There are many published studies that attempt to use genetic markers to investigate past interrelationships of population groups. This blog gives a quick sample. In particular, the ancestry of modern Jews has been the subject of such studies and that is the topic of the article Genetic studies on Jews. The majority of studies, but not all, emphasize a Middle-Eastern genetic heritage of Jews, while differing in many details. Recently a geneticist Eran Elhaik at Johns Hopkins University published a study "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses" in the peer-reviewed journal Genome Biology and Evolution published by Oxford University Press. The paper can be read for free here. The paper is notable in that it concludes that a large part of the genetic heritage of East European Jews is from the Caucasus. This matches a well-known but hotly-contested historical theory but is at variance with most previous genetic studies. It should not need to be said that this topic matters very much to people involved in certain political/ideological debates which, however, don't belong on this noticeboard. The paper was published only a few weeks ago and has received some press attention [1] but it is too early to expect any considered academic response.
A few editors, one in particular, are invoking the Fringe theories guideline and WP:UNDUE to completely exclude Elhaik's article from Genetic studies on Jews and other articles. The argument can be mostly found at Talk:Genetic studies on Jews.
My case is thus:
Zero talk 09:01, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
A few responses to comments:
Recent sequencing of modern Caucasus populations prompted us to revisit the Khazarian Hypothesis and compare it with the Rhineland Hypothesis. We applied a wide range of population genetic analyses to compare these two hypotheses. Our findings support the Khazarian Hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry.
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I am sorry that I will take a little more space but as I am pediatrician with genetic specialization and as I participated in the dialogue I think I have to present my views. Contrary to Elhaik paper which is a genetic analysis using samples from Behar and al genetic study, there are 20+ genetic studies carried out on thousands of participants from each Jewish groups. All of this studies with one exception have concluded that all major Jewish groups have common Middle Eastern origin (as presented bellow) Our article Genetic studies on Jews presented only classical genetic studies Here we have one article (or analysis) which uses samples from one huge genetic study (Behar and all 2010) coming out with diametrically opposite results. Elhaik paper refer to Shlomo Sand book "The invention of the Jewish people" which is also considered marginal by many historians and the only scholar which responded as per proposed reference from Haaretz article was again Shlomo Sand. Haaretz states "The only scholar who agreed to give his opinion (and did so with great enthusiasm ) was Tel Aviv University professor of history Shlomo Sand", while Sand is not even a geneticist. According to Elhaik he used "innovative techniques" My problem with this is WP:UNDUE. I do not believe that this article can present this paper as a classical genetic study, and as its results are opposite from all results of classical genetic studies, I believe that here we have a WP:UNDUE question "Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention overall as the majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to the view of a significant minority, or to include that of a tiny minority, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject. This applies not only to article text, but to images, wikilinks, external links, categories, and all other material as well" More so, there are numerous other articles all in line with classical genetic studies, so to pick up only one article whose results are against all classical genetic study, to promote it to the rank of classical genetic (as currently only this genetic studies, related to Y, X, and Autosomes are presented) study and to present it in a way which would imply as there is a dispute between geneticists about the origin of Jewish people would be in my view WP:UNDUE violation.. Also,Elhaik paper was not published "just few weeks ago" it exists on web from at least summer 2012 as online document, and in numerous conspiarationist site as "evidence of Khazar origin of the Jews" however only few weeks ago it was published in specialized journal. Results of classical genetic studies:
flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non- Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.
"It is believed that the majority of contemporary Jews descended from the ancient Israelites that had lived in the historic land of Israel until ∼2000 years ago. Many of the Jewish diaspora communities were separated from each other for hundreds of years. Therefore, some divergence due to genetic drift and/or admixture could be expected. However, although Ashkenazi Jews were found to differ slightly from Sephardic and Kurdish Jews, it is noteworthy that there is, overall, a high degree of genetic affinity among the three Jewish communities. Moreover, neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic Jews cluster adjacent to their former host populations, a finding that argues against substantial admixture.In our sample, this low-level gene flow may be reflected in the Eu 19 chromosomes, which are found at elevated frequency (12.7%) in Ashkenazi Jews.. " [6]
"Here we show that within Americans of European ancestry there is a perfect genetic corollary of Jewish ancestry which, in principle, would permit near perfect genetic inference of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. In fact, even subjects with a single Jewish grandparent can be statistically distinguished from those without Jewish ancestry. We also found that subjects with Jewish ancestry were slightly more heterozygous than the subjects with no Jewish ancestry, suggesting that the genetic distinction between Jews and non-Jews may be more attributable to a Near-Eastern origin for Jewish populations than to population bottlenecks."
"A 2004 study by Shen et al. compared the Y-DNA and DNA-mt Samaritans of 12 men with those of 158 men who were not Samaritans, divided between 6 Jewish populations (Ashkenazi origin, Moroccan, Libyan, Ethiopian, Iraqi and Yemeni) and 2 non-Jewish populations from Israel (Druze and Arab). The study concludes that significant similarities exist between paternal lines of Jews and Samaritans, but the maternal lines differ between the two populations. The pair-wise genetic distances (Fst) between 11 populations from AMOVA applied to the Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial data. For the Y-chromosome, all Jewish groups, except for the Ethiopians, are closely related to each other. They do not differ significantly from Samaritans (0.041) and Druze (0.033), but are different from Palestinians (0.163), Africans (0.219), and Europeans (0.111). Nevertheless, the data in this study indicated that the Samaritan and Jewish Y-chromosomes have a greater affinity than do those of the Samaritans and their geographical neighbors, the Palestinians."
