Cryptic Ashkenazi ancestry across Eastern Europe
One of the great things about the spread of ‘direct to consumer’ genomics is that it’s increasing sample size in countries where for various reasons there isn’t much coverage. It was brought to my attention that My Heritage DNA results have been analyzed by the company, and yielded the surprising result that Hungary has been […]
The origin of the Ashkenazi Jews in early medieval Europe
Last year’s The time and place of European admixture in Ashkenazi Jewish history is very close to the last word on the genetics of the ethnogenesis of Ashkenazi Jews. Here’s the author summary: The Ashkenazi Jewish population has resided in Europe for much of its 1000-year existence. However, its ethnic and geographic origins are controversial, […]
Ashkenazi Jews are not inbred – 2
I know I excoriate readers of this weblog for being stupid, ignorant, or lazy. But this constant badgering does result in genuinely insightful and important comments precisely and carefully stated on occasion. I put up my previous post in haste, and wh…
Ashkenazi Jews are not inbred
Jews, and Ashkenazi Jews in particular, are very genetically distinctive. A short and sweet way to think about this population is that they’re a moderately recent admixture between a Middle Eastern population, and Western Europeans, which has bee…