What was asserted by J. Evola as well as by a few other racists in the 1930's
and in the early 1940's was lately confirmed by Jewish and non Jewish scientists
: Jews are all but a race.
"A new thread is being woven into the complex tapestry of Jewish history, a
thread fashioned from a double twist of DNA.
The DNA data suggest a particular version of Jewish history and origins that
historians have not yet had time to appraise but that seem to be reconcilable in
principle with the historical record, according to experts in Jewish studies.
The emerging genetic picture is based largely on two studies, one published two
years ago and the other this month, that together show that the men and women
who founded the Jewish communities had surprisingly different genetic histories.
The earlier study, led by Dr. Michael Hammer of University of Arizona, showed
from an analysis of the male, or Y chromosome, that Jewish men from seven
communities were related to one another and to present-day Palestinian and
Syrian populations, but not to the men of their host communities.
The finding suggested that Jewish men who founded the communities traced their
lineage back to the ancestral Mideastern population of 4,000 years ago from
which Arabs, Jews and other people are descended. It pointed to the genetic
unity of widespread Jewish populations and took issue with ideas that most
Jewish communities were relatively recent converts like the Khazars, a medieval
Turkish tribe that embraced Judaism.
A new study now shows that the women in nine Jewish communities from Georgia,
the former Soviet republic, to Morocco have vastly different genetic histories
from the men. In each community, the women carry very few genetic signatures on
their mitochondrial DNA, a genetic element inherited only through the female
line. This indicates that the community had just a small number of founding
mothers and that after the founding event there was little, if any, interchange
with the host population. The women's identities, however, are a mystery,
because, unlike the case with the men, their genetic signatures are not related
to one another or to those of present-day Middle Eastern populations.
The new study, by Dr. David Goldstein, Dr. Mark Thomas and Dr. Neil Bradman of
University College in London and other colleagues, appears in The American
Journal of Human Genetics this month. Dr. Goldstein said it was up to historians
to interpret the genetic evidence. His own speculation, he said, is that most
Jewish communities were formed by unions between Jewish men and local women,
though he notes that the women's origins cannot be genetically determined.
"The men came from the Near East, perhaps as traders," he said. "They
established local populations, probably with local women. But once the community
was founded, the barriers had to go up, because otherwise mitochondrial
diversity would be increased."
In ancient Israel, the Jewish priesthood was handed from father to son. But at
some time from 200 B.C. to A.D. 500, Jewish status came to be defined by
maternal descent. Even though the founding mothers of most Jewish communities
were not born Jewish, their descendants were.
"It's precisely that custom that allows us to see these founding events," Dr.
Goldstein said.
Like the other Jewish communities in the study, the Ashkenazic community of
Northern and Central Europe, from which most American Jews are descended, shows
less diversity than expected in its mitochondrial DNA, perhaps reflecting the
maternal definition of Jewishness. But unlike the other Jewish populations, it
does not show signs of having had very few female founders. It is possible, Dr.
Goldstein said, that the Ashkenazic community is a mosaic of separate
populations formed the same way as the others.
Dr. Harry Ostrer, a medical geneticist at New York University, said the 26
specific genetic diseases found among Ashkenazim, usually attributed to "founder
effects," could be explained by the idea of a mosaic of small populations. A
founder effect amplifies any mutation present in a small population that later
expands.
"He has really opened up the door for some very interesting work," Dr. Ostrer
said.
The idea that most or all Jewish communities were founded by Jewish men and
local women is somewhat at variance with the usual founding traditions. Most
Jewish communities hold that they were formed by families who fled persecution
or were invited to settle by local kings.
For instance, Iraqi Jews are said to be descended from those exiled to Babylon
after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C. Members of the Bene Israel
community of Bombay say they are the children of Jews who fled the persecutions
of Antiochus Epiphanus, who repressed the Maccabean revolt, around 150 B.C.
Most of those founding narratives do not have strong historical support. Dr.
