Is the "Khazar" thing legit?

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

I think people get a little ahead of themselves when they state as fact that 80-90% of world jewry are of khazar origin. It's not a fact but a theory. Most people just accept this at face value having done either none, or very little research. I personally have done almost zero research on the subject and don't particularly find it that interesting or important. But what are the sources for this claim?

[Rockclimber]

The short answer is that the khazar theory was talked about in Arthur Koestler's book, the 13th tribe. Benjamin Freedman also wrote/spoke about it and there are others who beleive this theory.

Legit? According to the Jews, no. Imagine that. And jews also write most of the books bragging about thier IQs-go figure.

One thing you can ascertain almost entirely out of the chute is the fact that these "khazars", physically speaking, don't appear to have a drop of semitic blood, appearing to have an almost European and at times, slightly mongol features. Basically their Euro/mongol/turk mutts claiming to be semites to be used for political/manipulative purposes.

[MikeWB]

According to genetics and DNA, it's not really credible at all.

Edit: People should check out the Forward article I posted below. Here's tan excerpt about Khazars:

Whatever happened to the Khazars?

One of the more romantic, some might say fanciful, notions about Jewish history has to do with the Khazars. The Khazars were a Turkic-speaking people who established an empire in part of what is now Ukraine. Reliable historical documents confirm that at least part of the empire's population converted to Judaism in the ninth century C.E., following the lead of their king.

From these historical snippets, the writer Arthur Koestler, in his 1976 book "The Thirteenth Tribe," constructed a theory that Ashkenazic Jews are descended not from the ancient Israelites but rather from the Khazars. While his theory captured the imaginations of some, it gained little scholarly support. And findings by genetic researchers of significant Near Eastern ancestry among Ashkenazic Jews put to rest the notion that this population originated with or is predominantly descended from the Khazars.

Be that as it may, there is one odd and tantalizing feature of Ashkenazic Jewish Y chromosomes that may lead us back to Khazaria. Like kohanim, the Levites, the larger tribe of priestly helpers, pass on their identity from father to son. Yet unlike the kohanim, the Y chromosomes of Levites do not show homogeneity across geographically dispersed populations. There is no Y chromosome link that unites Ashkenazic and Sephardic Levites. Among the Ashkenazic Levites, however, there is a particularly common Y chromosome type that is not often found in other Jewish groups. But it is found among people who now live where the Khazars once did.

While the overall genetic makeup of Ashkenazic Jews provides little support for Koestler's theory, the Ashkenazic Y chromosome may be testimony to the entry of some of the Khazar population into Ashkenazic Jewry. Could it be that members of the Khazar elite, after converting to Judaism, assumed the identity of Levites?

One way to answer this question might be to try to develop a fuller picture of the genetics of the Turkic-speaking peoples, particularly modern-day speakers of Chuvash, a Turkic language related to that spoken by the Khazars. Then we could compare their genes to the Ashkenazic genes we suspect may be of Khazar origin.

Another issue with Khazar theory is that Ashkenazi history is much older than 9th or 10th century (time when some Khazars converted) and finally, only Khazar elites converted, not the whole population so the numbers are just not there to support the theory that Ashkenazis are Khazars. Yes, some Ashkenazis have Khazar blood in them but Ashkenazis didn't originate from Khazars. Modern Jews  seem to be an amalgam of many ethnicities but there does seem to be a common trait among them since they can be genetically discerned.

[Rockclimber]

According to genetics and DNA, it's not really credible at all.

The khazar theory? Perhaps not. But neither is the jew gene theory since no so called jew can trace their lineage back to Abraham.

[MikeWB]

I just did some more searching (we had a thread here on TiU but our search can't find it so here's the article again:

November 06, 2004

Jews & Khazars
If you check out the Khazaria site you will get your fill on information on the ancient Khazar people. I don't really understand why so many modern Jews are fixated on the Khazars, as there is now a Jewish state (the medieval Jews took heart that a temporal power had chosen their religion over Islam and Christianity). For those not in the know, Khazars were a Turkic tribe of the lower Volga region who were a dominant power between the 7th and 10th centuries. Though the Khazars are most famous for the fact that their elite chose Judaism as their dominant religion, their most important role in history was probably their alliance with the Byzantines and the fact that they blocked the northward push of Arab Muslims (though I suspect that climate would have turned against Arab military tactics at some point as one went north in any case).

Much speculation has been aired about the Khazar contribution to Jewish genetics, but people often forget that it is a fact that the Khazar aristocracy intermarried with Byzantine Imperial lines. In any case, my personal introduction to Khazars was watching an evangelical Christian program on a Sunday morning in the 1980s. The basic thesis of the program was this:

Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Khazars, Sephardic Jews are descended from ancient Jews.
Ashkenazi Jews are more militaristic (Yitzak Shami was given as an exemplarr), while Sephardic Jews are more dovish (Shimone Peres exemplar).
The world will come to an end because of the machinations of Ashkenazi Jews (armageddon).

Israeli readers will note that the "facts" offered during this program are at variance with reality on several points, and this has perhaps made me reflexively cautious about any talk of "Khazaria" (oh, and the fact that many anti-Semitic theories incorporate Khazaria, especially those influenced by Christian Identity).
Nevertheless, I was pointed to this paper in The European Journal of Human Genetics titled Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in Ashkenazi Jews. Near the end, the abstract concludes "...R-M17 chromosomes in Ashkenazim may represent vestiges of the mysterious Khazars." I found this website which reviews the lead author's previous work (again, allusions to Khazars). The paper suggests that the marker in question entered the Ashkenazi community early on, which seems to make an argument for an incremental introgression from the surrounding Eastern European population less plausible. Nevertheless, I still think it seems more likely that, for example, Jewish merchants in Germany purchased Wendish (West Slav) slaves who adopted Judaism (the Wends were pagan, so German Christians could enslave them and treat them like animals without too much objection from the Church, and while it was illegal to convert Christians to Judaism, I have read that there was less supervision when it came to pagans, even if the said pagans were nominally baptized and Christianized), than that somehow the Eastern European marker wended its way into Jews via the Khazars (remember, the Khazars were by origin a Central Asiatic people).2 I think the highest plausibility thesis of why the Khazars keep showing up in papers is that they are sexy (much more sexy than marginalized Slavs) and it guarantees publicity in the popular press.

Update: Here is the full paper (PDF).

Related: Multiple Origins of Ashkenazi Levites: Y Chromosome Evidence for Both Near Eastern and European Ancestries (again, a nod to the Khazars). A post where I collected links to many studies about Jewish genetics with summaries.

1 - Turkic shamanism, Christianity and Islam were also Khazar religions, though not as popular among the elite.

2 - Note, I am not asserting that Wendish males Judaized and so brought the marker in question into Ashkenazi Jews, I am simply offering that I do not find this any less plausible than the Khazar vector hypothesis, but you will not see this alternative offered because it is far less "sexy" a thesis.

Posted by razib at 07:29 AM

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/003047.html#

[MikeWB]

January 23, 2004

The blood of the Jews
Abiola & I have been having a discussion about where Jews are on the people -> religion spectrum over at his blog. Kind of silly-an African African American (had to type that!) and a South Asian American debating about Jews. GNXP readers are encouraged to contribute their opinions-particular the Judaic ones.

But-I would appreciate it if readers browsed some of the links below. Much research on Jewish genetics has come out in the past few years (most readers have read press releases of course)-

Y Chromosomes Traveling South: The Cohen Modal Haplotype and the Origins of the Lembathe "Black Jews of Southern Africa". This full text article confirms that the Lemba group of southern Africa does have some genetic connection to the world Jewish Diaspora, their traditional priestly class carries the traditional Jewish priestly marker ("The Cohen Modal Haplotype"). Here is the site of the NOVA documentary on this issue.

India's children of Israel find their roots. This popular press article reports on the research by Tudor Parfitt (who also did the research on the Lemba above) that indicates the Bene Israel, a Jewish community in India that traditionally has resided in the region to the south of Bombay, also exhibit the "Cohen Modal Haplotype," in other words, they too have genetic connections with the world Jewry.

The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East. Full text article asserts:
1) Kurdish and Sephardic Jews cluster
2) Ashkenazi Jews "slightly, yet significantly," different from the above two Jewish groups (posit gene flow from European populations)
3) The Jewish groups resemble groups from the northern part of the Fertile Crescent (Turks, Armenians & Kurds) more than Arabs, at least according to the measure of a major Y chromosomal haplogroup.

High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews. Basically many Arab and Jewish paternal lineages have a relatively recent comment ancestry, though Arabs in particular have some lineages that are absent among Jews at high levels, indicating recent admixture (this sort of pattern was found in the above article).

Y-Chromosome DNA Haplotypes in Jews: Comparisons with Lebanese and Palestinians. Sephardic Jews, but not Oriental Mizrachi or Ashkenazi, share certain haplotype frequencies.

The Two Common Mutations Causing Factor XI Deficiency in Jews Stem From Distinct Founders: One of Ancient Middle Eastern Origin and Another of More Recent European Origin. Full text of an older article (1997) indicating the common origin of the world's major Jewish communities.

MtDNA evidence for a genetic bottleneck in the early history of the Ashkenazi Jewish population. Study of mtDNA of the Ashkenazi, the maternal lineage, indicating an early (~100 generations before present) population bottleneck, after which there was rapid expansion.

Multiple origins of Ashkenazi Levites: Y chromosome evidence for both Near Eastern and European ancestries. The Levites, the helpers of the Cohens, have a (possibly) more diverse ancestry than the Cohens, and don't dovetail as easily into the religio-historical narrative of the Jews.

Founding Mothers of Jewish Communities: Geographically Separated Jewish Groups Were Independently Founded by Very Few Female Ancestors. Full text of the article that contends that the various Jewish communities have local maternal lineages and but common paternal lineages. With groups like the Lemba, Bene Israel and Black Cochin Jews of India, this seems pretty hard to dispute. With Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews, making these sort of assertions through visual inspection are more difficult since the host populations are far closer together in phenotype, while Ashkenazi are somewhere in between.

