Total Pageviews

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Jewish Women's DNA: K, H, J2, N1b, Others?

Testing the mtDNA of Jewish women have found that we trace back to four women who lived about within the last 2,000 years but not in the same place or time. They could have been from the Near East or even Europe. This is from Dr. Doron Behar in Haifa, Israel. My thinking is that they are not referring to our four matriarchs but to another set of four women much later. Again, our life was dependant on four such women becoming mothers.

Those of us with ancestors from central and eastern Europe are called Ashkenazi Jews. We can be traced back to Jews who migrated from Israel to Italy in the 1st and 2nd centuries. That's where the term "Ghetto" came from. Jews were locked up behind fences at night. We then moved into Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries and moved about there. There were about 10 million of us Jews just before WWII. This is from history and the study of mtDNA from more than 11,000 samples from 67 populations.

Our haplogroups are K-32%, H-21%, n1b-10%, J1-7%, and others.

Practically no other groups have K except for the Druze who have 16%. That shows to me that Jewish women married men who were or became Druze. Of the K there are four main groups in Jewish women. They are all unique in Jews, except the group which is 33% of the total K's is very similar to a type found at low to moderate frequency amongst gentile women in both Europe and the Near East. K is a subbranch of U that is believed to have appeared in early stages of the Holocene Epoch. This is when populations expanded into Europe after the last glacial period. About 1/3 of people with Ashkenazi ancestry carry a subclade of this haplogroup.

H-standing for Helena, though it is very common in Europe among gentiles, has unique characteristics in Jews My mother, whose mother was from Sweden who converted, is an H. So is her gentile sister-in-law with roots possibly from Germany. About half of Europe's women are H. This is connected to a population expansion about 20,000 years ago originating in the Caucasus or in Europe and now in 50% of those of European ancestry, and common in N. Africa and the Middle East.

J, J1, J2 originated about 45,000 years ago in central Asia. Connected with the spread of farming and herding in Europe during the Neolithic Period beginning 10,000 years ago, which would be about 8,000 BCE. Common in the Near East, Europe, the Caucasus, N. Africa and the Middle East and among Jews. J2 is more localized in the Mediterranean.

N1b-is present in low frequencies in Europe, the Caucasus, the Near East, Egypt and Arabia. It spread around 39,000 to 52,000 years ago, creating at least 4 ancestral clusters including haplogroup B.

What happened about 1,000 years ago is that our Jewish population had declined to such a small group that the wipe-out is referred to as a BOTTLENECK. It was followed by a large growth. Therefore, almost half of Europe's Jews were from just four women who lived 1,000 years ago.

Ashkenazi mtDNA is close to Moroccan Jewish mtDNA.

Now I'm so curious about my father's mother that I'm going to have a female cousin tested to find out what dna we have. It's not enough to know who my parents are and where they came from anymore. I want to know the whole megilla. Our history is pretty exciting.

My grandmother "Bubbi" was from Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania. I'm betting our mtDNA will be K. That seems popular in women from that area. I've sent for the kit today to test my cousin.

1/8/10: I was wrong. It turned out to be a rare W. It is listed as W1h, an Ashkenazi branch.  She had come from Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania.

Reference: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10827385/ns/technology_and_science-science/
http://www.britam.org/Questions/mtDNA.html
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v15/n4/full/5201764a.html
Book: Tracing Your Jewish DNA for Family History & Ancestry by Anne Hart -haven't read it yet but want to, http://books.google.com/books?id=Z2-FHdT_bPkC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=Jewish+mtDNA+in+Poland&source=bl&ots=IFUqFzl2Eu&sig=cr_h-HKeCZgu64frVEeEDOGwPe4&hl=en&ei=hWzCSsykE5G8sgO8jpzqAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#v=onepage&q=Jewish%20mtDNA%20in%20Poland&f=false

5 comments:

Nadene Goldfoot said...

Raymond Scott 9:00am Sep 9
Most branches of haplogroup H, the parent of H6, originated in the Near East and then expanded throughout Europe after the peak of the Ice Age. But H6 was a relatively ancient offshoot of H that arose about 30,000 years ago, before the Ice Age's peak, and moved east into central Asia. Today it is most widespread there, although fairly recent migrations have brought H6 into western Europe over the last few thousand years.

Nadene Goldfoot said...

Raymond Scott 8:29am Sep 9, 2013
The 4 Ashkenazi founding mothers are: K1a1b1a, K1a9, K2a2, and N1b2, which account for something like 40% of Ashkenazi maternal lineages. People with measurable amount of Ashkenazi heritage will have many people in their RF with those haplogroups. People with no discernible Ashkenazi will have few or none.

Nadene Goldfoot said...

Also read "What Haplogroup We Be?" in this same blog.

Anonymous said...

Hi, my maternal Haplogroup i J1c3. Does this mean I'm from Abraham too? :)

MRWG said...
This comment has been removed by the author.