Lawrence H. Schiffman, professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York
University, said the new genetic data could well explain how certain far-flung
Jewish communities were formed. But he doubted that it would account for the
origin of larger Jewish communities that seemed more likely to have been formed
by families who were fleeing persecution or making invited settlements.
Dr. Shaye Cohen, professor of Jewish literature and philosophy at Harvard, said
the implication of the findings and the idea of Jewish communities' having been
founded by traders, was "by no means implausible."
"The authors are correct in saying the historical origins of most Jewish
communities are unknown," Dr. Cohen said. "Not only the little ones like in
India, but even the mainstream Ashkenazic culture from which most American Jews
descend."
In a recent book, "The Beginnings of Jewishness," Dr. Cohen argued that
far-flung Jewish communities had adopted the rabbinic teaching of the
matrilineal descent of Jewishness soon after the Islamic conquests in the
seventh, eight and ninth centuries A.D.
One part of the Goldstein team's analysis, that matrilineal descent of
Jewishness was practiced at or soon after the founding of each community, could
fit in with this conclusion, Dr. Cohen said, if the communities were founded
around this time.
The data being generated by Dr. Hammer, Dr. Goldstein and other population
geneticists touches on the delicate issue of whether Jews can be considered a
race. Dr. Cohen noted that the Nazis and their anti-Semitic predecessors had
argued that Jews were a race and therefore irreconcilable with the host
community and that Jews had in response argued they were not, because they
admitted people by conversion.
If the founding mothers of most Jewish communities were local, that could
explain why Jews in each country tend to resemble their host community
physically while the origins of their Jewish founding fathers may explain the
aspects the communities have in common, Dr. Cohen said.
Despite the definition of Jewishness as being born to a Jewish mother, and the
likelihood of some continuity between ancient and modern populations, it has not
until recently been clear that genetics had anything much to contribute to
questions of Jewish identity.
Some scholars suspected that Jewish communities had through intermarriage or
conversion become little different from their host populations. Many say they
believe that even if Jews are a group definable in ethnic, as opposed to
cultural or religious terms, it is either impossible or unwise to define an
ethnic group genetically.
Dr. Schiffman said that as president of the Association for Jewish Studies he
would consider convening a discussion between the geneticists and the historians
on interpreting the new data. He noted that the study of racial differences had
led to disaster in the past but that the new analysis of genetic differences was
"a form of racial science for the good, rather than the bad."
"Racial science," Dr. Schiffman said, "has brought so many terrible things. But
it's a norm now in genetics to study the racial genetics of groups. So I think
it's an amazing difference."
Geneticists use the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA to track the movement of
populations because each is passed unchanged from parent to child, escaping the
genetic shuffle that occurs on the rest of genome between generations. Since the
Y chromosome passes down only from father to son, and mitochondrial DNA is
always inherited from the mother alone, the two elements serve to track the
genetic history of men and women respectively.
But since the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA clock up occasional changes or
mutations every thousand years or so, on much the same time scale as human
population splits, different ethnic groups tend to have characteristic patterns
of mutations.
The Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA's in today's Jewish communities reflect
the ancestry of their male and female founders but say little about the rest of
the genome, which is by now a presumably well mixed set of genes contributed by
all the founders of each community.
Noting that the Y chromosome points to a Middle Eastern origin of Jewish
communities and the mitochondrial DNA to a possibly local origin, Dr. Goldstein
said that the composition of ordinary chromosomes, which carry most of the
genes, was impossible to assess.
"My guess," Dr. Goldstein said, "is that the rest of the genome will be a
mixture of both."
http://books.google.fr/books?id=UNczHm67tjIC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=%22The+Y+chromo\
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20mitochondrial%20DNA%27s%20in%20today%27s%20Jewish%22&f=false
Jews are all but a race. Basically, as stressed by J. Evola in 'Sintesi della
dottribna della razza', Jews are the anti-race, the sub-race.