Could Western Jews (Ash. and Seph.) descend from Aegeans and Levantine admixture?

[Erikl86]

I've recently tried to find the best fit for Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews on nMonte, using Eurogenes Basal-rich K7 data.

These are the results I got:

[1] "distance%=0.0677 / distance=0.000677"

Ashkenazi_Jew:average

Minoan_Lasithi:I0070 42.35
Iran_ChL:I1661 22.05
French_East:French24434 20.60
Minoan_Odigitria:I9131 7.85
Mycenaean:I9041 4.00
Levant_N:I1704 2.40
Iran_ChL:I1665 0.65

Overall Bronze Age Levant - ~25%.
Ancient Aegeans - ~54%
Eastern French (Rhineland French) - 20.6%




[1] "distance%=0.0135 / distance=0.000135"

Sephardic_Jew:average

Mycenaean:I9006 10.20
Minoan_Lasithi:I0074 9.05
Iran_ChL:I1665 9.05
French_South:SouthFrench3326 8.60
Mycenaean:I9010 8.50
Iran_ChL:I1661 8.40
Minoan_Lasithi:I0071 7.90
Iran_ChL:I1662 7.25
French_South:SouthFrench3947 5.90
Minoan_Odigitria:I9130 5.15
Levant_N:I0867 5.10
Levant_N:I1704 4.40
Minoan_Odigitria:I9131 4.25
Minoan_Lasithi:I0073 3.60
Mycenaean:I9041 2.65

Overall Bronze Age Levantine - ~34% (10% higher than Ashkenazi Jews).
Ancient Aegeans - ~51%.
South French (very close genetically to North Eastern Spanish people like Catalans) - 14.5%.

These are the closest fits I got to both Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews. Neolithic Levantines + CHL Iranians are basically Bronze Age Levantines, based on Haber et al. 2017 study:

We computed the statistic f4(Levant_N,
Sidon_BA; Ancient Eurasian, Chimpanzee) and found populations from the Caucasus and Iran shared
more alleles with Sidon_BA than with Neolithic Levant (Figure 2A). We then used qpAdm8
(with parameter allsnps: YES) to test if Sidon_BA can be modelled as mixture of Levant_N and any other
ancient population in the dataset and found good support for the model of Sidon_BA being a mixture
of Levant_N (48.4± 4.2%) and Iran_ChL (51.6± 4.2%) (Figure 2B; Table S3).

From the look of it, I can't but come to the conclusions that both communities, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, are the descendants of Hellenistic Jews, which were basically a mixture of Southern, mainly Greek and Greco-Roman converts with Levantine Jews, centuries before the destruction of the second temple occurred.

According to historical sources, up to 10% of the Roman empire was Jewish, and in the Eastern half districts - up to 25% (!) of the population was Jewish.

To understand the extent of how popular Judaism became among Greeks (especially women, as the pain of circumcision and the social ramifications of having no foreskin seem to have deterred many men from fully converting) since the 2nd century BC, culminating in the 1st century AD, here’s what wikipedia has to say about the issue:

As Jews emigrated and settled in the Roman provinces of the Empire, Judaism became an appealing religion to a large number of Pagans, for many reasons; God-fearers and proselytes that underwent full conversion were Greeks or Romans, and came from all social classes: they were mostly women and freedmen (liberti), but there were also artisans, soldiers and few people of high status, like patricians and senators.

And one of the reasons why mainly women converted:

The rite of circumcision was especially unpopular in Classical civilization because it was the custom to spend an hour a day or so exercising in the nude in the gymnasium, and males did not want to be seen in public deprived of their foreskins. Hellenistic and Roman culture found circumcision to be cruel and repulsive.

