Gene Test Shows Spain’s Jewish and Muslim Mix
By NICHOLAS WADE
The genetic signatures of people in Spain and Portugal provide new and explicit evidence of the mass conversions of Sephardic Jews and Muslims to Catholicism in the 15th and 16th centuries after Christian armies wrested Spain back from Muslim control, a team of geneticists reports.
Twenty percent of the population of the Iberian Peninsula has Sephardic Jewish ancestry and 11 percent have DNA reflecting Moorish ancestors, the geneticists have found. Historians have debated how many Jews converted and how many chose exile. “One wing grossly underestimates the number of conversions,” said Jane S. Gerber, an expert on Sephardic history at the City University of New York.
The finding bears on two different views of Spanish history, said Jonathan S. Ray, a professor of Jewish studies at Georgetown University. One, proposed by the 20th-century historian Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, holds that Spanish civilization is Catholic and other influences are foreign; the other sees Spain as having been enriched by drawing from all three of its historical cultures, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim.
The study, based on an analysis of Y chromosomes, was conducted by biologists led by Mark A. Jobling of the University of Leicester in England and Francesc Calafell of the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. They developed a Y chromosome signature for Sephardic men by studying Sephardic Jewish communities in places where Jews migrated after being expelled from Spain in 1492 to 1496. They also characterized the Y chromosomes of the Arab and Berber army that invaded Spain in A.D. 711 from data on people living in Morocco and Western Sahara.
After a period of forbearance under the Arab Umayyad dynasty, Spain entered a period of religious intolerance, with its Muslim Berber dynasties forcing Christians and Jews to convert to Islam, and the victorious Christians then expelling Jews and Muslims or forcing them to convert. The new genetic study, reported online on Thursday in the American Journal of Human Genetics, indicates there was a high level of conversion among Jews.
Because most of the Y chromosome remains unchanged from father to son, the proportions of Sephardic and Moorish ancestry detected in the present population are probably the same as those just after the 1492 expulsions. A high proportion of people with Sephardic ancestry was to be expected, Dr. Ray said. “Jews formed a very large part of the urban population up until the great conversions,” he said.
Dr. Ray raised the question of what the DNA evidence might mean personally. “If four generations on I have no knowledge of my genetic past, how does that affect my understanding of my own religious association?”
The issue is one that has confronted Dr. Calafell, an author of the study. His own Y chromosome may be of Sephardic ancestry — the test is not definitive for individuals — and his surname is from a town in Catalonia; Jews undergoing conversion often took surnames from place names. But he does not regard his Y chromosome as a strong link to the Sephardic heritage. Assuming no in-breeding, he would have had more than one million living ancestors in A.D. 1500. “My full ancestry is made of many different individuals, and my Y chromosome tells me just about one of them,” he said.
Good article. The only thing they don't mention is the y-dna haplogroups that are characteristic of Arabs and Jews. My maternal grandfather has the y-dna characteristic of North Africa and associated with the Berbers (M-81). I might have some Sephardi Jewish because I have some ancestors with the last name Cardoza. It's kind of hard to tell now if anyone was Jewish because these conversions, like the article said, happened so long ago.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Sat 06 Dec 2008 18:08 Post subject:
This sounds suspect...how are they judging who was Sephradic? What haplogroup are they using to do this?
What is representative of a "Jewish Y Chromosome" what is representative of a "North African" Y Chromosome?
From what I read of the study on other sites they used Basque as a representative of Pre-Muslims Spaniards.
Huh?
First off there are were many other people...Celto-Iberians, Romans (who could have been from anywhere, including Levitine, Asian Minor and quite possibly were not Jewish...we know there were Phonecian colonies in Spain and they originated on the present day Lebanese coast.
You can not genetically, as of yet, separate most Jews from other natives of the surrounding region.
I'm going to guess, but they probably used interpreted J2 (which isn't frequent in either Basques or North Africans) as "Sephardic".
It could also be Italian or Greek and they had colonies in Spain as well...long before the Moors.
Since Spaniards speak a Romance language today, despite the influence of Germans after the fall of the Roman Empire (in the West) you would assume they left a pretty good genetic imprint...this does not appear to be taken into account.
There is nothing in history that shows Basques lived all over Iberia...in fact it appears their territory has shrunk but always been in the North.
This just seems fishy to me.
Not saying Jews and Muslims did not intermix into the Spanish population, they definitely did, this is not disputable...the issue is in what quantity? This study does not answer that.
