In my Substack post Under pressure: the paradox of the diamond I said this:
The implication of these DNA results is that Yemeni Jews are by and large descended from natives of this region of Arabia. They are converts, and their genetic uniqueness is a function of their isolation from demographic currents that swept across Arabia with the rise of Islam. The Yemenis of the highlands, isolated by geography, show the same genetic signature of isolation, as they descend solely from the original inhabitants of the region. This is the nth demonstration that culture and geography are both powerful factors driving genetic distinctiveness.
Some people took objection, or, inquired further, as to why I said this. From High-resolution inference of genetic relationships among Jewish populations:
Four Jewish populations included in the study—Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews from Cochin, Indian Jews from Mumbai, and Yemenite Jews—are considered to be culturally distinct and not part of the Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, North African, or Sephardi groups; they are therefore not analyzed in sets…
…Figure 1b reveals a distinctive position for the Yemenite Jewish samples in relation to other Jewish populations…
…The resulting MDS plot (Fig. 1c) places the Yemenite Jews near Bedouin, Saudi Arabian, and Yemenite non-Jewish populations…
…Jewish populations have mixed membership in the two clusters, with the exception of the Yemenite Jews, who are placed primarily in the main cluster among Middle Eastern populations. For K = 3, the third cluster (dark blue) separates the Mozabite and Moroccan populations. Non-Jewish populations from the Levant generally have substantial membership in this cluster, as do North African and Yemenite Jews.
For K = 6, Yemenite Jews have relatively high membership in the new cluster, which also has substantial membership from Middle Eastern populations such as Bedouins and Saudi Arabians (pink)…
We further reduced the population set, exploring structure among Jewish populations, continuing to exclude Ethiopian and Indian Jews, and also excluding the relatively dissimilar Yemenite Jews (population set 4)…
You can look at the plots above. I also added some of my own after I added Vyas et al. Yemen samples (warning, only 7,000 SNP intersection!). Using my own Fst, PCA, and TreeMix, I think it’s possible that the modern Yemenis aren’t related to ancient Yemenis, but Yemeni Jews clearly cluster with modern Arabian populations.
What does the three-population test say? You can look here, but Yemeni Jews don’t show a significant deviation from a three-population phylogeny when they’re an outgroup with the populations I have. That means with my particular model they’re probably best thought of as an ancient Arabian population without much gene flow from external sources (they don’t have much African admixture, unlike other Yemenis).
If you want to see the alternative, please read Mitochondrial DNA reveals distinct evolutionary histories for Jewish populations in Yemen and Ethiopia. I’m not spending any more time on this.
“Artificial Intelligence Has Found an Unknown ‘Ghost’ Ancestor in The Human Genome” by Peter Docrill on 25 OCTOBER 2021
https://www.sciencealert.com/artificial-intelligence-finds-an-unknown-ghost-ancestor-in-the-human-genome
“Using a statistical technique called Bayesian inference, the researchers found evidence of what they call a “third introgression” – a ‘ghost’ archaic population that modern humans interbred with during the African exodus.
“This population is either related to the Neanderthal-Denisova clade or diverged early from the Denisova lineage,” the researchers wrote in their paper, meaning that it’s possible this third population in humanity’s sexual history was possibly a mix themselves of Neanderthals and Denisovans.
* * *
“Our theory coincides with the hybrid specimen discovered recently in Denisova, although as yet we cannot rule out other possibilities”, one of the team, genomicist Mayukh Mondal from the University of Tartu in Estonia, said in a press statement at the time of discovery.”
November open thread please? I had something to say not relevant to this or any other current thread.
From the bits of the Substack post it seems like the hypothesis of many non-Middle Eastern Jews being Church of the East migrants who admixed locally and then adopted Hebrew Bible oriented faiths a la the 7th Day Adventists in the U.S. seems to be a leading hypothesis.
One possible test would be to see if “core Jewish” admixture into local populations (mostly through local wives) predates or postdates 70 CE (the canonical date for the transition from Temple Judaism to the Rabbinic Judaism after the fall of the Second Temple, and the commencement of the Jewish Diaspora) and also coincides with the rise of Christianity. The inference would be that an earlier date would have to be truly Jewish.
What do linkage disequilibrium measures say about time of admixture in these populations?