And this is another source:

During the Hellenistic and early Roman period (323 B.C. to 70 A.D.), the Jews were apparently extraordinarily successful in winning converts. Natural increase alone can hardly account for the vast growth in Jewish population, since there is no evidence that the population of the world at large had increased significantly during this period or that health conditions had improved or that Jews had previously been practicing birth control. On the basis of Biblical and archaeological data, Salo estimates that Judea, which contained the major part of the Jewish population at the time of the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C., had no more than 150,000 Jews. By the middle of the first century A.D. he estimates(8) that the world Jewish population had risen to about eight million. In the Roman empire, he suggests, every tenth inhabitant was a Jew. The most likely explanation of this increase is proselytism, as alluded to by numerous references in Philo, Josephus, the New Testament, Greek and Roman writers and the Talmud.(9) One may cite as samples the statements that “We are much more numerous, and like the Jews we shall force you to join our throng” (Horace, Satires 1.4.142–143), and “The Holy One, blessed be He, sent Israel into exile among the nations only for the purpose of acquiring converts” (Talmud, Pesahim 87b).(10)

I believe this makes a strong historical case that the Mediterranean admixture of Western Jews (Ashkenazi and Sephardic) is with ancient Aegean people, rather than Italians, and happened prior to the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 AD.

However, the strangest thing is the closeness to Cretan Minoans rather than Mycaneans. I've asked myself where could Western Jews could have gotten such a high Minoan admixture. Some of it is probably due to nMonte difficulty to distinguish between Mycenaean and Minoan when the two populations are mixed, but some of it might be due to perhaps Minoan origins. Then it hit me - the Philistines most probable place of origin was Crete, although their culture Mycenaean.

Perhaps the admixture between Judeans and ancient Aegean people happened in three phases:

1. Earlier one - from the beginning of the interactions between the people of the southern Kingdom of Judah with the Philistines, which were from Crete, the origin of the Minoans (but themselves were Mycenaean-influenced because they have arrived long after the Minoans have been already absorbed by the Mycenaeans). This happened from around the 11th century BC all the way to the 6th century BC.

2. Middle one - more substantial than the earlier one - from after the Babylonian diaspora, when Philistines have disappeared as separate people - that happened around the 5th-6th centuries BC. They have probably been absorbed with the remaining southern Judeans.

3. A late one - much more substantial than the other two - since the earliest days of Hellenism around the 4th century BC, culminating in Hellenistic, Greek speaking Jewish communities all over the Levant, Egypt, Asia minor, Greek Islands, and southern Italy. Most Greeks that would settle in the Levant during the 4th century BC would still be mostly Mycenaean genetically.

After that, there was probably also a little bit of admixture with non-Greek Italic people (Latin Romans basically) and then both communities started out early in the Early Medieval Ages from Jews immigrating north from Italy to France, with the split happening by the Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula - Sephardic Jews are the Jews which lived in south West France, Ashkenazi Jews are the Jews which lived in Eastern France. Their main non-Mediterranean European component seem to be of French origins.

There is one issue which I've yet managed to work around, and is the timing of when the admixture with southern Europeans happened.

According to a study from 2016, the timing of the admixture with southern Europeans, mainly southern Italians, between 35-55 generations ago (500-1000 AD), and this their conclusions:

What is perhaps surprising is the timing of the Southern European admixture to ≈31-52 generations
ago, since Jews are known to have resided in Italy already since antiquity. This result would then imply
no gene flow between Jews and local Italian populations until the turn of the millennium, either due to
endogamy, or because the group that eventually gave rise to contemporary Ashkenazi Jews did not
reside in Southern Europe until that time. More detailed or alternative interpretations are left for future
studies.

What if the solution is not that the Jews didn't mix with local Italians, but that until 31-52 generations ago, there was little Greek gene flow into the rest of southern Italians?

Until 640-750 AD, most southern Italy and Sicily were still controlled by Greek speaking Byzantine Empire, and Greek was still spoken by the majority of people in some southern areas in Italy and Sicily all the way to the 11th century.

After the Lombards conquered the rest of Italy, and then were absorbed by the Frankish empire in the 9th century, the area began a process of Latinization, which while was occurring before in small amounts, accelerated immensely after Southern Italy and Sicily were completely disconnected from the Byzantine Empire.