The report posted above was a bit garbled. (It is the New York Times, after all. They once had a scientifically literate reporter on staff, many years ago. No one knows what became of her.) There was a better summary in Science Daily. Your best bet, however, is to find the actual report itself, which is in The American Journal of Human Genetics. If you can find a PDF, I would love to upload it and add it to our collection.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Sat 06 Dec 2008 18:35 Post subject:
fwsweet wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
This just seems fishy to me.
The report posted above was a bit garbled. (It is the New York Times, after all. They once had a scientifically literate reporter on staff, many years ago. No one knows what became of her.) There was a better summary in Science Daily. Your best bet, however, is to find the actual report itself, which is in The American Journal of Human Genetics. If you can find a PDF, I would love to upload it and add it to our collection.
Okay I will look for it, I have an idea where I can get it.
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1082 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Sun 07 Dec 2008 04:03 Post subject:
Dragon Horse wrote:
Since Spaniards speak a Romance language today, despite the influence of Germans after the fall of the Roman Empire (in the West) you would assume they left a pretty good genetic imprint...this does not appear to be taken into account.
There is nothing in history that shows Basques lived all over Iberia...in fact it appears their territory has shrunk but always been in the North.
One study did attempt to link the Euskara language spoken by the Basques (classed by this study as a Usko-Mediterranean language) to genes, and claimed the Latin-based languages spoken in the Mediterranean area still have Usko-Mediterranean substrates. I'll have to dig around in my files to find it. It was suggested that this ancient language was in use in much of the Mediterranean area in prehistoric times.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Sun 07 Dec 2008 04:33 Post subject:
fwsweet wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
This just seems fishy to me.
The report posted above was a bit garbled. (It is the New York Times, after all. They once had a scientifically literate reporter on staff, many years ago. No one knows what became of her.) There was a better summary in Science Daily. Your best bet, however, is to find the actual report itself, which is in The American Journal of Human Genetics. If you can find a PDF, I would love to upload it and add it to our collection.
The supplement is just their raw data. We still need the report itself.
Even so, just looking at their raw data, I suspect that DH is correct and I share his concern. Apparently, they collected DNA from quite a few known Sepharadim and then sought whichever haplotypes were prevalent there in the general Iberian population. Judging from the raw data, I agree that they probably used J (and perhaps G and K), since these were high in the known Sephardics.
The summary table at the bottom is especially confusing, since it lists only three ancestral populations: Basques, Moroccans, and Sephardics. As DH points out, Iberia has been conquered and colonized by many peoples since Neolithic times, including Visigoths and Celts. Perhaps the authors are using the term "Basque" to denote everything that is neither Moroccan nor Sephardic.
Another confusing item is their apparent interpretation of E3b as Moroccan. This haplotype is found in high concentration all the way to Ethiopia and Somalia, and in lower concentration all the way to Nambia.
Finally, it is interesting to notice the sprinkling of E3a and E1 in their raw data, which are unambiguously of sub-Saharan (probably Bantu-speaking) origin.
Regarding the Basque language, I too had understood that it (or its ancestral forms) was the common language of Europe's hunter-gatherers before the Indo-European Neolithic immigrations.
Joined: 02 May 2006 {Posts: 443 } Location: Île-de-France
Posted: Sun 07 Dec 2008 14:54 Post subject:
The conclusion that because the Y chromosomes match Sephardic or Moroccan groups means that these chromosomes are descended from those who were identified as a jew or a moor in 15th century Spain is suspect.
Something that sticks out as especially odd is the 20% claim of Moorish ancestry for Galicia. Galicia was reconquered by the Christians in less than 20 years after the muslim conquest. I don't know whether they did recent common ancestor estimates with the modern Moroccan sample that they used, (if that is what they used) but I recall reading somewhere else that these E3b's in Galicia probably predate the muslim conquest of Iberia by several thousand years.
Based only on the data posted here, there many other possibilities that are not being taken into account, including prehistorical migrations, phonecian and greek colonies, movements of soldiers, slaves, and government officials from around the entire Mediterranean during the roman empire, the visigoths, and others. Furthermore, E3b is not uncommon in sephardim and J is not uncommon in Moroccans.
I guess I shouldn't talk before I read the entire paper, but it seems like they are reaching.
Something that sticks out as especially odd is the 20% claim of Moorish ancestry for Galicia. Galicia was reconquered by the Christians in less than 20 years after the muslim conquest.
I doubt that the columns labeled mYx (%) reflect percentages of each of the three ancestries. Those numbers must mean something else. For one thing, the number for Basque ancestry in Gascony is 110.8 percent. For another, Asturias shows 10.5 percent Moroccan and the Moors never took Asturias (as my mother never stops telling people, when boasting of our family's "purity"). Finally, east Andalucia (i.e.: Granada) shows only 2.5 percent Moroccan and, as we all know, the Moors held Granada to the bitter end in 1492.