"We perform a genome-wide population-genetic study of Jewish populations, analyzing 678 autosomal microsatellite loci in 78 individuals from four Jewish groups together with similar data on 321 individuals from 12 non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations. ... We find that the Jewish populations show a high level of genetic similarity to each other, clustering together in several types of analysis of population structure. Further, Bayesian clustering, neighbor-joining trees, and multidimensional scaling place the Jewish populations as intermediate between the non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations. ... These results support the view that the Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry...Jewish populations show somewhat greater similarity" to Palestinians, Druze and Bedouins than to the European populations, the most similar to the Jewish populations is the Palestinian population".
"Ashkenazi Jews represent the largest Jewish community and traditionally trace their origin to the ancient Hebrews who lived in the Holy Land over 3000 years ago. Ashkenazi Jews are among the groups most intensively studied by population geneticists. Here, main genetic findings and their implications to the history of Ashkenazim are presented reflecting in a way major developments in population genetics as a discipline. Altogether, Ashkenazi Jews appear as a relatively homogenous population which has retained its identity despite nearly 2000 years of isolation and is closely related to other Jewish communities tracing their common origin to the Middle East."
In conclusion, we demonstrate that 46.1% (95% CI = 39–53%) of Cohanim carry Y chromosomes belonging to a single paternal lineage (J-P58*) that likely originated in the Near East well before the dispersal of Jewish groups in the Diaspora. Support for a Near Eastern origin of this lineage comes from its high frequency in our sample of Bedouins, Yemenis (67%), and Jordanians (55%) and its precipitous drop in frequency as one moves away from Saudi Arabia and the Near East (Fig. 4). Moreover, there is a striking contrast between the relatively high frequency of J-58* in Jewish populations (~20%) and Cohanim (~46%) and its vanishingly low frequency in our sample of non-Jewish populations that hosted Jewish diaspora communities outside of the Near East. An extended Cohen Modal Haplotype accounts for 64.6% of chromosomes with the J-P58* background, and 29.8% (95% CI = 23–36%) of Cohanim Y chromosomes surveyed here. These results also confirm that lineages characterized by the 6 Y-STRs used to define the original CMH are associated with two divergent sub-clades within haplogroup J and, thus, cannot be assumed to represent a single recently expanding paternal lineage. By combining information from a sufficient number of SNPs and STRs in a large sample of Jewish and non-Jewish populations we are able to resolve the phylogenetic position of the CMH, and pinpoint its geographic distribution. Our estimates of the coalescence time also lend support to the hypothesis that the extended CMH represents a unique founding lineage of the ancient Hebrews that has been paternally inherited along with the Jewish priesthood"
Lucotte G, David F, Berriche S. Source International Institute of Anthropology, Paris, France. Abstract DNA samples from Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews were studied with the Y-chromosome-specific DNA probes p49f and p49a to screen for restriction fragment length polymorphisms and haplotypes. Two haplotypes (VII and VIII) are the most widespread, representing about 50% of the total number of haplotypes in Jews. The major haplotype in Oriental Jews is haplotype VIII (85.1%); haplotype VIII is also the major haplotype in the Djerban Jews (77.5%) (Djerban Jews represent probably one of the oldest Jewish communities). Together these results confirm that haplotype VIII is the ancestral haplotype in Jews."
"Here, using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only 4 women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews. We conclude that four founding mtDNAs, likely of Near Eastern ancestry"
"...The results also reveal a finer population substructure in which each of 7 Jewish populations studied here form distinctive clusters - in each instance within group Fst was smaller than between group, although some groups (Iranian, Iraqi) demonstrated greater within group diversity and even sub-clusters, based on village of origin. By pairwise Fst analysis, the Jewish groups are closest to Southern Europeans (i.e. Tuscan Italians) and to Druze, Bedouins, Palestinians. Interestingly, the distance to the closest Southern European population follows the order from proximal to distal: Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian, which reflects historical admixture with local communities. STRUCTURE results show that the Jewish Diaspora groups all demonstrated Middle Eastern ancestry" The study examines genetic markers spread across the entire genome — the complete set of genetic instructions for making a human — and shows that the Jewish groups share large swaths of DNA, indicating close relationships. Comparison with genetic data from non-Jewish groups indicates that all the Jewish groups originated in the Middle East. From there, groups of Jews moved to other parts of the world in migrations collectively known as the Diaspora.