That would mean those Greek people were then absorbed into general Latin-speaking population. But that was only the start of a gradual absorption of Italian-Greeks into the rest of the population - after the Muslim conquest of Sicily and continuous raids by Muslims on continental Italy, many Christians (of mainly Greek ancestry, as was the case for southern Italy and Sicily) fled to mainland Italy and further north.

Sicily itself took more than 3 decades to be conquered by Muslims.

I believe this integration and movement of southern, mainly Greek background, Italians with the rest of non-Greek Italians, actually took place in that time frame - 500-1000 AD. Before that, while of course there was some exchange of population, Greek was an official language of the Roman Empire (even after the split, it was still official in both halves of the empire) and so Greek speaking people could have kept their identity as such and had no pressure at all to speak any other language (all official Roman positions dictated that you'd know both Greek and Latin).

Perhaps then, "This result would then imply no gene flow between Jews and local Italian populations until the turn of the millennium, either due to endogamy, or because the group that eventually gave rise to contemporary Ashkenazi Jews did not reside in Southern Europe until that time." actually means that Greek and Phoenician admixture with Italians didn't occur in large amounts until the turn of the 1st millennium AD, thus creating the illusion that Jews didn't mix with local population there - they did, it's just that their European admixture was Mycenaean-Greek, and that admixture didn't occur among Italians until after the absorption of the Magnea Grecia by Latin-Italy around the turn of the millennium.

[Agamemnon]

"According to historical sources, up to 10% of the Roman empire was Jewish"

Which historical sources exactly? I keep seeing this claim, but nobody ever shows proof of this.

As for your scenario, while it isn't impossible, it certainly is unlikely. Overfitting is obviously an issue in your model here.

[Eihwaz]

That is literally the most overfitted model I've ever seen, with so many interrelated populations...

[vettor]

"According to historical sources, up to 10% of the Roman empire was Jewish"

Which historical sources exactly? I keep seeing this claim, but nobody ever shows proof of this.

As for your scenario, while it isn't impossible, it certainly is unlikely. Overfitting is obviously an issue in your model here.

Thats a ver high %.....considering the empire ruked about 13M

Maybe its a ficticous religous number since there was only jews and "pagans" at that tlme...pre-christians

[Tz85]

I've recently tried to find the best fit for Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews on nMonte, using Eurogenes Basal-rich K7 data.

These are the results I got:

[1] "distance%=0.0677 / distance=0.000677"

Ashkenazi_Jew:average

Minoan_Lasithi:I0070 42.35
Iran_ChL:I1661 22.05
French_East:French24434 20.60
Minoan_Odigitria:I9131 7.85
Mycenaean:I9041 4.00
Levant_N:I1704 2.40
Iran_ChL:I1665 0.65

Overall Bronze Age Levant - ~25%.
Ancient Aegeans - ~54%
Eastern French (Rhineland French) - 20.6%




[1] "distance%=0.0135 / distance=0.000135"

Sephardic_Jew:average

Mycenaean:I9006 10.20
Minoan_Lasithi:I0074 9.05
Iran_ChL:I1665 9.05
French_South:SouthFrench3326 8.60
Mycenaean:I9010 8.50
Iran_ChL:I1661 8.40
Minoan_Lasithi:I0071 7.90
Iran_ChL:I1662 7.25
French_South:SouthFrench3947 5.90
Minoan_Odigitria:I9130 5.15
Levant_N:I0867 5.10
Levant_N:I1704 4.40
Minoan_Odigitria:I9131 4.25
Minoan_Lasithi:I0073 3.60
Mycenaean:I9041 2.65

Overall Bronze Age Levantine - ~34% (10% higher than Ashkenazi Jews).
Ancient Aegeans - ~51%.
South French (very close genetically to North Eastern Spanish people like Catalans) - 14.5%.