Joined: 02 May 2006 {Posts: 443 } Location: Île-de-France
Posted: Sun 07 Dec 2008 15:33 Post subject:
Quote:
I doubt that the columns labeled mYx (%) reflect percentages of each of the three ancestries.
I doubted the same thing, but the table is clearly labeled
"Table S2. Ancestry Proportions in Iberian Populations."
I suspect that the 110 percent number means that they are using some formula based on the rate of the occurrence of the haplogroups in the source populations to get a most likely estimate. The 110 percent number probably just shows that formula is not very accurate.
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1082 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Sun 07 Dec 2008 18:49 Post subject:
Dragon Horse wrote:
Since Spaniards speak a Romance language today, despite the influence of Germans after the fall of the Roman Empire (in the West) you would assume they left a pretty good genetic imprint...this does not appear to be taken into account.
Strangely, some historic sources attempt to minimize the contributions of the Romans (a wieldy catch-all term for any citizen of the Roman Empire) to the makeup of various populations. As you say, since the languages (except Basque) of the Iberian Peninsula are Latin-based, it stands to reason the influence of Latin-speakers was not minimal.
As an analogy, I've read that Hungarians do not believe Romanians are descended (partly, obviously) from Roman colonists, but claim they are descended from later Slavic migrants. They claim the Roman-descended population was eradicated or transplanted elsewhere. This makes no sense to me. Romanian is a Romance language. The Romanian version of their own history makes much more sense. They claim they are descended from the ancient Dacians, Roman colonists, and various other European and Asiatic conquerors and settlers.
Frank wrote:
Even so, just looking at their raw data, I suspect that DH is correct and I share his concern. Apparently, they collected DNA from quite a few known Sepharadim and then sought whichever haplotypes were prevalent there in the general Iberian population. Judging from the raw data, I agree that they probably used J (and perhaps G and K), since these were high in the known Sephardics.
That seems probable.
Frank wrote:
The summary table at the bottom is especially confusing, since it lists only three ancestral populations: Basques, Moroccans, and Sephardics. As DH points out, Iberia has been conquered and colonized by many peoples since Neolithic times, including Visigoths and Celts. Perhaps the authors are using the term "Basque" to denote everything that is neither Moroccan nor Sephardic.
It seems strange to refer to non-Moroccan and non-Sephardic influences as Basque. If this is indeed what they are doing, it is a poor choice of a term. Merely using Iberian would have been a bit less confusing. Even if the language(s) ancestral to Euskara were common throughout the Mediterranean in pre-I.E. days, calling Iberians before the advent of the Muslims and Jews there Basques does indeed ignore the influences of many other populations that had crossed or settled in the peninsula.
Frank wrote:
Another confusing item is their apparent interpretation of E3b as Moroccan. This haplotype is found in high concentration all the way to Ethiopia and Somalia, and in lower concentration all the way to Nambia.
E3b has been demonstrated to have originated in East Africa, and it does indeed reach its highest concentrations there. In Europeans, it reaches its highest concentrations in Greeks.
Frank wrote:
Finally, it is interesting to notice the sprinkling of E3a and E1 in their raw data, which are unambiguously of sub-Saharan (probably Bantu-speaking) origin.
Yes, indeed. ExE3b (meaning E haplotypes excluding E3b) have been found sporadically in Iberians as well as Italians in earlier studies.
Frank wrote:
Regarding the Basque language, I too had understood that it (or its ancestral forms) was the common language of Europe's hunter-gatherers before the Indo-European Neolithic immigrations.
I was under the impression that it was at least spoken in the Mediterranean region of Europe before the I.E. Neolithic migrations. That one Arnaiz-Villena study may shed more light on it, when I locate it.
MisterLawyer wrote:
Something that sticks out as especially odd is the 20% claim of Moorish ancestry for Galicia. Galicia was reconquered by the Christians in less than 20 years after the muslim conquest. I don't know whether they did recent common ancestor estimates with the modern Moroccan sample that they used, (if that is what they used) but I recall reading somewhere else that these E3b's in Galicia probably predate the muslim conquest of Iberia by several thousand years.
Most occurrences of E3b in Galicia probably do antedate the Moorish conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. I recall a study on the Portuguese where mtDNA haplogroup U6 was found only in northern Portuguese, and the conclusion drawn by the geneticists was that this must be due to Berber influence dating to the invasions of the Moors. This explanation is not satisfactory since Moorish/Berber influence in Portugal is strongest in the south, and weakest in the north (like elsewhere in Iberia). It must represent a much earlier migration of North Africans to Iberia.
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