection (expansion but also backflow from North Africa) with North Africa and Arabia Peninsula.
The Northern Highlander group instead was dominated by J2 and is the most important in relation with Eurasia, with expansions into Europe and South Asia.
Of course there are other Y-DNA haplogroups implied (G2, E1b1b1), as well as mtDNA, that I'm ignoring here for space reasons and simplicity only. And of course the Northern and Southern groups have interacted (an important moment being the PPNB "invasion" and then also the Semitic expansion) but the basic pattern is still very apparent and supportive of these two broad clusters having Fertile Crescent origins and not being the product of any semidesert-originated invasions.
And Western Jews show much more affinity with the Northern group than with the Southern one. I used to think this meant a partly Anatolian origin in the Hellenistic-Roman period but this data, together with the (less obvious but still supportive) in Atzmon 2008, is strongly suggestive of an origin in Cyprus area very specifically.
Western Jews must have some identifiable origin and, after the widespread sampling of this paper, the only remaining possibility is the Lebanon-Cyprus region, possibly with extension to coastal Syria and Cilicia, not sampled here). It's clearly not in Palestine in any case.
As for the other Jewish populations, they are clearly different ones (see Fst distances at Atzmon 2008, discussed here) and have very clear local origins per the data of this paper. The only case I'm not really sure about are Uzbek Jews but they are a small sample in any case.
I was referring to
this
I think the book is worth reading. Perhaps you can find/order the Spanish version in a public library. The title sounds like a continuation to Da Vinci's Code, but it is not.
About those possible similarities: I think you have to be careful with that, we can find that level of similarities everywhere...you won't want to imply that unless you want to tell us that Adam and Eve spoke Basque :-p
We don't know about the Phoenician ham because we don't know about the Phoenician dances or sport sandals or about much of anything but that they were good traders and they were supposed to eat children for breakfast. The others really wanted to delete them from the map. One of the distinctive factors archaeologists find with the emergence of "Jews" is that there are almost no pig rests in the whole central area from the -XIII century onwards. Very interesting: if you check out the prohibitions for food, a lot of it had to do with things you could not find in the central area of Palestine or things that would easily rot (like lobster being taken from the Mediterranean or the Red Sea).
Now, this is what I imagine: the Israelis were a mix lot already, mainly Canaanite who themselves had Northern and Southern groups. There may have been also a more Northern component (Bible stories
could be a hint).
At the time when Christianity appeared, there were lots of Jewish communities all the way to Turkey. They would eventually start to go little by little to Italy and there further mix.
Perhaps more information is needed about Jewish history in Italy to fish for some hints about where to look for the jump from there to Germany.
As I said, I understand Mr Finkelstein is now involved in a multidisciplinary project on the origins of ancient Palestinian populations and
DNA will play a role.
I just hope the whole project will be kosher, some may not like the results.
"you won't want to imply that unless you want to tell us that Adam and Eve spoke Basque :-p"
LOL. Of course they did, how could it be otherwise. It's the language of God! ;D
According to ancient myths, dated maybe to the 19th century (long before I was born in any case), Basque is one of the languages created by God himself at the Tower of Babel language confusion episode. It has something to do with a guy named Tubal, but admittedly I have no idea who was that guy, because he must be older than my great-grandfather, and that's long ago... at least from the 19th century. He was surely a mason... one of those that put bricks one above the other to make walls and such. :P
Seriously, it's not anything conclusive at all but two hits out of three traits mentioned in a totally unrelated article is more than what I can call a random coincidence.
I have been accumulating the knowledge of other "random coincidences" along my life that together make a quite suspicious bunch. They concentrate along the Cardium Pottery and Megalithic area, so I am starting to suspect that Basque language could well be a remnant not of the languages of Paleolithic but of those of the Neolithic.
I have discussed some of them here, including this "coincidence". But it's not any extensive nor systematic endeavor. Actually I have rather avoided the linguistic field because I know well it's very slippery terrain.
As for the book, it looks interesting yes but I'm unsure on how it may relate to what we are discussing here.
"We don't know about the Phoenician ham because we don't know about the Phoenician dances or sport sandals or about much of anything but that they were good traders and they were supposed to eat children for breakfast".
Of course, I was just joking a bit. What I meant is just that none of those possible differences are insuperable obstacles for conversion, specially if there are other reasons.
"The others really wanted to delete them from the map".
Not the Persians nor the Egyptians, who seem to have got along with them quite well. Carthage was allied of Achaemenid Persia (a religiously tolerant state) and Tyre was allowed independence under Persian domination. Only the Hebrews and Greco-Romans seem to have got major issues with the Phoenicians.
"One of the distinctive factors archaeologists find with the emergence of "Jews" is that there are almost no pig rests in the whole central area from the -XIII century onwards".
I mentioned what might have been the first properly Jewish stronghold here. Same conclusions. I'm not sure if hygienic reasons are the only ones anyhow behind those taboos.
"At the time when Christianity appeared, there were lots of Jewish communities all the way to Turkey",
Exactly. However the question is how biologically Jewish were they? (a) Were they pure Palestinian Jewish emigrants?,(b) were they essentially converts from other communities such as Phoenicians or Assyrians (once an important trader community in that area)?, or (c)were they something in between?
I think that the data clearly answers the question in the sense of (b), at least for the modern descendants that we call Jews. There's just no meaningful evidence of the strongly distinctive Palestinian component and this Palestinian-specific component cannot be argued anymore to have arrived from outside, as all relevant populations are considered in this paper.
"I just hope the whole project will be kosher, some may not like the results".
I like it better haram. ]:D
What's the Hebrew equivalent of haram (sinful, against the law), just as halal is equivalent to kosher?
In other words, I like not being politically correct, unless I do think that such specific instance of political correctness makes good sense, such as in the issues of racism, sexism, etc.
I agree with your assessment of a northern and a southern group. The question is, how far north and how far south. I think the archaeology supports the border being at the negev desert. The overlap of Jews with Druze and Samaritan supports this.
BTW, have you seen the new Atzmon paper, which gives further support to the idea that Jews are close to Druze? It also says Jews are close to Bedouin, but not Palestinians.
I'm not too sure or what archeology are you referring to.
Both Negev and fertile Palestine part of the Natufian-PPNA area and Palestine proper is its core without doubt. However the southern semidesertic areas (the desert as such was not yet available for use) were distinctive (Harifian) and, in my opinion, constituted the transitional bridge between Egypt and West Asia, allowing African lineages and Afroasiatic languages to penetrate the area. There are other theories on the origin of Asian Afroasiatic leading to Semitic, so I won't insist on this much.
Just to mention that it does seem to be evidence at late Harifian sites for an origin of the Circum-Arabian Pastoralist Complex, which has been often claimed as the source of Semitic linguistic expansion c. 5000-3500 BCE (in a time when there were no domestic camels yet and hence no journeys through the desert and no Arabia Peninsula connection I can discern yet).
There was not any absolute genetic border probably ever but there is a clear flow from the North once and again (PPNB, Ghassulian), which must have been dominated by Y-DNA J2. Lebanese and Western Jews (and, for what I recall, Syrians as well) show this admixture with more balanced apportions of the two J sublineages (see Semino 2004)
Let's see how these lineages behave:
- Konya Turks: 28% J2, 4% J1
- Sephardim: 27% J2, 12% J1
- Lebanese: 25% J2, 13% J1
- Ashkenazim: 23% J2, 15% J1
- Palestinian: 17% J2, 38% J1
- Negev Bedouins: 3% J2, 63% J1
So while Palestine was surely originally all or mostly J1 (per the North African connection but the West Asian origin of the lineage) and this may also have been the case to some extent of Syria-Lebanon, the various (at least two) cultural influxes from the North, distributed J2 southwards in a decreasing frequency.
There are no known south-to-north flows except the localized Natufian expansion into the Euphrates bend in NE Syria (Mureybet) and the phenomenon of the Circum-Arabian Pastoralist Complex, which probably originated in Natufian after PPNB arrival. Both are clearly weaker than the North to South flows.
"BTW, have you seen the new Atzmon paper, which gives further support to the idea that Jews are close to Druze?"
