I signed up with the 23andme DNA service, just for fun, and discovered that my paternal DNA Haplogroup is G2c. Here’s what Wikipedia tells me:
The most plausible scenario for the spread of G2c within Europe is an origin among Jews in Sicily, and a spread northward to Germany and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the time of the expulsion of the Jews of Sicily in 1492.[citation needed]
It is estimated that Jews made up 6% or more of the population of Sicily in 1492.[24] Historical evidence shows that most Sicilian Jews went eastward to the Ottoman Empire, where Sicilian Jewish congregations existed in Salonika and Constantinople until the late 19th century. However, it is known that many Sicilian Jews first went to Calabria, and then Jews were expelled from Calabria in 1524, and later from the entire Kingdom of Naples in 1540. There was a gradual movement throughout the 16th century of Jews in Italy from south to north, with conditions worsening for Jews in Rome after 1556 and Venice in the 1580s. Many Jews from Venice and the surrounding area migrated to Poland and Lithuania at this time.[24][25][26][27]
In this scenario it may be that there was a direct migration from Sicily or Southern Italy separately to both Western Germany and Poland-Lithuania, but the presence of G2c in Germany may be due to a later migration from Eastern Europe to Germany starting with the aftermath of Khmelnytsky’s Pogrom in Poland in 1648,
Jews had lived in Sicily since Roman times. After the Byzantine reconquest of Sicily from the Arian Ostrogoths who were very tolerant of the Jews in 552, conditions worsened dramatically for Jews in Sicily. Under the Byzantine Empire few Jews lived in Sicily because of official persecution. Before 606 the bishop of Palermo ordered the synagogue to be converted into a church. An edict issued by Leo III the Isaurian in 722 which ordered the baptism by force of all Jews in the Empire[28]. After the Muslim conquest of Sicily in 831-902, large numbers of Jews settled on the island.[29] In 972, the Arab merchant Ibn Hawqal mentioned a Jewish Quarter in Palermo, and by 1170, Benjamin of Tudela reported 1500 Jewish households in Palermo and 200 in Messina.[30] In 1149, Roger II forcibly brought the Jewish brocade, damask, and silk weavers of Thebes in Greece to Sicily to establish a silk industry there.[24][31][32] This is an example of a late entry into Sicily of non-Iberian, non-Provençal Jews from outside of Western and Central Europe, from a region that has been poorly tested or devoid of Jews in modern times.
The preliminary conclusions from this evidence is that haplogroup G2c is not native to Europe. The very late tMRCA, and the very high ethnic specificity indicate a rather brief presence in Europe, but one that participated in the exponential growth of the Ashkenazi Jewish population in Eastern and Central Europe after the Black Death. The complete lack of G2c in Iberia and also so far among Spanish Jews indicates that G2c didn’t come from Spain, or France, since some Spanish Jewish families originated in southern France and migrated to Spain after France expelled the Jews in 1306. This, along with the other evidence, leaves Sicily as the European origin of G2c. We know that Greek and Mizrahi Jews arrived in Sicily as late as 1149,and that primarily most Sicilian Jews settled there during the Arab Emirate of Sicily. This is one way of explaining the very late presence of G2c in Europe, the likely presence of G2c among at least Kurdish Jews, if not other Mizrahi Jews as well.
mariner says:
I hadn’t realized Jews were expelled from Sicily in the same year they were expelled from Spain.
April 26, 2010, 8:46 pmlibertariansoldier says:
The decree covered all the territories and possessions of the joint monarchs, and Aragon possessed Sicily and southern Italy.
April 26, 2010, 8:52 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Coincidentally, I recently read an article about the Jews of Sicily, and how there are towns where most of the residents are known to descend from Jews forced to convert during the Inquisition, who maintain a few rather random Jewish customs, though often unaware of the origin.
April 26, 2010, 8:58 pmgab says:
Did you pay $400 for the ancestry test?
April 26, 2010, 9:04 pmDavid Bernstein says:
No, it was on sale for $200. Even better, a couple of days ago they had the whole kit including the health part on sale for $99 for “DNA Day,” but it was too late for me.
April 26, 2010, 9:15 pmYZ says:
Cool. I love this stuff. Anything interested in your mitochondrial DNA?
As one Israeli activist, Tzvi Misinai, has painstakingly documented, a large number of Palestinians actually have recent Jewish ancestry. Some Palestinian towns and small tribal/village groups seem to be nearly wholly Jewish, from rather recent times (the last hundred years or so). Fascinating stuff — perhaps DNA evidence will assist in reuniting some of these people with the Jewish people. That happens to be Misinai’s plan for peace in the region! Well, it’s probably more plausible than the two-state solution.
http://the-engagement.org/default.asp?PageId=28
April 26, 2010, 9:55 pmChrisIowa says:
I bet your happy that’s settled.
April 26, 2010, 10:35 pmgab says:
DB – thanks for the reply. Seems interesting but I just couldn’t see parting with $400 to satisfy my curiosity. I’ll keep an eye out and see if they offer a special again!
April 26, 2010, 10:49 pmEvilDave says:
I once suggested that my company use a DNA ancestry service to fully comply with the diversity requirements/goals.
April 26, 2010, 10:55 pmEveryone could take the test on a volunteer basis, and we could do some internal marketing under the slogan “It only takes one drop!”
.
For some reason those championing the diversity drive did not look favorably on this suggestion.
LarryA says:
Old joke rewrite:
They had to cancel the parade for people of pure racial heritage. One of them broke his leg, and the other wouldn’t march alone.
