Neanderthals, Jews and
The First Americans
Edited by Jonathan D.
Kantrowitz
Published by Tsadek
Press
Copyright, Jonathan
Kantrowitz 2014
8.5 x 11, 104 pages
$10.95
2 Tsadek Press books $19.95
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Call 1-800-232--2224 to order a pdf of this title
This book offers fascinating research reports on the background and genetic history of three groups of people with ancient origins but, each in its own way, with an impact on our society today.
Topics Covered:
Neanderthals
Introduction
Neanderthals
and Human Evolution
Appearance and
Behavior
Neanderthal Genes
Earliest Humans
in Europe
Interaction
with Homo Sapiens
Extinction
Jews
Khazars
Ashkenazi Jews
Sephardic Jews
Jews from North
Africa
All Jews
Pashtuns
Druze
First Americans
Where
They Came From
When They Came
How They Lived
Who Are Their
Descendants?
Life Before
Columbus
South America
Sample reports:
New Method Confirms
Humans and Neandertals Interbred
Technical objections to the idea that Neandertals interbred with the
ancestors of Eurasians have been overcome, thanks to a genome analysis method
described in the April 2014 issue of the journal GENETICS. The technique can more confidently detect the genetic
signatures of interbreeding than previous approaches and will be useful for
evolutionary studies of other ancient or rare DNA samples.
“Our approach can distinguish between two subtly different scenarios
that could explain the genetic similarities shared by Neandertals and modern
humans from Europe and Asia,” said study co-author Konrad Lohse, a population
geneticist at the University of Edinburgh.
The first scenario is that Neandertals occasionally interbred with
modern humans after they migrated out of Africa. The alternative scenario is
that the humans who left Africa evolved from the same ancestral subpopulation
that had previously given rise to the Neandertals.
Many researchers argue the interbreeding scenario is more likely,
because it fits the genetic patterns seen in studies that compared genomes from
many modern humans. But the new approach completely rules out the alternative
scenario without requiring all the extra data, by using only the information
from one genome each of several types: Neandertal, European/Asian, African and
chimpanzee.
The same method will be useful in other studies of interbreeding where
limited samples are available. “Because the method makes maximum use of the
information contained in individual genomes, it is particularly exciting for
revealing the history of species that are rare or extinct,” said Lohse. In
fact, the authors originally developed the method while studying the history of
insect populations in Europe and island species of pigs in South East Asia,
some of which are extremely rare.
Lohse cautions against reading too much into the fact that the new
method estimates a slightly higher genetic contribution of Neandertals to
modern humans than previous studies. Estimating this contribution is complex
and is likely to vary slightly between different approaches.
“This work is important because it closes
a hole in the argument about whether Neandertals interbred with humans. And the
method can be applied to understanding the evolutionary history of other
organisms, including endangered species,” said Mark Johnston, Editor-in-Chief
of the journal GENETICS.
Jews
Khazars
Did the Khazars convert to Judaism? New
research says 'no'
Did
the Khazars convert to Judaism? The view that some or all Khazars, a central
Asian people, became Jews during the ninth or tenth century is widely accepted.
But following an exhaustive analysis of the evidence, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem researcher Prof. Shaul Stampfer has concluded that such a conversion,
"while a splendid story," never took place.
Prof.
Shaul Stampfer is the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Professor of Soviet and East
European Jewry, in the department of the History of the Jewish People at the
Hebrew University's Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies. The research has just
been published in the Jewish Social Studies journal, Vol. 19, No. 3 (online at
http://bit.ly/khazars).
From
roughly the seventh to tenth centuries, the Khazars ruled an empire spanning
the steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas. Not much is known about Khazar
culture and society: they did not leave a literary heritage and the
archaeological finds have been meager. The Khazar Empire was overrun by
Svyatoslav of Kiev around the year 969, and little was heard from the Khazars
after. Yet a widely held belief that the Khazars or their leaders at some point
converted to Judaism persists.
Reports
about the Jewishness of the Khazars first appeared in Muslim works in the late
ninth century and in two Hebrew accounts in the tenth century. The story
reached a wider audience when the Jewish thinker and poet Yehudah Halevi used
it as a frame for his book The Kuzari.