I really pass of the Druze. They are a very small minority in Israel/Palestine (somewhat larger in Lebanon), their traditions acknowledge themselves as immigrants to the Levant and they are so extremely inbred that they are nearly impossible to use in autosomal analysis.
I think that past papers have tended to use the Druze as a cover up, suggesting that the are more Palestinian than the Palestinians and more Levantine than the Levant peoples as a whole. This claim seems totally unfounded and is nothing but another case of Zionist wishful thinking. Not acceptable really.
I have read Atzmon 2010 in any case and I have discussed it here, along with an unrelated paper on Basques.
Actually, what I see in that paper's PC graphs (supp. material) is a very interesting clustering of Western Jews with the ESE sample, made up of Turks and Cypriots, and more tightly with a subset of these which was not identified in the paper but that seems to be the Cypriots after all.
Another important data is Fst distances, which show that Iranian Jews have so much relation with Western Jews as the most distant European populations (Russians and Basques) do, clearly showing we are talking of very different populations, unrelated in the context of West Asia. Iraqi Jews behave similarly by to a less extreme degree.
Palestinians were relatively akin to Western Jews and certainly more akin than Irano-Iraqi Jews, but the mislabelling of them and Bedouins in the main PC graph (which I want to think as a mere error) confuses this appreciation.
"It also says Jews are close to Bedouin, but not Palestinians".
That's a clear labeling error. The Fst data clearly confirms that, as do all other genetic data I know of, including the paper discussed here, which shows Negev Bedouins as probably made up of two distinct populations, one very much unique and the other not sufficiently well defined but somewhat akin to Palestinians and generic Arabs (different components). The blue dots do in fact represent Palestinians and the pink ones represent Negev Bedouins.
Cheers.
Actually, the article DOESN¹T imply that the Jews are Phoenicians. If
anything, there is less overlap between Jews and Cypriots than between Jews
and Druze.
If you read the article properly, it shows that Palestinians, Bedouins,
Saudis, and Jordanians form a very tight cluster, which also includes
Yemenis (see image).
Since we know that modern Arab populations originated in southern Saudi (and
migrated north during 1st millennium AD), the only possible conclusion from
the article is that Palestinians arrived around that time.
The article actually implies that Jews, Druze, Samaritans, and Cypriots
co-originated and probably were an indigenous population that was displaced
by Palestinians/Arabs.
Whether or not the Jews, Druze, Samaritans, and Cypriots were Phoenician,
Canaanite, or admixture is not possible to say from the article (since they
didn¹t examine Phoenician and Canaanite DNA).
Neither can you conclude from the article that the Palestinians were the
original population.
Be that as it may, the article supports the notion that both populations
(Jews/Druze/Samaritans/Cypriots and Palestinians/Bedouins/Saudis/Jordanians)
have a shared origin (probably around 5000 years ago, in southern Saudi).
"Actually, the article DOESN¹T imply that the Jews are Phoenicians".
The text of the article does not. The usage of the word "Levant" (without any distinction between North and South) was carefully chosen to avoid such a controversial conclusion. :)
But that is what the data here and in Atzmon's paper seems to say: Jews are most closely related not with Palestinians but with Lebanese, Cypriots and maybe other groups of the Cyprus Gulf.
"If you read the article properly, it shows that Palestinians, Bedouins,
Saudis, and Jordanians form a very tight cluster".
They do not. Palestinians diverge from all other West Eurasians at K=8. If we ignore extremely isolated groups like Druze (immigrants from other areas but extremely endogamous) and Bedouins (not immigrants but endogamous and small in numbers), they are the first population diverging. They are in fact the first single ethnic group diverging in all Eurasia at that ethnic/national level
Although I'd like to have data under K=8 to compare with others and the Palestinian cluster detection may have been aided by the good sampling of this people, what this clearly says is that Palestinians are a deeply distinctive population and not just "immigrant Arabs" as Zionist doctrine likes to claim.
This distinctiveness can only happen if they are at least direct descendant of ancient Jews, Canaanites, etc. towards the depths of Prehistory.
"Since we know that modern Arab populations originated in southern Saudi (and migrated north during 1st millennium AD)"...
No, we do not know that. Not only Southern Arabia, unless you call that to the the Hejaz and the Syrian Desert too. We certainly do not know that they migrated in numbers that could alter the pre-existent farmer population and that is in fact most unlikely. It's just one of those things that Zionists like to repeat once and again but is baseless.
(continues)
"... it shows that Palestinians, Bedouins, Saudis, and Jordanians form a very tight cluster, which also includes
Yemenis (see image)".
What do you know about the Prehistory of West Asia? Palestine was a distinct province on its own right all the time. Palestinian Neolithic (PPNA) is distinct from Highland West Asia Neolithic (PPNB), even if this one did expand southwards.
The colonization of Arabia Peninsula surely happened first from Palestine, more precisely from the peripheral regions of this province, where a less sedentary lifestyle existed, represented maybe better by Jordanians and Bedouins. It is a South Levant to Arabia flow and this can be tracked in Y-DNA and mtDNA pretty well.
I don't say there have been no backflows, obviously, just not enough to alter the genetic landscape as dramatically as Zionist doctrine would require. Would it have been that way we would not see that distinct Palestinian cluster which is clearly not "Arab" but specifically Canaanite.
We'd have some other group popping up at k=8 as distinct (if anything) and Palestinians would never become distinct in the cluster analysis from other Arabs. Also the supposed "Arab migration" should be more apparent in Syria and Lebanon, Egypt, etc. It is not. Not at all. It's just a neomyth we have to shake off.
Plaestinians must be close to other Lowland West Asians (and not just generically "Arabs") because archaeological and other genetic evidence clearly shows that Arabian deserts were colonized from Palestine.
It's important to identify the origin and destiny of the late Neolithic colonization of the semideserts. In Y-DNA J1 for example it is obvious that not just Palestinians but even North Africans and Caucasic peoples (and Jews too) have much higher diversity than peninsular Arabs and Yemenis in particular. So J1 migrated from North to South.
The same is apparent in mtDNA (cf. for instance Abu Amero 2008): colonization of Arabia Peninsula from the Crescent Fertile (and more detailed data should pinpoint Palestine specifically) and not the opposite.
It is also apparent in the archaeological record, with the Circum-Arabian Pastoralist Complex, formed in relation to PPNB's expansion but has its origins in PPNA instead, specifically in the semidesert (Negev) facies of PPNA, as far as we can tell. This CAPC that preceded true desert nomadism later on (only possible when the camel was domesticated, c. 2000 BCE) is probably at the origin of the expansion of Semitic languages c. 5000 BCE. It expanded to the Levant, to Iraq and to Arabia Peninsula. But their origins are in truth in the periphery of the Fertile Crescent by all accounts.
"The article actually implies that Jews, Druze, Samaritans, and Cypriots
co-originated and probably were an indigenous population that was displaced
by Palestinians/Arabs".
That is your interested interpretation and is easy to rebuke (see above). When you look at West Asian genetics you do see a Highland and a Lowland cluster which is obviously not caused by Arab political-religious expansion. This is very apparent in the distribution of the two subclades of Y-DNA J. J2 is clearly highlander and extends to Europe and India, while J1 is clearly lowlander (there are exceptions but this is the main pattern) and extends to North Africa specially. This distribution is Prehistoric, either Paleolithic (my opinion) or Neolithic but not recent in any case.
(continues)
"... is not possible to say from the article (since they
didn¹t examine Phoenician and Canaanite DNA)".
I understand they did: they examined Palestinians (Canaanites with all likelihood) and Lebanese+Cypriots (Phoenicians with all likelihood). Admittedly Cypriots could also have Greek origin but it's clear that they do not cluster close to other Greeks and instead cluster with Lebanese very strongly.
"Neither can you conclude from the article that the Palestinians were the
original population".
Yes, that's my whole point: that Palestinians show up as distinct and not at all as "undifferentiated Arabs", as the Zionist neomyth would want us to believe. I have already said why.
"Be that as it may, the article supports the notion that both populations
(Jews/Druze/Samaritans/Cypriots and Palestinians/Bedouins/Saudis/Jordanians)
have a shared origin (probably around 5000 years ago, in southern Saudi)".
