Ashkenazi Levites with R1a (Y haplogroup)

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Moses officiated the honor to deem Aaron as High Priest, father of a Dynasty of priests

Aaron's line has produced the J1 (Y haplogroup), and often the J2 as well.  

Approximately 300,000 out of 14.8 million Jewish men around the globe self-identify as Ashkenazi Levites, of whom 2/3 were  descended from one man.  Levites are from the tribe of Levi, of the 3rd son of Jacob and Leah.  Moses and his brother, Aaron, were Levites.  The direct descendants of Aaron were chosen as the high priests or Cohens by Moses.  Other Levites were to be the ones who had other duties in the temple, such as washing the feet of the Cohens, the 2nd readers of the Torah on a Shabbat with Cohens being the 1st.  

 There are many variations of 486 Y-chromosomes within the Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Levite R1a clade, which are other Ashkenazi Jewish paternal lineages, as well as non-Levite Jewish and non-Jewish R1a samples. 

The emerging profile is of a Middle Eastern ancestor, self-affiliating as Levite, and carrying the highly resolved R1a-Y2619 lineage, which was likely a minor haplogroup among the Hebrews. 

Most Gentiles have the tag of R1b1 such as R-L21 or R-M269.  How did the R1a arrive with Ashkenazi Jews and when?  

The R-Y2619 genetic variation is found among ~50 percent of those Ashkenazi males who claim a tradition of Levitic descent. The variation arose ~2,900 years ago and appears to have been present in a male who joined the Ashkenazi population at the time of its founding roughly 700 CE in France.

The presence of Jews in France under Charlemagne is documented, with their position being regulated by law. Exchanges with the Orient strongly declined with the presence of Saracens in the Mediterranean sea. Trading and importing of oriental products such as gold, silk, black pepper or papyrus almost disappeared under the Carolingians.                

The Carolingian Dynasty (751-887) was a family of Frankish nobles who ruled Francia and its successor kingdoms in Western and Central Europe during the Early Middle Ages.  Frank, member of a Germanic-speaking people who invaded the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Dominating present-day northern France, Belgium, and western Germany, the Franks established the most powerful Christian kingdom of early medieval western Europe. The name France (Francia) is derived from their name.

The Radhinites were Jewish merchants of the 9th century who traveled between Southern France to China.  They spoke Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Roman (Latin),  and the languages of the Franks, Andalusians and Slavs. 

                                     Emperor Charlemagne
  Charlemagne (reigned from 800-814) A Frankish king;  fixed a formula for the Jewish oath to the state. He allowed Jews to enter into lawsuits with Christians. They were not allowed to require Christians to work on Sunday. Jews were not allowed to trade in currency, wine, or grain. Legally, Jews belonged to the emperor, and could be tried only by him. But the numerous provincial councils which met during Charlemagne's reign were not concerned with the Jewish communities.

The variation has not been found among the Jewish non-Ashkenazi populations tested worldwide, meaning in the Sephardic or Mizrachi Jewish groups. Hence its presence in the Jewish population before that date cannot yet be confirmed. Its most closely related lineages date to the Late Bronze Age and are found at present in Iran and Armenia. R-M207, found in a Jewish man:  We note that one of these is a very rare haplogroup (R1a*) that has previously been observed only in two Armenian men (Weale et al. 2001). We now report the same haplogroup in one additional Belarusian man. The Ashkenazi Levites were typed for a set of 25 biallelic markers including P9, M216, M217, YAP, P2, M35, P14, M201, P15, M52, P19, 12f2b, M172, M9, M20, LLY22g, Tat, M175, P27, P36, M207, M173, SRY10831, M17, and P25. PCR protocols for detection of these polymorphisms have been reported elsewhere (Hammer et al. 2001; .....

Armenia alongside Iran and Turkey on the West side.

Iran is very plausible, as Jews lived in 127 provinces of the huge Persian Empire that spread out from the Euphrates River of Mesopotamia to the Egyptian borderland. We have our Queen Esther story of when Haman started killing Jews in the Empire before Queen Esther stopped him. Queen Esther herself was married to King Ahasuerus, or Xerxes, who was not Jewish.

As for Armenia, Jews moved there after the 1st destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE. During 2nd Temple days, Armenia had ties with the Jews of Jerusalem. Aristobulus, Herod's grandson, was made king of Little Armenia. Two other grandsons ruled Greater Armenia. Since the 5th century, Christian Armenians have lived in Jerusalem in the Armenian Quarter.

