FOUND; ADAM, Our origin Adam Through Genetics

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Modern man's Adam discovery 

It's been said for some time now that mankind originated in Africa.  NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC sponsored research which DR. SPENCER WELLS, leading population geneticist,  led and discover Adam along with pertinent information about him.  This was a modern man, capable of thinking and creating art work in his caves.   

I note that this was pronounced in the Torah in Genesis, and now in science.  Amazing!                  

Spencer Wells (born April 6, 1969) is an American geneticist, anthropologist, author and entrepreneur. He co-hosts The Insight podcast with Razib Khan. Wells led The Genographic Project from 2005 to 2015, as an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, and is the founder and executive director of personal genomics nonprofit The Insitome Institute.  

It may be hard to visualize that Wells' deep ancestors were from Africa, and waves have left this continent  in different eras; with humans ending in northern climates losing their melatonin in order for the sun to deliver the much needed vitamin D to them.  

Wells followed the Y haplogroup of men, a gene that also decides if a baby is to be a male or female, and in this case with Y-a male.  Your father had it, and he got it from his father, and his father got it from his father, etc, back thousands of years that scientists can see today in this tag showing who made us.  Today, scientists have found  a few different lines of males and have named them like E, Q, R, etc;  Spenser's research finally ended with a man he named M168, who lived about 60,000 years ago; and that's a long long time ago.  Abraham, we figure, was born in about 1948 BCE which would be about 4,000 years ago.  

Dr. Wells actually went to all the sites in the world and tested the population.  He states that all men genetically are 99.9% identical.    An interesting part of his story was that he was testing the population of men on an island off Africa and all the men had the same Y haplogroup as all men in the rest of the world except one man, and this man was carrying the M168.  He was the kingpin that Spencer was looking for.  

We customers of Genealogy companies will not see DM9 or M168 in our reports as this is deep genetics.  It's for the geneticists' job to work on our deep ancestors that go beyond our understanding, I figure, though I do belong to GED Match, genesis now, and have used their tools to analyze my deep dna.  This additional site makes genealogy all the more exciting to explore.  I love it all.  

Most of us have heard about the history of Ghengis Khan who fathered thousands of Mongolian men.  Spenser found a group of men in California who met together and he spoke with them.  Yes, they all figured that they were descendants of Khan.  Spencer tested them and found only two were actual descendants.  

Wells is renowned for his logistically complex sample-collecting expeditions in remote parts of the world. EurAsia98, which in 1998 took him and his team from London to the Altai Mountains on the Mongolian border, via an overland route through the Caucasus, Iran and the -stans of Central Asia, was sponsored by Land Rover. In 2005 he led a team of Genographic scientists on the first modern expedition to the Tibesti Mountains in northern Chad, and in 2006 he led a team to the Wakhan Corridor on the Tajik-Afghan border. His work has taken him to more than 100 countries.  He should be given extra cudos because these areas were probably dangerous to travelers, especially in the Tajik-Afghan border.  

All this can be found on youtube.  I suggest you use this tool to find out more if interested.  

Resource: 

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i28uO1TRHX4

Abraham's Ancestry-An Amazing Journey Through Time and Geography

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

     The Garden of Eden, 5,783 years ago according to the Bible,  where Adam and Eve came from, was the factory.  It seems that it was located on the land mass of Africa, where so many bones of various eras of development have been found. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa from Homo heidelbergensis. They co-existed for a long time in Europe and the Middle East with the Neanderthals, and possibly with Homo erectus in Asia and Homo floresiensis in Indonesia, but are now the only surviving human species, the first we know about named in the bible:  Adam and Eve.  

Adam was made, according to the Bible, in the image of G-d from the dust of the earth on the 6th day of creation which was the last work day of G-d because the 7th was his day of rest. .  His duty was the dominion over the rest of the animals on earth.  Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs and was intended as a help/a partner for Adam, definitely a help in the creation of more humans.   Adam and Eve's first children were Cain and Abel. Seth was the 3rd child and lived for 912 years. The sons of Seth were the nomadic Sutho, shepherds,  tribes mentioned in the neighborhood of the Palestine-Syria frontier in about the 15th century BCE. It was Balaam (Num.24:17) who mentioned them.   They seem to have been related to the Hebrews.  They could be Abraham's cousins.    Cain killed Abel, the example of fighting between the nomadic shepherd and the settled agriculturalist.  Cain was accidentally killed by his own blind grandson, Lamech.  .  