I am not sure where they say this but I cannot agree. What we are seeing here is the structure of West Eurasians, which may well have began to diverge some 40 or 50 Ka ago (at least 30 Ka). The sample is very good for this kind of all-regional analysis.
We see in this general context, first of all, a West Asian/European divergence (normal because of geographical barriers and consistent with the different haplogroups and their frequencies found in both subregions).
Then we see a Highland/Lowland divergence in West Asia, a trait that I have been pointing to since long ago, specially on the differential distribution of Y-DNA J2 and J1, whose early expansion and differentiation must be Paleolithic.
This second divergence, that you misunderstand as "Arab expansion", is less marked than the Europe/West Asia divide, logically, as there is no physical barrier, just somewhat different ecosystems and, importantly, different population histories, at least since Neolithic but probably since deep in the Paleolithic.
And then we see a South-North divergence in Europe.
Some of these large scale structures need to be analyzed more in depth. In Europe at least deep regional clusters have been found, not just North European but Iberian, Basque, Finnic... all of which must date from at least the Epipaleolithic.
In West Asia we do not had such comprehensive structure studies and it'd be nice if a third West Asia-specific structure analysis would have been run (or going deeper to k=16 maybe) in this paper. Not yet it seems but it will be done eventually.
But what this paper clearly says is that one of the earliest distinct clusters is made up only of Palestinians, showing some minor affinity only to Negev Bedouins.
Some facts:
1. Some of the earliest attested Semitic languages were found in the North Levant.
2. The original language of the Mesopotamians is Sumerian and is superceded by Akkadian only later, presumably from the West. So, the Proto-Semites of the Levant should be prior in time to the Proto-Semites of Mesopotamia.
3. The earliest Jewish myths (e.g. Genesis and the birth story of Moses) draw on Mesopotamian material originally created in Sumerian, indicating contact with that area, presumably during an era during the Akkadian era or afterwards.
4. Semitic people came to Egypt, a culture with which the Phoenicians had close ties.
5. The Jewish national myth recounts their immediate origins prior to establishing a Jewish state in the South Levant and conquering outsiders, rather than being natives there, around the time (plus or minus a couple centuries) of Bronze Age Collapse. Egyptian origins for the Jews are supported by the Torah, the existence of Semites in Egypt around then, Jewish burial customs that follow Egyptian precedent and the close in time Egyptian flirtation with monotheism.
6. The South Levant was multi-ethnic for almost the entire period from the arrival of Jews in the area to the destruction of the Temple.
7. The Jewish nation in the South Levant that is the subject of the Bible collapsed, in fits and starts, and many Jews were exiles to what is now Iraq and elsewhere.
8. Hebrew is linguistically closer to Arabic than it is to almost any other extant or extinct Semitic languages.
9. Circumcision was a significant barrier to conversion in the Rabbinic period and dispensing with that rite is one of the reasons that Christianity grew by conversion much faster than Rabbinic Judaism whose formative period was at roughly the same time. The Roman and Jewish historical accounts from the 1st century also show that there was a strong Jewish national and ethnic identity by then. So, the case for significant conversion of people into Rabbinic Judaism around the 1st Century CE isn't very strong.
Conclusion: It makes more sense to me to see Phoenicians as being derived from the Proto-Semitic source population (ca. 2000 BCE +/- 500 years) in the North Levant vicinity, with Semitic pre-Jews becoming true Jews in or shortly after leaving Egypt via intellectual influence from the brief period of Egyptian monotheism (ca. 1200 BCE +/- 20 years), and that they maintain ties with their kin in the Northern Levant for the duration in a region where trade has been ancient and vigorous. The Baal cult which has been associated with Phoenician pagan religion and with the pre-Jewish faith of the Jews in Exile also fits this idea.
In this view, the Palestinians are the native people of the Southern Levant, probably from pre-historic times at least (i.e. sometime before 3500 BCE, perhaps back to the Neolithic or before, or perhaps not) and become subjects of the Jewish invaders post-Exile. Palestinian/Arabic linguistic affinities derive from adoption the language of their Semitic language speaking rulers in this era or earlier, rather than from a more recent common pool of genetic ancestors. But, unlike the Jewish invader layer of that culture, the Palestinians are not exiled and reassert themselves as the natives of the South Levant when the Jews are kicked out where they remain ever after.
Of course, long close association in the Near East between all of its Paleolithic peoples means that Phoenicians and Proto-Palestinians aren't that far removed from each other genetically.
I think you fail to get my point, Andrew: what I'm trying to explain is that the data shows that modern Western Jews (Sephardi and Ashkenazi) show a clear affinity or rather identity with the Lebanon-Cyprus area and extremely low one with Palestine. That means that they are surely converts of Phoenician or similarly "Syrian" origin rather than genuine "Biblical Jews".
Other Jewish groups show different affinities (for instance Yemeni Jews look largely Yemeni, as one would expect considering history) but in general they do not look at all related to Palestinians, casting a serious doubt about the mythical origin of Jews worldwide in the historical and Biblical Jewish ethnicity of Palestine.
Instead Palestinians show a strong unique component that points to a distinct coalescence, which can perfectly be interpreted in terms of ancient Jews, Southern Cannaanites and maybe even back in time up to PPNA and Kebaran Mesolithic.
I am of the opinion anyhow that Semitic languages coalesced in the Circum-Arabian Pastoralist Complex in PPNB, and its genetics can be represented to some extent at least by the "pink" component dominant in peninsular Arabia (but also present to lesser extent among Palestinians, Negev Bedouins and others). I have no reason to associate proto-Semitic with Highland West Asia, where other non-Afroasiatic language families are attested instead (Hattic and Hurro-Urartean).
For what it's worth here is Atzmon's "Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era":
http://napobo3.lk.net/dna/Abrahams_children_in_the_genome_era_2010_in-press_AJHG.pdf
Also Behar's "The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people":
http://napobo3.lk.net/dna/Behar_2010.pdf
And Bray's "Signatures of founder effects, admixture, and selection in the Ashkenazi Jewish population":
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/08/23/1004381107.full.pdf+html
Thanks, JL. I updated with a link to Behar's letter per your post. The other two are already freely accessible (both PNAS and AJHG have 6-months paywall policies, after which all becomes open access).
Still, I think that, while the rest of materials (both here and in Atzmon's) hint in the same direction the key evidence comes in Behar's regional (West Eurasian) ADMIXTURE analysis (supp fig. 4), where we see how Palestinians quickly form a cluster of their own, suggesting old distinct personality (and not indistinct "Arab" recent immigration, as Zionist propaganda often claims). The lack of any important link between Western (Hellenistic) Jews and Palestinians makes the case for modern Western Jews being of a different origin. The closest populations appear to be Cypriots and Lebanese.
Cypriots also clustered tightly in Atzmon's paper.
Bray's paper lacks the relevant NW West Asian populations (Turks, Cypriots, Lebanese and Syrians) for any useful comparison. a lot of Jewish genetics papers have fallen in this sampling error, once and again avoiding this way to consider the hypothesis of Syrio-Anatolian Hellenistic origin of modern Western Jews (in spite of being a known historical fact that ancient Disapora Jews lived mostly there and practiced extensive proselytism).
Enfin... seems solved now. Thanks again for the links.
@Jules: I cannot say for sure with all that certainty you use. Notice that I have slightly revised my stand since I wrote this and now I rather lean for the Hellenistic mass conversions in (primarily) Asia Minor, which is also what is behind early Christians.
The issue is that while the Cyprus connection remains strong, the Lebanese one does not, while Turkey remains just behind Cyprus (i.e. very high). Also FYI there were very few Phoenicians in Italy (only in West Sicily and Sardinia and rather late anyhow).
See especially here: http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com.es/2012/01/spehardi-jews-in-context-of-levant-and.html
I had to restrict myself to Sephardites because Ashkenazi and Moroccan Jewish endogamy/founder effect is too strong and distorted the analysis. But as we can see in this and other studies all Western ("Greco-Roman") Jews seem to be quite similar in their overall genetic background.