The study compared these Jewish groups with 1043 unrelated individuals from 52 world-wide populations. To further examine the relationship between Jewish communities and European populations 2407 European subjects were assigned and divided into 10 groups based on geographic region of their origin. This study confirmed previous findings of shared Middle Eastern origin of major Jewish groups and found that "the genetic connections between the Jewish populations became evident from the frequent IBD across these Jewish groups (63% of all shared segments). Jewish populations shared more and longer segments with one another than with non-Jewish populations, highlighting the commonality of Jewish origin. Among pairs of populations ordered by total sharing, 12 out of the top 20 were pairs of Jewish populations, and none of the top 30 paired a Jewish population with a non-Jewish one" "Each Jewish group demonstrated Middle Eastern ancestry and variable admixture from host population, while the split between Middle Eastern and European/Syrian Jews, calculated by simulation and comparison of length distributions of IBD segments, occurred 100–150 generations ago, as "compatible with a historical divide that is reported to have occurred more than 2500 years ago" as the Jewish community in Iraq and Iran were formed by Jews in the Babylonian and Persian empires during and after Babylonian exile. The main difference between Iraqi, Iranian and Ashkenazi Jews was the absence of south European component in this Middle Eastern Jewish groups. This study found that genetic dates "are incompatible with theories that Ashkenazi Jews are for the most part the direct lineal descendants of converted Khazars or Slavs" Citing Behar, Atzmon states that "Evidence for founder females of Middle Eastern origin has been observed in all Jewish populations based on non overlapping mitochondrial haplotypes with coalescence times >2000 years"
"The results shows that most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster with common genetic origin, that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired Diaspora host populations..."The most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant." In conclusion the authors are stating that the genetic results are concordant "with the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World"
A striking finding from our study is the consistent detection of 3–5% sub-Saharan African ancestry in the 8 diverse Jewish groups we studied, Ashkenazis (from northern Europe), Sephardis (from Italy, Turkey and Greece), and Mizrahis (from Syria, Iran and Iraq). This pattern has not been detected in previous analyses of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome data [7], and although it can be seen when re-examining published results of STRUCTURE-like analyses of autosomal data, it was not highlighted in those studies, or shown to unambiguously reflect sub-Saharan African admixture [15], [38]. We estimate that the average date of the mixture of 72 generations (~2,000 years assuming 29 years per generation [30]) is older than that in Southern Europeans or other Levantines. The point estimates over all 8 populations are between 1,600–3,400 years ago, but with largely overlapping confidence intervals. It is intriguing that the Mizrahi Irani and Iraqi Jews—who are thought to descend at least in part from Jews who were exiled to Babylon about 2,600 years ago [39], [40]—share the signal of African admixture. (An important caveat is that there is significant heterogeneity in the dates of African mixture in various Jewish populations.) A parsimonious explanation for these observations is that they reflect a history in which many of the Jewish groups descend from a common ancestral population which was itself admixed with Africans, prior to the beginning of the Jewish diaspora that occurred in 8th to 6th century BC
"North African Jews are more closely related to Jews from other parts of the world than they are to most of their non-Jewish neighbors in North Africa, a study has found. North African Jewish Populations Form Distinctive Clusters with Genetic Proximity to Each Other and to European and Middle Eastern Jewish Groups. SNP data were generated for 509 unrelated individuals (60.5% female) from the 15 Jewish populations (Table 1). These SNP data were merged with selected datasets from the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) to examine the genetic structure of Jewish populations in both global and regional contexts (Fig. 1 and SI Appendix, Fig. S1). The first two principal components of worldwide populations showed that the North African Jewish populations clustered with the European and Middle Eastern Jewish groups and European non-Jewish groups, but not with the North African non-Jewish groups, suggesting origins distinctive from the latter... The relationships of the Jewish communities were outlined further by the IBD sharing across populations [Fig. 3B and SI Appendix, Tables S1 (lower triangle) and S4], because the Jewish groups generally demonstrated closer relatedness with other Jewish communities than with geographically near non- Jewish populations." Beside this the current page do not have section for the "innovative techniques" as it presents only classical genetic studies which explore X, Y chromosomes and autosomal chromosomes. So my issue with this paper is WP:UNDUE. Excuse me for the huge space I took. Tritomex ( talk) 15:18, 3 January 2013 (UTC) |
I would like to echo Andy's sentiments. I believe it should remain in the article under the section "autosomal DNA", but definitely not in the intro. It should also be directly followed by links to critiques of his work by Razib Khan and others. Evildoer187 ( talk) 15:14, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
In population genetics it has not a single genetic study to back it, although over 20 genetic studies have been carried out on Jewish populations.-- Tritomex ( talk) 20:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
IMHO the problem with this article is that its encyclopaedic reason for existing is misplaced. It has in fact been turned into some sort of attempt to prove or disprove that modern Jewish populations are related to the ancient populations in the Eastern Mediterranean. Consider however that there are only three other ethnicities that have similar articles ( Tamils/ Sinhalese, and Serbs), but neither takes this approach. Moreover, the Article on Jews seeks to not only to self-define itself, but redefine the discipline within which it is ostensibly located. Consider the following:
Identifying that
gene flow among the Jews exists is a bit of a no-brainer given the
Jewish diaspora article.
No mention is made that Jews themselves are not united by 'blood', but by religious practice, which forms the basis of a converts' inclusion in the
Ethnoreligious group. What is then the significance of these studies, and why are they encyclopaedic other than for the purpose of attempting to 'prove' that modern Jews are not 'pure' genetically, something they freely admit, and which is codified in the
Torah! It sounds like an article seeking to define
who is a Jew.
