Who are the Khazars...Turks?

[djoser-xyyman]

Who are the Khazars...I don't know.

khazardnaproject.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/responding-to-the-criticism-for-des-et-al-2016/

Responding to the criticism for Das et al. (2016)
Posted on May 5, 2016 by eelhaik
In Das et al. (2016), we applied the Geographic Population Structure (GPS) algorithm to the genomes of Yiddish and non-Yiddish speaking Ashkenazic Jews (and other Jewish and non-Jewish populations) to study the origin of their genomes. Since genetics, geography, and linguistics are well correlated we surmised that the origin of the DNA would point to the origin of the Yiddish language. Surprisingly, GPS traced 93% of the samples to northeastern Turkey where we found four villages whose names may be derived from the word Ashkenaz. By the proximity of this region to Slavic lands and combined with other historical and linguistic evidence our findings were in support of Prof. Wexler’s Slavic hypothesis rather than the dominant Rhineland hypothesis proposing a Germanic origin to Yiddish.

[djoser-xyyman]

This blew my mind....

"ally have plenty of ancient Judaeans skeletons that no one has ever sequenced (and probably never will). Why the DNA of the ancient Judaeans has not being sequenced and settle the question of relatedness once and for all is a question that should be directed to Israeli archeologists. It is most unfortunate that the members of the general public have been mislead to believe (no doubt after paying a lot of money to DTC companies) that they are related to ancient figures without any shred of evidence. However, this is not something our study aims to prove or disprove."


"Second, Iraqi and Iranian Jews are extremely similar, and the latter were indeed included in the study. The genetic similarity between Ashkenazic Jews and Iranian Jews was explained by their shared Iranian-Turkic past."

""In “Scholars Blast New Study Tracing Ashkenazi Jews to Khazars of Ancient Turkey” Mr. Liphshiz cites two academics who criticized on our study, or more precisely, criticized the press release: most blasting indeed."

[djoser-xyyman]

"In “Scholars Blast New Study Tracing Ashkenazi Jews to Khazars of Ancient Turkey” Mr. Liphshiz cites two academics who criticized on our study, or more precisely, criticized the press release: most blasting indeed. First is Prof. Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer who proposed that including Sephardic Jews would have changed our findings.

serious research would have factored in the glaring genetic similarity between Sephardim [sic] and Ashkenazim [sic], which mean Polish Jews are more genetically similar to Iraqi Jews than to a non-Jewish Pole.

First, let us start with a basic biology. Each person has unique DNA: studying the DNA of non-Ashkenazic Jews would not change the DNA of Ashkenazic Jews nor the predicted origin of their DNA (i.e., “ancient Ashkenaz” in northeastern Turkey). GPS is an unbiased algorithm, that is, including or excluding other samples does not change the results for the test samples. GPS also cannot relocate the villages bearing the name of Ashkenaz to Germany.

Second, Iraqi and Iranian Jews are extremely similar, and the latter were indeed included in the study. The genetic similarity between Ashkenazic Jews and Iranian Jews was explained by their shared Iranian-Turkic past.

Had Prof. DellaPergola bothered to read our study rather than rely on the above figure, which was produced for the press and for simplicity included only Ashkenazic Jews, he would have found that we have analyzed Sephardic Jews (The yellow and pink triangles below in Figure 4 from Das et al. 2016 correspond to Iranian and Mountain Jews considered “Sephardic Jews”).

Ashkenaz

Third, to date, only three biogeographical analyses were carried out for Ashkenazic Jews. The first was done by Elhaik (2013) who mapped Ashkenazic Jews to western Turkey, ~100km away from “ancient Ashkenaz” and included only Ashkenazic Eastern European Jews. The second was done by Behar et al. (2013), who included both Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews and mapped Ashkenazic Jews to Eastern Turkey, ~600km away from “ancient Ashkenaz.” Using a large dataset that include mostly Ashkenazic Jews and some Sephardic Jews and a more accurate algorithm, the third study by Das et al. (2016) discovered “ancient Ashkenaz.” In summary, all three studies pointed to Turkey. Interestingly, Behar et al. (2013) interpreted their results in favor of a Middle Eastern (Israelite) origin, although it is unsupported by their data. The inclusion of Sephardic samples did not change the Turkish geo location for the latter two studies.