Little
attention was given to the issue in subsequent centuries, but a key collection
of Hebrew sources on the Khazars appeared in 1932 followed by a little-known
six-volume history of the Khazars written by the Ukrainian scholar Ahatanhel
Krymskyi. Henri Gregoire published skeptical critiques of the sources, but in
1954 Douglas Morton Dunlop brought the topic into the mainstream of accepted
historical scholarship with The History of the Jewish Khazars.
Arthur
Koestler's best-selling The Thirteenth Tribe (1976) brought the tale to the
attention of wider Western audiences, arguing that East European Ashkenazi
Jewry was largely of Khazar origin. Many studies have followed, and the story
has also garnered considerable non-academic attention; for example, Shlomo
Sand's 2009 bestseller, The Invention of the Jewish People, advanced the thesis
that the Khazars became Jews and much of East European Jewry was descended from
the Khazars. But despite all the interest, there was no systematic critique of
the evidence for the conversion claim other than a stimulating but very brief
and limited paper by Moshe Gil of Tel Aviv University.
Stampfer
notes that scholars who have contributed to the subject based their arguments
on a limited corpus of textual and numismatic evidence. Physical evidence is
lacking: archaeologists excavating in Khazar lands have found almost no
artifacts or grave stones displaying distinctly Jewish symbols. He also reviews
various key pieces of evidence that have been cited in relation to the
conversion story, including historical and geographical accounts, as well as
documentary evidence. Among the key artifacts are an apparent exchange of
letters between the Spanish Jewish leader Hasdai ibn Shaprut and Joseph, king
of the Khazars; an apparent historical account of the Khazars, often called the
Cambridge Document or the Schechter Document; various descriptions by
historians writing in Arabic; and many others.
Taken
together, Stampfer says, these sources offer a cacophony of distortions,
contradictions, vested interests, and anomalies in some areas, and nothing but
silence in others. A careful examination of the sources shows that some are
falsely attributed to their alleged authors, and others are of questionable
reliability and not convincing. Many of the most reliable contemporary texts,
such as the detailed report of Sallam the Interpreter, who was sent by Caliph
al-Wathiq in 842 to search for the mythical Alexander's wall; and a letter of
the patriarch of Constantinople, Nicholas, written around 914 that mentions the
Khazars, say nothing about their conversion.
Citing
the lack of any reliable source for the conversion story, and the lack of
credible explanations for sources that suggest otherwise or are inexplicably
silent, Stampfer concludes that the simplest and most convincing answer is that
the Khazar conversion is a legend with no factual basis. There never was a
conversion of a Khazar king or of the Khazar elite, he says.
Years
of research went into this paper, and Stampfer ruefully noted that "Most
of my research until now has been to discover and clarify what happened in the
past. I had no idea how difficult and challenging it would be to prove that
something did not happen."
In
terms of its historical implications, Stampfer says the lack of a credible
basis for the conversion story means that many pages of Jewish, Russian and
Khazar history have to be rewritten. If there never was a conversion, issues
such as Jewish influence on early Russia and ethnic contact must be
reconsidered.
Stampfer
describes the persistence of the Khazar conversion legend as a fascinating
application of Thomas Kuhn's thesis on scientific revolution to historical
research. Kuhn points out the reluctance of researchers to abandon familiar
paradigms even in the face of anomalies, instead coming up with explanations
that, though contrived, do not require abandoning familiar thought structures.
It is only when "too many" anomalies accumulate that it is possible
to develop a totally different paradigm -- such as a claim that the Khazar
conversion never took place.
Stampfer concludes,
"We must admit that sober studies by historians do not always make for
great reading, and that the story of a Khazar king who became a pious and
believing Jew was a splendid story." However, in his opinion, "There
are many reasons why it is useful and necessary to distinguish between fact and
fiction -- and this is one more such case."
New study sheds light on
the origin of the European Jewish population
Despite
being one of the most genetically analysed groups, the origin of European Jews
has remained obscure. However, a new study published)in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution by Dr Eran Elhaik, a geneticist at the Johns Hopkins
School of Public Health, argues that the European Jewish genome is a mosaic of
Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, setting to rest previous
contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry. Elhaik's findings strongly support
the Khazarian Hypothesis, as opposed to the Rhineland Hypothesis, of European
Jewish origins. This could have a major impact on the ways in which scientists
study genetic disorders within the population.
