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

[passenger]

And what’s the evidence for a possible Romaniote substrate? Thanks.

At least according to those brief overviews it doesn't seem that the local Romaniote population would have made a substantial contribution. There is probably a Romaniote component among Rhodes Sephardim, but rather than being specific to Rhodes, I think it's most likely the same Romaniote component you would find among other Eastern Sephardim, since the island's Jewish population was basically replaced in the sixteenth century by settlers from elsewhere in Greece and Turkey, plus some newly arrived conversos.

[hartaisarlag]

According to the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World:



The Encyclopedia's entry on Rhodes is written by Marc Angel, who lists the following sources:



Also, you have this page, which gives some more detail:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org...h-history-tour

Knew you'd come through! Muito obrigado.

[TheIncredibleHulk]

According to the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World:



The Encyclopedia's entry on Rhodes is written by Marc Angel, who lists the following sources:



Also, you have this page, which gives some more detail:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org...h-history-tour

In 1944, during World War II, the entire Jewish community was deported by the Nazis; only about 150 survived the concentration camps. A few Jews still live in Rhodes and maintain the synagogue building and museum.

That's the saddest thing in this paragraph to say the least. Btw, the name, Malki, means king in Arabic. It's pronounced as Malik, and it was a common Arabic name among the Nabatean kings along with Arethas(Hellenized Arabic name for 7aritha or al-7arith) and Obodas(again, hellenized Arabic name for 3obaydah which is still common Arabic name today btw). Obodas I for example went into war against the Hasmonean Jews in the Golan Heights 2,000 years ago, and built a city in the Negev in his honor, Avdat or 3abdah in Hebrew and Arabic respectively which the king was believed to be buried there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avdat

And yes, this is from the same site where the Eyn Avdat(3eyn al-3abdah) a mixed bi-lingual inscription was found(Nabatean Aramaic and Nabatean Arabic) as well. The Nabatean Arabic was consintuned to be spoken in the Levant until the 7th century AD which was converged with the old Arabic dialects of Arabia according to Ahmad al-Jallad like the Petra Papyri from the late 6th century D:

"The last attestation of Nabataean Arabic occurs in the Petra Papyri, 6th c. CE. These documents record many Arabic words in Greek transcription from the city of Petra. After this period, it seems Nabataean Arabic was replaced by dialects coming from the Peninsula."

https://twitter.com/Safaitic/status/1003649806164774913

Sorry for the off-topic post.

[AppalachianGumbo]

I'm just going to throw this in. Perhaps it was addressed in the comments at some point. A lot of comments to go through.

On 23andMe, there was a member which was Italian. After the update in 2012 to Ancestry Comp., he came back as 25% Ashkenazi with the bal. Italian. To his knowledge there was no known Jewish ancestor.
When he asked 23andMe about this, he was told due to the similarity/overlap in genome between Italian and Ash Jews, was the reason. The Ashkenazi may not be real. If there is overlap, is this a small minority
of Italians due to sampling.

I don't know what his results yield today. However, either he does have Ashkenazi or as 23andMe said, the population(s) has a genetic overlap. It would be interesting if anyone else ever received this result.

[CyrylBojarski]

I'm just going to throw this in. Perhaps it was addressed in the comments at some point. A lot of comments to go through.

On 23andMe, there was a member which was Italian. After the update in 2012 to Ancestry Comp., he came back as 25% Ashkenazi with the bal. Italian. To his knowledge there was no known Jewish ancestor.
When he asked 23andMe about this, he was told due to the similarity/overlap in genome between Italian and Ash Jews, was the reason. The Ashkenazi may not be real. If there is overlap, is this a small minority
of Italians due to sampling.

I don't know what his results yield today. However, either he does have Ashkenazi or as 23andMe said, the population(s) has a genetic overlap. It would be interesting if anyone else ever received this result.

I am sure, that after 5.9 update they can differ Italian from Ashkenazi Jewish much more accurate, than in 2012. I have Italian person in matches, scores 99.8% Italian and 0.2% AJ and I match him on segment, which I match other full Ashkenazi Jews and Latin Americans, so that means minority of Southern Italians have this heritage

[jkotl0327]

I'm just going to throw this in. Perhaps it was addressed in the comments at some point. A lot of comments to go through.

On 23andMe, there was a member which was Italian. After the update in 2012 to Ancestry Comp., he came back as 25% Ashkenazi with the bal. Italian. To his knowledge there was no known Jewish ancestor.
When he asked 23andMe about this, he was told due to the similarity/overlap in genome between Italian and Ash Jews, was the reason. The Ashkenazi may not be real. If there is overlap, is this a small minority
of Italians due to sampling.

I don't know what his results yield today. However, either he does have Ashkenazi or as 23andMe said, the population(s) has a genetic overlap. It would be interesting if anyone else ever received this result.

Given how accurately they tend to identify Ashkenazi it seems much more likely that he just had a Jewish grandparent than it being a mistake. G25? Gedmatch?

[rober_tce]

With new versions 5.2 and 5.9, Ashkenazi Jewish markers are easily differenciated of italian admixture.

[CyrylBojarski]

Deleted

[Seabass]

23andme is really a total joke! You're not really all that Levantine unless your Greek Orthodox, Maronite. Muslim, Palestinian or Samaritan? Forget about it . . .

Sharing V5.9 results below of a 3/4 Samaritan 1/4 Ashkenazi.

V5.9 3 Samaritan 1 Ashkenazi GP.JPG

[23abc]

23andme is really a total joke! You're not really all that Levantine unless your Greek Orthodox, Maronite. Muslim, Palestinian or Samaritan? Forget about it . . .

Sharing V5.9 results below of a 3/4 Samaritan 1/4 Ashkenazi.

V5.9 3 Samaritan 1 Ashkenazi GP.JPG

It's basically rubbish unless your ethnic group is a reference population. Since v5.9 is now available on older kits, it became clearer. One of my matches that was 40% Southern Euro (mostly Italian %) and 60% West Asian (Cypriot, Iranian and Broadly %) and now went to over 90% West Asian, which is now 40% Anatolian, 30 something % Cypriot and rest Broadly WANA %. From the same village, two full siblings who share a little over 50% DNA have an over 65% disparity in the %'s they score in various categories. For example, one scores 50% Cypriot while the other scores 30%, one scores 20% Anatolian while the other scores 1% Anatolian, one scores 13% Balkan and the other scores less than 1% Balkan. Adding the absolute differences of all the differences exceeds 65% which is clearly impossible since they share over 50% DNA they are expected to be 50% identical. And it's not like they are siblings of recently mixed origins, they are many generations from the same village in Rhodes, so that kind of difference shows that if you're not a reference population the results are very random.

I'm assuming Levantine Christians are the reference population for the 23andMe Levantine category which is why they are the ones who are mainly getting 100% Levantine. If all Samaritan results look like this, I doubt they have any Samaritans in the reference population.