Unlike Prof. DellaPergola, historian Prof. Shaul Stampfer, went to an even greater length enlightening us with his well supported criticism of our study:
"

[djoser-xyyman]

The study has been published two weeks ago and has been picked up by the media. It has been received nearly 100% positive coverage in over 100 media outlets and numerous blogs. Expectedly, we have also received a bit of criticism, some of it will be addressed here and some of it will be ignored because it is merely ad hominem, not science.

Genetic criticism

None has been received, however some people have voiced their concerns about the implications of our results to their potential relatedness to the ancient Judaeans. I have commented at length on this issue to the Israeli Globes (Hebrew). Briefly, our study did not focus on the origin of Jews or even all Ashkenazic Jews, but rather the origin of Yiddish using a third of the Ashkenazic Jewish community for which genomic data were available. Testing whether one is related to the ancient Judaeans, Jesus, Moses, or Muhammad requires actually sequencing the genomes of these people and meticulously comparing it with modern day genomes looking for shared biomarkers. As opposed to the latter three we actually have plenty of ancient Judaeans skeletons that no one has ever sequenced (and probably never will). Why the DNA of the ancient Judaeans has not being sequenced and settle the question of relatedness once and for all is a question that should be directed to Israeli archeologists. It is most unfortunate that the members of the general public have been mislead to believe (no doubt after paying a lot of money to DTC companies) that they are related to ancient figures without any shred of evidence. However, this is not something our study aims to prove or disprove.

[djoser-xyyman]

quote:
"To maintain their self-conviction, authors oftentimes contradicted themselves or clung to very sketchy arguments. For example, Behar et al. (Behar et al. 2013) has published a paper titled “No evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazi Jews“ where they wrote:

We confirm the notion that the Ashkenazi, North African, and Sephardi Jews share substantial genetic ancestry and that they derive it from Middle Eastern and European populations, with no indication of a detectable Khazar contribution to their genetic origins.

This is despite of the fact that their own biogeographical analysis traced Jews to Western Turkey, not too far from ancient Ashkenaz in Eastern Turkey (See figure below in red). Doron Behar refused to provide the data from their figure, as if they couldn’t be obtained from their blurry figure with a little bit of effort. Behar and colleagues must have hoped that considering Turkey as part of the Middle East and ignoring the common Turkish origin of the Khazars and Ashkenazic Jews would be sufficient to convince their readers"

[djoser-xyyman]

Quote
"By the time this paper was written ancient DNA data from the Levant and the Near East had surfaced. These data allowed a direct examination of AJs ancient origins. Using two different methods we found that AJs have 0-3% ancient Levantine ancestry. AJ’s ancestry was 88% ancient Iranian with some Anatolian – in agreement with our previous findings. These findings not only reject the German origin. In fact, they rule out any ancient European origins. As you can see below, it is simply not in the cards. Ironically, the only ones boosting the European and Levantine ancestry numbers (AJs on the far right) are the half-Jews and not because of their Jewish descent!"

[djoser-xyyman]

This is off the chains!!!!



Quote

Figure from Das et al. (2017)

The results were replicated in a separate analysis. The evidence for the non-Levantine origin of AJs is very strong. Interestingly, these findings also explain the results of previous genetic studies that relied on the similarity between AJs and Palestinians to claim Levantine origins for AJs. This similarity, however, is likely based on the Iranian and Turkish components of Palestinians (about 40%), not the Levantine one that Jews don’t have. The only ones with a full Levantine ancestry (as far as we know) are about half of the Bedouins (far left). Please note, that Semitic DNA from Israel is still missing, however Lebanese Semitic genomes and Egyptian ones were published. These genomes exhibit high similarity to the Levantine genomes used in our study, so we do not expect major surprises when Israelite Semitic data would be published.

