Saturday, May 28, 2016

Elhaik's at it and wrong again

Seems Dr. Eran Elhaik, despite being proven wrong in the past, is at it again but this time with a seemingly new game plan. You see, Ashkenazim are now no longer simply Khazarians but are originally  Northeastern Anatolians who spoke a... "Slavo-Irano-Turkic" language. And that language is apparently Yiddish because all of the linguists who are pretty sure it's a Germanic language are quite wrong according to Elhaik and this is because the genetics supposedly supports a nonsensical fringe theory.



First off, linguistics is linguistics and population genetics is population genetics. The two fields can compliment one another for sure but linguistic issues will principally be solved via linguistic study but that doesn't even matter because the genetic data is not actually on Elhaik's side this time either.

I wouldn't let all of this disingenuous "GPS" talk fool you... Simply observe any decent PCA (principal component analysis) based on autosomal DNA and- :




-you'll catch onto the fact that Ashkenazi Jews are nearly identical to Sephardi Jews and cluster extremely close to them (often overlapping with them as well) whilst the other groups they cluster closest to are Sicilians, the Maltese, certain Greeks (i.e. Cretans) and Cypriots. Mostly Mediterranean islander populations and not Northeastern Anatolians or Northern Caucasians

Ashkenazim are basically, from a genetic perspective, a Mediterranean population who seem to be a mixture between Southern Europeans (Italian or Greek related) and Hebrew speaking Levantines (I'd say more of the latter than the former) and they're, at a basal level, of mostly Near Eastern origins (i.e. Anatolian Neolithic & Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer type ancestries) and we have an array of studies and data supporting this but Elhaik still seems hellbent on preaching this type of gobbledygook with a straight face. Whatever floats his boat, I guess. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

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Suggested reads:




8 comments:

  1. Brilliant work as always Mr. Abdi effendi.

    Eran "Jews are *anything* but Levantine" Elhaik is at it again with his famous unreplicatable conclusions! His methodology is not only highly faulty, but alas begins to reveal the political underpinnings of his disingenuous ways.

    

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    1. Thanks, man. Appreciate you keeping up with Anthromadness. ;-)

      Here is also a nice site a friend led me to which showcases Ashkenazi Jews' Y-DNA lineages and frequencies:

      http://jewishdna.net/

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    2. Thank you very much.
      Please, if you can find any information on Mizrahi samples, try to assess them.
      Also, if I have Iraqi Jew samples from my family and I, should I submit them somewhere?

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    3. Sure, I'm a bit pre-occupied with other things but I'll try out a post on Mizrahis someday, perhaps. And as for your fmaily's samples... You can join this forum and share them there:

      http://anthrogenica.com/

      There's a sharp-minded paternally Ashkenazi member there with a background in Linguistics who'd be very helpful.

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    4. Thank you very much for steering me upon the right path, and sparing some of your time! Cheers. Will register this week.

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    5. No problem, my friend. That member I mentioned is named "Agamemnon". Seek him out once you've registered. ;-)

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  2. Hey Awale, great article explaining this. There is an interesting argument going on between Pavel Flegontov and Elhaik on this matter. My knowledge of this stuff is incredibly superficial, so it's taking a while for me to really get the details.
    If you have the time, I have one question to ask you. I've been arguing on the web with a guy who seems like he knows what he's talking about, and he confidently claims that the paternal lineages of Ashkenazi Jews are conclusively linked to the generally Mediterranean region, and specifically Italy, rather than the Levant. Are there any studies which specifically point to the Levant, or at this point we can't really tell?

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    1. Sorry for the late reply, my friend. Anyway, I actually shared a good link for Ashkenazi Y-DNA with "Babylonian Hebrew":

      http://jewishdna.net/

      You can see the various Y-DNA lineages found among Ashkenazim there, along with the geographic origins for each clade. Western Jewish Y-DNA looks to be mainly West Asian to me. There're definitely some Italo-Greek type lineages amok and some Iberian as well as "Slavic" lineages but Jews are mainly West Asian from a Y-DNA point-of-view, as far as I've seen.

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