Abraham, the ancestor of Jews and their cousins, today's Muslims, are well documented in the Torah and its extension, the whole Tanakh.  His name was Abram and he lived in about 1948 BCE, born in Ur on the Tigris River of the Chaldees.  

Abram's father was Terah and mother was Amathlai of Haran whose parents were  Nahor and Iyoska, going back:  Serug and Milcah, Reu, Peleg, Eber, Shelah, Arpachshad, Shem, and finally, Noah. 

Noah's story is that he saved his family including his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth,  by building an ark or ship before the great flood, and they managed for 40 days on it, landing on new land. If his father, Lamech and mother, Adah,  were alive, they were with Noah.  Lamech's father was Methuselah who lived for a very long time.  His father was Enoch, and was remembered in stories about Noah.    He had loaded it with all the animals he was familiar with, for he didn't know where they'd land and what lay before him. From his sons sprang the 1st 70 people (types or tribes) from whom humanity was derived.  This can also be read somewhat in the Babylonian tale of Gilgamesh, an epic that contains a parallel flood story with the hero called Utnapishtim.  many midrashic stories were woven around the story of Noah.  Therefore, we now have humanity moved to Turkey as hunters and gatherers of food.  

This goes along with my father's Y haplogroup line of  Q's (QBZ67).  The origin was said to be in Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey.  It's an ancient Jewish line-of which today is 5% of 0.02% of the world population, a very small group of men. Does this mean that they are one of the oldest groups of males that can trace back to Noah? 

Q-M242-his genetic title originally;  is believed to have arisen around the Altai Mountains area (or South Central Siberia), approximately 17,000 to 31,700 years ago. However, the matter remains unclear due to limited sample sizes and changing definitions of Haplogroup Q: early definitions used a combination of the SNPs M242, P36.2, and MEH2 as defining mutations.)    

J1, the Cohen gene,( this haplogroup evolved ~ 20,000 years ago somewhere in northwestern Iran, the Caucasus, the Armenian Highland, and northern Mesopotamia. The major branch-J1a1a1-P58-evolved during the early Holocene ~ 9500 years ago somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, and southern Mesopotamia.) This seems to be the landing site of Noah's Ark as well.                  

     The Middle East, and landing on Mt. Ararat:  The Garden of Eden could have come from Egypt for it's a country on Africa.  The Ark could have sailed over the Mediterranean onto Turkey during the Flood. Iraq was the scene of the tower of Babel of Babylon.   

Even I must use Noah in our genealogy history, for he landed on Mt. Ararat, thought to be  located in extreme northeastern Turkey, near the borders with Iran and Armenia.  Nevertheless, Mount Ararat is traditionally considered the resting place of Noah's Ark, and, thus, considered a biblical mountain. Mount Ararat has been associated with the Genesis account since the 11th century, and Armenians began to identify it as the ark's landing place during that time.  

That's where Abram, later called Abraham's ancestors came from.  They had come from the East and he had migrated west to Canaan with his family which included Terah, his father, and his wife, Sarai, later called Sarah. Sarah was his niece, which shows that they did marry into their own family.  Siblings did not marry in Abraham's group, though, like the Egyptian royalty did.    

The beautiful plan of creation included giving male humans DNA that could be traced back to their beginning roots.  Abraham was the ancestor of Moses, born in 1391 BCE to Amram and Jochebed. Amram's father was Kohath, and went back to Levi, son of Jacob whose name changed to Israel, father of 12 sons who became the 12 Tribes of Israel.  Their DNA line is J1, called the Cohen gene, coming direct from Aaron, brother of Moses who would have been J1 as well.  Jacob's father was Isaac whose father was Abraham.  

                                Sarah with Hagar, her handmaid

 Abraham had a child with Hagar, Sarah's handmaid when Sarah was very old, past child-bearing age. Then she surprised everyone and did get pregnant and had Isaac.   The child Abraham had with Hagar was  called Ishmael. Hagar took her son and left the family due to all the in-fighting of the children, Ishmael and Isaac going on.  