If DNA teaches nothing else, it will be worth it.
April 26, 2010, 10:57 pmneurodoc says:
If you hadn’t leaked your results here first, Henry Louis Gates might have chosen you as one of the subjects on his PBS program and surprised you with the genealogic implications of your DNA results in front of PBS audiences.
April 26, 2010, 11:45 pmpc says:
If it helps, I can offer up a nice red gravy recipe that only requires the blood of one or two Christian/Muslim babies.
April 26, 2010, 11:47 pmDuffy Pratt says:
I have a friend who did the same sort of testing for one of her dogs. It only cost $85, so its a bargain compared with human DNA testing. The results: the company determined that her dog was part German Shepherd and part Chihuahua. The first problem here is that its pretty much physically impossible for such a pairing to occur, absent artificial insemination. And I don’t know too many breeders who are actively trying to mix German Shepherds with Chihuahuas.
I suspect that the human DNA tracing is probably about as accurate and informative.
April 27, 2010, 1:26 amRicardo says:
Duffy, blame the firm, not the method. DNA testing can already be used to establish within pretty good error ranges what European country one’s ancestors hailed from: Link. The “prediction” of the DNA testing matches up with reality a surprising number of times given how much ethnic overlap there is within Europe. Finns, Poles, Swedes and Italians all appear to have very unique genes.
April 27, 2010, 7:25 amMike P Wagner says:
Did the DNA evidence serve mainly confirm existing family stories? Or was the Sicilian connection news to you?
April 27, 2010, 9:11 amDavid Bernstein says:
Never heard of the Sicilian connection before. I have friends and relatives who are “Ashkenazim” but family lore relates that they were once of Sephardic or Mizrahi heritage. I had no idea.
April 27, 2010, 9:40 amSpitzer says:
It’s interesting that Jews were both invited to places and later driven out for essentially the same set of reasons: their skills (often of a portable, not simply agrarian, nature), and the moveable wealth that such skills created. Medieval monarchs invited Jews to come to their communities to build a new economic skill set (and expand the tax base, by the by) – sort of like the way that communities today seek to attract rich corporations or optimistic startups. And, once the Jews were ensconced in the new locale, and once the government began to enjoy the fruits of their labors, the politicians (as usual) became ever hungrier for more taxes to fund their government’s ambitions (war, bureaucracy, whatever). So when the ordinary taxes were not enough for particular projects, Medieval monarchs would raid Jewish communities and expropriate what they could (which could be everything from a simple seizing of goods to an outright pogrom). This would happen every few years or decades, depending on what the kings wanted. And, of course, it was safe to raid the Jews because they were set apart from the rest of the community, so the good burghers were not made to fear for their own chattels when the king’s men came calling. Finally, when the kings’ thirst for taxes could not be quenched by a little expropriation, they went all the way and expelled the Jews (a tactic mostly designed to seize their goods). And so the Jews would find themselves looking for a new place to settle, and often would find themselves invited by a neigboring kingdom to settle (and bring their portable skills, and the wealth that ultimately came of it). In short, the tale of invitation, expropriation, and expulsion repeated itself over and over throughout Europe, from Roman times to the twentieth century.
April 27, 2010, 10:44 ammichael livingston says:
I always knew David was an Italian conservative.
April 27, 2010, 3:49 pmRT says:
I’m more curious on how many cousins that they located for you. Their web page says possibly in the several hundreds for Europeans, but I am skeptical of this number.
April 27, 2010, 4:08 pmHay says:
I jumped on the $99 deal, I should get my kit soon. Among my friends we were discussing what obligations if any I would have to disclose the medical (disease-indicator) results to a insurance company/employer in the future. Did the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act take care of all that?
April 27, 2010, 5:11 pmneurodoc says:
Is that $99 offer still out there? If so, where does one find it?
I think I read not too long ago (WSJ?) that these DNA testing companies that market themselves to the general public are not doing the gangbusters business they had projected.
German shepherd and chihuahua does sound rather improbable, but then love is a powerful motivator.
April 27, 2010, 9:29 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I have 975, which is apparently on the very low side for a Jew of Ashkenazic origin, they usually get more than 1000.
April 27, 2010, 10:10 pmAssistant Village Idiot says:
David, this is going to increasingly relate to your other posts on Israel and Palestine. DNA is revealing that many Palestinians have Jewish ancestry (though sometimes remote). It gives a different spin to the issue of how many Jews were continuously present in Palestine and how much claim they have to being the “real” owners.
We would wish, of course, that such questions of right and ownership would rest more on negotiation and agreement, not bloodlines. But as the ancestry question seems important to many Palestinians, finding out that 18% of their haplogroup are Oriental Jews from the general region might affect their perceptions.
April 28, 2010, 2:48 pmThe Commentator says:
My father’s – a Calabrese catholic – lawyer is Jewish. A couple of years back he visited Rome because it holds within its cultural museum part of the Jewish story. Great insights into it here:
http://manofroma.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/the-roman-jews-2-segregated-in-the-ghetto-because-of-their-terrible-sin/
April 28, 2010, 5:49 pmHay says:
No. That sale was only for DNA day or something. Now it’s back to $499 or such.
My roots are S. American, so I already met 200 or so cousins based on my extended family I know of. I can’t think how many this will reveal.
April 29, 2010, 2:15 pmLarryA says:
I know several Chihuahuas. They do tend to be optimistic.
April 29, 2010, 7:49 pm