Origins of Falasha Jews studied by haplotypes of the Y chromosome. Concludes that the Falasha/Beta Israel are converts to Judaism (note that Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity is in practice closer to Judaism than the more Hellenized variety that we are familiar with).

Here is a site listing many studies and popular presentations of them (on the Khazaria site-buyer beware).

There are many more studies out there-but I hope that the above citations will disabuse the two binary alternatives presented by ideologues:
1) Jews are an alien people among their hosts, by blood, custom and confession.
2) Jews are socially constructed, local gentiles that took up the Torah and Talmud, who have no genetic connection transnationally.

Posted by razib at 05:39 PM

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001719.html

[MikeWB]

Blogs / Gene Expression
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How Ashkenazi Jewish are you?

     
 
Carl Zimmer pointed me to a new paper, A genome-wide genetic signature of Jewish ancestry perfectly separates individuals with and without full Jewish ancestry in a large random sample of European Americans. The title is so informative that pasting the abstract is almost unnecessary, but here is the conclusion which gets to the point:

In conclusion, we show that, at least in the context of the studied sample, it is possible to predict full Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity, although it should be noted that the exact dividing line between a Jewish and non-Jewish cluster will vary across sample sets which in practice would reduce the accuracy of the prediction. While the full historical demographic explanations for this distinction remain to be resolved, it is clear that the genomes of individuals with full Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry carry an unambiguous signature of their Jewish heritage, and this seems more likely to be due to their specific Middle Eastern ancestry than to inbreeding.

There have been other papers which show that Ashkenazi Jews form a separate cluster from gentile whites in the United States. This is important again in the context of biomedical studies attempting to ascertain the genetic roots of particular diseases; population substructure (e.g., Jew vs. non-Jew) may result in confounded associations. Also, one of the authors of the paper is David Goldstein, author of the fascinating Jacob's Legacy.
In any case, on to the PC charts where the real action is. Do note that I've resized and added explanatory labels here & there for clarity.


As you can see, there is almost perfect separation between the Jewish and non-Jewish clusters here. PC 1 = first principle component of variation, and PC 2 second principle component of variation. These are the two largest independent dimensions of genetic variance extractable out of the data set. The authors note that there is almost perfect separation along PC 1, and, they note that most of the gentile whites who are closest to the Jews on this PC are of Italian or Eastern Mediterranean origin. This is important later.


As you can see here, the interesting point is that Jewish ancestral quanta is roughly predictive of genetic position. This shouldn't be that surprising once we know that Jews and non-Jews separate so cleanly (e.g., someone who is biracial would be located between their two parent racial clusters on any plot), but it is striking nonetheless in reaffirming the genetic reality of Jewishness. The United States has an easy genealogical history for Jews, as the ancestors of all self-identified American Jews today arrived on the order of 4-6 generations ago. These individuals were likely Jewish relatively far back in their lineages, and admixture is easy to recall because it is of recent vintage.
Finally, let's put Ashkenazi Jews in the worldwide context.


I labeled a few populations for clarity. Orcadians are individuals from the Orkney Islands, just off the northern coast of Scotland. As you can see, American whites occupy an expansive region, in large part due to their diverse origins and admixtures. The Druze have been genetically isolated for over 5 centuries, so it is not particularly surprising they form a distinct cluster. It is likely a function of drift due to bottlenecking, just like Iceland. The separation between the Ashkenazi and the Palestinians might be of interest to some because of political reasons.

As the authors note, the Ashkenazi are almost certainly a compound population. There are full-Jews who "look gentile" and full-Jews who could pass easily in the Middle East as a native. Most Ashkenazi Jews exhibit a mix of features. The genetic likelihood that the Ashkenazi have varied origins should no surprise. The paper notes that Askhenazi heterozygosity is actually somewhat greater than American whites, implying that the source of their distinctiveness has to do with genetic origin, not genetic history (i.e., population bottlenecks). Another population which I suspect resembles the population history of the Ashkenazi are Uyghurs, who fall between Europeans and Han Chinese in their ancestry. But the hybridization even occurred in the past, so the Uyghurs today can be thought of as a separate population with its own suite of genetic combinations, as opposed to a hybrid of two "pure" groups. Similarly, Ashkenazi Jews no doubt emerged from hybridization evens between Middle Eastern and European females, but over the generations they have been relatively endogamous (most gene flow has been out of the community into gentile Europeans through conversion) and so are a genetically coherent population in their own right.

Note that the authors had only a few non-Ashkenazi Jews in their sample, so the assertions above only apply to the Ashkenazi (95-99% of America's Jewish population, but only ~50% of Israel's).

Update: Dienekes emphasizes that the hypothesis that the admixture element which makes Ashkenazi Jews distinctive from other Europeans is Middle Eastern is somewhat speculative. I'm less skeptical than him seeing as how some Y lineages are Middle Eastern, but he offers this interesting point:
With that said, I do suspect that the distinctiveness of the Ashkenazi Jews is in part due to the possession of a Middle Eastern component of unspecified strength. I base this hypothesis on the results reported to me about the EURO-DNA-CALC test. This test distinguishes between NW, SE Europeans and Ashkenazi Jews; a few Arab individuals who have communicated their results to me have reported fairly high AJ components, indicating that part of what distinguishes an AJ from Europeans is related to the Middle Eastern Semitic background of that group.
January 22nd, 2009 by Razib Khan in Genetics | 33 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/ ... h-are-you/

The biggest issue with this Khazar theory is this: Khazars were turkic and Ashkenazis genes don't fit in that group.

[MikeWB]

The most WTF theory is that Jews are descendants of neanderthals... hehe. MCP apparently edited a new issue of Barnes Review that details this. I think he said that Wills Carto came up with that theory on his own (there's two or three other guys who claim the same thing.

Here's Salon article:

So Are the Neanderthals Still Jews?
And other revelations culled from history's big secrets.
By Charles Paul Freund
Posted Saturday, Aug. 2, 1997, at 3:30 AM ET

You read the press reports in July about the DNA of Neanderthals, and you quickly grasped how the new findings suggest that this branch of humanoids is much more distantly related to modern Homo sapiens than you may have believed--they are not even direct human ancestors. Now you must apply these findings, and examine their implications for the world around you. Specifically, you must weigh their effect on certain theories in circulation, among them that Neanderthals still walk--or lumber--among us, and indeed that they have maintained their cohesion through the ages and still constitute a group apart. And, most importantly, that this group of living, lumbering Neanderthals is the Jews.

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You laugh? That may be a mistake. At least two theorists working separately have concluded precisely this: The Jews are surviving Neanderthals. Laughing at such ideas suggests you believe them to be absurd. But the validity of such theorizing is beside the point. What matters is the existence of such a premise, because it validates the question it seeks to answer: What explains the Jews? That Jews require a meta-explanation is the problematic premise, one that even philo-Semites have sometimes fallen for. Anyway, if you laugh at the idea that the Jews are Neanderthals, what will you do when you learn, as you shortly will, that the Jews are really aliens from outer space?
A long and extraordinary history of speculation concerns the ultimate identity of the Jews. In its course, learned fellows have repeatedly announced they have stumbled on a Big Secret, a hidden truth that explains Jewish survival, character, behavior, and even the historical antipathy toward Jews by others. That Big Secret has often been that Jews are not what they seem to be: This line of thought provides for a certain macabre entertainment, but it is also a lesson in how the most inane ideas can have the most appalling consequences. Here is a whirlwind tour of the field, in approximately chronological order.
The Jews are a Race of Lepers. An ancient argument in circulation in the first century. We know of it because Flavius Josephus, the traitorous Jewish general who joined the Romans, bothers to refute it in his surviving writings. Josephus attributes the argument to an Egyptian named Manetho who, in a counter-version to the Book of Exodus, asserted that the Hebrews weren't led out of Egyptian bondage by Moses. Instead, they were an outcast group of lepers, forced to settle together, who were eventually chased out of the country by patriots. The existence of such a story is not necessarily evidence of general antipathy toward Jews; it is a likely reflection of the long struggle between Hellenism and the only Mediterranean culture of consequence that held out against it, Judaism. The idea that Jewish lineage is impure or malevolent reappears in Visigothic Spain in the early medieval period, and most notoriously in Nazi Germany.
The Jews are a Race of Devils. References to the Jews as the children of the devil or as constituting a "Synagogue of Satan" appear in the New Testament, implying that they are in league with the devil. That they are themselves actually devils, complete with horns, is a folk belief that arises in the centuries following the Crusades, when European Jewry's problems begin in earnest. The survival of such beliefs into the mid-20th century is illustrated by Carlo Levi, an anti-fascist Italian Jew sent into internal exile among dirt-poor southern peasants in the 1930s. His memoir of exile, Christ Stopped at Eboli, describes an encounter with a local woman who refuses to believe that Levi can be Jewish because he seems to be a person much like herself. Arguments that Jews are a race of nefarious devils are still being published in the Middle East, and have been exhibited at Cairo's book fair.
The Jews are a Separate Creation. "Polygenism," the theory that God created different peoples in different acts of creation, blossomed during the Enlightenment. It was in part a "solution" to the "mystery" of Native Americans, whose startling existence seemed to require some explanation, and whose status as humans awaited papal resolution. It was also an attempt by early humanists to challenge clerical authority. They pointed to ambiguous passages in Genesis that might suggest more than one creation. Some prominent Jews of the period saw the hope of popular redemption by supporting such notions. However, Jew-haters also saw value in the idea, because it allowed them to regard the Jews as an entirely separate species. French scholar Leon Poliakov argues that the pseudoscientific foundations of racism were laid in this debate.
The Jews are an Inferior Race. A still-familiar concept that arose in the wake of Jewish emancipation in 19th-century Europe, it argues that Jews constitute a separate racial group anthropologically inferior to European racial groups. The thesis attempted to provide a "scientific" rationale for hatred at a time when legal restrictions on Jews were disappearing. A great deal of detail was presented in support of the thesis, from relatively tiny cranial capacity to the idea of peculiar Jewish feet and a peculiar Jewish smell.
The Jews are Khazars. An idea put into circulation by Arthur Koestler in his 1976 work, The Thirteenth Tribe, it is now widely disseminated among Jew-haters and anti-Zionists. The argument is that Europe's eastern Jews have no connection to the Jews of the Bible, but are all descended from the Khazars, a once-powerful Turkic people who lived near the Caspian Sea and who are known to have converted to Judaism in the eighth century. Koestler argued from circumstance, asserting that it is unclear where all the eastern European Jews came from, that the fate of the Khazars is unknown, and that the solution to both problems is the same. Among the scant evidence he offered--in all seriousness--was a chart of noses. The appeal of the argument is apparent: It enables anti-Semites to embrace Scripture and hate Jews without inconsistency.
The Jews are Africans. A thesis advanced by a number of authors, most notably, perhaps, by Yosef ben-Jochannan. His emotional book, We the Black Jews, is printed largely in uppercase. The central idea is that white Jews are all impostors, that the real Jews of the Bible exist, and that they are East Africans. Adherents of the idea draw on the Bible for support, including the often-cited "Black Jesus" passage in Revelations.
The Jews are Space Aliens. First argued in 1974 by French thinker Marc Dem in his Les Juifs de L'espace, this thesis holds that Jews are ultimately space aliens, and that that explains their, um, difficult history. Dem's book was part of the flood of Ancient Astronaut books inspired by the huge success of Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods?, and appeared here in 1977. Von Daniken, like many of his imitators, sought evidence for ancient visitations in the Bible, especially in such passages as the description of Ezekial's flying chariot. Deducing that the whole of the Old Testament was the work of aliens is, therefore, perfectly logical.
The Jews are Neanderthals. Advanced in this decade by heretic anthropologist Stan Gooch, who has also argued that the original, full-blooded Neanderthals were telepathic. The thesis was taken up last year by Canadian Michael Bradley in his incoherent book Chosen People From the Caucasus. Bradley is known for a book-length rant titled The Iceman Inheritance, which identifies the origins of white racial evil in prehistoric psychosexual tensions of some sort. Chosen People is an extension of his ideas: Biblical evidence that Jews are Neanderthals includes the Esau incident (Esau is hairy, remember?). The reason Jews have an injunction against portraying God is that Neanderthals cannot draw. However, Bradley adduces evidence that they were quite good with numbers and were overly sentimental about their mothers. Interestingly, Bradley also believes that modern European Jews are Khazars, which means he must argue not only that biblical Hebrews were Neanderthals, but that so were Khazars. He actually does so. News that Neanderthals have little in common with modern humankind should be welcome to admirers of Bradley's work. Among his blurbists, by the way, is Dr. Leonard Jeffries, of New York's City College.
"It is not my intention to give anti-Semitism any support whatever," wrote Marc Dem, as he argued that Jews were from outer space. Certainly not. Arthur Koestler wrote the same thing in his Thirteenth Tribe, stating that if most of the world's Jews come from the Volga region, then "anti-Semitism will become void of meaning." Sure. We're all out here just looking for the Truth. And no matter where we look for it, over our shoulders among the hominids of prehistory, or out on the interplanetary horizon, we can find whatever Truths we're looking for: Those that set us free, and those that prove us mad, too.