These are the closest fits I got to both Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews. Neolithic Levantines + CHL Iranians are basically Bronze Age Levantines, based on Haber et al. 2017 study:


From the look of it, I can't but come to the conclusions that both communities, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, are the descendants of Hellenistic Jews, which were basically a mixture of Southern, mainly Greek and Greco-Roman converts with Levantine Jews, centuries before the destruction of the second temple occurred.

According to historical sources, up to 10% of the Roman empire was Jewish, and in the Eastern half districts - up to 25% (!) of the population was Jewish.

To understand the extent of how popular Judaism became among Greeks (especially women, as the pain of circumcision and the social ramifications of having no foreskin seem to have deterred many men from fully converting) since the 2nd century BC, culminating in the 1st century AD, here’s what wikipedia has to say about the issue:



And one of the reasons why mainly women converted:



And this is another source:



I believe this makes a strong historical case that the Mediterranean admixture of Western Jews (Ashkenazi and Sephardic) is with ancient Aegean people, rather than Italians, and happened prior to the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 AD.

However, the strangest thing is the closeness to Cretan Minoans rather than Mycaneans. I've asked myself where could Western Jews could have gotten such a high Minoan admixture. Some of it is probably due to nMonte difficulty to distinguish between Mycenaean and Minoan when the two populations are mixed, but some of it might be due to perhaps Minoan origins. Then it hit me - the Philistines most probable place of origin was Crete, although their culture Mycenaean.

Perhaps the admixture between Judeans and ancient Aegean people happened in three phases:

1. Earlier one - from the beginning of the interactions between the people of the southern Kingdom of Judah with the Philistines, which were from Crete, the origin of the Minoans (but themselves were Mycenaean-influenced because they have arrived long after the Minoans have been already absorbed by the Mycenaeans). This happened from around the 11th century BC all the way to the 6th century BC.

2. Middle one - more substantial than the earlier one - from after the Babylonian diaspora, when Philistines have disappeared as separate people - that happened around the 5th-6th centuries BC. They have probably been absorbed with the remaining southern Judeans.

3. A late one - much more substantial than the other two - since the earliest days of Hellenism around the 4th century BC, culminating in Hellenistic, Greek speaking Jewish communities all over the Levant, Egypt, Asia minor, Greek Islands, and southern Italy. Most Greeks that would settle in the Levant during the 4th century BC would still be mostly Mycenaean genetically.

After that, there was probably also a little bit of admixture with non-Greek Italic people (Latin Romans basically) and then both communities started out early in the Early Medieval Ages from Jews immigrating north from Italy to France, with the split happening by the Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula - Sephardic Jews are the Jews which lived in south West France, Ashkenazi Jews are the Jews which lived in Eastern France. Their main non-Mediterranean European component seem to be of French origins.

There is one issue which I've yet managed to work around, and is the timing of when the admixture with southern Europeans happened.

According to a study from 2016, the timing of the admixture with southern Europeans, mainly southern Italians, between 35-55 generations ago (500-1000 AD), and this their conclusions:



What if the solution is not that the Jews didn't mix with local Italians, but that until 31-52 generations ago, there was little Greek gene flow into the rest of southern Italians?

Until 640-750 AD, most southern Italy and Sicily were still controlled by Greek speaking Byzantine Empire, and Greek was still spoken by the majority of people in some southern areas in Italy and Sicily all the way to the 11th century.

After the Lombards conquered the rest of Italy, and then were absorbed by the Frankish empire in the 9th century, the area began a process of Latinization, which while was occurring before in small amounts, accelerated immensely after Southern Italy and Sicily were completely disconnected from the Byzantine Empire.

That would mean those Greek people were then absorbed into general Latin-speaking population. But that was only the start of a gradual absorption of Italian-Greeks into the rest of the population - after the Muslim conquest of Sicily and continuous raids by Muslims on continental Italy, many Christians (of mainly Greek ancestry, as was the case for southern Italy and Sicily) fled to mainland Italy and further north.

Sicily itself took more than 3 decades to be conquered by Muslims.