 Jews of Kaifeng, late 19th or early 20th century

There is an oral tradition that the first Jews immigrated to China through Persia following the Roman Emperor Titus's capture of Jerusalem in 70 CE. A large number of Jews emigrated from Persia during the reign of Emperor Ming of Han (58–75 CE). Writing in 1900, Father Joseph Brucker hypothesized that Jews came to China from India by a sea route since ancient times.

My notes: from What Haplogroup We Be?

R, R1, R2, R1a, R1b haplogroups are believed to have originated in NW Asia between 30,000 and 35,000 years ago. R1 is very common in Europe and Western Eurasia. R2 is rare and found only in Indian, Iranian and central Asian populations. R1a is most common among eastern European Slavs and populations in India and central and western Asia. It was thought to be the Khazarian Jewish lineage. They most likely originated in the Eurasian steppes north of the Black and Caspian seas in the Kurgan people who lived there around 3000 BCE and known for the domestication of the horse.
Update: 5/10/2012: Subtypes of R1a1 may have come from Khazaria.
Update 6/25/15: R1a1, R1b, and R1a1a or R1a-CTS6 is the Levite haplogroup.  Read www.levitedna.org. for more information. Jeff Wexler discovered this line of Ashkenazi Levites.  Analyses posted here. R1a1 is common among Ukrainians-thought to have originated there, Russians, and Serbs (Slavic speakers in Germany, as well as among Central Asian populations with admixture possible with Ukrainians, Poles or Russians.
 

A later 2005 study by Nebel et al., found a similar level of 11.5% of male Ashkenazim belonging to R1a1a (M17+), the dominant Y-chromosome haplogroup in Central and Eastern Europeans.; R-M269; R1b1a2a; R-V88 are found among Jews.  R-L47-from R1a, Jewish. 

Update: R-M17:  Levites carry this , not from ancestral Hebrew population, did not resemble other Y chromosomes from the Jewish population studied.  From Slavic source, 1,000 years ago, if not from Sorbs or Belarusians ancestors, could be from  Khazars-Turkish empire.
Update:9/19/19  https://www.academia.edu/13830064/Phylogenetic_applications_of_whole_Y-chromosome_sequences_and_the_Near_Eastern_origin_of_Ashkenazi_Levites?email_work_card=view-paper

 R1b is the most common haplogroup in Europe and expanded throughout after the last ice age, 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. It contains the Atlantic Modal Haplotype. R1b formed from a group that emigrated from Africa 50,000 years ago and eventually settled in Europe in the last 30,000 years.  It has high frequencies among the Welsh, Basques, Irish, English, Portuguese, French and Dutch.  It's occurrence among Ashkenazi Jews may be an indicator of admixture that happened at the time of Jewish residence in the Rhine Valley prior to migration to Eastern Europe.  Prevalent among the Marronite Christian community in Lebanon and represents establishment of European enclave in Lebanon by religious Crusaders in 11th -13th centuries.

 R-M269 (R1b...)  It's a Galicia- Ashkenazi haplogroup, and not that common.  This is found in low frequencies in Europe, Central Asia and Central Asia.  It is thought it moved from Europe into Asia.  It is found in Armenia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Turkey and Ukraine.  In some cases, major downstream mutations such as M269 are used to identify R1b, especially in regional or out-of-date studies  Update: 4/30/15 
Update 5/15/15 The surname of Cohen has found an R-M269 haplogroup.  
R-M124.(R2a) developed 25,000 years ago in Central Asia, the 2nd wave of migration in India;  ..from Ashkenazi in Ukraine

R-M207: Y-haplogroup R-M207 is common throughout Europe, South Asia and Central Asia (Kayser 2003). It also occurs in the Caucasus and Siberia. Some minorities in Africa also carry subclades of R-M207 at high frequencies.

While some indigenous peoples of The Americas and Australasia also feature high levels of R-M207, it is unclear whether these are deep-rooted, or an effect of European colonization during the early modern era.

It's been found in the Lithuania=Poland-Ukraine area in Jewish population.   (R-M207)

Haplogroup R* Y-DNA (xR1,R2) was found in 24,000-year-old remains from Mal'ta in Siberia near Lake Baikal.^[4] In 2013, R-M207 was found in one out of 132 males from the Kyrgyz people of East Kyrgyzstan.^[

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14761-7

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/ashkenazi-levite/about?intent=&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkruVBhCHARIsACVIiOxWGTuRYjPp4hPffY392Z3k8uUw9cNSmsJhQKCIrM4KZkxaIrylMDMaAn6zEALw_wcB

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2141940009976831016/4311532341183795402

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_China