http://www.slate.com/id/2457

[MikeWB]

This is a very interesting article!

http://www.forward.com/articles/112422/

In Jewish Genetic History, the Known Unknowns
By David B. Goldstein
Published August 19, 2009, issue of August 28, 2009.
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The Jews have been a continuous feature of human history for at least 3,000 years. As much as perhaps any other group, the Jews have shaped and influenced the Western world, from antiquity to the present.

But who exactly are we speaking of when we talk about "the Jews"? That a group that came to be referred to as Jews controlled territory in the eastern Mediterranean and wrote materials making up what we know as the Hebrew Bible is generally uncontroversial. That some 13 million people today, dispersed throughout the world, consider themselves Jews is also clear. But in what sense are these two populations connected?

GETTY IMAGES/FORWARD MONTAGE
Ties That Bind: Research has revealed genetic links between Sephardim (such as Israel's chief Sephardic rabbi, Shlomo Amar) and Ashkenazim (such as Russia's chief rabbi, Berel Lazar).
This is perhaps the most fundamental question about the genetic history of the Jews, and until recently the answer was anyone's guess. In the past decade and a half, however, modern genetic research has started to provide us with some answers to this question.

We have learned that Jewish populations from around the world — with a few exceptions — have a remarkable degree of genetic connectedness with each other and with the Near East.

In one striking example, we have learned that self-identified priests, or kohanim, Ashkenazic and Sephardic alike, in large numbers share a particular Y chromosome type that is much less common among other Jews and rare among non-Jews. Since the Y chromosome is passed along unchanged from father to son, this indicates that many contemporary kohanim — who according to tradition are all descendants along the patrilineal line of Moses' brother Aaron — do in fact have a common ancestor on the male line.

But many unknowns about Jewish history remain, leaving geneticists with an interest in Jewish origins with plenty of sleuthing work to do. Here are a few tantalizing mysteries that geneticists have yet to crack:

How did members of various Jewish populations come to look so different from one another?

We now know that Jewish populations have substantial Near Eastern ancestry. While Y chromosomes show sharp differences from one part of the world to the next, Y chromosomes from different Jewish populations — including those from Europe — usually look like those commonly found in people from the Near East.

The rest of the Jewish genome paints a similar, though less pronounced, picture. A recent study looking at hundreds of thousands of variable sites in the genome revealed a clear genetic signature for Jewish ancestry among randomly selected university students in America. When this Jewish signature was compared with the genetic makeup of other populations, it became clear that Ashkenazic Jews have a genetic makeup more similar to Near Eastern populations than do other Northern European populations.

Yet despite sharing an origin point in the Near East, individual Jews today tend to look markedly different from one another in terms of their physical appearance, depending upon which part of the world their ancestors resided in during recent centuries. Clearly, this diversity of physical appearance is the result of a degree of intermingling with the populations among which Jews have lived. But we don't know precisely when or how this intermingling took place.

Did large numbers of gentiles join the Jewish population through mass conversion in the ancient world? Was there a steady trickle of intermarriage? Was there some combination of these? We can't say for certain what accounts for the present-day diversity in Jewish physical appearance.

One hint we do have is that research shows — in multiple Jewish groups from Ashkenazic Jews to Georgian Jews — more genetic continuity with Near Eastern populations on the paternal side (indicated by the Y chromosome) than on the maternal side (indicated by mitochondrial DNA). This was unexpected given that Jewishness has been, for most of the Diaspora period, inherited along the matrilineal line and suggests that early on in the establishment of far-flung Jewish communities, local non-Jewish women married Jewish men, with a barrier later erected to prevent further intermarriage.

Ultimately, however, research is needed to shed further light on this question. Before too long we will be able to sequence people's entire genomes and track where individual parts of genomes come from. This will likely yield additional insights about the specific genetic inputs into Jewish populations from surrounding communities.

Whatever happened to the Khazars?

One of the more romantic, some might say fanciful, notions about Jewish history has to do with the Khazars. The Khazars were a Turkic-speaking people who established an empire in part of what is now Ukraine. Reliable historical documents confirm that at least part of the empire's population converted to Judaism in the ninth century C.E., following the lead of their king.

From these historical snippets, the writer Arthur Koestler, in his 1976 book "The Thirteenth Tribe," constructed a theory that Ashkenazic Jews are descended not from the ancient Israelites but rather from the Khazars. While his theory captured the imaginations of some, it gained little scholarly support. And findings by genetic researchers of significant Near Eastern ancestry among Ashkenazic Jews put to rest the notion that this population originated with or is predominantly descended from the Khazars.

Be that as it may, there is one odd and tantalizing feature of Ashkenazic Jewish Y chromosomes that may lead us back to Khazaria. Like kohanim, the Levites, the larger tribe of priestly helpers, pass on their identity from father to son. Yet unlike the kohanim, the Y chromosomes of Levites do not show homogeneity across geographically dispersed populations. There is no Y chromosome link that unites Ashkenazic and Sephardic Levites. Among the Ashkenazic Levites, however, there is a particularly common Y chromosome type that is not often found in other Jewish groups. But it is found among people who now live where the Khazars once did.

While the overall genetic makeup of Ashkenazic Jews provides little support for Koestler's theory, the Ashkenazic Y chromosome may be testimony to the entry of some of the Khazar population into Ashkenazic Jewry. Could it be that members of the Khazar elite, after converting to Judaism, assumed the identity of Levites?

One way to answer this question might be to try to develop a fuller picture of the genetics of the Turkic-speaking peoples, particularly modern-day speakers of Chuvash, a Turkic language related to that spoken by the Khazars. Then we could compare their genes to the Ashkenazic genes we suspect may be of Khazar origin.

Where did the "Lost Tribes" wind up?

Another perennial subject of popular speculation is the fate of the so-called "Lost Tribes of Israel." These are the 10 tribes that tradition says were carried off after the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BCE. Nobody knows what became of these lost tribes, but many have ventured often wild guesses. Various theories have suggested that peoples ranging from the British to the Japanese are descended from these lost tribes.

In recent years, geneticists have found evidence of Jewish ancestry in some unexpected places. Most notably, a Bantu-speaking southern African people called the Lemba, whose oral tradition maintains that the tribe is of Jewish ancestry, was found to have a strikingly high proportion of men with the distinctive kohen haplotype, particularly among its leading clan. While the Lemba do appear to have Jewish ancestry, this does not mean, of course, that they are descendants of one of the lost tribes.

Indeed, even when we find Jewish ancestry in unexpected places, it will be difficult (perhaps even impossible) to confirm whether or not that ancestry comes via the lost tribes. That said, there are some interesting avenues of investigation to consider.

For starters, geneticists might undertake a thorough study of both Kurdish/Assyrian Jews and Iraqi Jews. While little is known about the origins of the former, I have always been drawn to the idea that the community is a remnant of the forced expulsions of the leading citizens of the northern kingdom of Israel after the Assyrian conquest. Iraqi Jews, with considerably more historical support, are thought to be descended from those Jews exiled by the Babylonians centuries later. Comparing these two populations could give us some important insights.

But before going hunting for lost tribes, it's a good idea to know what you're looking for: Namely, what does the ancestral genetic makeup of the ancient Israelites look like?