Crock81 (
talk)
23:42, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Exactly the point I'm making. Your linking to a 'paper' not to Wikipedia and an encyclopedia. An encyclopedic article is very different from a paper which is usually created by suggesting a position, and then providing proof or support for that position. We cannot synthesize content, or provide support for a position. We are simply assembling information from sources that have been published. Tightening up the use of sources probably doesn't change the way this article is actually written.( olive ( talk) 23:49, 3 January 2013 (UTC))
Although my primary concern was WP:UNDUE I fully agree with Mangoe as there is no genetic study or scientific academic book from Human population genetics which supports Khazar Theory ( and which was described by historian Bernard Lewis as "This theory… is supported by no evidence whatsoever.." ) Elhaik paper has to be treated as a fringe primary source.-- Tritomex ( talk) 07:55, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and that brings the discussion full circle back to the point raised by ATG and olive that none of the published works (if I've understood them correctly) listed in the article in question represents a definitive scientific statement--all are hypothetical, primary level interpretations of raw data--and therefore the attempt to support any theoretical position on the basis of those sources would represent a WP:SYNTH statement.-- Ubikwit ( talk) 19:10, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Hi. Came to this late, but I have been involved in talk page discussions about this subject on the article talkpage, and also some similar arguments over the years when genetics articles have touched upon sensitive points. Some quick notes:
The second problem is the Khazarian Theory which is itself a fringe theory. As this theory is attractive in Anti-Semitic circles although considered mythological by historians like D.M. Dunlop and Bernard Lewis, this genetic paper was presented in numerous antisemitic sites like Stormfront and similar. Also this paper was available on line for at least many months. Third as blogs like those of Rhazib Khan spotted, there are numerous factual errors in the article like for example the description of Hungarians as "Slavic people" To summarize, We have here a genetic analysis using non standard procedure which is concluding the opposite from all genetic studies and academic books from population genetics which uses standard procedures, in support for a fringe history theory.-- Tritomex ( talk) 09:41, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Jits van Straten has nothing to do with Elhaik paper and he is not WP:RS for population genetics as he is not geneticist and he is not historian too.
The genetic origin of Jewish population, X, Y, autosomes have been examined and population genetic has its clues based on standard genetic studies and their results. You failed to provide any source that Khazar theory exist in population genetics, as I provided numerous academic sources stating the opposite.-- Tritomex ( talk) 23:18, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I asked you to provide an academic book from population genetics, or any genetic study which supports the Khazar theory.
your personal feelings that "This is a field of science with a lot of ideological pressure and spin on it"
**************************************
Could further comments please ignore all temptations to indulge in peripheral divagations and theories and whatever, and simply address the original request made bby Zero on the status of Elhaik's paper. Does it qualify as WP:Fringe? Thank you Nishidani ( talk) 18:53, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Can anyone actually come up with a rule-based argument for excluding a peer-reviewed scientific article in a prestigious academic journal? Come on, folks, this is pretty elementary wikicraft. Zero talk 00:43, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Other things usually should not be called pseudoscience on Wikipedia:
4. Alternative theoretical formulations: Alternative theoretical formulations from within the scientific community are not pseudoscience, but part of the scientific process. Such theoretical formulations may fail to explain some aspect of reality, but, should they succeed in doing so, will usually be rapidly accepted. For instance, the theory of continental drift was heavily criticised because there was no known mechanism for continents to move. When such a mechanism was discovered, it became mainstream as plate tectonics.
To determine whether something falls into the category of pseudoscience or merely an alternative theoretical formulation, consider this: Alternative theoretical formulations generally tweak things on the frontiers of science, or deal with strong, puzzling evidence—which is difficult to explain away—in an effort to create a model that better explains reality.
Hello everyone, after having read this page I just wanted to point out one quick thing some people here have mentioned that is simply not correct. If one goes over to a place like say "Stormfront" (I will not provide any links from there here for obvious reasons) one will see that a large bulk of the "Stormfront" users are not promoters of the Khazar hypothesis and actually cluster closer to certain ideologues on the Zionist side who appear to promote the idea of a separate "Jewish race" (of course "Stormfront" people and this other group, Zionists, clearly do so for their own separate reasons). For example Shlomo Sand has stated (as he comes up in these topics and Elhaik openly cites Sand's work); "'Their search for the origin of a common gene in order to characterize a people or a nation is very dangerous,' says Sand. With several reservations, he cites the example of the Germans, 'who also searched for a common component of blood ties.' The historical irony, he emphasizes, is expressed in the fact that 'whereas, in the past, anyone who defined the Jews as a race was vilified as an anti-Semite, today anyone who is unprepared to define them as a race is labeled an anti-Semite.'" So again certain users here who have said that Elhaik's study should be used "carefully" and that the Khazar hypothesis is allegedly used primarily by white supremacists are in my opinion not being completely factual (as of course a long list of scholars support the Khazar hypothesis, up to individuals like Eran Elhaik and Shlomo Sand today) and maybe even more crucially again one can see a large bulk of the white supremacists claiming Jews are their own separate "race" (something that Sand links to Zionist ideology itself). I end with a quote from academic Noel Ignatiev
[20] "The 'Jewish' population of Israel includes people from fifty countries, of different physical types, speaking different languages and practicing different religions (or no religion at all), defined as a single people based on the fiction that they, and only they, are descended from the Biblical Abraham. It is so patently false that only Zionists and Nazis even pretend to take it seriously."