I believe this integration and movement of southern, mainly Greek background, Italians with the rest of non-Greek Italians, actually took place in that time frame - 500-1000 AD. Before that, while of course there was some exchange of population, Greek was an official language of the Roman Empire (even after the split, it was still official in both halves of the empire) and so Greek speaking people could have kept their identity as such and had no pressure at all to speak any other language (all official Roman positions dictated that you'd know both Greek and Latin).

Perhaps then, "This result would then imply no gene flow between Jews and local Italian populations until the turn of the millennium, either due to endogamy, or because the group that eventually gave rise to contemporary Ashkenazi Jews did not reside in Southern Europe until that time." actually means that Greek and Phoenician admixture with Italians didn't occur in large amounts until the turn of the 1st millennium AD, thus creating the illusion that Jews didn't mix with local population there - they did, it's just that their European admixture was Mycenaean-Greek, and that admixture didn't occur among Italians until after the absorption of the Magnea Grecia by Latin-Italy around the turn of the millennium.

Jews were dwelling in Southern Italy pre 1st century, and have the oldest Jewish community outside of West Asia. I don't think the Aegean people have a stronger case at all. Imo

[kingjohn]

i also think the southern european admixture that western jews have is more
italian than greek
i saw some living dna results of full aschenazi jews they dont score aegean in the complete mode
but they do score south italy , tuscany, and some north italy
about the non -southern european ancestery in ashkenazim on this i agree with you more than likely french.....

[Erikl86]

"According to historical sources, up to 10% of the Roman empire was Jewish"

Which historical sources exactly? I keep seeing this claim, but nobody ever shows proof of this.

As for your scenario, while it isn't impossible, it certainly is unlikely. Overfitting is obviously an issue in your model here.

If I switch from nMonte2, to nMonte3, and for example add Polish to Ashkenazi Jews, I get the following:

[1] "distance%=0.3267"

Ashkenazi_Jew:average

Mycenaean,28
Minoan_Lasithi,20.6
Iran_ChL,19
Polish,10.8
Levant_N,9.8
Minoan_Odigitria,6.4
French_East,5.4

Still, Bronze Age Levantine (N_Levant + CHL_Iran) is 30%, Ancient Aegean is 55%, and North/East European is around 15%.
The fit is still pretty good - 0.3267%.

Please explain why is it just over-fit to you? And why unlikely?

Also, consider all the quotes I gave, and that Jewish proselytism was very active at the time.

As for the source of Jewish demographics:

The 13th-century author Bar Hebraeus gave a figure of 6,944,000 Jews in the Roman world Salo Wittmayer Baron considered the figure convincing.[22] The figure of seven million within and one million outside the Roman world in the mid-first century became widely accepted, including by Louis Feldman. However, contemporary scholars now accept that Bar Hebraeus based his figure on a census of total Roman citizens. The figure of 6,944,000 being recorded in Eusebius' Chronicon, although this number is seen by modern scholarship as huge exaggeration.[23]: 90, 94, 104–05[24] Louis Feldman, previously an active supporter of the figure, now states that he and Baron were mistaken.[25]: 185 Philo gives a figure of one million Jews living in Egypt. John R. Bartlett rejects Baron's figures entirely, arguing that we have no clue as to the size of the Jewish demographic in the ancient world.[23]: 97–103 The Romans did not distinguish between Jews inside and outside of the Land of Israel/Judaea. They collected an annual temple tax from Jews both in and outside of Israel. The revolts in and suppression of diaspora communities in Egypt, Libya and Crete in 115–117 CE had a severe impact on the Jewish diaspora.

Source: Jewish diaspora article on wikipedia.

[Erikl86]

Going back to nMonte2, and dropping most of the East French and Minoans, and the Polish:

[1] "distance%=0.0819 / distance=0.000819"

Ashkenazi_Jew:average

Minoan_Lasithi:I0070 34.30
Iran_ChL:I1661 20.10
French_East:French24434 19.60
Mycenaean:I9041 17.25
Levant_N:I1704 8.75

Again, same statistics:
BA Levantine - ~29%
BA Aegean people - ~52%
East French (Rhineland) - ~19%

Distance of 0.081%.