We might be able to piece that together. For instance, what genetic traits are found in common in lots of different Jewish groups? Those are the ones that are derived from their common ancestors rather than from different host populations among which they have lived since. We could also look at populations that are thought to be descended from groups that never left the vicinity of the ancestral Israelite homeland. Or we could look at the Jews from the Tunisian island of Djerba, who are thought to have resided there for perhaps as long as 2,500 years. After cobbling together a genetic picture of the ancient Israelite population, we can compare the genomes of present-day populations to it.

Genetics will never be able to solve these mysteries by itself. But along with shards of pottery, passages from the Bible and other clues, genetic research can help us put together the pieces of the intricate puzzle that is the history of the Jewish people.

David B. Goldstein is director of the Center for Population Genomics and Pharmacogenetics at the Duke Institute for Genome Policy and Sciences. He is the author of "Jacob's Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History" (Yale University Press, 2008) and a lead researcher on several of the studies discussed above.

[abduLMaria]

My impression is that the Jews left the Mediterranean, and settled in the area we call Khazaria, which many centuries later became Ukraine/Eastern Europe.

The organized crime nature of Judaism was appealing to many Khazarians, and more and more Khazarians joined up.

As they travelled around the world, they intermarried, combining Khazarian genes with those of the countries they travelled to.

Over time, because Talmudic Judaism embraced sociopathic behavior, this aspect of their nature may have been "selected for", to use the genetics term.  In other words, the sociopathic Jews were among the most successful in their culture.

Over time, sociopathic behavior became a genetic characteristic of Jews, which would make it psychopathic (pyschopathic behavior is something you're born with; sociopathic behavior is learned.)

Then they kicked their crime gang into high gear with the advent of the Zionists, in approximately 1897.

It makes me wonder if the Zionist Jews really do accept somebody who is genetically different, such as Condoleeza Rice.  Although she is African American, she is such a huge supporter of the Zionists that she even got an oil-tanker named after her.  Shuttling between Stanford & Washington, both major Zionist hang-outs.

It seems like now Zionist sub-culture accepts different races, and selects individuals who meet their criteria for intelligence and sociopathic behavior.

One final question - are the Rothschild's Khazarian ?  They seem more European.

[MikeWB]

My impression is that the Jews left the Mediterranean, and settled in the area we call Khazaria, which many centuries later became Ukraine/Eastern Europe.

The organized crime nature of Judaism was appealing to many Khazarians, and more and more Khazarians joined up.

As they travelled around the world, they intermarried, combining Khazarian genes with those of the countries they travelled to.

Read my first post in this thread. Khazar connection is way too overplayed. People who are enemies of Zionism like that connection because they can then say that Jews have no right to Palestine. I think this approach is wrong because genetics dismisses the Khazar origin and with it the argument that Jews don't have the right to Palestine. Jews don't have the right to Palestine for completely different reasons and not because they're from Khazaria!

If Ashkenazis were Khazars, they'd be turkic and have strong genetic markers for them. Research in this thread suggests that Khazarian gene might be in Ashkenazi genotype but it's clearly not strong. This is why people who are pushing this Khazars thing are doing disservice to Palestinians and are doing more damage than good to the whole "Zionism and their right to be in Israel" issue.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

The thing is though that for Sephardic Jews... their closest Genetic "cousins" are actually Palestinians. They are nearly identical.   Ashkenazis are closest to Kurds - not Turks...from some Journals I've seen on Genetics. The weird thing is that Kurdish is an Indo-European language but apparently the Kurdish Jews speak Aramaic.

However, they are grouped with all the assorted Turkic Nomadic horsemen of the Eurasian Steppes:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=10814

They are a real group that really existed. I believe they were subsumed into the Kievan Rus Empire and eventually created the Yiddish language.

If anything thing in the world states unequivocally that the Ashkenazis are imposters without claim to Palestine proper it is the "Yiddish" Language.  It is not Semitic in origin despite Jew official and academic apologia:

Yiddish (ייִדיש yidish or אידיש idish, literally "Jewish") is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages.[2][3] It is written in the Hebrew alphabet.

The language originated in the Ashkenazi culture that developed from about the 10th century in the Rhineland and then spread to Central and Eastern Europe and eventually to other continents. In the earliest surviving references to it, the language is called לשון־אַשכּנז (loshn-ashkenaz = "language of Ashkenaz") and טײַטש (taytsh, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for the language otherwise spoken in the region of origin, now called Middle High German; compare the modern New High German Deutsch). In common usage, the language is called מאַמע־לשון (mame-loshn, literally "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, which are collectively termed לשון־קודש (loshn-koydesh, "holy tongue"). The term "Yiddish" did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature of the language until the 18th century.

For a significant portion of its history, Yiddish was the primary spoken language of the Ashkenazi Jews and once spanned a broad dialect continuum from Western Yiddish to three major groups within Eastern Yiddish, namely Litvish, Poylish and Ukrainish. Eastern and Western Yiddish are most markedly distinguished by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin in the Eastern dialects. While Western Yiddish has few remaining speakers, Eastern dialects remain in wide use.

Yiddish is written and spoken in Orthodox Jewish communities around the world. It is a home language in most Hasidic communities, where it is the first language learned in childhood, used in schools and in many social settings.

History

The Ashkenazi culture that took root in 10th century Central Europe derived its name from Ashkenaz (Genesis 10:3), the medieval Hebrew name for the territory centered on what is now Germany. Its geographic extent did not coincide with the German Christian principalities; Ashkenaz included northern France. It also bordered on the area inhabited by the Sephardim, or Spanish Jews, which ranged into Southern France. Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe.

The first language of European Jews may have been Aramaic,[5] the vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Palestine and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia. The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek-speakers, and this is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., Kalonymus). Much work needs to be done, though, to fully analyze the contributions of those languages to Yiddish.

Nothing is known about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. It is generally accepted that it was likely to have contained elements from other languages of the Near East and Europe, absorbed through dispersion. Since many settlers came via France and Italy, it is also likely that the Romance-based Jewish languages of those regions were represented. Traces remain in the contemporary Yiddish vocabulary: for example, בענטשן (bentshn, to bless), from the Latin benedicere; and the personal name Anshl, cognate to Angel or Angelo.[citation needed] Western Yiddish includes additional words of Latin derivation (but still very few): for example, orn (to pray), cf. Latin "orare."

Members of the young Ashkenazi community would have encountered the myriad dialects from which standard German was destined to emerge many centuries later. They would soon have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into the region. These dialects would have adapted to the needs of the burgeoning Ashkenazi culture and may, as characterizes many such developments, have included the deliberate cultivation of linguistic differences to assert cultural autonomy. The Ashkenazi community also had its own geography, with a pattern of relationships among settlements that was somewhat independent of its non-Jewish neighbors. This led to the consolidation of Yiddish dialects, the borders of which did not coincide with the borders of German dialects.

Apart from the obvious use of Hebrew words for specifically Jewish artifacts, it is very difficult to determine the extent to which the Yiddish spoken in any earlier period differed from the contemporary German. There is a rough consensus that by the 15th century Yiddish would have sounded distinctive to the average German ear, even when restricted to the Germanic component of its vocabulary.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

If you look at the history of the Hunnic Empire, in many ways it resembles the Khazar Empire some 400 years later. Almost everybody who met with them or traveled with the Huns hated them... the narratives are similar... which makes me think they are the Khazars- Ashkenazi Jews:

Classification

Hunnic has been considered as related to the extinct Bulgar and to present-day Chuvash in various schemes of genetic relationship. Today these languages are usually classified, with Khazar and Turkic Avar, as members of the Oghuric branch of the Turkic language family.[4]

The suggestion that Hunnic was a Turkic language arises from the identification of some of the Hunnic names, attested in the surviving literary records, as Turkic.[5]. Other names were classified as Germanic and Iranian. The recorded words (medos, kamos, strava, (and possibly cucurun)) do not seem to be Turkic.[6] These remained records have been studied for more than a century and a half and no attempt to connect the remaining names with any known language group has achieved scholarly consensus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunnic_language

Modern ethnogenesis interpretation
Main article: Ethnogenesis

There are no historical records that definitively answer where the Huns in Europe of the 4th century came from. Modern understanding[14] suggests that the large steppe confederations of history were not ethnically homogeneous[14] , but rather unions of multiple ethnicities such as Turkic, Yeniseian, Tungusic, Ugric, Iranic,[15] Mongolic, among others. This likely suggests the same was true for the Huns.[14] Many clans may have claimed to be Huns simply based on the prestige and fame of the name or it was attributed to them by outsiders describing their common characteristics, believed place of origin, or reputation.[14] Similarly, Greek or Latin chroniclers may have used "Huns" in a more general sense, similar to the use of "barbarian".

Because of these factors – 1. no ethnic homogeneity among comparable groups; and 2. association with the Hunnic name by outside chroniclers – many modern historians have turned to an ethnogenetic approach in explaining the origins of the Huns. An ethnogenetic approach does not assume that a group is a linguistically or genetically homogeneous tribe, that has a single place of origin or a single tribal history. Rather, small groups of aristocratic warriors may have carried ethnic traditions from place to place and generation to generation. Followers would coalesce or disband around these nuclei of tradition. Hunnic ethnicity would then require acceptance into these groups but no requirement to have been born into a "tribe". "All we can say safely," says Walter Pohl, "is that the name Huns, in late antiquity (4th century), described prestigious ruling groups of steppe warriors."[14]

Appearance and customs

All surviving accounts were written by enemies of the Huns, and none describe the Huns as attractive either morally or in appearance.

Jordanes, a Goth writing in Italy in 551, a century after the collapse of the Hunnic Empire, describes the Huns as a "savage race, which dwelt at first in the swamps,--a stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human, and having no language save one which bore but slight resemblance to human speech."