Have you seen the paper, 'Genome-Wide Diversity in the Levant Reveals Recent Structuring by Culture', Maju?
Apparently, when you segregate Lebanese Christians from Lebanese Muslims, Jews can actually cluster with Lebanese Christians. Perhaps they were originally semitic phoenicians who later mixed with europeans during the roman era. Given that the Lebanese Christians are mainly a cosmopolitan people rather than rural peasants, it seems like a possibility to entertain.
First of all, STL, my apologies because Blogger spam filter (which I cannot deactivate even if it is pretty much a useless nuisance) sent your comment to the spam folder. It's been solved now.
Then, what you say is interesting. I did comment on that paper but, being honest, I accidentally skipped the Lebanese-specific part and focused on the overall duality in West Asia, which is coincident with other pop. genetic elements like the distribution of Y-DNA J1/J2, etc. I was not really paying any attention to Lebanese specifics that day...
I can indeed see in this graph for example how Lebanese Muslim cluster with Syrians, while Christian ones cluster with Cypriots, Druzes (who are exotic to the region) and Sephardites. It'd be interesting to know if, beyond the religious divide, there is also a geographic divide. For example: where is that Lebanese Muslim sample from? Bekaa (not ancient Phoenician) or coastal (ancient Phoenician lands)?
If you look at this other figure (bottom), geography is not as irrelevant as the authors want us to believe, with three regions Beirut (oversampled), Bekaa and Mt. Lebanon having their own specificity, almost regardless of religious affiliation.
Whatever the case I take notice of your comment and I think we may consider some Lebanese (Christians? Beiruties?) as intermediate between Syria and Cyprus/Anatolia, what makes better sense IMO if we recall the Amuq-Biblos culture. I bet they also cluster well with Latakia Syrians and Cilicia/Antioch Turks.
Well, something to keep in mind is as I've said, Lebanese/Syrian Christians have always maintained a cosmopolitan presence in the region. Whereas the bulk of muslims are spread-out through both rural and urban parts of the region, so overall you may see that type of schism, although not as necessarily segregated on a regional basis.
So, one way or another whether it is Anatolian or Roman, etc. there does seem to be a distinction. Syrians tend to be all over the map, but there is definitely a western bias amongst lebanese christians.
Perhaps this does confirm the genesis of the Phoenicians and Phoenician interactions during the Roman Empire?
Keep in mind that Cyprus was a major location of Hellenistic Judaism. Barnabas was a famous Cypriot jew.
I recommend this book:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/58456022/Jew-and-Gentile-in-the-Ancient-World-Attitudes-and-Interactions-From-Alexander-to-Justinian
Some interesting quotes:
"In particular, the
tremendous growth of the Jewish population of Cyprus,"
"We may add that Josephus (Against Apion 1. which Josephus otherwise carefully suppressed. Conversions in the Diaspora: The Phoenicians The very dispersion of the Jews. the Book of Tobit. because they had practiced circumcision for ages. One theory to explain the widespread success of Jewish proselytism in the Diaspora posits that the Jews had absorbed the far-flung settlements of the Phoenicians. one of the groups that led the revolution against Rome in 66 C. looks forward to the day when “many nations shall come to you [G-d] from afar” (13:13) and when “all the nations in the whole world shall turn and fear G-d” (14:6). whose language is so similar to Hebrew. had lost their independence. Carthage. in royal robes in the Temple (War 2. indicates the revolt’s messianic dimensions. Once the mother-cities of Tyre and Sidon and the chief daughter-city. and Slouschz has theorized that Phoenician owners of Jewish slaves may have been exposed to Jewish customs and ideas and may easily have passed over into Judaism."
On page 323 the author discusses the conversion of upper-class romans to judaism.
Also, on the subject of anatolian jews, you see jews often being linked to Solymi, who were said to speak Phoenician. So, those 'anatolian jews' may have actually been ethnic phoenician settlers. See 521-522
See also:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/135961652/Respect-for-Judaism
These are too heavy materials to read in depth for me. I would thank relevant quotes, as I've gone through the first two already and most is not too relevant.
As a matter of fact I'm using as main reference the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, which describes the Roman era Jewish diaspora more synthetically.
"Keep in mind that Cyprus was a major location of Hellenistic Judaism".
True but it's also a fact that Jews were expelled from the island in times of Trajan:
In Cyprus especially it was simply a war of extermination; the Jews massacred all the Greek inhabitants of Salamis; and when the uprising was suppressed, residence on the island was forbidden to Jews under pain of death (Dio Cassius, lxviii. 32).
So I'm rather inclined towards a mainland Anatolian origin rather than strictly Cypriot. But the details are a bit of a mystery.
I would at least recommend the first book.
Then how do you explain the situation with the Solymi?
Anatolians who were described as phoenician speaking and jewish?
The anatolian jews could just have been a part of the phoenician diaspora.
I went through the first two.
"Anatolians who were described as phoenician speaking and jewish?"
I don't know (all I can find about the Solymi deals with Greek mythology: Bellerophon, so not too useful: Amazons and Solymi... not exactly the kind of data I'd find reliable). Whatever the case we do not know if they, even if real, are ancestral to modern Jews or a branch that died out, like so many others probably did, being converted to mainstream religions and melting with them altogether.
Well, you can blame Hellenization and Romanization for that, although Dienekes would like to put the blame on Turkification for everything.
The Solymi were also said to be Milyas from Elmali (SW Turkey).
http://books.google.com/books?id=49E_AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA247&lpg=PA247&dq=%22Milyans%22+solymi+phoenicians&source=bl&ots=Wqdu0B7PSG&sig=bcF_5eUpzujDCFFVmaeMuX7s_Mw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gvdsUeeBKMnl0gHTtoDoDA&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Milyans%22%20solymi%20phoenicians&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=N3sBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=%22Milyans%22+jews&source=bl&ots=OtF3zf48ng&sig=C3Yw5u4Kq3h5nkomEUMfGqN23qY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2_ZsUZrqCI6B0AHwzIDICA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22Milyans%22%20jews&f=false
Well, we are trying here to discern the origins of Western Jews in historical times (Antiquity), so I don't see how speculation about a proto-historical semi-mythical people helps. I guess all you mean is that there is some chance that the origins of the Jewish diaspora are older than Hellenism... sure, maybe, why not? But how does that matter?
Consider the history of Phoenician interaction in the region, and considering the association of these characters with both Jews and Phoenicians and notices by other historians who also described the Jews and Phoenicians. Also, considering the close genetic clustering between Cypriots, Lebanese Christians and Jews, is it not something to contemplate?
So, those anatolian jews wouldn't really be anymore 'anatolian' then, not anymore than north african jews are really 'north african'. Maybe there would be some admixture, but that would not prevent Jews from forming their own distinct cluster, even then.
In ancient times, the Phoenicians were described as a merchant/trader class. And what are Jews today and what have Jews historically been associated with in the post-Roman era? Merchants/Traders and the Bourgeoisie.
Given that 1/7th to 1/8th of the Roman Empire was jewish, let's say that many semites and people of various of other ethnicities converted to Judaism. Which groups would be most likely to survive in the case of the rise of christianity?
Blue-Collar workers would surely be discriminated against relative to non-jewish co-workers, however 'Bourgeoisie' Jews would still be able to satisfy a niche that would allow them to be paid in similar terms to their non-jewish counterparts. And the Phoenicians, of course, were generally part of that social stratum, so incidentally, they may have become the inadvertent major 'Jewish Community' in the Mediterranean.