Also, the closeness between Italkim (Italian Jews) rite and Romanoites (ancient origins, Greek-speaking Jews) makes me believe perhaps Italkim has their origins in Romanoites that dwelled in the Italian peninsula from Roman times.

[kingjohn]

the sefharadi jewish run of yours is logic
also i also saw it in eurogenes k13 4 populations
that balkan sefharadi need the french basque for the complete fit
you are correct that this is the european source in sefhardi {my self score 6% southwest europe in dna land and gencove
and my mom even higher} that is pointing that you are correct .....

[Erikl86]

i also think the southern european admixture that western jews have is more
italian than greek
i saw some living dna results of full aschenazi jews they dont score aegean in the complete mode
but they do score south italy , tuscany, and some north italy
about the non -southern european ancestery in ashkenazim on this i agree with you more than likely french.....

When I do change to the more "traditional" admixture, of Bronze Age Levantines, using modern Tuscans as a model for the Mediterranean admixture, I get higher distance (again, nMonte2):

[1] "distance%=0.1844 / distance=0.001844"

Ashkenazi_Jew:average

Levant_N:I1704 27.20
Italian_Tuscan:NA20509 23.20
Iran_ChL:I1661 18.10
French_East:French24434 16.20
Levant_N:I1699 8.05
Italian_Tuscan:NA20799 7.25

Bronze Age Levantines: 53%
Tuscans: 30.4%
East French (Rhineland): 16.2%.

However, I have a problem with the attitude of using modern Italians as a proxy, for several reasons:
1. Tuscans might be mixed with assimilated Greek people from Italian south.
2. Modern Italians, even Tuscans, have Middle Eastern admixture from assimilated southern Italians, which might make them closer than they are.
3. If I try to model Sephardic Jews with Tuscans, they get much further away. The genetic similarity between Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews is well documented, they cluster almost the same. So, if the Mediterranean admixture doesn't fit, it means they have different origins.

Check out Sephardic Jews with Tuscan and South French admixture (nMonte2):

[1] "distance%=0.134 / distance=0.0134"

Sephardic_Jew:average

Levant_N,35.4
Italian_Tuscan,24.2
Iran_ChL,23.2
French_South,17.2

This gives Southern French way too much admixture, and the distance is further away from say:

[1] "distance%=0.071 / distance=0.0071"

Sephardic_Jew:average

Mycenaean,34.2
Iran_ChL,20.4
Minoan_Lasithi,17.4
French_South,10.2
Minoan_Odigitria,9
Levant_N,8.8

While using ancient Aegean as the core Mediterranean component, you get the same basic Levantine admixture (29.4%), but European admixture is more shifted to Mediterranean (Aegean - 61%) vs Northern (10% French).

And the distance is now 0.07%.

Modern south Italians and Sicilians should cluster so close to Jews precisely because of my explanation:

Levantine admixture in Italians is probably due to Phoenician colonies in Sicily and South Italy dating some 3500 years ago, and then of course Carthage, which was a Phoenician empire centered in North Africa, controlled Sicily for centuries all the way to 150 BC, the last Punic War.

And later on, there was the Emirate of Sicily from 830-1090, about 260 years (almost 10 generations of Arab-Berber rule).

I would say a lot of Levantine, North African (J2 and E1b1 haplogroups) admixture in Sicily and southern Italy, along side Greek populations. Hence why modern Sicilians would cluster close to Jews. Add to that the fact that until 1800s they were ruled by a Norman kingdom from Northern Europe, which resulted in about 7% of Sicilians carrying North European haplogroups.

Mycenaean Greeks + Near Easterns + small amount of North Europeans, would indeed make them cluster even closer to Ashkenazi Jews than modern Greek Islanders would, and this is what we see.