    "They made their foes flee in horror because their swarthy aspect was fearful, and they had, if I may call it so, a sort of shapeless lump, not a head, with pin-holes rather than eyes. Their hardihood is evident in their wild appearance, and they are beings who are cruel to their children on the very day they are born. For they cut the cheeks of the males with a sword, so that before they receive the nourishment of milk they must learn to endure wounds. Hence they grow old beardless and their young men are without comeliness, because a face furrowed by the sword spoils by its scars the natural beauty of a beard. They are short in stature, quick in bodily movement, alert horsemen, broad shouldered, ready in the use of bow and arrow, and have firm-set necks which are ever erect in pride. Though they live in the form of men, they have the cruelty of wild beasts."[6]

Jordanes also recounted how Priscus had described Attila the Hun, the Emperor of the Huns from 434 - 453, as: "Short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head; his eyes were small, his beard thin and sprinkled with grey; and he had a flat nose and tanned skin, showing evidence of his origin."[7]
[edit] Society and culture

The Huns kept herds of cattle, horses, goats, and sheep.[8] Their other sources of food consisted of wild game and the roots of wild plants. For clothes they had round caps, trousers or leggings made from goat skin, and either linen or rodent skin tunics. Ammianus reports that they wore these clothes until the clothes fell to pieces. Priscus describes Attila's clothes as different from his men only in being clean.[9] In warfare they utilized the bow and javelin. The arrowheads and javelin tips were made from bone. They also fought using iron swords and lassos in close combat. The Hun sword was a long, straight, double-edged sword of early Sassanian style.[10] These swords were hung from a belt using the scabbard-slide method, which kept the weapon vertical. The Huns also employed a smaller short sword or large dagger which was hung horizontally across the belly. A symbol of status among the Huns was a gilded bow.[10] Sword and dagger grips also were decorated with gold.

With the arrival of the Huns, a separate tradition of composite bows arrived in Europe. Each siyah was stiffened by two laths, as in the longstanding Levantine tradition, and the grip by three. Therefore, each bow possessed seven grip and ear laths, compared with none on the Scythian and Sarmatian bows and four (ear) laths on the Middle Eastern Yrzi bow.[11] There is no evidence that the Huns used bows in any way superior to those of their contemporaries.

Ammianus mentions that the Huns had no kings but were instead led by nobles. For serious matters they formed councils and deliberated from horseback.

Jordanes and Ammianus report that the Huns practiced scarification, slashing the faces of their male infants with swords to discourage beard growth. Another custom of the Huns was to strap their children's noses flat from an early age, in order to widen their faces, as to increase the terror their looks instilled upon their enemies. Certain Hun skeletons have shown evidence of artificially deformed skulls that are a result of ritual head binding at a young age.[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huns

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Chuvash has links to Yiddish:

----------

YIDDISH ASHKENAZI TRADITIONS AND JUDAIC DIALECTS AROUND THE WORLD

By Dr. Harrell Rhome
 

Rembrandt's Rabbi.

Yiddish (ייִדיש or אידיש) is a curious semi-Germanic patois, the word literally translating as Jewish.  It was also called yoshon-ashkenaz, the Ashkenaz language, but more affectionately termed (מאַמע־לשון) mame-yoshon or mother tongue, distinguishing it from biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, called yoshon koydesh, the holy tongues.  Nevertheless by the 1700s it was generally called Yiddish.  Yid (or Zid) is a word for Jew in Eastern Europe, so some say the name comes from Yid-Deutsch.  It has roots in High German, but is written with the Hebrew alphabet.  It arose in the tenth century, coinciding with the coming of the Khazar convert Jews from the east.  It became the lingua franca of the Judaic world, with several distinct dialects among its speakers.  The Eastern idiom naturally had more Slavic elements.  Spoken around the world in Orthodox communities, Yiddish is most widespread among the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic sect.  It did not appear in print until the nineteenth century.  While the number of speakers and publications has declined, it continues as a Judaic dialect and international trade language.   Some researchers maintain it has links to the old, obscure Turkic language of the Khazars, but other linguists and historians disagree.  Several years ago, I spoke with Dr. Clarence Lang and Dr. Charles Weber, both of whom were Professors of History and German about the possible Khazarian roots of Yiddish.  Both disagreed.  But, could it be so?  

"I believe that Yiddish is a mixed West-East Slavic language (and not a German dialect as is commonly believed. Of the two native Slavic substrata of Yiddish — Sorbian and pre-Ukrainian/pre-Belarusian (or in historical terms, 'Kiev-Polessian') — it is the latter imprint that unambiguously points to the existence of Slavic-speaking Jewries in parts of the former Khazar kingdom who eventually became speakers of Yiddish. Hence, one major venue for the birth of the Ashkenazic people would have to be in the contemporary Belarusian and Ukrainian lands, where an indigenous Slavic-speaking Jewry (as best established by the facts of Yiddish) could only be derived from the Turko-Iranian-speaking Khazars. Furthermore, Yiddish lexicon and grammar reveal links with Turkic and Iranian languages that have not been widely appreciated."  Paul Wexler, Khazars, as seen on http://www.israelshamir.net/.

The Yiddish letters do not entirely conform to the basic Hebrew alphabet.  See below.

THE GERMANIZATION OF THE KHAZAR ASHKENAZIM AND THE FURTHER EVOLUTION OF YIDDISH.

Yiddish and German have a close connection, both linguistically and culturally.
Read what Professor Arthur Koestler said about this curious love-hate relationship.

"It is easy to see why Khazar immigrants pouring into mediaeval Poland had to learn German if they wanted to get on. Those who had close dealings with the native populace no doubt also had to learn some pidgin Polish (or Lithuanian, or Ukrainian or Slovene); German, however, was a prime necessity in any contact with the towns. But there was also the synagogue and the study of the Hebrew torah. One can visualize a shtetl craftsman, a cobbler perhaps, or a timber merchant, speaking broken German to his clients, broken Polish to the serfs on the estate next door; and at home mixing the most expressive bits of both with Hebrew into a kind of intimate private language. How this hotchpotch became communalized and standardized to the extent to which it did, is any linguist's guess; but at least one can discern some further factors which facilitated the process."  Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, The Khazar Empire And Its Heritage, 1976.

The German states already had a Judaic presence long before the coming of the Khazars.  Soon they became the "German Jews" as they rapidly began to settle there, eventually becoming the predominant Judaic sect.  Considering the time it takes to walk from the east, the Ashkenaz migration expanded all over Europe in a remarkably short period of time.  Germanic areas were at the top of their list.

"Even if their number was relatively small, these German-speaking Jews were superior in culture and learning to the Khazars, just as the German Gentiles were culturally superior to the Poles. And just as the Catholic clergy was German, so the Jewish rabbis from the West were  a powerful factor in the Germanization of the Khazars, whose Judaism was fervent but primitive."

"A rabbinical tract from seventeenth century Poland contains the pious wish...  May God will that the country be filled with wisdom and that all Jews speak German."  Koestler.

The Khazarian Ashkenazim were characterized by their unique language as well as their distinct dress, both varying greatly from any others in Europe.
 
The old Khazar tongue was crude, lacking an alphabet.  Along with their conversion to Talmudic Judaism, Hebrew became a handy linguistic tool.  While Yiddish picked up other words and features as it moved westward, it remained the language of the Ashkenaz.  From the beginning, it had nothing to do with the preexisting Jews of Western Europe until after the tenth century and had nothing to do with ancient Israel or the old Hebrew language other than using the alphabet.   While the famous Khazar Correspondence with Sephardic Judaics in Islamic Iberia (c.950) was conducted in Hebrew, just a handful of upper class Khazars and their rabbis really understood or wrote the language.  Words were added and meanings change, common factors in the evolution of all languages.  German was a natural contributor to Yiddish.  The Khazars recognized the dynamism and advanced nature of the culture, quickly sending their children to German schools and adapting everyday Germanic terms into their polyglot Yiddish dialect. The rest of the linguistic elements were from Slavonic, Russian, Baltic and related regional dialects, including the old Khazar Turkic tongue.

"The Khazar language was supposedly a Chuvash dialect of Turkish, which still survives in the Autonomous Chuvash Soviet Republic, between the Volga and the Sura. The Chuvash people are actually believed to be descendants of the Bulgars, who spoke a dialect similar to the Khazars. But all these connections are rather tenuous, based on the more or less speculative deductions of oriental philologists. All we can say with safety is that the Khazars were a Turkic tribe, who erupted from the Asian steppes, probably in the fifth century of our era."  Koestler.

"...the Jewries of eastern Europe were, if not established, at least recruited in substantial numbers from Jews from farther east.  On the linguistic side, investigations have tended to establish the absence of western influences in Yiddish...."  Douglas M. Dunlop, The History Of The Jewish Khazars, 1954.

Dr. Koestler succinctly sums up how Judaics, both the Sephardim and Ashkenazim, use language.  While the Khazar Turko-Mongol tribes were not the Hebrew tribes of the Bible, they share some obvious characteristics.  Owing to this and by the sheer strength of numbers, the Khazars eventually came to define and control modern Judaism, bringing it into their service.

"Incidentally, the descendants of the biblical Tribes are the classic example of linguistic adaptability. First they spoke Hebrew; in the Babylonian exile, Chaldean; at the time of Jesus, Aramaic; in Alexandria, Greek; in Spain, Arabic, but later Ladino — a Spanish-Hebrew mixture, written in Hebrew characters, the Sephardi equivalent of Yiddish; and so it goes on.  They preserved their religious identity, but changed languages at their convenience.  The Khazars were not descended from the Tribes, but, as we have seen, they shared a certain cosmopolitanism and other social characteristics with their co-religionists."  Koestler.  

"Spanish Jewry was part of a trading network which spread throughout the Old World.  Against this background, Hasday ibn Shaprut's links with the Khazars and the Jewish Academies of Mesopotamia seem rather less surprising...."  Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain, 1992, p. 95.

 

An Ashkenazi rabbi is pictured below.

 

 

 

WHO ARE THE ASHKENAZIM?

How did the Khazars come to be called Ashkenazis?  This name is dubious and obviously very convenient, supporting spurious claims to the heritage of old Palestine and the Bible.  Like Jew, it is yet another hijacked word.  But, what does it really mean?  Several scholars comment.

