Jews' Deep DNA Ancestry: Bubba, Where and Who Did We Come From?

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

All of us on this planet are humans, called Homo Sapiens. We all have a common ancestor who lived about 115,000 years ago.   We are all identical by 99.9%.  That little 0.1% is what makes us different from each other, giving scientists called geneticists the ability to find out who we came from and where that happened.  They discovered that our evolutionary cousins, the great apes, have in their genes more of a variation in their genes than we have.  Actually, "The recent sequencing of the gorilla,  chimpanzee and bonobo genomes confirms that supposition and provides a clearer view of how we are connected:  chimps and bonobos in particular take pride of place as our nearest living relatives, sharing approximately 99 percent of our DNA, with gorillas trailing at 98 percent.Sep 1, 2014.  What makes us truly human, so unique,  is all in that little 0.1% of our genes.  

In a sense, we humans are all related to each other.  Our Biblical story is that we came from Adam and Eve, so are, but we sure split up into clans quick enough.  Many of us, like the Jews, have become an endogamous people, people living close to each other for long spells and have intermarried with each other at different generations.  Europe was like that with most people being endogamous being transportation was so primitive.  People developed similar characteristics, making them identifiable to a certain extent.
                                                                           

Our direct ancestor was called Homo erectus who left Africa about 1.8 million years ago and settled in Central and East Asia where the weather was condusive to life being tropical and subtropical.   They died out about 100,000 years ago.  The Neandertal's ancestors left Africa about 500,000 years ago and they died out.  Before they did, they had mated in Israel about 50,000 60,000 years ago.    Excavations in Israel's Keara Cave on Mount Carmel have unearthed Neandertal skeletons as recent as 60,000 years old, showing that both lived together and were both hominids.  Early Homo sapiens who went into the Middle East about 110,000 years ago died out 30,000 years later.

10,000 years ago the world population was about only a few million humans that were hunters and gatherers of food. That would have been about 8,000 BCE.  Abraham was born about 1,948 BCE.  

 They were able to spread themselves across the world's habitable continents of that time because of having to follow herds for food, and of course, good weather.  Today we have about 7 billion people on earth.  By the middle of this 21st century, it will be about 10 billion humans.

Beginning  about 7,000 years ago in the fertile crescent, agriculture was invented by some creative woman whose job it was to gather food.  It beat hunting all the time and going hungry.  It beat searching for food.  There is was, growing by your home.  The idea was passed from human to human and changed SE Europe as well about 5,000 years ago.

                                                                           

Jacob and his 2 wives, 2 concubines, and 12 sons and 1 daughter, making
up the 12 Tribes of Jacob, or the Jewish people who come from Judah and Benjamin, two of the sons.
  

5,000 years ago Egypt was a force to behold.  They had warm weather and the Nile River, and were part of the fertile crescent. They had agriculture.   Near Egypt lie Canaan, where Abraham went from Ur in today's Iraq.  We have the Jewish development told to us in the 5 Books of Moses.  Moses led the Israelites that were slaves for 400 years back to Canaan, their original homeland before the drought that drove them to Egypt.

 Scientists use the terms NEAR EAST and   MIDDLE EAST as to where haplogroup's origins were located.  .
 "The Near East is the eastern Mediterranean region once dominated by the Ottoman Empire. Middle East—the newest of the three terms—originally referred to everything between the other two Easts (Mesopotamia to Burma), but it now usually denotes the Near East in addition to Afghanistan, Iran, and the Arabian peninsula.
                                                                             

The inventor of agriculture most likely was a woman carrying the J haplogroup of her mt dna 10,000 years ago who  had many descendants and they spread out into Europe.  Her line is found at high frequency in the Middle East, but is harder to find as you get into Europe, but  is one of the major haplogroups in Denmark and Britain today, showing how agriculture ideas spread.
                                                                           

Homo Sapiens that are now ancestors of the R1b Gentile Y haplogroup who live in modern western Europe today had started wandering into Europe around 35,000 years ago where they met another hominid living there, the Neandertals.  Neandertals first appeared in Europe around 200,000 years ago.  They had been living in the intense cold of the European ice ago and it had molded them into highly cold-adapted beings with thick trunks and heavy bones showing their struggle to survive adaptability.  These new homo sapiens were tall and thin and used cultural adaptations they had to learn like warm clothing to live in this new cold climate.  Neandertals lived around 500,000 years ago and is known by names such as Homo antecessor, Homo heidelbergensis and Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa.   The tall modern man met his cousin on the snowy fields of central France and probably thought they were some sort of primitive animal, but they had sexual encounters with them that produced children, showing there was enough alike to produce results.  .  Skeletons have been found showing detail from both groups.  I myself carry 2.9% of my genes from Neandertal ancestors.
                                                                          .......................