Since, we are discussing Anatolian jews, it is also important to discuss their geographical distribution:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0002_0_01496.html
"It mentions Caria, Pamphylia, and Lycia as places of Jewish settlement "
http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/volltexte/2011/1080/pdf/Roellig_Asia_minor_as_a_bridge_1992.pdf
"Recently, another document inscribed in Phoenician was found — once again, in Cilicia"
"Just a few years ago, another Phoenician document was found. In Ivriz near Eregli, thatis, in Cappadocia beyond the Taurus mountains,"
http://books.google.com/books?id=wa8VAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA416&lpg=PA416&dq=cilicia+phoenicians&source=bl&ots=8wIclwnVYq&sig=BUfr5fQE1uXGdcOONVCFIvV9bf4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FOxtUYqyGJfi4APruoGACA&ved=0CG4Q6AEwGg#v=onepage&q=cilicia%20phoenicians&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=ufmTU599Bf8C&pg=PA491&lpg=PA491&dq=cilicia+phoenicians&source=bl&ots=Lz1oStjZzo&sig=voCxv3ax52HByuYncAxkYcCst1M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FOxtUYqyGJfi4APruoGACA&ved=0CGgQ6AEwGA#v=onepage&q=cilicia%20phoenicians&f=false
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064:entry=lycia-geo
"The most ancient inhabitants of Lycia, as we have seen above, were the Solymi, who are generally believed to have been a Phoenician or Semitic race. "
Seems like Blogger Spam Filter really hates you STL. Fixed again.
I have no clear indication of Phoenicians ever having colonies in Asia Minor, just in Cyprus and then far to the West (Gadir and Carthage were their very first two colonies, even before Cyprus, it seems). Excepting Iberia they seem to have ignored the European shores altogether, what is coincident with the description of Herakles' journeys taking place along North Africa, back in the day seemingly the normal route to the mineral-rich Hesperides.
"Given that 1/7th to 1/8th of the Roman Empire was jewish"...
At what time? Do you include Christians? On first sight it seems to me a far fetched claim. That there were Jewish (or later also Christian) communities in certain areas does not make them Jewish as a whole. It's like saying Mohammed's Medina was Jewish or that Germany and Poland before Hitler were Jewish. Or that Russia or the USA are Jewish nowadays...
"It mentions Caria, Pamphylia, and Lycia as places of Jewish settlement "
And Galatia, Pamphlagonia, Cappadocia and a long etc. In brief: all Asia Minor. I am particularly intrigued about Cilicia, which is geographically close to Cyprus and culturally closer to Syria/Phoenicia than other parts of Anatolia (also a hub of early Christian proselytism), but just a thought...
On Lycia: "The eponymous inhabitants of Lycia, the Lycians, spoke Lycian, a member of the Luwian branch of the Anatolian languages, a subfamily of the Indo-European family" (from Wikipedia). Of course they may have been Semitic or something else previously but there was a clear cultural change with the Hittites.
Of course Phoenician was an important trading language and probably replaced Assyrian among the Semitic-speaking communities of Asia Minor (the first known Semitic speakers of that area were Assyrian traders, which in many aspects may resemble later Jewish communities, although I do not wish to imply here any necessary connection) but that does not mean that Phoenicians were settling Asia Minor in any significant numbers.
http://www.smie.co/html/cultural_history/assyrian_colonies/assyrian_colonies.shtml
Assyrians appear to be too far east. Also, it would explain the close relations between southern italians and jews, since sicily was also settled by the phoenicians.
If you notice, just by doing a Google Book Search, most of these sources appear to be coming from the ancient writers like Josephus, Herodotus, etc.
http://books.google.com/books?id=tvIKAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=phoenicians+solymi&source=bl&ots=iHIVjTLLfw&sig=ChXkAaH9mireGavUtNXiHB9Kwl0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=lEluUf2dItaj4APqhoDIBg&ved=0CDUQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=phoenicians%20solymi&f=false
http://www.ancientlibrary.com/gazetteer/0325.html
"Many, again, say that they were a race of Ethiopian origin, who in the time of king Cepheus were driven by fear and hatred of their neighbors to seek a new dwelling-place. Others describe them as an Assyrian horde who, not having sufficient territory, took possession of part of Egypt, and founded cities of their own in what is called the Hebrew country, lying on the borders of Syria. Others, again, assign a very distinguished origin to the Jews, alleging that they were the Solymi, a nation celebrated in the poems of Homer, who called the city which they founded Hierosolyma after their own name. "
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/roman-jews.asp
Pamphylia in Southern Anatolia was said to be settled by the Phoenicians:
http://www.ancientlibrary.com/gazetteer/0261.html
Given the socio-economic dynamic, though, I would say that the Phoenicians would be more likely. Name a more famous Mediterranean-focused semitic merchant/trader class in history (besides the Jews)?
Is there a reason you particularly don't like the Phoenician hypothesis now?
Hierosolyma? Jerusalem quite clearly derives from iri/iru + salem. Another similar toponym in that area is Jerico: iri-ko. Iri, uri. uru, iru, ili, ilu, etc. seem all variants of a very old word for city, which spread from West Asia to Europe (Basque iri, uri, Iberian ili, uli, Latin urbs, also Elis, Ilion, etc.) and India (I've been told it's also found in Dravidian). In West Asia we do not just find it in Irisalem and Iriko but also in many Sumerian cities: Ur, Uruk, Eridu, etc. (Sumerian for city was uru). Possibly others that I can't recall. It's a magnific example of wanderwort, just like moder "telephone" and similar, spreading across cultures and languages.
Salem is obviously Peace in Semitic languages (salam, shalom...). So Jerusalem is the city of peace or the peaceful city (or alternatively the city of a Canaanite god known as Shalem or Shalim god of dusk, who would yield his name to the Semitic word for peace - ???).
Hierosolyma is just a Greek name where hiero means "holy". Greeks had the bad habit of changing the names of cities in different languages: for example way too many Egyptian cities. Later also the Romans gave it another name: Aelia Capitolina.
Urusalim and Rusalim are known alternative names of Jerusalem in Ancient Egyptian (again iri/uru + salim). The form Yerushalayim is the oldest Biblical form, where yeru or yry is a Semitic variant of the same old iri cosmopolitan word for city.
In fact the paper referred to clearly states more than once that the testing proves the origins of worldwide Jewish communities and their present-day members, especially Ashkenazi and Sephardic, in the Levant exactly where they claim to originate. It shows nothing at all about "later conversion" and the results prove the opposite; and it says or implies nothing - zero - about Palestinian origins beyond a general Middle-Eastern basis. You ought to actually read your "evidence" before interpreting it to suit your preexisting beliefs.
@Redcedar:
→ http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/2012/01/spehardi-jews-in-context-of-levant-and.html
Reality is that the whole data points to Cyprus/Turkey and not to Lebanon/Syria as the main origin of Western Jews. You can expand your idea of "Levant" as much as you wish to fit your preconceptions but reality is stubborn and:
1. Ancient Jews lived in Palestine (not further North).
2. Modern Western Jews seem to originate in Anatolia.
Jewish identity is fundamentally religious and before the Christian-Muslim imposed ghettoization of Rabbinic Judaism, Judaism (Rabbinic or not) was very actively proselytistic and even converted several kingdoms (Kurdistan, Yemen, Axum, Tataria (Khazaria), some Berber tribes). In fact Christianity and Islam are just more successful proselytizing Jewish sects.
As non-Yahvist I don't really see any need to make a distinction between those categories of Jews: it's just a convention. It's like the subtle theological and doctrine distinctions between Muslim or Christian sects: almost totally pointless as their beliefs are nearly the same: those of Moses.
I don't know why are you relaying on Biblical Historicity since the whole Canaanites' history there is written of theological anti-paganism and was put on paper somewhere between the 9th-7th Centuries BC at the maximalist view or 6th-5th Centuries BC according to the minimalistic view, while Canaanites who lived in Israel ceased to exist in their Canaanite pagan context around the 11th Century BC. The most of the Canaanites who lived in Southern Canaan (modern day Israel & Transjordan) turned into the Hebraic Nations: Israelites, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites between the 14th-13th Centuries BC, due to social-political and economical reasons, so their only descendants to live nowadays in the Holy Lands are the Hebrews, or in other words: are the Jews and the Samaritans.
Canaan included what today are Lebanon, Israel and the "Palestinian" (was NEVER such a nation or land before 1964/7, even the arabs know that..) territories, northwestern Jordan, and some western areas of Syria. According to archaeologist Jonathan N. Tubb, "Ammonites, Moabites, Israelites and Phoenicians undoubtedly achieved their own cultural identities, and yet ethnically they were all Canaanites", "the same people who settled in farming villages in the region in the 8th millennium BC."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL-F_MkDy...