"As to the terms Sephardim and Ashkenazim, the following seems pertinent.  In Die Geschichte des Volkes Israel (History of the People of Israel), 1926, Ludwig Albrecht, a professed Christian, wrote on page 654:  'The name Sephardim, designating the Spanish and Portuguese Jews comes from the biblical book, Obadiah, verse 20, '...the exiles of Jerusalem who are in the Sepharad shall possess the cities of Negeb.'  The name Ashkenazim, designating the German Jews comes from Genesis 10:2, 'The sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah'...."  Prof. R. Clarence Lang, Th.M., Ph.D.

It was only in medieval times, after the coming of the Khazars, that the term began to be applied as it is today.  While an etymological cognate relationship is not crystal-clear, the Old Turkic term, Aq Khasars, indicating the upper classes or the "White Khazars", sounds similar to Ashkenaz.

"Ashkenaz is also a brother of Togarmah (and a nephew of Magog) whom the Khazars, according King Joseph, claimed as their ancestor.  But worse was to come.  For Ashkenaz is also named in Jeremiah 51, 27, where the prophet calls his people and their allies to rise and destroy Babylon...."

"This passage was interpreted by the famous Saadiah Gaon, a spiritual leader of Oriental Jewry in the tenth Century, as a prophecy relating to his own times:  Babylon symbolized the Caliphate of Baghdad, and the Ashkenaz who were to attack it were either the Khazars themselves are some allied tribe."

"Accordingly ... some learned Khazar Jews who heard of the Gaon's ingenious arguments, called themselves Ashkenazim when they migrated into Poland."     Koestler.

By now, you see a recurring pattern.  Khazars assume, adopt and adapt a Semitic name and Hebrew heritage that was never theirs.  Are they the "German Jews"?  No, not really.  Albeit small in numbers except in the Iberian Peninsula, Sephardic and oriental Jews were already in Europe and living in the Germanic lands long before the coming of the Khazar convert Jews.  But given that the Ashkenazis were such extreme Germanophiles, their designation as "German Jews" is somewhat correct.

 

OTHER JUDAIC DIALECTS AROUND THE WORLD.

In actuality, there are as many dialects as there are unique Judaic communities such as the Falashas of Ethiopia the Kai Feng of China, the Cochin Judaics of India and others.  The Sephardic equivalent of Yiddish is Ladino (also called Judezmo or Spaniolish), the lingua franca of the Iberian Jews.  Like Yiddish it is written in Hebrew.  Ladino blends Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic and perhaps other tongues as well.  I once had occasion in Gibraltar to hear it spoken among Sephardic taxi drivers.  While sounding something like Spanish, its vocabulary and particular accent distinguish it.    The use of Ladino and Yiddish as an insider code-talk parallels the Gypsy tongue, Romani.  Romani, like Yiddish, took on many words from the many lands where they lived.  This was paralleled by the more localized use of other polyglot dialects such as Judeo-Greek, Judeo-Italian and Judeo-Persian.  Like Ashkenazic Yiddish, Sephardic Ladino took on words from other languages as they moved about the world.  

The Karaite non-Talmudic Jews are of Turko-Khazar origin and speak a particular dialect.  Today, younger Karay Turks are working to preserve their unique linguistic legacy, and the Karay proudly proclaim their Khazarian history and heritage.  A perhaps related group, the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus, speak Farsi-Tat, a Persian dialect with added Hebrew words and expressions.   This usage may shed some light as to their elusive origins.  While they might have some Khazarian origins given their proximity, the use of the Farsi-Tat dialect reflects the influences of the oriental Judaism of Babylon and Baghdad.  The Karaite dialect followed the Karay and continued to evolve as they made their way west.

 "It is also significant that Tshagataish, the language of the Khazar Jews, a Turkish dialect, is still spoken in Poland, Hungary and Lithuania by the Karaites, the Jewish sectarians whose homeland was originally in the Crimea.  Even more significant is that Tshagataish is spoken by the few surviving Jewish Krimtchaki of the Crimea."  Nathan Ausubel, Pictorial History of the Jewish People, 1984.

 

Dr. Koestler tells us more about the Khazars and the Karaites.

"That language was and still is a Turkish dialect, in fact the nearest among living languages to the lingua cumanica, which was spoken in the former Khazar territories at the time of the Golden Horde. According to Zajaczkowski, this language is still used in speech and prayer in the surviving Karaite communities in Troki, Vilna, Ponyeviez, Lutzk and Halitch. The Karaites also claim that before the Great Plague of 1710 they had some thirty-two or thirty-seven communities in Poland and Lithuania.  They call their ancient dialect "the language of Kedar" — just as Rabbi Petachia in the twelfth century called their habitat north of the Black Sea "the land of Kedar"; and what he has to say about them — sitting in the dark through the Sabbath, ignorance of rabbinical learning — fits their sectarian attitude."

"Accordingly, Zajaczkowski, the eminent contemporary Turcologist, considers the Karaites from the linguistic point of view as the purest present-day representatives of the ancient Khazars.  This sect preserved its language for about half a millennium, while the main body of Khazar Jews shed it in favour of the Yiddish lingua franca...."

 

And we mustn't forget other Judeo-Persian dialects.

 

"It was the Jewish practice to corrupt for their own use the language generally employed in commerce in the region in which they took up residence, and to write it in their own alphabet to prevent the natives from reading it.  Under the Sassanian dynasty (after c. A.D. 226), the Jews in the territory under Persian control quickly developed for themselves a corruption of the revived Persian language, what we may call a 'Persian Yiddish,' which was certainly known to some of the composers of the Talmud and corrupted in some passages the corrupt Aramaic they continued to use. A very large number of Jewish religious writings in their corruption of Persian are still extant."  Dr. Revilo Oliver, 1985.

 

The Judaics of the Meshed area of Iran were forced to convert to Islam, but spent the latter part of the nineteenth century trying to break away.  Some fled to Afghanistan, taking their peculiar Judeo-Persian dialect called Elazar with them.  As we see, wherever there are settlements of Jewish folk, they either use existing intra-Judaic idioms or create their own.

 

YIDDISH AND THE ASHKENAZI CULTURE TODAY.

While younger Jews are losing the ability to use Yiddish, it remains a powerful communications tool.  Many of the current generation will never learn it well, but rest assured that others will.  For certain dealings, there is no replacement.  Yiddish speakers can recognize one another and know where the other person is from through their accent and idiomatic expressions.  Even in the electronic twenty-first century, the old Khazar code talk is still indispensable for certain clandestine activities.  Besides, with fewer people understanding Yiddish, it becomes an even more exclusive tongue, just for the Ashkenaz elites and no one else.

Their insistence on the use of Yiddish rather than adopting the Slavic tongues, led to even more cultural isolation from Polish and Russian societies.  Not only did they live apart from all others when they moved west, but in homes and buildings often with an alien look.  Pagoda-like synagogues typified the Judaic areas of town.  They also dressed differently.  Even in the early twentieth century, many Ashkenazim were characterized by oriental kaftans and speaking a mostly unintelligible language.  This, and Talmudic business practices, set them apart from Russians, Poles, Germans or the people of whatever country where they settled.  Ghettos were closed communities imposed by Christian society.  However, the Ashkenaz lived by choice in shtetls, self-imposed kosher and pure ethnocentric communities, undefiled by contact with the unclean goyim.    

"What virtues and what vices brought upon the Jew this universal enmity? Why was he in turn equally maltreated and hated by the Alexandrians and the Romans, by the Persians and the Arabs, by the Turks and by the Christian nations? Because everywhere and up to the present day, the Jew was an unsociable being. Why was he unsociable? Because he was exclusive and his exclusiveness was at the same time political and religious, or, in other words, he kept to his political religious cult and his law.  B. Lazare, L'Antisemitism.

 

ASSIMILATION IS THE FOREMOST THREAT TO THE FUTURE OF ASHKENAZI JUDAISM AND THE YIDDISH LANGUAGE.

"The Jew is a religious being.  All Jewish history is the result of religious passion and purpose, and, whatever is said to the contrary, the continuity of the Jew is bound up with the retention of his religion.  Wipe out the religious element from the equation of his life, and the Jew would cease automatically."  H. G. Enelow, A Jewish View Of Jesus, 1920.

          Yiddish is exactly what its name literally means – the language of the Ashkenazi Khazar Jews -- and no one else.  Beyond that, Judaism is an exclusive religion for their benefit.  The Talmudic scriptures tell them they are different from other human beings, especially chosen by their exclusive and jealous Egypto-Semitic deity.  Not only that; the Talmud and Halakah Rabbinical Law gives permission to gouge, maltreat and manipulate the gentiles as they please.  This supremacist mindset makes it virtually impossible to assimilate, adjust and adapt to other societies.  As we know from eons of past history, this is an ongoing phenomenon.  The observant Jew purposely stands apart religiously and culturally, never really blending in.  Some overcome this, but more often than not have to completely divorce themselves from Judaism.  The rabbis are right.  Assimilation -- especially when it involves conversion to some form of Christianity -- is a total rejection of rabbinic authority and Talmudic supremacism.  

"Humanity changes, empires arise and fall, ideals spring up, become resplendent, and are extinguished, the Jew remains, Judaism remains clothed in its fierce exclusivism.... A people without land, a wandering nation, dispersed race, they preserve a country, their religion... ever pursuing the mirage of a golden age, a new era, a messianic time when the world would live in joy and peace, subject to Yahweh, serving his Law under the rule of the sacerdotal people, who had been prepared by trials for the attainment of this hour...  they are eternally inadaptable...."  Georges Batault, Le Probleme Juif, 1921.

"Paris (EJP) Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former chief rabbi of Israel and currently chairman of Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, said assimilation 'is today the biggest threat to the Jewish people.'  Speaking during a gathering in Paris of around 300 rabbis from across Europe and Israel... Lau said assimilation is a 'bigger threat' than anti-Semitism and terrorism for the future of Jews.  Lau mentioned statistics from the United States showing that out of 100 Jews from the first generation only three are left as Jews in the fourth generation.  Rabbi Yisroel Yaakov Lichtenstein, head of the Jewish court in the UK, spoke of around 50% assimilation among Jews in his country.  Young people are not interested in religion, they have no connection with Judaism.... "  

So, we have a demographic problem here.   There's a 97% casualty rate in the US and 50% in the UK.  Not only that, immigration to Israel decreases every year, especially with prolonged and increased violence.  Some say one way or another, the ministate may not last another twenty years.  But even if Israel were to become some kind of non-Jewish entity or otherwise cease to exist, and even if only a few Jews pass on the traditions, Yiddish, yoshon-ashkenaz, the language and legacy of the Ashkenazim, lives on.   Regardless of losses to assimilation or conversion, for a number of devout and observant Judaic Talmudists, there are two truly holy languages: Hebrew and Yiddish.  