Isaac,  Abraham's son by Sarah  had twins, Jacob and Esau.   Jacob's fraternal twin, Esau,  fought with Jacob, having the opposite type of personality.  They were even enemies.  Esau left the family group and married with Others not related.  Jacob had fled to Haran and stayed there for 20 years before connecting with his brother once more.  The three most important men in our Jewish history were Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  

How do people remember such facts, especially names?  We saw this happening in the Black tribe mentioned in the book, Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a 1976 novel written by Alex Haley. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent, sold into slavery in Africa, and transported to North America; it follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the United States down to Haley.   

  Haley spent the last chapter of the book describing his research in archives and libraries to support his family's oral tradition with written records. If Haley's family line remembered facts orally, I believe ours could have used this method as well, possibly combined with written. If you're interested in your family, read this book, whoever you are.       

Abraham's journey can be tracked by oral history and today's DNA.  That way we can see who he has left behind as descendants.                             

Resource:

Tanakh, Stone Edition

https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/homo-sapiens-modern-humans/#:~:text=Homo%20sapiens%20evolved%20in%20Africa,the%20only%20surviving%20human%20species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33758277/#:~:text=We%20show%20that%20this%20haplogroup,the%20Levant%2C%20and%20southern%20Mesopotamia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_Q-M242

Bringing Babies Into The World-From the Beginning Till Now

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Our ancestors, wives of Jacob:  Leah-daughter of Laban, oldest sister of Rachel, with her 6 sons Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun,  Rachel with Joseph and Benjamin (born later) :   and Zilpah, handmaiden to Leah with Gad and Asher, and Bilhah, handmaiden to Rachel with Dan and Naphtali.  

Abraham, grandfather of Jacob, was born in about 1948 BCE-the 2nd millennium, almost 4,000 years ago. 

 When Rachel gives birth to Benjamin, she will die in childbirth near Bethlehem.  Benjamin is compensated for losing his mother by the land he inherits.  He is given land between Ephraim and Judah which includes the future Jerusalem.  Saul, 1st king of Israel, was a Benjamite.  The land eventually had to be partitioned between the 2 kingdoms of Israel and Judah, even though it was such a small plot.   

 Today, it costs about $20,,000 to give birth to a baby in the USA.  No wonder our population growth has slowed down.  There is only a 0.4% annual change from 2020.  The U.S. population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year since the founding of the nation, based on historical decennial censuses and annual population estimates.  The U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2021 Population Estimates released today show that population grew only 0.1% and that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the slower growth the country has experienced in recent years. 

What does that imply?  A baby will be born in a hospital with expert medical conditions guaranteeing the life for the baby and the mother. Parents cannot afford $20,000 for a child.   Now, Roe vs Wade is discarded and having an abortion is against the law.  The numbers should come up.  In our already crowded world, many are hysterical about this new law causing pain and inconvenience to their families. 

Eve didn't have it so well.  Imagine, her midwife was Adam and neither she or he knew what was happening or what to do.  She gave birth to Cain and Abel, and Cain wound up killing Abel when they were adults.  They had no understanding of the pain that Eve went through to bring them into this world.  

Jacob is our 3rd patriarch (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob).  He's the younger non-identical twin of Isaac and Rebekah.  The older twin was Esau.  Jacob was jealous of Esau as being the older, got the birthright benefits and the much desired Blessing, so their mother, Rebekah,  helped him cheat his twin out of it.  Esau went on to lose interest in  the family values having lost his birthright Blessing and status, and  threatened later to kill his twin, Jacob.  Jacob fled to Aram-Naharaim and Laban, his uncle.                         

They met 20 years later and Jacob tried to make friends with him and apologize  to no avail. The deed was done.    Then Esau became a villain, a violent person, a coarse materialist who was unable to recover from his trauma of having something and then losing it to trickery!  He had left the family and found wives amongst the Arabs.

 According to the Torah, Esau is the progenitor of the Edomites.  Jacob was born holding onto Esau's heel.  Esau, a "man of the field", became a hunter who had "rough" qualities that distinguished him from his twin brother. Among these qualities were his redness and noticeable hairiness.