"The most of the Canaanites who lived in Southern Canaan (modern day [Palestine]) turned into the Hebraic Nations: Israelites, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites between the 14th-13th Centuries BC, due to social-political and economical reasons"...
I wholeheartedly agree with this part (except the politically loaded terminology which I corrected).
... "so their only descendants to live nowadays in the Holy Lands are the Hebrews, or in other words: are the Jews and the Samaritans".
I must strongly disagree with this one however. The Samaritans are a tiny inbred community of obscure origins, so I will disregard them altogether. Modern Jews (Diaspora Rabbinic Jews) however are very relevant and they seem to have an array of diverse origins. For practical reasons I will focus on "Western Jews", i.e. those originating at the Hellenistic-Roman Diaspora, whose origins seem to be roughly the same and are best represented by the Sephardic community (less inbred, but also include Ashkenazim, Moroccan and Italian Jews).
We know for a fact that prior to the success of Christianity and Islam, Judaism was extremely proselytistic. In fact Christian and Muslim proselytism are just derived from this ancient Jewish tendency (Christianity is in fact a Jewish sect, Islam almost so - and even more strictly "Jewish" in many aspects). In the centuries surrounding the Roman Era, Judaism made A LOT of converts, particularly in Anatolia but also in other regions. Several historical states in Kurdistan, Yemen, Russia... had Judaism as their religion (although obviously their denizens were not of Jewish/Canaanite ancestry), while flourishing and powerful Jewish communities were found all around (for example in Medina). Some of them became the core of Christianity but many others remained more "traditional" and would be considered today as "Rabbinic Jews" (even though the Talmud is a later development).
What happened to the core population of the historical Jewish lands which the Romans renamed Palestine? Almost certainly they remained there for the greatest part, farming their lands as they had done "always" (even Theodor Herlz admitted that). Probably they converted to Christianity in large numbers, as this Jewish sect was seen as less threatening by the Romans and hence better treated. Later with the Muslim expansion they gradually converted to Islam (not all but eventually most).
This so far is theory, I know. But what does genetics say? After writing this review, I went again on the issue of Western Jewish and Palestinian origins from an autosomal viewpoint at my new blog, confirming much of what was said here but with some shading.
In essence Western Jews are almost identical to Cypriots and Turks and hence can hardly originate in Palestine, at least for the bulk of their ancestry. On the other hand Palestinians show a huge deal of rather unique internal diversity that cannot be attributed to recent imaginary immigration (although a small fraction of it can be, certainly not the bulk).
Sadly we don't have regionalized Palestinian samples but, in any case, there is some indication of some Palestinian elements (yellow and blue components at K=6) being in excess in Western Jews when compared with Turks/Cypriots. This suggests that modern Western Jews do have minor Palestinian ancestry although they are still mostly Anatolians.
This very strongly confirms that Palestinians are the more direct descendants of Ancient Jews (and Canaanites and the peoples before them in the land), while modern Western Jews are in essence descendants of Anatolian converts (and not Phoenicians as I suggested here). The theory is confirmed by the genetic data.
It would be of course very much desirable to investigate further in an unbiased manner but, considering the political situation on the ground, it is extremely difficult to do so, sadly enough.
You may like to take into account that Palestine was heavily settled by Hurrians, an Anatolian people, during the 2nd millenium BC, and it's probably not the only north-south input of highlanders in the region.
At some point when Egyptians were raiding Canaan, the captives taken as booty were registered like 80% as "Hurrians".
( see more here : http://books.google.fr/books?id=HmTOoQmf23AC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=hurrians+canaan&source=bl&ots=9d-cS7oaG-&sig=MXq_Kg2rledruWofPB_-aLi3rjs&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=AR5uVPOGLcOxadzFgYAC&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=hurrians%20canaan&f=false )
We know btw, that the social/ethnic phenomenon known as "Apiru/Habiru" that is recorded in the Middle-East some centuries before the appearance of Hebrew states proper, involved people with both semitic and hurrian names, with a switching proportion depending on the location and time of the record.
All this could lead to take with a grain of salt the anatolian link among modern Jews as an indication that they descend mostly from converts from roman times.
We know the geocultural order of that time was very complex, so simple explanations might be inaccurate.
You can't totally refute later migrations from islamic times either. Genetics has well proven that all religious minorities in the middle-east have very "preserved" DNA, while neighbouring Muslim populations tend to be a lot more mixed, as they viewed themselves as a single religious superentity.
I tend to agree with you that the Palestinians are mainly indigenous though (more than the quite mixed Jews probably). This do not mean that THEY are the descendants of ancient Jews, though. The latter themselves made a point of differentiating themselves from their neighbours and many passages of the Bible insist on the purity of the ancestry through endogamy.
Ancient Jews may well have been Anatolian-linked from the beginning, and Palestinians may well be mostly descended from other peoples of that time who neighbored them.
I'm digressing but the various massacres between "Greeks" and Jews on Roman times may to some extent be a late expression of this old conflict between in fact Jews and hellenized old neighbours.
The question (follow the link at the "update" notice on top of the main entry) is that Palestinians are quite distinctive and diverse - possibly the most genetically diverse population of all Eurasia and quite distinct from any other neighbor - they are not "generic Arabs" at all, nor they are Syrians nor Talmudic Jews, nor anything else: they are diverse but also very unique. Meanwhile "Roman" Jews are homogeneous and not really different from Cypriot/Turks (other Jews have other origins such as Yemeni, etc.)
So the question is turning not so much about Jews (overly studied and invariably Anatolian-like in essence) but about Palestinians, who are unique and, sadly enough, poorly studied, particularly in their regional variation (Bedouins excepted).
This kind of information is not something we're going to get from the Israeli Academy or related researchers from Europe and the USA because there is major political interest interfering. Actually since it became evident that Western Jews are some sort of Anatolians, interest on research of genetic Jewishness has actually collapsed: they just can't demonstrate any significant origin in Palestine, rather the opposite, so those who act on ideological reasons are pressing against further research.
But the scientific question on Palestinians remains and does objectively demand a much more focused research. Hopefully at some point some independent academy (Turkish, Iranian, Chinese maybe?) will dedicate some resources to research this matter on how Palestinians, which are the interesting population rather than Jews, relate in the wider region, including modern Jews.
Personally I have little doubt, based on what I've seen that they are the actual ancient Jews. Regardless of the exact genesis of these ancient Jews (it's not like Palestinians absolutely lack "Highlander DNA", just that it's minor).
• “The wide meaning thus given to the term Semitic has been found necessary on account of the almost inextricable interrelationship between the Hamites and the Semites proper. Whether in Mesopotamia, in Palestine, in North Africa, or even in Arabia, the Hamites not only appear as the neighbors of the Semites, but as having generally been ethnologically absorbed by them. The bible indicates the close relationship existing between Hamites and Semites by representing the Cushites as children of Ham, and repeatedly applying the name Cush to peoples closely connected with Semites proper.” (Ripley, George and Dana, Charles A. The American Cyclopaedia, Vol. XIV. New York: D. Appleton and Company: 1875, pg. 760) Ripley and Dana inaccurately state that the Semites absorbed the Hamites. In reality, the opposite was true. In almost all cases, the Semites, when in close contact with the Hamites, became absorbed into the Hamitic group.