# # #

Copyright ©2009 Harrell Rhome All Rights Reserved.

http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/y ... itions.htm

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

I agree with MikeWB that people cling onto the khazar thing because it delegitimizes the Zionist occupation of Palestine, but it's probably not accurate. I also think people like it becasue they can now use the word "khazar" in place of "jew" since everybody is just so afraid of that three letter word. "Khazar" thus becomes yet another layer of the onion. Most people go from "it's the republicans" to "it's the neo-cons"to "it's the new world order" to "it's the illuminati" to "it's the ashkenazim" or "khazars"  or  "zionists" and then get stuck on the zionist thing. Which isn't particulary bad to get stuck on but it's like getting ur car stuck in a ditch, no matter how hard you press on the gas peddle ur just spinning ur wheels. Jewry's been at this game for thousands of years and zionism is just another outlet of control and a Jewish refusal to assimilate.

Khanverse seems to love the khazar theory. Apparently "the khazars" even destroyed his website  :lol:. Maybe he should change his name to Khanzarverse?  :think: Seems like he has khazars on the brain. Apparently he thinks that only the "khazars" are bad and the sephardi are dovish or something. So basically the "fake Jews" who are basically just "white people" are bad and the "real Jews" are angels. Jesus didn't seem to think so but such a theory fits well with Khan's 'anti-cracka' ideology. I guess those sephardi organ trafficking rabbis in New Jersey are the exception to the rule? Most of the sephardi live in israel and are some of the most rabid zionists.

[MikeWB]

I also think people like it becasue they can now use the word "khazar" in place of "jew" since everybody is just so afraid of that three letter word. "Khazar" thus becomes yet another layer of the onion. Most people go from "it's the republicans" to "it's the neo-cons"to "it's the new world order" to "it's the illuminati" to "it's the ashkenazim" or "khazars"  or  "zionists" and then get stuck on the zionist thing. Which isn't particulary bad to get stuck on but it's like getting ur car stuck in a ditch, no matter how hard you press on the gas peddle ur just spinning ur wheels. Jewry's been at this game for thousands of years and zionism is just another outlet of control and a Jewish refusal to assimilate.

Absolutely true! You've nailed it. It's just another euphemism that people use because they're too scared to use the term "jewish".

Khanverse seems to love the khazar theory. Apparently "the khazars" even destroyed his website  :lol:. Maybe he should change his name to Khanzarverse?  :think: Seems like he has khazars on the brain. Apparently he thinks that only the "khazars" are bad and the sephardi are dovish or something. So basically the "fake Jews" who are basically just "white people" are bad and the "real Jews" are angels. Jesus didn't seem to think so but such a theory fits well with Khan's 'anti-cracka' ideology. I guess those sephardi organ trafficking rabbis in New Jersey are the exception to the rule? Most of the sephardi live in israel and are some of the most rabid zionists.

Again, you've nailed it. Biggest Talmudists are Sephardi jews, not Ashkenazis!

Rabbi Rav Ashi, the primary redactor of Babylonian Talmud,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rav_Ashi is Sephardi.

"The nation of Israel is pure and the Arabs are a nation of donkeys. They are an evil disaster, an evil devil, and a nasty affliction. The Arabs are donkeys and beasts. They want to take our girls. They are endowed with true filthiness. There is pure and there is impure and they are impure."

--Rabbi David Batzri, head of the Magen David Yeshiva in Jerusalem [Israeli newspaper Haaretz, March 21, 2006

Yep, Batzri's Sephardic as well.

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."

Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]

Yes, Perrin's Sephardic as well.

Anyone who claims that Sephardic Jews are somehow exonerated from all this doesn't know what they're talking about.

[ehpg]

kt40j2b2]

kt40j2b2]

kt40j2b2]

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

thanks ehpg. here are the other two:

part 4
[youtube:3f6g6s94]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ12XIXD6Ak[/youtube]3f6g6s94]
Part 5
[youtube:3f6g6s94]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaO0IRGOZwU[/youtube]3f6g6s94]

[Reboot]

The Jews don't think the Khazar thing is legit. Koestler was suicided.

Let's look at this in another way:

The world hates Americans. They start wars and pollute the world.

Should we do away with all Americans or only Republicans?

Should we throw all of them out of our countries?

Should we send them back to wherever they came from and give the occupied territory back to the Mexicans and Native Americans?

Should we find out which one of them are bad and leave the rest alone?

Should we take away their privileges and see which of them are nice before we allow any of them to hold a powerful position?

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

The Jews don't think the Khazar thing is legit. Koestler was suicided.

Let's look at this in another way:

The world hates Americans. They start wars and pollute the world.

Should we do away with all Americans or only Republicans?

Should we throw all of them out of our countries?

Should we send them back to wherever they came from and give the occupied territory back to the Mexicans and Native Americans?

Should we find out which one of them are bad and leave the rest alone?

Should we take away their privileges and see which of them are nice before we allow any of them to hold a powerful position?

Explain to us why you believe the Sephardim are honest brokers and what is your evidence that they aren't part of this as well? DNA proves this khazar theory incorrect. It's just a bunch of garbage to shift the blame once more onto "false Jews"  (i.e. gentiles in disguise) thus projecting the true Hebrew Israelites as some sort of innocent victims of identity theft. Jesus didn't seem to think they were angels like you believe. Jesus repudiated the judaic religion and called its followers a "den of vipers; liars and the fathers of it." Hebrews killed Jesus, not Khazars. Jewish persecution existed long before late 8th century C.E. when these khazar creatures came about so obviously they weren't behaving any better before then. People just want to believe this theory because they are still brainwashed to believe Jews can do no wrong... so they force themselves to unquestionably believe this bedtime story that says the evil-doers are not real Jews.

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

Reboot,

are you going to respond? or are you gonna pull the typical hit n' run?

[Reboot]

Explain to us why you believe the Sephardim are honest brokers

I can't say that all or only some of them are innocent. What I'm saying is that the world might be held responsible, as you probably would hold the world, for doing away with you just because you're an American (example above). Do the people in the third world know very much about America or do they just do what their leaders tell them what they should do.

Should the world also do away with all Democrats because one or two helped the Republicans to destroy it?

DNA proves this khazar theory incorrect.

Israeli research says that, I wonder why.

Jesus didn't seem to think they were angels like you believe.

There never was any Jesus. The Dead Sea Scrolls never mention any existence of Israel, no Jesus, no nothing.

Does your enemy have to be an easy target? Do you need support from a superior being to take on your enemies?

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

I can't say that all or only some of them are innocent.

What makes you think that Sephardic Jews are nicer than Ashkenazi Jews?

What I'm saying is that the world might be held responsible, as you probably would hold the world, for doing away with you just because you're an American (example above). Do the people in the third world know very much about America or do they just do what their leaders tell them what they should do.

wat does this have to do with your belief that 90% of jewry are fake Khazar converts to Judaism?

Should the world also do away with all Democrats because one or two helped to start the war?

Well the concept of democrat/republican-left/right paradigm should be done away with, yes, because they all work for the same people. Wouldn't you say?

DNA proves this khazar theory incorrect.

Israeli research says that, I wonder why.

So you dont trust the research debunking the theory but you trust the research of the Jew Koestler? I smell a double standard. Are you not choosing what you want to believe, no?

Here is my simple question for you, reboot,... what does it matter what type of blood flows through their veins, Is it not their mindset that makes them do what they do?

[Reboot]

I would be very sceptical about hiring, voting for, or trusting research from any Jew.  I started doing that long before I knew what I know today just by reading their books. Full of badly written crap.

From what I understand, Jews didn't resist their captivity in Egypt or Babylon very much. Nor was there a lot of Babylonian attitudes among Jews in Egypt, I think. We also have to remember that the Jews that came out of Egypt were not a homogeneous group. There was more than one group. Not all of them agreed with each other.

Were all Jews equally evil? Did all of them like their leaders? Did all the Jews stay in the region we now call Israel or did some of them move to Rome before Babylon came into existence? Did they start the Catholic Church? Did they invent Jesus to get people in the West to like their leader?  They certainly fought many wars in the West to push this belief in Jesus on spiritual Europeans.

Did someone from the Vatican go to Khazaria to manipulate Khazars to make them destroy the world for them because the evil Jews weren't evil enough or many enough? The story from alternative Christian historians is that Khazars asked the Vatican for permission to become Jewish. Why didn't they just kick out the "Vaticans"? Are the "Vaticans" more powerful than the rutheless Khazars?

Can't we then say that the real evil Jews run and own the Vatican and call themselves Catholics? Aren't "Vaticans" just as evil, morally corrupt and sadistic as Khazar's. Do you see that same deviance among Sephardic Jews? Maybe, but not as much as in "Vaticans" and Khazars? Should we get rid of Sephardic Jews just because they call themselves Jews?

Why should I give Israel more credit than Arthur Koestler?

[MonkeySeeMonkeyDo]

Just one example that debunks the widely held belief in the leftist anti-Zionist circles that the Sephardim are exempt from all this: The African transatlantic slave trade was principally financed, organized, and dominated by the Spanish/Portuguese Sephardic Jews not Khazars or Ashkenazis. The Sephardi populations of Spain and Portugal were expelled from their respective countries in 1492 and 1497. So we can clearly see that hostility and aversion is not limited to Ashkenazis which you believe are Khazars. In fact this hostility directed against the jews can be found pretty much WHEREVER jews and non-jews are associated. There is no evidence to suggest that one particular distinction of Jews is less apt to these bad behaviors than others.

[Reboot]

leftist anti-Zionist circles

The main group in Israel that makes life difficult are socialists. Why don't socialists like what they're doing? Is it to keep other people from bringing forth better arguments against Israel than yells and screams?