[djoser-xyyman]

Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz - Ranajit Das

QUOTES:
Like most Eurasians, Yiddish speaker genomes are amedley of three major components: Mediterranean (X= 52%),
Southwest Asian (X= 24%), and Northern European (X= 16%) (fig. 2A), although, like the ancient pre-Scythian, they
also exhibit a small and ****consistent sub-Saharan African component ****(X~2%), in general agreement with Moorjani et al.
(2011). GPS positioned nearly all Ashkenazic Jews (AJs) on the


We generated the admixture signatures of 100 or 200 “native” individuals from six areas associated with the origin of
Yiddish and AJs (fig. 4, supplementary figures S4 and S5, Supplementary Material online, and table 1): Germany,
Ukraine, Khazaria, Turkish “Ashkenaz,” Israel, and Iran (fig. 5A and C). We first tested the genetic affinity of these “native”
populations by examining their genetic distances (d) to modern-day populations residing within the same regions (fig.
5B). For Israelites, we used Palestinians and Bedouins, and for Khazars we used Armenians, Georgians, Abkhazians,
Chechens, and Ukrainians.

To identify additional potential founding populations, we assessed the genetic distances between AJs and all non-Jewish
individuals in this study, including populations excluded from the reference population panel. Most of the individuals cluster
along an ‘A’-shaped structure with the ends corresponding to Scandinavians and North Africans. AJs, due to their large
number, formed the apex of the ‘A’, connecting Southern Europeans with Near Eastern (fig. 6). AJs overlapped with
few Greeks and Italians within an Irano-Turkish super-cluster.


The mitochondrial haplogroup L2a1 is found in five Ashkenazic maternal lineages, where
80% of the mothers speak ***solely ****Yiddish (supplementary table S3, Supplementary Material online). A search in the
Genographic public dataset found 229 individuals with that haplogroup. Of those, 169 described their maternal descent
as African (156), European (4), or “Jewish” (9), mostly Ashkenazic.


Our findings are also consistent with the vast majority of genetic findings that AJs are closer to Near Eastern (e.g.,
Turks, Iranians, and Kurds) and South European populations (e.g., Greeks and Italians) as opposed to Middle Eastern populations
(e.g., Bedouins and Palestinians). Remarkably, with only few exceptions (e.g., Need et al. 2009; Zoossmann-
Diskin 2010), these findings have been consistently misinterpreted in favor of a Middle Eastern Judaean ancestry, although
the data do not support such contention for either Y chromosomal (Hammer et al. 2000; Nebel et al. 2001;
Rootsi et al. 2013) or genome-wide studies (Seldin et al. 2006; Kopelman et al. 2009; Tian et al. 2009; Atzmon et al.
2010; Behar et al. 2010; Campbell et al. 2012; Ostrer and Skorecki 2012). To promulgate a Middle Eastern origin despite
the findings, various dispositions were adopted. Some authors consolidated the Middle East with other regions whereas
other authors abolished it altogether. For example, Seldin et al. (2006) wrote that the “southern [European]” component
is “consistent with a later Mediterranean origin,” whereas Rootsi et al. (2013) declared it as part of the Near
East, ...

[djoser-xyyman]

So.... have we been fooled for the last 400years? Someone help ,e out here.

[kel]

yes.

they have nothing to do with the Hebrews of the bible or the "Middle East"/ Holy Lands

[djoser-xyyman]

The Geography of Jewish Ethnogenesis(2019)

Aram Yardumian

Department of History and Social Sciences, Bryn Athyn College, Bryn Athyn, PA 19009-0717, and Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6398, USA. Email: [e-mail]

Abstract
A reevaluation of the anthropological genetics literature on Jewish populations reveals them **NOT** simply to be a body of genetically related people descending from a small group of common ancestors, but rather a “mosaic” of peoples of diverse origins. Greek and other pre-medieval historiographic sources suggest the patterning evident in recent genetic studies could be explained by a major contribution from Greco-Roman and Anatolian-Byzantine converts who affiliated themselves with some iteration of Judaism beginning in the first and second centuries ce and continuing into the Middle Ages. These populations, along with Babylonian and Alexandrian Jewish communities, indigenous North Africans, and Slavic-speaking **converts** to Judaism, support a mosaic geography of Jewish ancestry in Europe and Western Asia, rather than one arising from a limited set of lineages originating solely in Palestine.