• Found in Rabbinic Hebrew tradition... the 8th century Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer (Chapter 23):
Noah brought his sons and his grandsons, and he blessed them with their (several) settlements, and he gave them as an inheritance all the earth. He especially blessed Shem and his sons, black but comely, and he gave them the inhabitable earth. He blessed Ham and his sons, black like a raven, and he gave them as an inheritance the coast of the sea. He blessed Japheth and his sons, they entirely white, and he gave them for an inheritance the desert and its fields; these (are the inheritances with) which he endowed them.[1]
• In the ancient world, Ethiopia was a vast expanse of land that was developed and controlled by members of the black race. The ancients knew the country by the name Cush (Kush). The word Cush means blackness. The name Ethiopia was applied later by the Greeks as a word used to describe the racial characteristics of the inhabitants of the lands that lay south of Egypt. (Dunston, Jr. Bishop Alfred G. The Black Man in the Old Testament. New Jersey: African World Press, 1992, pg. 14)
• The term Ethiopian was applied broadly to all Black people who inhabited Africa and Asia.[11] The Ancient Cushites ushered the dawn of civilization in by developing a high cultural society, which stretched from the Sudan to Eastern India. This is supported by the words of historian Sir E.A. Wallis Budge: “It seems certain that classical historians and geographers called the whole region from India to Egypt, both countries inclusive, by the name of Ethiopia, and in consequence they regarded all the dark skinned and black peoples who inhabited it as Ethiopians.” (Budge, Sir E.A. A History of Ethiopia, Vol. I. London: 1928, pgs, 1-2)
Count Volney, a French intellectual, stated that when using the term Ethiopians, they were using it to represent people of black complexion, thick lips and wooly hair. (Volney, Count C.F. The Ruins of Empire. Maryland: Black Classic Press, 1991, pg. 17)
• The Cushites are very important to our study of Abraham and the Hebrews because we will notice that everywhere that the Hebrew settles, there is always a very large Cushite presence around them. The Cushitic influence of their cultural development cannot be overstated. The Bible notes heavy crossbreeding and intermixture between the Cushites and the Semites. The descendants of Shem were blacks with long straight hair. (Lewis, Robert B. Light and Truth: Containing the Universal History of the Colored and Indian Race, from the Creation of the World to the Present Time. Boston: Published by a Committee of Colored Gentlemen, Benjamin F. Roberts, Printer, 1844, pg. 309)
• Sir E.A. Wallis Budge noted that, “Homer and Herodotus call all the peoples of the Sudan, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine and Western Asia and India Ethiopians.” (Budge, Sir Wallis E.A.History of Ethiopia, Vol. I. London: 1928, Preface) That the Ethiopians and the Egyptians were of the same racial stock is unquestionable. Traditionally, Ethiopia is seen as the mother of nations, who lent its culture to Egypt and many of the nations of Asia. (Parker, George Wells. The Children of the Sun. First Published 1918 by the Hamitic League of the World, republished 198, 1981 Chicago: Black Classic Press, pg. 4) George Rawlinson described the African Ethiopians as having “swart complexions, and their crisp or frizzled hair.” Whereas he quotes Herodotus who describes the Asiatic Ethiopians as “equally dark, but their hair was straight and not frizzle.” (Rawlinson, George. The Seven Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, Vol. I. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2002, pg. 35)
• Ethiopia and Egypt were linked culturally from the most ancient of times. The two countries were “originally peopled, contemporaneously, by the brothers, Misraim and Cush, and were long confederated under one government being similar people in politics and literature, etc.” (Armistead, Wilson. A Tribute for the Negro: Being a Vindication of the Moral, Intellectual, and Religious Capabilities of Coloured Portion of Mankind; with Particular Reference to the African Race. Manchester: William Irwin, 1848, pg. 122) The customs and opinions of the Ethiopians were the same as those of the Egyptians. (Kennedy, John. The Natural History of Man; or Popular Chapters on Ethnography, Vol. I. London: John Cassell, 1851, pg. 127)
• The Chaldeans were descendants of the Sumerians. The Egyptians considered the Chaldeans as a migrant colony of Egyptian astromer-priests. In biblical genealogies, Cush (Ethiopia) and Mizraim (Egypt) are brothers, and Cush begat Nimrod (Babylonia, i.e. Sumer). (Jackson, John G. Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization. Maryland: Black Classic Press, 1985, pg. 11)
• Sir Godfrey Higgins believed that the Chaldeans and the Colchians were the same people. Meanwhile Herodotus said, “The Egyptians said that they believed the Colchians to be descended from the army Sesostris. My own conjectures were founded, first, on the fact that they are blackskinned and have wooly hair.” (Herodotus. The History of Herodotus, Vol II. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1889, pg. 146) If Herodotus described the Colchians as “blackskinned” with “wooly hair” and Higgins believed that the Chaldeans and the Colchians were the same, then they must have had the same physical characteristics i.e. the Chaldeans were Black.
• In his book, The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, George Rawlinson stated that the Chaldeans were predominately Kushite. (Rawlinson, George. The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World- Vol. II. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1870, pg. 500) Professor Charles Seignobos of the University of Paris in his book History of Civilization sheds more light on the color of the Chaldeans: “It is within the limits of Asia and Africa that the first civilized people had their development-theEgyptians in the Nile Valley, the Chaldeans in the plains of the Euphrates. They were people of sedentary and peaceful pursuits. Their skin was dark, the hair short and thick, the lips strong. Nobody knows their origin with exactness, and scholars are not agreed on the name to give them (some term them Kushite, others Hamites).” (Seignobos, Charles. History of Ancient Civilization. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907, pg. 17)
• Drusilla Dunjee Houston notes that the art, science and culture of the earlier unmixed Chaldeans was Cushite. (Houston, Drusilla Dunjee. Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire. Oklahoma City: The Universal Publishing Company, 1926, pg. 163) She also writes that the records of the Hebrews connected the Chaldeans, Ethiopians, and Egyptians in ties of kinship. (ibid, pg. 162)
• The British Egyptologst, Gerald Massey, has this to say about the Chaldeans: The primitive Chaldeans and Babylonians were known to the Greeks by the names of Chaldeans and Kephenes. The Kephenes were synonymous with Ethiopians. They were descended from king Kepheus (A Book of the Beginnings, Vol, 2, p, 503).
• Tacitus, the first century Roman historian, insisted that Abraham was an Ethiopian. Tacitus wrote that it was common knowledge that the Hebrews originated in Ethiopia then left because of persecution by the Ethiopian King Cephus because of their belief in one God. (Al Mansour, Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tarq. Seven African Arabian Wonders of the World. San Francisco: The First African Arabian Press, 1991, pg. 119) Josephus, the famous Jewish historian, supports this claim. In his book Ethiopia and the Missing Link in African History Reverend Sterling Means cites Marcus Dourd: “This people (Jews) say their old writings are descended from the Chaldeans; they sojourned heretofore in Mesopotamia because they will not follow the gods of their fathers.” (Means, Rev. Sterling M. Ethiopia & The Missing Link in African History. Philadelphia: Hakim’s Publications, 1980, pg. 69)
• H. P. Blavatsky (1831-1891) was a author and co-founder of the Theosophical Society in 1875. She was a woman that traveled the earth to learn secrets of the world. She also was a racist woman, but she admits something very interesting about the ancient Chaldeans in her writings. She uses the term ASIATIC ETHIOPIANS. Check it out on pgs 330-332. Remember too that Abraham was from Ur of the Chaldees.