                                                

Today's Edom is Israel, possibly as Edom was south of Judah-the southern end of ancient Israel.  Edom was the land touching the Dead Sea and bordering Judah.  Notice that much of Jacob's history took place in today's Syria.  

 Jacob was a plain or simple man, depending on the translation of the Hebrew word tam (which also means "relatively perfect man"). Jacob's color was not mentioned. Throughout Genesis, Esau is frequently shown as being supplanted by his younger twin, Jacob (Israel).                                              

Here, Esau did the hunting and Jacob does the cooking.  

Jacob fell in love with young Rachel and in order to win her as a wife, had to work for her father, Laban, who in fact was Jacob's uncle, for 7 years.  She was very young.  He was tricked into actually marrying her oldest sister, Leah, first, and had to continue working another 7 years to finally gain Rachel.  Leah gave him Reuben-1st son , Simeon-2nd son, Levi-3rd son, Judah-4th son, Issachar-5th son, and Zebulun-6th son.  Then he had a daughter, Dinah-order unknown.                               

Rachel, who also lived at Haran in Aram-Naharaim (Syria),  produced Joseph, Jacob's most precious son, and his 11th, finally produced by the love of his life.  He was an exceptional lad, treated as such even in the presence of his brothers, having been given a special coat of many colors that none had that showed favoritism.  Jacob hadn't had the chance to read child development books about such things as we have done.  He was ignorant of such things.  Joseph's brothers were so jealous that they intended to kill him, but settled for selling him to passer-by merchants on camels instead who took him to Egypt.     

 Rachel had finally given birth to Benjamin-12th son and then died in childbirth   near Bethlehem.  Who raised her son?  Probably her handmaiden, Bilhah, who, with Rachel's permission, had also given birth to Dan and Naphtali by Jacob before Rachel had ever given birth.  (Gen: 30) Rachel had said that if she remained childless, it would be as if she were dead, so that's why she needed her Bilhah to have a son.  Rachel would be credited for it.  She had threatened Jacob for not getting her pregnant, but of course he could do nothing about it.  The irony is that she was his great love and she had a hard time getting pregnant.  

This instigated Leah to add more sons from her, so she gave her handmaiden to Jacob and Zilpah then gave birth to Gad and Asher.  In those days, men felt obligated to produce sons.  It was of great value to them.  Probably these 4 women acted as midwives to each other.  There probably was jealousy among them, but necessity was also in the mix.  Their worth to Jacob had to be considered.  Their sons were their insurance.  

Who were the handmaidens?  Chances are they were bought in Egypt and were also  sisters.  They all would have spoken the same language, maybe those females that hadn't attracted a mate and the father could use the money.  

As we see, even with our Israelite family, women had less status than men did at this point in time.  We're lucky to know about Dinah and how she had been raped and what he brothers had done about it by putting themselves in jeopardy.

Resource:

Tanakh, Stone Edition

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

  

How Judaism Tells Where Our DNA Comes From

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

                                                                 
This all happened in a garden in Eden 5,780 years ago, which was in the Eastern part of the world.  The area is identified by four rivers.  The first was Pishon that circled Havilah, the land where gold was found  The second river was Gihon that circled the land of Cush.  The third was Hideel which flowed toward the east of Assyria, and the 4th river was the Euphrates.  

The Torah starts off right away in the first chapter, Genesis (Bereishis)  with Adam's creation of a partner, Eve,  through his own rib, giving Cain and Abel, their sons,  DNA from an extremely close source.
                                                                           

They had been born in a different section of land, leaving the garden in Eden, so were receiving a different environment in which to grow up.  
                                                                                     

Cain and Abel received their DNA as normal brothers, but as different as could possibly be.  One had talent in hunting and the other didn't.  Abel became a shepherd and Cain became a tiller of the ground.   Cain eventually killed his brother, Abel.  That shows me that the first people carried a great variety of genes, just like today, from their mother and their  father.  Adam was the one with the extreme differences that he shared with Eve.  
                                                                               

The sons of the rulers saw that the daughters of man were good and they took themselves wives from whomever they chose.  .....his days shall be 120 years.  