Freudk (
talk)
09:22, 10 January 2013 (UTC)sock edits
There are many published studies that attempt to use genetic markers to investigate past interrelationships of population groups. This blog gives a quick sample. In particular, the ancestry of modern Jews has been the subject of such studies and that is the topic of the article Genetic studies on Jews. The majority of studies, but not all, emphasize a Middle-Eastern genetic heritage of Jews, while differing in many details. Recently a geneticist Eran Elhaik at Johns Hopkins University published a study "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses" in the peer-reviewed journal Genome Biology and Evolution published by Oxford University Press. The paper can be read for free here. The paper is notable in that it concludes that a large part of the genetic heritage of East European Jews is from the Caucasus. This matches a well-known but hotly-contested historical theory but is at variance with most previous genetic studies. It should not need to be said that this topic matters very much to people involved in certain political/ideological debates which, however, don't belong on this noticeboard. The paper was published only a few weeks ago and has received some press attention [1] but it is too early to expect any considered academic response.
A few editors, one in particular, are invoking the Fringe theories guideline and WP:UNDUE to completely exclude Elhaik's article from Genetic studies on Jews and other articles. The argument can be mostly found at Talk:Genetic studies on Jews.
My case is thus:
Zero talk 09:01, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
A few responses to comments:
Recent sequencing of modern Caucasus populations prompted us to revisit the Khazarian Hypothesis and compare it with the Rhineland Hypothesis. We applied a wide range of population genetic analyses to compare these two hypotheses. Our findings support the Khazarian Hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry.
Extended content
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I am sorry that I will take a little more space but as I am pediatrician with genetic specialization and as I participated in the dialogue I think I have to present my views. Contrary to Elhaik paper which is a genetic analysis using samples from Behar and al genetic study, there are 20+ genetic studies carried out on thousands of participants from each Jewish groups. All of this studies with one exception have concluded that all major Jewish groups have common Middle Eastern origin (as presented bellow) Our article Genetic studies on Jews presented only classical genetic studies Here we have one article (or analysis) which uses samples from one huge genetic study (Behar and all 2010) coming out with diametrically opposite results. Elhaik paper refer to Shlomo Sand book "The invention of the Jewish people" which is also considered marginal by many historians and the only scholar which responded as per proposed reference from Haaretz article was again Shlomo Sand. Haaretz states "The only scholar who agreed to give his opinion (and did so with great enthusiasm ) was Tel Aviv University professor of history Shlomo Sand", while Sand is not even a geneticist. According to Elhaik he used "innovative techniques" My problem with this is WP:UNDUE. I do not believe that this article can present this paper as a classical genetic study, and as its results are opposite from all results of classical genetic studies, I believe that here we have a WP:UNDUE question "Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention overall as the majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to the view of a significant minority, or to include that of a tiny minority, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject. This applies not only to article text, but to images, wikilinks, external links, categories, and all other material as well" More so, there are numerous other articles all in line with classical genetic studies, so to pick up only one article whose results are against all classical genetic study, to promote it to the rank of classical genetic (as currently only this genetic studies, related to Y, X, and Autosomes are presented) study and to present it in a way which would imply as there is a dispute between geneticists about the origin of Jewish people would be in my view WP:UNDUE violation.. Also,Elhaik paper was not published "just few weeks ago" it exists on web from at least summer 2012 as online document, and in numerous conspiarationist site as "evidence of Khazar origin of the Jews" however only few weeks ago it was published in specialized journal. Results of classical genetic studies:
flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non- Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.
"It is believed that the majority of contemporary Jews descended from the ancient Israelites that had lived in the historic land of Israel until ∼2000 years ago. Many of the Jewish diaspora communities were separated from each other for hundreds of years. Therefore, some divergence due to genetic drift and/or admixture could be expected. However, although Ashkenazi Jews were found to differ slightly from Sephardic and Kurdish Jews, it is noteworthy that there is, overall, a high degree of genetic affinity among the three Jewish communities. Moreover, neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic Jews cluster adjacent to their former host populations, a finding that argues against substantial admixture.In our sample, this low-level gene flow may be reflected in the Eu 19 chromosomes, which are found at elevated frequency (12.7%) in Ashkenazi Jews.. " [6]
"Here we show that within Americans of European ancestry there is a perfect genetic corollary of Jewish ancestry which, in principle, would permit near perfect genetic inference of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. In fact, even subjects with a single Jewish grandparent can be statistically distinguished from those without Jewish ancestry. We also found that subjects with Jewish ancestry were slightly more heterozygous than the subjects with no Jewish ancestry, suggesting that the genetic distinction between Jews and non-Jews may be more attributable to a Near-Eastern origin for Jewish populations than to population bottlenecks."
"A 2004 study by Shen et al. compared the Y-DNA and DNA-mt Samaritans of 12 men with those of 158 men who were not Samaritans, divided between 6 Jewish populations (Ashkenazi origin, Moroccan, Libyan, Ethiopian, Iraqi and Yemeni) and 2 non-Jewish populations from Israel (Druze and Arab). The study concludes that significant similarities exist between paternal lines of Jews and Samaritans, but the maternal lines differ between the two populations. The pair-wise genetic distances (Fst) between 11 populations from AMOVA applied to the Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial data. For the Y-chromosome, all Jewish groups, except for the Ethiopians, are closely related to each other. They do not differ significantly from Samaritans (0.041) and Druze (0.033), but are different from Palestinians (0.163), Africans (0.219), and Europeans (0.111). Nevertheless, the data in this study indicated that the Samaritan and Jewish Y-chromosomes have a greater affinity than do those of the Samaritans and their geographical neighbors, the Palestinians."
"We perform a genome-wide population-genetic study of Jewish populations, analyzing 678 autosomal microsatellite loci in 78 individuals from four Jewish groups together with similar data on 321 individuals from 12 non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations. ... We find that the Jewish populations show a high level of genetic similarity to each other, clustering together in several types of analysis of population structure. Further, Bayesian clustering, neighbor-joining trees, and multidimensional scaling place the Jewish populations as intermediate between the non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations. ... These results support the view that the Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry...Jewish populations show somewhat greater similarity" to Palestinians, Druze and Bedouins than to the European populations, the most similar to the Jewish populations is the Palestinian population".
"Ashkenazi Jews represent the largest Jewish community and traditionally trace their origin to the ancient Hebrews who lived in the Holy Land over 3000 years ago. Ashkenazi Jews are among the groups most intensively studied by population geneticists. Here, main genetic findings and their implications to the history of Ashkenazim are presented reflecting in a way major developments in population genetics as a discipline. Altogether, Ashkenazi Jews appear as a relatively homogenous population which has retained its identity despite nearly 2000 years of isolation and is closely related to other Jewish communities tracing their common origin to the Middle East."
In conclusion, we demonstrate that 46.1% (95% CI = 39–53%) of Cohanim carry Y chromosomes belonging to a single paternal lineage (J-P58*) that likely originated in the Near East well before the dispersal of Jewish groups in the Diaspora. Support for a Near Eastern origin of this lineage comes from its high frequency in our sample of Bedouins, Yemenis (67%), and Jordanians (55%) and its precipitous drop in frequency as one moves away from Saudi Arabia and the Near East (Fig. 4). Moreover, there is a striking contrast between the relatively high frequency of J-58* in Jewish populations (~20%) and Cohanim (~46%) and its vanishingly low frequency in our sample of non-Jewish populations that hosted Jewish diaspora communities outside of the Near East. An extended Cohen Modal Haplotype accounts for 64.6% of chromosomes with the J-P58* background, and 29.8% (95% CI = 23–36%) of Cohanim Y chromosomes surveyed here. These results also confirm that lineages characterized by the 6 Y-STRs used to define the original CMH are associated with two divergent sub-clades within haplogroup J and, thus, cannot be assumed to represent a single recently expanding paternal lineage. By combining information from a sufficient number of SNPs and STRs in a large sample of Jewish and non-Jewish populations we are able to resolve the phylogenetic position of the CMH, and pinpoint its geographic distribution. Our estimates of the coalescence time also lend support to the hypothesis that the extended CMH represents a unique founding lineage of the ancient Hebrews that has been paternally inherited along with the Jewish priesthood"
Lucotte G, David F, Berriche S. Source International Institute of Anthropology, Paris, France. Abstract DNA samples from Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews were studied with the Y-chromosome-specific DNA probes p49f and p49a to screen for restriction fragment length polymorphisms and haplotypes. Two haplotypes (VII and VIII) are the most widespread, representing about 50% of the total number of haplotypes in Jews. The major haplotype in Oriental Jews is haplotype VIII (85.1%); haplotype VIII is also the major haplotype in the Djerban Jews (77.5%) (Djerban Jews represent probably one of the oldest Jewish communities). Together these results confirm that haplotype VIII is the ancestral haplotype in Jews."
"Here, using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only 4 women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews. We conclude that four founding mtDNAs, likely of Near Eastern ancestry"
"...The results also reveal a finer population substructure in which each of 7 Jewish populations studied here form distinctive clusters - in each instance within group Fst was smaller than between group, although some groups (Iranian, Iraqi) demonstrated greater within group diversity and even sub-clusters, based on village of origin. By pairwise Fst analysis, the Jewish groups are closest to Southern Europeans (i.e. Tuscan Italians) and to Druze, Bedouins, Palestinians. Interestingly, the distance to the closest Southern European population follows the order from proximal to distal: Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian, which reflects historical admixture with local communities. STRUCTURE results show that the Jewish Diaspora groups all demonstrated Middle Eastern ancestry" The study examines genetic markers spread across the entire genome — the complete set of genetic instructions for making a human — and shows that the Jewish groups share large swaths of DNA, indicating close relationships. Comparison with genetic data from non-Jewish groups indicates that all the Jewish groups originated in the Middle East. From there, groups of Jews moved to other parts of the world in migrations collectively known as the Diaspora.
The study compared these Jewish groups with 1043 unrelated individuals from 52 world-wide populations. To further examine the relationship between Jewish communities and European populations 2407 European subjects were assigned and divided into 10 groups based on geographic region of their origin. This study confirmed previous findings of shared Middle Eastern origin of major Jewish groups and found that "the genetic connections between the Jewish populations became evident from the frequent IBD across these Jewish groups (63% of all shared segments). Jewish populations shared more and longer segments with one another than with non-Jewish populations, highlighting the commonality of Jewish origin. Among pairs of populations ordered by total sharing, 12 out of the top 20 were pairs of Jewish populations, and none of the top 30 paired a Jewish population with a non-Jewish one" "Each Jewish group demonstrated Middle Eastern ancestry and variable admixture from host population, while the split between Middle Eastern and European/Syrian Jews, calculated by simulation and comparison of length distributions of IBD segments, occurred 100–150 generations ago, as "compatible with a historical divide that is reported to have occurred more than 2500 years ago" as the Jewish community in Iraq and Iran were formed by Jews in the Babylonian and Persian empires during and after Babylonian exile. The main difference between Iraqi, Iranian and Ashkenazi Jews was the absence of south European component in this Middle Eastern Jewish groups. This study found that genetic dates "are incompatible with theories that Ashkenazi Jews are for the most part the direct lineal descendants of converted Khazars or Slavs" Citing Behar, Atzmon states that "Evidence for founder females of Middle Eastern origin has been observed in all Jewish populations based on non overlapping mitochondrial haplotypes with coalescence times >2000 years"
"The results shows that most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster with common genetic origin, that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired Diaspora host populations..."The most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant." In conclusion the authors are stating that the genetic results are concordant "with the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World"
A striking finding from our study is the consistent detection of 3–5% sub-Saharan African ancestry in the 8 diverse Jewish groups we studied, Ashkenazis (from northern Europe), Sephardis (from Italy, Turkey and Greece), and Mizrahis (from Syria, Iran and Iraq). This pattern has not been detected in previous analyses of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome data [7], and although it can be seen when re-examining published results of STRUCTURE-like analyses of autosomal data, it was not highlighted in those studies, or shown to unambiguously reflect sub-Saharan African admixture [15], [38]. We estimate that the average date of the mixture of 72 generations (~2,000 years assuming 29 years per generation [30]) is older than that in Southern Europeans or other Levantines. The point estimates over all 8 populations are between 1,600–3,400 years ago, but with largely overlapping confidence intervals. It is intriguing that the Mizrahi Irani and Iraqi Jews—who are thought to descend at least in part from Jews who were exiled to Babylon about 2,600 years ago [39], [40]—share the signal of African admixture. (An important caveat is that there is significant heterogeneity in the dates of African mixture in various Jewish populations.) A parsimonious explanation for these observations is that they reflect a history in which many of the Jewish groups descend from a common ancestral population which was itself admixed with Africans, prior to the beginning of the Jewish diaspora that occurred in 8th to 6th century BC
"North African Jews are more closely related to Jews from other parts of the world than they are to most of their non-Jewish neighbors in North Africa, a study has found. North African Jewish Populations Form Distinctive Clusters with Genetic Proximity to Each Other and to European and Middle Eastern Jewish Groups. SNP data were generated for 509 unrelated individuals (60.5% female) from the 15 Jewish populations (Table 1). These SNP data were merged with selected datasets from the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) to examine the genetic structure of Jewish populations in both global and regional contexts (Fig. 1 and SI Appendix, Fig. S1). The first two principal components of worldwide populations showed that the North African Jewish populations clustered with the European and Middle Eastern Jewish groups and European non-Jewish groups, but not with the North African non-Jewish groups, suggesting origins distinctive from the latter... The relationships of the Jewish communities were outlined further by the IBD sharing across populations [Fig. 3B and SI Appendix, Tables S1 (lower triangle) and S4], because the Jewish groups generally demonstrated closer relatedness with other Jewish communities than with geographically near non- Jewish populations." Beside this the current page do not have section for the "innovative techniques" as it presents only classical genetic studies which explore X, Y chromosomes and autosomal chromosomes. So my issue with this paper is WP:UNDUE. Excuse me for the huge space I took. Tritomex ( talk) 15:18, 3 January 2013 (UTC) |
I would like to echo Andy's sentiments. I believe it should remain in the article under the section "autosomal DNA", but definitely not in the intro. It should also be directly followed by links to critiques of his work by Razib Khan and others. Evildoer187 ( talk) 15:14, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
In population genetics it has not a single genetic study to back it, although over 20 genetic studies have been carried out on Jewish populations.-- Tritomex ( talk) 20:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
IMHO the problem with this article is that its encyclopaedic reason for existing is misplaced. It has in fact been turned into some sort of attempt to prove or disprove that modern Jewish populations are related to the ancient populations in the Eastern Mediterranean. Consider however that there are only three other ethnicities that have similar articles ( Tamils/ Sinhalese, and Serbs), but neither takes this approach. Moreover, the Article on Jews seeks to not only to self-define itself, but redefine the discipline within which it is ostensibly located. Consider the following:
Identifying that
gene flow among the Jews exists is a bit of a no-brainer given the
Jewish diaspora article.
No mention is made that Jews themselves are not united by 'blood', but by religious practice, which forms the basis of a converts' inclusion in the
Ethnoreligious group. What is then the significance of these studies, and why are they encyclopaedic other than for the purpose of attempting to 'prove' that modern Jews are not 'pure' genetically, something they freely admit, and which is codified in the
Torah! It sounds like an article seeking to define
who is a Jew.