One of the 4 major female Ashkenazi Jewish founder lineages is called the mt haplogroup of N1. 

                                                                               

Destruction by Romans of our 2nd Temple in 70 CE
Here they are having looted Solomon's Temple. Many Jews were  killed
and much of remainder  marched to Rome.  

 The founding of this population took place in the Rhine Basin and experienced a big growth in population there, possibly because of the mild climate and easy food production.  The Ashkenazi Jews-from the fleeing from Jerusalem's destruction in 70 CE and entering Europe in about 1,000 CE  had 25,000 population in about 1300 CE. 

In 1290, Jews were expulsed from England until 1655.By 1306 Jews were expulsed from France.

By 1355, 12,000 Jews were massacred by the mob in Toledo, Spain. 

 In the 300 years of living in Europe, about 12 generations had gone by.  Ten generations can produce 1,024 ancestors for one person; 512 females and 512 males.  I might remind the reader that since 1776, the birth of the USA, only 240 years have gone by.  Many Jews living in Europe had been brutally killed by the native population. 

Line-up of Jews in Europe in the Holocaust to be carried in
trains to death camps. Note the boy wearing the star of David.
All Jews had to do so.  

  By the 1900s, the 20th century, there were about 8,500,000 Ashkenazi Jews in Europe.  

There had been a lot of expulsions, pogroms and of course it was figured on the brink of WWII which killed 6 million Jews.  I dare say that by 1945, there were hardly any Jews left in Europe at all.  Those left alive must have been living in Great Britain, certainly not Germany or Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, etc.
                                                   

Ann Curry, from Today show has mt haplogroup N99.
Born in 1956 in Guam, she was raised in Oregon among other places
and graduated from U of O in journalism.  Her mtdna comes from
her Japanese mother, so N did spread to other areas.  She's not Jewish.  

About half of all Ashkenazi Jews trace their mt haplogroup back to one of 4 women and N1 is one of them. 

 It is seldom found in a non-Ashkenazi population.  It does appear in 3% or higher in people from the Levant, Arabia and Egypt, where Jews have also lived.  Today, haplogroup N1 is the 2nd most common in Ashkenazi Jews and is shared by around 800,000 people.  I must say that  I have  found people matching my DNA to bear this mt haplogroup, though many testing have not tested for their own haplogroup. I have matches of N1b and N1b2.   N1b is one of the 4 haplogroups Ashkenazi Jews have as a clan ancestor.  

N1 was not a beginning mt haplogroup.  It grew out of the more ancient line of L1 to L2 to L3 to N and then to N1, so let's look at our very ancient heritage.  Humans are said to have originated in Africa.  This must be the Garden of Eden.  It was during the Middle Stone Age about 200,000 years ago.  Not until 50,000 to 70,000 years ago with the onset of the Late Stone Age (Paleolithic) that signs of modern human behavior emerge.  Eve was of the Late Stone Age.  Her children moved around Africa and split into 2 groups.  The older group is L0.  The younger group was L1 who left Africa and populated the rest of the world.  L0 stayed in Africa.  L3 were born and kept moving northward, leaving Africa.  10% of the Middle Eastern population are made of them and they caused 2 important haplogroups that went onto populate the rest of the world.  L3 gave rise to M-- 60,000 years ago. and is considered an Asian lineage.  It is found in high frequencies eat of the Arabian Peninsula.  None are in the Levant of the Middle East like Lebanon.  They are 15% of the population around the southern Arabian Peninsula. They are also prevalent
 among people in the southern parts of Pakistan and NW India making up about 30- 60 50% of the mt gene pool.

They were the first women of SW Asia.  N's early members lived in the eastern Meditterranean region and western Asia, living among other hominids like the Neandertals. 

Today, descendants of N who had headed west are prevalent in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean.  They are found farther east in parts of central Asia and the Indus Valley of Pakistan and India.  Some headed north out of the Levant across the Caucasus Mountains and have remained in SE Europe and the Balkans.  They went on to populate the rest of Europe, and today are the most frequent mt lineage found there.
                                                                   

My aunt Elsie, with W haplogroup
mother born in Lazdijai, Suwalki, Lithuania/Poland

My own paternal grandmother was a W haplogroup as found in female descendants of her.  W branches off of N. They migrated into Europe from the Middle East.  Those who still live in the Middle East today have more divergent lineages than those found in northern Europe because of the Jews' ability to find other Jewish mates. It shows that those still living in the Middle East were there for a long period of time and have accumulated more mutations.  Early members of this haplogroup W likely moved north across the Caucasus mountains during the Middle Upper Paleolithic Era.  The  Aurignacian culture is also associated with W members.  This means that they had significant innovations in tool manufacture and invention.  Their people began using a broader set of tool types, such as end-scrapers for preparing animal skins and tools for woodworking.  They used stone like everyone else but then used bone, ivory, antler and shells to make tools.  Jewelry shows status, and is in this culture as well.  they had bracelets and pendants made of shells, teeth, ivory and carved bone.  This shows the beginnings of a more complex social organization.

Haplogroup K constitutes 3 of the 4 major Ashkenazi Jewish founder lineages. The 4 women would have lived in Europe from c.1,000-1,300 CE onward.  It has nothing to do with Sarah, Leah, Rebecca and Rachel, our 4 matriarchs. 

 K has N as an ancestor.  She is a branch off of R that is N's branch.  K has a lot of genetic diversity but probably lived about 20,000 years ago and her descendants have been parents of several different subgroups.  They harbor specific European, northern Africa and Indian components and are found in Arabia, the northern Caucasus Mountains and throughout the Middle East.Many of my matches are K.  Most moved northward out of the Middle East.  They crossed the rugged Caucasus Mountains in southern Russia and moved onto the steppes of the Black Sea.  I have matches of K1a, K, and K1a1b1a depending on the extent of their tests.
                                                                       

Haplogroup J is also one of Eve's children that only women can pass onto her children, following the line from L1 to L2 to L3 to N to R and then to J. The confusing aspect is that the males also have a haplogroup J which is their Cohen gene.  Our female J lived sometime around 40,000-45,000  years ago.  It has a very wide distribution and is present as far east as the Indus Valley bordering India and Pakistan and as far south as the Arabian Peninsula, and is also common in eastern and northern Europe.  It's found a great deal in the Neolithic expansions.  It was 10,000 years ago in 8,000 BCE that there was a group of modern-type humans living in the Fertile Crescent area of today's Turkey and northern Syria who began domesticating plants, nuts and seeds they had collected.  This era is the Neolithic.  As they migrated out of the Middle East, they brought their new technology with them.  Genetic evidence indicates that the high incidence in Lebanon, and Arabia with 25% of Bedouin and Yemeni, and more reflective of a low population sizes than  the occurrence of a founder event in this region actually being the site of the origin.  It is common in the Middle East, Europe, Caucasus, North Africa and among Jews.  J2 is more localized in the Mediterranean regions.

H makes up almost half of Europe in the mt haplogroup, but only a few are really carried by Jewish women.  H73 and HV1b2 are two matching my family.   HV have been found all around the Red Sea and widely throughout the Near East.  The highest number have been from  Arabia.   It also descends from R and is sometimes referred to as R0.   They live in high frequencies in the Anatolian/Caucasus region and in Iran.   Others have moved north across the Caucasus Mountains and went across Anatolia, carried on into Europe this way by the Cro-Magnon.
                                                                         

75% of these well known Jews probably are carrying the mt haplogroup of K. 
Jews only make up 2% of the American population and 0.02% of the world population.
They make up about 14 million of the world population that has 7.5 billion in 2016.  . 

About half of all Ashkenazi Jews trace their mitochondrial lineage back to one of these 4 women.  K's are found at a smaller frequency in non-Ashkenazi Jews, but are seldom found in other populations.  It's virtually absent in Europeans.  It appears at frequencies of  3% or higher in groups from the Levant, Arabia and Egypt.  This shows a strong founder event of Ashkenazis which happened in the Middle East.  It is currently shared by more than 3 million people.
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As for Jewish men, the Y haplogroup traces Adam's descendants from Abraham onward.  E1b1b1a , E2855, E-M34 and E-L117  are among popular Jewish E haplogroups.  Albert Einstein was one.  An ancient E was Ramesses III, 2nd pharoah of Egypt.  E came along in NE Africa 30,000 to 40,000 years ago.  About 50,000 years ago, a group of humans called the Middle Eastern Clan came from a man with marker M89 and left the continent.  They headed north and settled in the Middle East.  Why aren't all Jewish men J's?  Remember, Moses left with the family of Jacob's 12 tribes and OTHERS.

Some others are G and I.  G may have originated along the eastern edge of the Middle East or in India or Pakistan 30,000 years ago and has spread out into central Asia, Europe and the Middle East.  7% of Ashkenazis carry this haplogroup.  The G2 branch has the P15 mutation found in the Caucasus, Balkans, Italy and the Middle East.  Since the Romans were into Egypt, it's not uncommon to find this. Some common G branches are G-M201 and G-M377.

Haplogroup I has some traces in the Middle East, which is  probably  the source of their origin.

Jacob came from Isaac  and Isaac was the son of Abraham by Sarah, along with Ishmael, son of Hagar the Egyptian princess.  Their descendants carried the J (Cohen) gene of Abraham.  DNA figures that the patriarch of haplogroup J was born  around 15,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent that includes Israel, Judea and Samaria, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.   I have found in our historic references that Abraham was born in Ur (Iraq) in about the 2nd millennium BCE or about 4,000 years ago, so it would be his deep ancestor born in about 13,000 BCE  who  would be the reference for J's creation.