Suddenly Cain finds a wife in the neighborhood, so Enoch was born.  This was a beginning evidently and a family had not been created as yet but is in the beginning stage.  Cain's genes will induce him to be a wanderer and will be exploring the land.  His descendant, Methushael had a son, Lamech, who started bigamy by taking two wives, Adah and Zilah.  
                                                  

The first,  Adah's descendant, Enoch,  became a city-builder, so that's where those genes came from.  A descendant, Jabal was the first to live in a tent and breed cattle.  His brother, Jubal became the first to have and play the harp and flute.  Lamech's second wife, Zilah's son Tubal-Cain sharpened all cutting implements of copper and iron.  
                                                           

Lamech was blind, so his son, Tubal-cain would lead him when walking.  Tubal-cain saw Cain but thought he was seeing an animal.  He told his father to shoot an arrow at this animal. (Tubal-cain's eyes were going like his father's, evidently.)  When Lamech understood that he had shot Cain instead,  he beat his hands together in grief  and accidently killed his son.  His wives were so angry that they refused to live with him.  He tried to appease them.  "If the punishment of Cain, an intentional murder of Abel was delayed until the 7th generation, surely my punishment will be deferred many times 7 because I killed accidently."  (Rashi).  
                                                   

Cain suffered vengeance for 7 generations.  Lamech suffered vengeance for 77 generations.  Then Seth was born to Adam and Eve to replace Abel.    The telling of the genealogy of mankind is beginning.  It starts with Seth and goes on from Adam to Noah.  From Seth onward, the human race survived.  Abel had died without leaving any children.  All of Cain's descendants perished in the Flood.
So did the continuance of mankind living as long as Methuselah, son of Enoch and father of Lamech of 969  years.     
We come from Seth and the genes he carried on his 23 chromosomes.  
                                                

Noah after 40 days tested for land with a raven.  When he sent out a dove, he also returned.  Another 7 days went by and this time after flying out, the dove returned with a twig.  He had found land.  

                                                 

Noah had 3 sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.  THE FLOOD covers land in the 600th year of Noah's life, the year 1656 from the time of creation of the world.  After the Flood, we see that 70 people came from Shem, Ham and Japheth from whom humanity was derived.  The Babylonians also have a story about THE BEGINNING, The Gilgamesh epic which contains a parallel flood story.  Instead of a hero, Noah, their story contains Utnapishtim as their hero.  Many midrashic legends were woven around the story of Noah.  A Midrash is the finding of new meanings in addition to the literal one in the Scriptures.  It's the tradition of the Talmud to formulate certain rules to deduce hidden and new meanings.  Sometimes it is to find scriptural support for laws already accepted.  The entire talmudic literature is full of midrashic exposition of verses.  It's now applied mainly to legends and ethics.  

From Shem came the nations of Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, and Aaram.  Arpachshad was the father of Eber and ancestor Abraham.  That line should carry the J1 line of Cohen as Abraham was the ancestor of Moses and his brother, Aaron, the 1st high priest (Cohen).  These people's language were akin to Hebrew and are called a Semitic people and their languages are Semitic languages.   

From Ham came the nations of Cush (Nubia and Ethiopia), Put (Libya and Morocco), Mizraim (Egypt) and Canaan (Syria and what came to be called Palestine).  The languages of Africa south of Egypt which are related to Semitic languages are called Hamitic languages.  

From Japheth came the nations of  wide territories, 14 different peoples.  Mostly they came from the Indo-European language group, ranging from the Caucasus to the Aegean. 

It is my understanding that to be a member of the Sanhedrin, an assembly of 71 ordained scholars which functioned both as Supreme Court and as legislature, one had to present credentials showing their genealogy who in its later history was usually a descendant of Hillel, a man born in the 1st century BCE.  At the head of the Sanhedrin was the Nasi, meaning prince or president.   Hillel was born in Babylonia but settled in Eretz Yisrael and earned a slender living by manual labor while studying with the famous teachers, Shemaiah and Avtalyon.  He's the one that phrased, Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you."  



Resource;
Tanakh, The Stone Edition, The Torah/Prophets/Writing, the 24 books of the Bible.
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia