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Author Topic: The original Jewish mums (Ashkenazi side)...
lagatta
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posted 13 January 2006 09:27 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Almost half of Europe's Jews are descended from just four women, according to a new study.
Scientists studied the mitochondrial DNA - passed from mother to daughter - of 11,000 women of Ashkenazi Jewish origin living in 67 countries.

The Ashkenazis moved from the Mid-East to Italy and then to Eastern Europe, where their population exploded in the 13th Century, the scientists say.

One of the authors said the study shows the importance of Jewish mothers.

"This I could tell you even without the paper," Dr Doron Behar of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology told Reuters news agency.



European Jewish foremothers.

Though actually, the Mediterranean mama is not only Jewish, and certainly not only Ashkenazi...


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
rinne
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posted 13 January 2006 10:11 PM      Profile for rinne     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
From the above article:

"There are now some eight million people of Ashkenazi origin living around the world, the researchers say.

Some 3.5m, or 40%, of them are descended from the four women, they say."

Absolutely incredible.


From: prairies | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged
Reality. Bites.
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posted 13 January 2006 11:49 PM      Profile for Reality. Bites.        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Almost half of Europe's Jews are descended from just four women

And do you think any of them ever pick up a phone to say hello?


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Boom Boom
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posted 13 January 2006 11:53 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
RB:
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Serendipity
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posted 20 January 2006 08:27 PM      Profile for Serendipity     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
RB: I read your joke (and the article) on the phone to my yiddish grandmother and we both laughed for over a minute until our sides hurt.
From: montreal | Registered: Sep 2005  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 20 January 2006 08:40 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That's lovely, Serendipity, and you must study Yiddish - there is a Yiddish Winkel in Montréal; I know a (goyish) Scot who is studying it because his wife is Polish-Jewish... Her very lively mum (70+) is active in the Klezmer camps in the old Jewish-Commie holiday camps in the Laurentians...

As for me, stuck studying German, for my Yekke.


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sidra
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posted 20 January 2006 09:04 PM      Profile for sidra   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:

And do you think any of them ever pick up a phone to say hello?
R.B.



From: Ontario | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Reality. Bites.
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6718

posted 27 January 2006 04:12 PM      Profile for Reality. Bites.        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Serendipity:
RB: I read your joke (and the article) on the phone to my yiddish grandmother and we both laughed for over a minute until our sides hurt.

I'm so glad you both (and the others) enjoyed it. I was hesitant to post it, since making light of ethnic stereotypes can be risky.


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Makwa
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posted 28 January 2006 12:52 AM      Profile for Makwa   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by RealityBites:
And do you think any of them ever pick up a phone to say hello?
Bwahahahaha. Oy. I think I peed myself.

From: Here at the glass - all the usual problems, the habitual farce | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged
Reality. Bites.
rabble-rouser
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posted 28 January 2006 07:33 AM      Profile for Reality. Bites.        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Makwa:
Bwahahahaha. Oy. I think I peed myself.

Anyone else, I'd be flattered. Coming from you I can't help but be a little disappointed you didn't poo yourself.


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skdadl
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posted 28 January 2006 07:56 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

Can someone help me with the time-logic of these two facts, though:

quote:
The four women are thought to have lived in the Middle East about 1,000 years ago but they may not have lived anywhere near each other, according to the study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

...

The Ashkenazis are thought to have travelled from the Middle East to Italy in the first or second Centuries.


One thousand years ago would be the tenth or eleventh centuries. But the Ashkenazi population is thought to have migrated long before then, so what were these mamas still doing back in the Middle East? And how would they be related to an already migrated population? Or am I misreading this?


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Reality. Bites.
rabble-rouser
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posted 28 January 2006 08:04 AM      Profile for Reality. Bites.        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by skdadl:
Can someone help me with the time-logic of these two facts, though:

I'm going to chalk it up to sloppy reporting and/or misunderstanding of something in the original paper.


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jrootham
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posted 28 January 2006 08:13 AM      Profile for jrootham     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It seems to confusion in the reporting, a different report (from CNN!) says:

quote:
Those women apparently lived somewhere in Europe within the last 2,000 years, but not necessarily in the same place or even the same century, said lead author Dr. Doron Behar of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel.

quote:
Mike Hammer, who does similar research at the University of Arizona, said he found the work tracing back to just four ancestors "quite plausible... I think they've done a really good job of tackling this question."

But he said it's not clear the women lived in Europe.

"They may have existed in the Near East," Hammer said. "We don't know exactly where the four women were, but their descendants left a legacy in the population today, whereas ... other women's descendants did not."

Behar agreed that the four women he referred to did inherit their genetic signatures from female ancestors who lived in the Near East. But he said he preferred to focus on these later European descendants because they were at the root of the Ashkenazi population explosion.


CNN seems to have done better reporting.

[ 28 January 2006: Message edited by: jrootham ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Reality. Bites.
rabble-rouser
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posted 28 January 2006 08:19 AM      Profile for Reality. Bites.        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jrootham:
CNN seems to have done better reporting.

That's an Associated Press report.


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jrootham
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posted 28 January 2006 08:23 AM      Profile for jrootham     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Damn fine print. I thought there was something wrong with the universe there.
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skdadl
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posted 28 January 2006 08:24 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Aha. That's more helpful, and of course they would have connections back to the Middle East.

These studies are fascinating, aren't they. I'm probably too old to find out what's written in my genes, but I'll bet one day almost anyone will be able to trace self back to some unexpected places. There's a myth in my mum's family (Polish) about the Mongol hordes, eg.

Well, we have these curious cheekbones. It's not beyond all belief, eh?


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lagatta
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posted 28 January 2006 08:44 AM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Skdadl, lots of Northern Slavs (Poles, Ukranians, Russians) have cheekbones from Central Asia. Nothing odd about that.

Yes, the first report I'd posted was very sloppy in terms of timelines.


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Boarsbreath
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posted 31 January 2006 09:41 PM      Profile for Boarsbreath   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I and my brother have just-discernible inverted-triangles of hair centered over the anal crack. I was told when young that this was a sign of Mongol ancestry, from the good old days -- my family's descended from the British Isles.

YEARS and years later, I learn the obvious point that since your "ancestors" double every generation back in time, and there were lots fewer people then than now, almost everyone's "descended from" almost everyone far enough back, especially within a smallish area (like Eurasia). (Those Ashkenazi women were special, not for their breeding capacity but for the fluke of mutant mytochondrial DNA; and the Askenazi are special for restrictive out-breeding.) AND old Ghengis Khan, thanks to a mutant feature of (apparently) his Y-chromosome, is now known to be ancestor to something like 1/20 of the population of Eurasia...

...so now I treasure my little Bush of the Great Khan.


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skdadl
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posted 01 February 2006 07:49 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hmmn. Well, I do not have one of those, Boarsbreath. I just checked.
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Michelle
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posted 01 February 2006 07:52 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by RealityBites:
And do you think any of them ever pick up a phone to say hello?


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged

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