6. In the PCA plot from Behar et al. (2010), Levantine populations (Samaritans
and Druze but not Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, or Syrians) were remarkably
close to some Jewish individuals. However, most Ashkenazi Jewish individuals were
positioned outside the Levantine cluster. More importantly, in figure 2 from this
same paper, Jewish populations were positioned closer to the “host” populations than
to each other, and without intermediate individuals, which hardly is suggestive of a
population with centralized ancestry


7. While, on the one hand, stating, “the time frame for the split from Middle Eastern populations is beyond the detection power of our IBD analysis” (Behar et al.
2013:29), the authors claimed that the founding lineages likely belonged to a “Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool” despite nothing in the data set suggesting either an “ancestral” pool or a subsequent “split” within it. In an earlier analysis of genomic data,
Behar et al. (2010:239–40) made similar statements about “ancestral Levantine contribution to much of contemporary Jewry” and consistency “with historical records
describing the dispersion of the people of ancient Israel throughout the Old World.”

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

Of course the Khazars were Turkics.
Whether black n white are just class
division or actual complexions

Arab geographer Istakhri said:

“The Khazars do not resemble the Turks.
They are black-haired and of two kinds,

one called the Kara [i.e. “Black”] - Khazars
who are swarthy verging on deep black
as if they were a kind of Hindu,

and a white kind [Ak-Khazars],
who are strikingly handsome”.

they adopted 'Judaism' for political reasons
in the face of both Muslim Arab and
Christian 'Caucasian' aggressors.


900 yrs ago the Spanish & Portuguese
Israelite Rabbi Y*hudah haLewi wrote
down his story of their conversion in
the book Sepher haKhuzari. I personally
know Korobkin its latest translator. Also
corresponded with Brook 'webmaster' of
www.khazaria.com/khazar-history.html
www.khazaria.com/khazar-quotes.html

In Caribbean Sephardi Israelite Jose Malcion's
pamphlet How the Hebrews Became Jews is
where I first heard of Poliak's Khazaria before
I knew a 13th Tribe Koestler even existed.
Malcion served as president of an USA
organization of the "Black Jews of India".
He signed my copies of his book and pamphlet.


Here's a very analytical guy, Paul Wexler whose
works are quite econstructionist especially
The Ashkenazic Jews:
A Slavo-Turkic People
In Search Of A Jewish Identity

Yardumian 2019 said:

A reevaluation of the anthropological genetics literature on Jewish populations reveals them not simply to be a body of genetically related people descending from a small group of common ancestors, but rather a “mosaic” of peoples of diverse origins.
Greek and other pre-medieval historiographic sources suggest the patterning evident in recent genetic studies could be explained by a

major contribution from Greco-Roman and Anatolian-Byzantine converts who affiliated themselves with some iteration of Judaism beginning in the first and second centuries ce

Dio Cassius ~2nd century CE said:

other men, who, although of a different race, have adopted the laws of the people."

5
This was the course of events at that time in Palestine; for this is the name that has been given from of old to the whole country extending from Phoenicia to Egypt along the inner sea. They have also another name that they have acquired: the country has been named Judaea, and the people themselves Jews.

17
1
I do not know how this title came to be given to them, but it applies also to all the rest of mankind, although of alien race, who affect their customs. This class exists even among the Romans, and though often repressed has increased to a very great extent and has won its way to the right of freedom in its observances.

2
They are distinguished from the rest of mankind in practically every detail of life, and especially by the fact that they do not honour any of the usual gods, but show extreme reverence for one particular divinity. They never had any statue of him even in Jerusalem itself, but believing him to be unnamable and invisible, they worship him in the most extravagant fashion on earth.