Today J with marker M304 is the highest in the Middle East, North Africa and Ethiopia.  In Europe, it is seen only in the Mediterranean region.  Both haplogroup J and its subgroup or branch of J2 are found at a combined frequency of around 30% among Jewish individuals.  (Deep Ancestry ). I found men I match  carrying J-M267; J-P58; J-M172 J-Y23457; .  While the majority of haplogroup J is not of Jewish people, the majority of Jewish men fall into the J hapogroup.  This is where the Cohen Modal Haplotype was found.  This is because Ishmael was the father of the Arab people carrying J, and they have not been decimated to the point that the Jewish people have been.  Ishmael went to the other people to find a wife and home, as his father, Abraham had to lead his mother and him away due to jealousy and aggressive behaviors.  He populated the land easily.  Isaac, on the other hand, had a limited source for a spouse, being the family, but did manage to produce Jacob who had his 12 sons.  Dinah, the one sister of the 12 brothers,  almost started a war since an outsider wanted her for a wife, and her brothers, enraged, attacked these people.  They took children and carrying on their culture most seriously.
                                                                 

Grandfather Nathan Abraham Goldfus/Goldfoot b: 1872 Telsiai, Lithuania,
carrying Q1b1a; now tagged as QBZ67. He spoke only Yiddish, though
left at 21 for England, then Dublin, Ireland, Quebec and finally into Council, Idaho.
He died at about age 40 in Portland, Oregon.  

Q's happen to be my father's Y haplogroup.  We are 5% of the Jewish population.  Our origins started in Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.  They migrated through northern Eurasia and our branch settled in and around Abraham's Ur of today's Iraq.  It took a long time to get there by the 2nd millennium.  They weren't in any hurry, following game and the weather for the most part, and then running into social situations causing wars.  Some other branches of Q's became the native people of North and South America, so in a way we're related to native Americans who had migrated through northern Eurasia into the Americas.  Our line wound up in Telsiai, Lithuania in the 1700's at least, though Lithuania was the new home for many Jews by the 1300s.  A charter was written up allowing their presence from 1320 to 1432 though Jews had started to enter in the 8th century.  I found Goldfus in Telsiai and even in Papile, a small shtetl.

R1a1a has been found to be a branch of Levites, one of the 12 tribes of Jacob from son Levi.  It was from the Levites that that Aaron was asked to be the high priest, the start of the Cohen genes of J1.  They originate from  the branches of M168 to M89 to M9 to M45 to M207 to M173 to M17.    Their ancestor was born about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in present-day Ukraine or southern Russia.  His descendants were nomadic. and carried their genes as far away as to India and Iceland.  they were the 1st to domesticate the horse., and may have spread the Indo-European languages.  40% of the men in the Czech Republic to the steppes to Siberia are descendants.  The M17 marker is found in only 5-10% of Middle Eastern men., even in Iranian populations.  This marker could easily identify Jews as they were carried to Persia (Iran) by the Assyrians through Babylon, and onto Persia.
                                                             

Ashkenazi Jews with high I Qs.
Average IQ for Europeans is 100, but for Jews is from 112 to 115.This fact is interesting for genetic researchers because Ashkenazi Jews are over-represented in high positions in society for the size of their ethic group, while other Jewish ethnic groups are not.  More than 25% of all Nobel Prizes, including Albert Einstein, have been won by Ashkenazi Jews, and over 50% of chess world champions are Ashkenazi Jews.In general, IQ in America has been rising at a rate of over .3 points per year.  Proof of increasing IQ, however, is becoming more difficult to find…

         The majority of my DNA matches are Cohens bearing the Cohen gene of J1.  We Ashkenazis were forced to live in Europe, but that was not our origin.  Now we have finally, after 2,000 years of waiting, been able to return home to our Israel.

Resource:  Deep Ancestry-inside the Genographic Project by National Geographic by Spencer Wells-2007
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html
http://www.eupedia.com/genetics/famous_y-dna_by_haplogroup.shtml
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/06/how-cohen-gene-of-j1-is-being-found-in.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2009/09/jewish-womens-dna.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2011/10/where-were-our-jewish-ancestors-13800.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/05/what-genetics-tells-us-about-our.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/05/dna-study-of-jews-covers-3000-year.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2011/10/where-were-our-jewish-ancestors-13800.html
http://www.seeker.com/first-neanderthal-human-love-child-from-israel-1769467646.html
https://www.familytreedna.com/public/nmtdna
http://www.biography.com/people/ann-curry-224907
https://www.google.com/search?
https://whatisgenetic.com/tag/ashkenazi-jews/
Update: https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/y-dna-testing/y-str/we-all-go-back-africa/