The African transatlantic slave trade was principally financed, organized, and dominated by the Spanish/Portuguese Sephardic Jews not Khazars or Ashkenazis.

Does Michael A. Hoffman II agree with this? Or was the Wikipedia information written by the same people who paid for the report about the Jewish genes? Why does PBS make and air a documentary about the Armenian genocide? Hosted by a Jew? It makes Turks furious and claim they had nothing to do with it. Is it to put the blame on someone else than Khazarian Jews and those who kicked them into action - Vatican Jews? The Jewish tribe that went to Italy?

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Just one example that debunks the widely held belief in the leftist anti-Zionist circles that the Sephardim are exempt from all this: The African transatlantic slave trade was principally financed, organized, and dominated by the Spanish/Portuguese Sephardic Jews not Khazars or Ashkenazis. The Sephardi populations of Spain and Portugal were expelled from their respective countries in 1492 and 1497. So we can clearly see that hostility and aversion is not limited to Ashkenazis which you believe are Khazars. In fact this hostility directed against the jews can be found pretty much WHEREVER jews and non-jews are associated. There is no evidence to suggest that one particular distinction of Jews is less apt to these bad behaviors than others.

Good point there MSM...

basically whether Ashkenazi or Sephardic... but groups of these Jews of the Talmud are deep in the game of corruption in both Israel and in the worlds of Finance. The Babylonian temple practices are used by both groups throughout history.  For example,  the Sassons are Sephardic Babylonian Jews that led tens of millions of Chinese into opium addiction.  Both groups have Palestinian blood on their hands.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Scientists prove humans bred with Neanderthals  

Published: 6 May 10 20:26 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100506-27033.html

For the first time ever, German scientists have drafted a genome sequence for the Neanderthal and believe their results show that the extinct hominid interbred with humans.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig analysed some four billion base pairs of DNA from Neanderthals – a species which died out more than 30,000 years ago. Initial analysis of the resulting genome sequence draft show that Neanderthals left traces of themselves in the genomes of some modern humans, the study published in this month's journal "Science" revealed.

"The comparison of these two genetic sequences enables us to find out where our genome differs from that of our closest relative," research team leader Svante Pääbo said in a statement.

The DNA fragments came from bones found in Croatia, Russia, Spain and the Neandertal region of Germany. But the scientists had to develop a new method of separating DNA microbes that had lived in the bones for some 40,000 years and the DNA of the Neanderthals themselves, the statement said.

"Over 95 percent of the DNA in one sample originated from bacteria and micro-organisms which colonised the Neanderthal after his death," Pääbo said.

Once they were able to compare the human and Neanderthal genome sequences, they discovered that contrary to the common belief that the two species are not related, it appears the two actually bred enough for traces to appear in between one and four percent of modern human DNA.

"Those of us who live outside Africa carry a little Neanderthal DNA in us," Pääbo said.

The scientists compared the genome sequences for European, Asian and Africans against the Neanderthal, and found that humans outside Africa show traces.

"Neanderthals probably mixed with early modern humans before Homo sapiens split into different groups in Europe and Asia," Pääbo said.

Now the group is working to determine which modern human genes may have come from Neanderthals and whether they provided an evolutionary advantage.

So far they have found genes related to cognitive function, metabolism and cranial features, the collar bone, and rib cage, the statement said.

"We will also decode the remaining parts of the Neanderthal genome and learn much more about ourselves and our closest relative," says Svante Pääbo.

External link: Max Planck Institute »

The Local (http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100506-27033.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Khazar - Neanderthal update:

It looks like early humans didn't kill off the Neanderthals unless they gave them killer diseases.  It also appears that the Volcanic Campanian Ignimbrite Eruption in Southern Italy was a Heinrich Event 4 that may have done them in since  volcanic "ash" would have prevented animals from chewing their food in most of Europe leading to mass grazing animal deaths  :think: :

Potential Interference Among The Campanian Ignimbrite Eruption, Heinrich Event 4 and The Middle/upper Palaeolithic Shift In Late Pleistocene Europe
Fedele, F. G.; Giaccio, B.; Isaia, R.; Orsi, G.
EGS XXVII General Assembly, Nice, 21-26 April 2002, abstract #4318

    The Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) eruption (Phlegraean Fields Caldera) was the largest volcanic eruption in the Greater Mediterranean area over the past 200 Ka (at least 150 km3 DRE). Ash layers correlated with CI have been found in sediments of the eastern Mediterranean Sea (Y5) and East Europe, from Italy to the former USSR. The recent dating of the CI eruption at 39.3 Ka BP draws attention to the coincidence be- tween this volcanic catastrophe and the suite of coeval biocultural modifications in Old World prehistory, here termed the European Late Pleistocene shift (ELPS). These included the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic cultural transition and the supposed change from Neanderthal to "modern" Homo sapiens anatomy, still a subject of sustained de- bate. The first results of our investigations show that: (1) at several archaeological sites of peninsular Italy a distinct tephra layer corresponding to the CI is regularly interbedded between the last documented Middle Palaeolithic and the earliest appear- ance of unquestionable Upper Palaeolithic assemblages; (2) at the same sites the CI tephra coincides with a interruption of occupation, several millennia long; (3) in the GISP2 Greenland ice-core, Lago Grande di Monticchio (southern Italy) lacustrine se- quences, and KET 8003 Tyrrhenian sea-core, a large volcanogenic sulfate signal (375 ppb, at 40,062 yr BP) to be correlated with the CI eruption and/or CI tephra layer occurs just before a sharp climatic shift which coincides with the onset of Heinrich event 4 (HE4). The concurrence of the CI eruption, Palaeolithic site abandonment and beginning of HE4 suggests that the overlapping of CI eruption and HE4 climatic im- pacts induced ecosystem crisis on a fairly large scale - human systems included - and well beyond the direct-impact zone. Moreover, the occurrence of the CI eruption just before HE4 probably corroborates the positive climate-volcanism feedback supposed for other high magnitude eruptions (e.g. Toba, 74 Ka). Without obviously claiming for the CI an overall evolutionary relevance within the ELPS, on the available data we nevertheless suggest that it deserves careful consideration as a contributing factor to the regional expression - or re-orientation - of cultural and population change.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002EGSGA..27.4318F

Says disease likely killed the Neanderthals -- not enough evidence of violent encounters with modern humans.
http://energy.ruc.dk/Neanderthal%20Demography.pdf

A few years ago, some scientists proposed that the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption on 39,000 years ago may have played a role in doing them in. Southern Italy exploded back then, producing an amount of lava and ash similar in size to Laacher See. Evidence of the eruption has been found littered around the Mediterranean Sea and as far away as Russia. It was certainly a bad day for early people, but did it wipe out the Neanderthals?
The volcano is closely associated with a strong shift in climate that A few years ago, some scientists proposed that the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption on 39,000 years ago may have played a role in doing them in. Southern Italy exploded back then, producing an amount of lava and ash similar in size to Laacher See. Evidence of the eruption has been found littered around the Mediterranean Sea and as far away as Russia. It was certainly a bad day for early people, but did it wipe out the Neanderthals?

http://dsc.discovery.com/earth/slidesho ... tions.html
 

Supervolcano Eruption Was Tough on Teeth
    Ash from an ancient supervolcano eruption would have made it difficult for human and animals to chew their food.

    By Michael Reilly
    Fri Sep 25, 2009 11:45 AM ET
    0 Comments | Leave a Comment


An active volcano shoots ash into the air. Ash from an ancient supervolcano eruption would have made it difficult for human and animals to chew their food, according to a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science.


If you've ever eaten a sandy batch of shellfish, you know the feeling: the terrible crunching and grinding that cracks through your jaw, making you question the wisdom of your choice of food. Now imagine that feeling with every bite you take, every meal of every day.

If a new study is right, that's what early humans and animals felt after the Laacher See supervolcano exploded in central Europe 13,000 years ago, and it drove them out of the region.

Laacher See was a tremendous blast. It devastated 540 square miles of forested land right around the crater and conservative estimates suggest an area the size of Minnesota was covered in a blanket of ash and rock bits.

Flung into the air at the slightest breeze, the fluffy mixture of tephra particles stung the eyes, irritated the lungs and coated anything animals or people would have cared to eat. For game animals like elk, hare and reindeer, chewing plants would've ground their teeth to the pulp and left them starving.

Wildlife probably fled the worst affected areas of central Europe, leaving northern tribes living in Germany, the Netherlands and southern Sweden marooned on a withered landscape. Populations dwindled, and archaeological evidence suggests they abandoned bows and arrows in favor of more primitive hunting spears.

"We have very little information on how small scale hunter-gatherer societies would respond to this," said Felix Riede of Aarhus University in Denmark. "Would they just leave? Or would they try and deal with the tephra?"

In a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Riede and colleague Jeffrey Wheeler of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom show that the volcanic particles are about twice as hard as most mammal teeth, including those belonging to humans.

Any meal seasoned with a coating of tephra would have been miserable, if not life-threatening.

Even a few months of exposure to tephra could have been devastating. But Riede and Wheeler think it could have lingered on the landscape for as much as 300 years, carried away by rain only to return in drifting, wind-blown dunes.

Still, John Grattan of Abersystwyth University in the United Kingdom points out that there is a silver lining to the Laacher See eruption.

"The people living in Central Europe adapted to these intense stresses," he said. "They were able to cope with them, and to survive."

"We grew up in a volcanic environment," he added, noting that most of our fossil records of early humans come from the volcanically active region of eastern Africa. "That kind of pressure and stress, if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger, as our friend Nietzsche would say."

http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/s ... -chew.html

[haver]

Hi. If the khazars are neanderthals, the hungarians (magyars) are neanderthals also. The reason is the folowing:
after the khazar empire started to die, hungarians decided to exit the alliance. There is a civil war started in khazaria against judaism and against the leaders, but it was unsuccesfull. Who lost this civil war, is joined to magyars, and they formed the "10 tribe" (hungarians). After hungarians leaved, khazar empire slowly falled.

Becouse of this historical fact, it maybee would much better to investigate hungarians instead of jews, becouse that would result no flying hate and stereotypes.