103. DNA What is The Reality of Jewish Genetic Origins 01

Evo Inception, "What is The Reality of Jewish Genetic Origins", April 30 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vITrg5zLZgc


Ever wondered why DNA testing companies can identify Jewish ancestry it seems strange doesn't it?

How can a religion show up in your genetic code?

After all, people of the same faith living in different corners of the world should have wildly different DNA based
on their geography right?

What makes Jewish ancestry detectable in a way that say Christian or Buddhist ancestry isn't?

This is where the story gets fascinating. Jewish
ancestry appears in DNA tests not because Judaism left a mark on people's genes.  Religions don't alter DNA, but
because certain Jewish populations became genetically distinct through a combination of geography, history, culture
and marriage practices that kept these communities somewhat genetically isolated over centuries.

To understand this genetic story, we need to travel back thousands of years to the ancient Middle East where the Jewish story began.

The earliest historical references to the people who would become known as Jews appear in ancient Egyptian texts
from around 1200 BC where they are called Israelites.

Biblical tradition traces their origins to Abraham who supposedly lived around 18800 BC in Mesopotamia
before migrating to Canaan, roughly modern-day Israel. these early Israelites weren't genetically distinct from their
neighbors at first. They were simply one of many Semitic-speaking peoples in the region closely related to Canaanites
early Phoenicians and other local populations.

What set them apart was their emerging monotheistic religion and
unique cultural practices not their genetics. Archaeological evidence confirms these ancient Israelites built a kingdom centered around Jerusalem which eventually split into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. it was from Judah
that the word Jew would eventually derive.

When the Babylonian Empire conquered Judah in 586 BC, they exiled many residents to Babylon. The first major displacement of Jewish people that would characterize much of their
subsequent history.

But what was their genetic makeup at this time, modern genetic studies suggest these ancient Israelites carried Y chromosome haplo groups common to the Levant region,  particularly J1 and J2 which remain prevalent among both Jewish and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations today.

Their mitochondrial DNA passed exclusively from mothers to children likely included Hapla group common to the region as well including subgroups of Haplo groups, H, K and others
still found throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. 

When some exiled Jews returned to rebuild Jerusalem under
Persian rule, they maintained stronger boundaries around their community. the scribe Ezra, reportedly forbad intermarriage with surrounding peoples, setting a precedent for the indogamy,
marriage within the community that would later play such an important role in Jewish genetic distinctiveness.

After Alexander the Great's conquests spread Hellenistic culture throughout the region. Many Jews dispersed throughout the
Mediterranean world, establishing communities in Egypt, Syria, Greece and beyond.

Romans called this population: the diaspora, from Greek for scattering.


When the Romans destroyed the second temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD following a Jewish revolt, even more Jews were displaced, 
accelerating this dispersion. yet despite living among diverse populations, many Jewish communities maintained their
distinct religious practices and tended to marry within their faith.

This wasn't absolute.

Converts joined Jewish communities and some Jews certainly had
children with non-Jews.

But the overall pattern of marrying within the community
created the beginnings of genetic distinctiveness.

As centuries passed, Jewish Branches these dispersed Jewish populations developed into several major branches with their own unique histories and genetic signatures.

The three largest groups became known as Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews.

Mizrahi Jews remained closest to the ancestral homeland living continuously in the Middle East and North Africa.

Their genetic makeup shows the strongest connection to ancient Lavantine populations with relatively less, add mixture from surrounding peoples Iraqi Jews, Iranian Jews and Yemenite Jews, all fall within this broad category. Each with slight variations in their genetic profile reflecting their specific histories. 

Yemenite Jews for instance, maintained an isolated community in the Arabian Peninsula for nearly 2,000 years.

Their genetic studies reveal predominantly Middle Eastern ancestry with some add mixture from the local Arabian population. They carry unique genetic variants not found in other Jewish groups.

Yet still share certain key genetic markers that connect them to
the broader Jewish diaspora. Sephardic Jews established themselves throughout the Mediterranean, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula, modern Spain and Portugal, where they lived for centuries. During this age, Jewish communities experienced some cultural and economic stability. The genetic story
of Sephardic Jews reveals a fascinating mixture. They maintained significant genetic connections to Middle Eastern ancestry, while also incorporating genetic influences from North African
Berbers and various Mediterranean populations.

When they were brutally expelled from Spain in 1492, these
communities dispersed again throughout North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, and the Netherlands, carrying their
unique genetic mixture with them. Perhaps the most genetically studied Jewish population is the Ashkanazi community, which formed in the Ryan Valley of France and Germany around 900 to 1,000 AD before later expanding eastward into Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia.


Ashkenazi: their genetic story is particularly interesting because it involves several founder events and population
bottlenecks that dramatically shape their genetic profile.

A founder event occurs when a small group establishes a
new population bringing only a fraction of the genetic diversity from their parent population.

Population bottlenecks happen when dramatic reductions in population size due to persecution, disease or migration further restrict genetic diversity.


The Ashkenazi population experienced both phenomena repeatedly throughout their history. 

As mentioned earlier, the genetic evidence suggests that the early Ashkenazi community began with just a few hundred individuals who migrated from southern Europe and the Middle East into the Rin Valley.

These founders carried only a subset of the genetic diversity present in the broader Jewish population. Studies of their mitochondrial DNA have revealed something surprising. While Ashkenazi paternal lineages Y chromosome show predominantly Middle Eastern origins similar to other Jewish communities a
significant portion of their maternal lineages appear to derive from European women who joined the community, likely through
conversion.


This doesn't mean, as some have claimed, that Ashkenazi Jews are
actually European. Rather it reflects the complex reality of population formation.


The early male Jewish merchants and scholars who established communities in Europe, often married local women who
converted to Judaism, creating a population with mixed ancestry.

As these early Ashkenazi communities grew they faced repeated persecutions, including massacres during the Crusades, expulsions from various cities and regions, and restrictions that concentrated them in particular areas. As mentioned earlier, each of these events created genetic
bottlenecks that reduced diversity and increased the frequency of certain genetic variants within the population.

Particularly significant was the population restriction following the Black Death in the 14th century. When
Jewish communities were often blamed for the plague and massacred.

Those who survived faced increasing restrictions that confined them to specific areas later formalized as ghettos and limited
their economic activities primarily to occupations like money lending that Christians were forbidden to practice.

Despite these hardships, the Ashkenazi population experienced
remarkable growth during the 16th to 18th centuries, particularly in Eastern Europe from a population of perhaps a
few thousand in 1500, they grew to several million by 1900 as mentioned earlier,

The practice of endogamy, marrying within the community further reinforced these genetic patterns never absolute. Conversion and intermarriage did occur like in other Jewish groups.

The cultural practice of matching Jewish children with other Jewish families, combined with external factors like discrimination against interfaith marriages meant that
Ashkenazi Jews primarily had children with other Ashkenazi Jews generation after generation.


This created a unique genetic signature distinct from surrounding European populations despite centuries of living among them. This brings us to one of the most medically
significant aspects of Jewish genetic history, the prevalence of certain genetic diseases. The combination of founder effects, population bottlenecks and indogamy dramatically increased the
frequency of certain genetic variants within specific Jewish populations in Ashkenazi Jews. This led to higher rates
of Tay-Sachs disease, gaucher disease.

Similarly Sephartic Jews have elevated rates of familial Mediterranean fever, while Persian Jews show higher frequencies of mutations causing salt-wasting congenital adrenal hyperlasia.

These disease patterns helped early genetic researchers identify
distinctive Jewish genetic signatures which became important reference points when modern consumer DNA testing emerged.