Crock81 (
talk)
23:42, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Exactly the point I'm making. Your linking to a 'paper' not to Wikipedia and an encyclopedia. An encyclopedic article is very different from a paper which is usually created by suggesting a position, and then providing proof or support for that position. We cannot synthesize content, or provide support for a position. We are simply assembling information from sources that have been published. Tightening up the use of sources probably doesn't change the way this article is actually written.( olive ( talk) 23:49, 3 January 2013 (UTC))
Although my primary concern was WP:UNDUE I fully agree with Mangoe as there is no genetic study or scientific academic book from Human population genetics which supports Khazar Theory ( and which was described by historian Bernard Lewis as "This theory… is supported by no evidence whatsoever.." ) Elhaik paper has to be treated as a fringe primary source.-- Tritomex ( talk) 07:55, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and that brings the discussion full circle back to the point raised by ATG and olive that none of the published works (if I've understood them correctly) listed in the article in question represents a definitive scientific statement--all are hypothetical, primary level interpretations of raw data--and therefore the attempt to support any theoretical position on the basis of those sources would represent a WP:SYNTH statement.-- Ubikwit ( talk) 19:10, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Hi. Came to this late, but I have been involved in talk page discussions about this subject on the article talkpage, and also some similar arguments over the years when genetics articles have touched upon sensitive points. Some quick notes:
The second problem is the Khazarian Theory which is itself a fringe theory. As this theory is attractive in Anti-Semitic circles although considered mythological by historians like D.M. Dunlop and Bernard Lewis, this genetic paper was presented in numerous antisemitic sites like Stormfront and similar. Also this paper was available on line for at least many months. Third as blogs like those of Rhazib Khan spotted, there are numerous factual errors in the article like for example the description of Hungarians as "Slavic people" To summarize, We have here a genetic analysis using non standard procedure which is concluding the opposite from all genetic studies and academic books from population genetics which uses standard procedures, in support for a fringe history theory.-- Tritomex ( talk) 09:41, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Jits van Straten has nothing to do with Elhaik paper and he is not WP:RS for population genetics as he is not geneticist and he is not historian too.
The genetic origin of Jewish population, X, Y, autosomes have been examined and population genetic has its clues based on standard genetic studies and their results. You failed to provide any source that Khazar theory exist in population genetics, as I provided numerous academic sources stating the opposite.-- Tritomex ( talk) 23:18, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I asked you to provide an academic book from population genetics, or any genetic study which supports the Khazar theory.
your personal feelings that "This is a field of science with a lot of ideological pressure and spin on it"
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Could further comments please ignore all temptations to indulge in peripheral divagations and theories and whatever, and simply address the original request made bby Zero on the status of Elhaik's paper. Does it qualify as WP:Fringe? Thank you Nishidani ( talk) 18:53, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Can anyone actually come up with a rule-based argument for excluding a peer-reviewed scientific article in a prestigious academic journal? Come on, folks, this is pretty elementary wikicraft. Zero talk 00:43, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Other things usually should not be called pseudoscience on Wikipedia:
4. Alternative theoretical formulations: Alternative theoretical formulations from within the scientific community are not pseudoscience, but part of the scientific process. Such theoretical formulations may fail to explain some aspect of reality, but, should they succeed in doing so, will usually be rapidly accepted. For instance, the theory of continental drift was heavily criticised because there was no known mechanism for continents to move. When such a mechanism was discovered, it became mainstream as plate tectonics.
To determine whether something falls into the category of pseudoscience or merely an alternative theoretical formulation, consider this: Alternative theoretical formulations generally tweak things on the frontiers of science, or deal with strong, puzzling evidence—which is difficult to explain away—in an effort to create a model that better explains reality.
Hello everyone, after having read this page I just wanted to point out one quick thing some people here have mentioned that is simply not correct. If one goes over to a place like say "Stormfront" (I will not provide any links from there here for obvious reasons) one will see that a large bulk of the "Stormfront" users are not promoters of the Khazar hypothesis and actually cluster closer to certain ideologues on the Zionist side who appear to promote the idea of a separate "Jewish race" (of course "Stormfront" people and this other group, Zionists, clearly do so for their own separate reasons). For example Shlomo Sand has stated (as he comes up in these topics and Elhaik openly cites Sand's work); "'Their search for the origin of a common gene in order to characterize a people or a nation is very dangerous,' says Sand. With several reservations, he cites the example of the Germans, 'who also searched for a common component of blood ties.' The historical irony, he emphasizes, is expressed in the fact that 'whereas, in the past, anyone who defined the Jews as a race was vilified as an anti-Semite, today anyone who is unprepared to define them as a race is labeled an anti-Semite.'" So again certain users here who have said that Elhaik's study should be used "carefully" and that the Khazar hypothesis is allegedly used primarily by white supremacists are in my opinion not being completely factual (as of course a long list of scholars support the Khazar hypothesis, up to individuals like Eran Elhaik and Shlomo Sand today) and maybe even more crucially again one can see a large bulk of the white supremacists claiming Jews are their own separate "race" (something that Sand links to Zionist ideology itself). I end with a quote from academic Noel Ignatiev
[20] "The 'Jewish' population of Israel includes people from fifty countries, of different physical types, speaking different languages and practicing different religions (or no religion at all), defined as a single people based on the fiction that they, and only they, are descended from the Biblical Abraham. It is so patently false that only Zionists and Nazis even pretend to take it seriously."
Freudk (
talk)
09:22, 10 January 2013 (UTC)sock edits