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v13/ph_025.htm
• Francois Lenormant, a French archaeologist wrote in Ancient History of the East, "The Canaanites at first lived near the Cushites, their brethren in race, on the banks of the Erythraean Sea, or Persian Gulf." (Lenormant, Francois. Ancient History of the East, Vol.II. London: Asher & Co., 1869, pg.144)
• From the earliest recorded times, the land of Canaan was inhabited by black people. The original inhabitants of Palestine, the Natufians, were black. Rev. Means quotes Josephus regarding the Canaanites: "That Canaan the fourth son of Ham inhabited the country now called Judea and called it from his Canaan and that Ragmus the Son of Canaan had two sons, one of which was Judadas and his descendants were called Judadean a nation of Western Ethiopians. The name, Judadean in short the term, is Judeans or Jews. The Hamite and Semites were one and the same people the Jews were a direct branch of the Ethiopian Race." (ibid, pg.34)
• "The earliest inhabitants of Assyria were unquestionably Black: “There were Cushite settlements all along the Southern shore of Arabia, and up the Persian Gulf, and in Babylonia and Assyria, and from there onward north and east to the banks of the Indus. They did not retain these possessions, but for a time there they were; and they have left signs of their presence in magnificent architectural remains, the ruins of which can be traced to this day.” (ibid, pg. 125)"
• Ethiopian colonists founded the Assyrian empires of Babylon and Nineveh. Sir Harry Johnston wrote: “In early Assyria, we come across images of a people with curliness of hair, together with a Negro eye and full lips.” (Johnston, Sir Harry. The Negro in the New World. London: Methuen & Co., 1910, pg. 27)
• Blacks held a high level of culture and civilization in the early annals of Assyrian history: “…there is no doubt but that on the banks of the Tigris dwelt a race known as the Cushite; and he adds, that it is necessary to admit into the history of the ancient world a third element, which is neither Semite nor Aryan, but which may be called Ethiopic or Cushite. The exhumed monuments of Babylon and Nineveh make it apparent that the Assyrian civilization had as little resemblance to Semitic as it had to Aryan civilization, and was of an earlier date than either. It was of the same lineage as that of Egypt, which partook largely of the Cushite element.” (M’Causeland, Dominick. The Builders of Babel. London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1871, pg. 41)
• In her book, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Drusilla Dunjee Houston noted that classical traditions connected the primitive inhabitants of Assyria, Chaldea and Susiana with Ethiopia. (Houston Druscilla Dunjee. Wonderful Ethiopians if the Ancient Cushite Empire. Oklahoma City: The Universal Publishing Company, 1926, pg. 171) Houston also wrote that Assyria’s leaders and teachers were the Cushite Arabians of the Hamitic race. (ibid, pg. 180) The Assyrians showed a distinct “Negroid” strain. (DuBois, W.E.B. The Negro. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1915, pg. 62) It was the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia that gave “curly hair and a Negroid type to Jew, Syrian, and Assyrian.” (ibid, pg. 12)
• Arabia was one of the earliest colonies of the ancient Cushite Empire of Ethiopians. (Houston, Drusilla Dunjee. Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire. Oklahoma City: The Universal Publishing Company, 1926, pg. 127)
• In a book entitled “A General History of the Several Nations of the World, From the Flood, to the Present Times”, Thomas Salmon wrote: “(The name Arabia) is derived according to some from Arabus, supposed to be the son of Apollo and Babylonia; others suppose it to be derived from the Hebrew word, Harabi, or Arabi, a thief or robber; and others are of opinion, it takes name from the word Arab, which in the Hebrew signifies Black, this country, being anciently called Ethiopia, as well as Abyssinia, which lies on the opposite shore of the Red Sea in Africa; and it seems probable, that it was originally inhabited by Ethiopians or Blacks, as will appear more evident, on examining its ancient history, either sacred or profane.” (Salmon, Thomas. A History of the Several Nations of the World, from the Flood to the Present Times. London: 1751, pg. 85)"
• Our exploration starts with Josephus who following the Hebrew writings tells us that in his time the descendants of Keturah or Qeturah coming from southern Arabia had settled the area of the “troglodytes” in the Horn of Africa, which in Josephus' era was also considered part of "Arabia".
John Murray states the following.
“Josephus ('A.J.' i. 15) tells us that the descendants of Keturah occupied the Troglodyte country and Arabia Felix, which statement is repeated by Jerome ('Qu. Heb. in Gen.').” The Holy Bible according to the authorized version (A.D.1611) published 1872.
What Josephus, Jerome and others documented were numerous “Hebrew” clans in sub-Saharan Africa found under the eponyms reminiscent of both children of Hagar and Keturah of the Hebrew Bible.
• Josephus in his commentary on the people wrote that Ashurim or Assurim was the child of “Yudadas” a people whom, according to him, were dwelling in ‘western Ethiopia’. Judadas, settled the Judadeans, a nation of the western Ethiopians, and left them his name; as did Sabas [Saba] to the Sabeans…” (See The New Complete Works of Josephus 1999, p.58, Book 1, Chapter 6). Arabia was considered Ethiopia by the Greeks. Within the last 500 years Arabized people largely of Syrian, Turkish and other foreign biological origin have intermixed with the original Arabs both within the peninsula and elsewhere and these mixed descendants now occupy a large swathe of the Arabian peninsula from north to south.
• Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees (Gen. 11, 31) Godfrey Higgins, a careful and reliable English antiquary says, “The Chaldees were originally Negroes.” (Anacalypsis, Vol. II, p. 364. New York, 1927)
• Higgins said that he acknowledged with "great difficulty" than Chaldeans were blacks too. But Let's quote him:
"...In consequence of the prejudice (for it is already prejudice)against the negro, or I ought to say, against the possibility of a negro, being learned and scientific, arising from an acquaintance with the present with the present Negro Character, I admit with great difficulty the theory of all the early astronomical knowledge of the chaldean having been acquired or invented by his race, and the Chaldees were originally Negroes..."
• Ibn Khaldun, who lived in the 13th century, a respected authority on Berber history testified about the Black Jews of Western Sudan with whom he personally interacted. The famous muslim geographer al-Idrisi, born in Ceuta, Spain in the 12th century, wrote extensively about Jewish Negroes in the Western Sudan. Black Jews were fully integrated and achieved pre-eminence in many West African kingdoms. For instance Jews were believed to have settled in great West African empires such as Songhai, Mali, Ghana and Kanem-Bornu empires. According to numerous accounts of contemporary visitors to the region several rulers, and administrators of the Songhai empire were of Jewish origins until Askia Muhammad came to power in 1492 and decreed that all Jews either convert to Islam or leave the region. See Ismael Diadie Haidara, “Les Juifs a` Timbouctou”, Recueil de sources relatives au commerce juif a Timbouctou au XIXe siecle, Editions Donniya, Bamako, 1999.
• In a book "Last sigh of Moor" published in 1995, the dark skinned Indoeuropean antireligious writer Salman Rushdie claims that according to Indian history books, first Jewish refugees, which in Antiquity have set their settlements in India, after Nabuchodonozor conquered their land in the 6th century BC, were... dark skinned, probably of NEGROIDAL RACE. (Remember that Moses had wife from the Medianite tribe, from the country of volcanos, which corresponds to Ethiopia of today.)
According to Salman Rushdie the second wave of Jewish emigration to India, after the destruction of Israel by Romans in 1-2nd century, consisted of WHITE JEWS. The third wave of Jewish emigration to India, which occured after 1482, when Queen Izabelle have thrown Jews out of Spain, arrived and settled at Cochin peninsula in Southern India, where was the capital of organized by vice-King Vasco da Gama Portuguese colony. According to the late 19 century Larousse Encyclopedia, Jews from the tropical Conchin were the most dark skinned Jews known at that time. Salman Rushdie claims that nearly all Jews from Conchin emigrated to Israel in the second half of 20 century.
• The noted Jewish historian, Josephus from his book The Great Roman-Jewish War: 66-70, where he writes about this Jewish dispersion and captivity. "General Vaspasian and his son Caesar Titus fought against the Jews. Millions of Jews fled into Africa, among other places, fleeing from Roman persecution and starvation during the siege."
• Historian Wilson Armistead states quite plainly: “The descendants of a colony of Jews, originally from Judea, settled on the coast of Africa, are black.” (A Tribute for the Negro: Being a Vindication of the Moral, Intellectual, and Religious Capabilities of the Colored Portion of Mankind; with Particular Reference to the African Race by Wilson Armistead. Manchester and London: W. Irwin, 1848, pg. 66)
• Sir Godfrey Higgins quoted Mr. Maurice: “The Yadavas were the most venerable emigrants from India; they were the blameless and pious Ethiopians, whom Homer mentions, and calls the remotest of mankind. Part of them, say the old Hindu writers, remained in this country; and hence we read of two Ethiopian nations, the Western and the Oriental. Some of them lived far to the East; and they are the Yadavas who stayed in India, while others resided far to the West. The fact of part of the tribe yet remaining in existence is one of the pieces of circumstances of this kind that I ground my system. They surpass all written evidence, for they cannot have been forged. This emigrating tribe of Yadu or Yuda, we shall find of the first importance, for they were no other than the Jews.” (Anacalypsis, Vol. I. by Sir Godfrey Higgins, London:1836, reprinted. Brooklyn:A&B Books Publishers, 1992, pg. 392) So we can clearly see in this passage that Maurice is stating that the Tribe of Yuda (Judah) and the “blameless and pious Ethiopians” were the same.
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