The
Rhineland Hypothesis has been the favoured explanation for the origins of
present-day European Jews, until now. In this scenario Jews descended from
Israelite-Canaanite tribes left the Holy Land for Europe in the 7th century,
following the Muslim conquest of Palestine. Then, in the beginning of the 15th
century, a group of approximately 50,000 left Germany, the Rhineland, for the
east. There they maintained high endogamy, and despite wars, persecution,
disease, plagues, and economic hardships, their population expanded rapidly to
around 8 million in the 20th century. Due to the implausibility of such an
event, this rapid expansion was explained by Prof Harry Ostrer, Dr Gil Atzmon,
and colleagues as a miracle. Under the Rhineland Hypothesis, European Jews
would be very similar to each other and would have a predominant Middle Eastern
ancestry.
The
rival explanation, the Khazarian Hypothesis, states that the Jewish-convert
Khazars – a confederation of Turkic, Iranian, and Mongol tribes who lived in
what is now Southern Russia, north of Georgia and east of Ukraine, and who converted
to Judaism between the 7th and 9th centuries – along with groups of
Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman Jews, formed the basis of eastern Europe's Jewish
population when they fled eastward, following the collapse of their empire in
the 13th century. European Jews are thus expected to exhibit heterogeneity
between different communities. While there is no doubt that the Judeo-Khazars
fled into Eastern Europe and contributed to the establishment of Eastern
European Jewry, argument has revolved around the magnitude of that
contribution.
Dr
Elhaik's paper, 'The missing link of Jewish European ancestry: contrasting the
Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses', examined a comprehensive dataset of
1,287 unrelated individuals of 8 Jewish and 74 non-Jewish populations genotyped
over 531,315 autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). This was data
published by Doron Behar and colleagues in 2010, which Elhaik used to calculate
seven measures of ancestry, relatedness, admixture, allele sharing distances,
geographical origins, and migration patterns. These identified the
Caucasus-Near Eastern and European ancestral signatures in the European Jews'
genome along with a smaller, but substantial Middle Eastern genome.
The
results were consistent in depicting a Caucasus ancestry for all European Jews.
The analysis showed a tight genetic relationship between European Jews and
Caucasus populations and pinpointed the biogeographic origin of the European
Jews to the south of Khazaria, 560 kilometers from Samandar –Khazaria's capital
city. Further analyses yielded a complex multi-ethnical ancestry with a
slightly dominant Caucasus -Near Eastern, large South European and Middle
Eastern ancestries, and a minor Eastern European contribution.
Dr
Elhaik writes, "The most parsimonious explanation for our findings is that
Eastern European Jews are of Judeo-Khazarian ancestry forged over many
centuries in the Caucasus. Jewish presence in the Caucasus and later Khazaria
was recorded as early as the late centuries BCE and reinforced due to the
increase in trade along the Silk Road, the decline of Judah (1st-7th
centuries), and the rise of Christianity and Islam. Greco-Roman and
Mesopotamian Jews gravitating toward Khazaria were also common in the early
centuries and their migrations were intensified following the Khazars'
conversion to Judaism… The religious conversion of the Khazars encompassed most
of the Empire's citizens and subordinate tribes and lasted for the next 400
years until the invasion of the Mongols. At the final collapse of their empire
in the 13th century, many of the Judeo-Khazars fled to Eastern Europe and later
migrated to Central Europe and admixed with the neighbouring populations."
Dr
Elhaik's findings consolidate, otherwise conflicting results describing high
heterogeneity among Jewish communities and relatedness to Middle Eastern,
Southern European, and Caucasus populations that are not explained under the
Rhineland Hypothesis. Although Dr Elhaik's study linked European Jews to the
Khazars, there are still questions to be answered. How substantial is the
Iranian ancestry in modern day Jews? Since Eastern European Jews arrived from
the Caucasus, where did Central and Western European Jews come from? If there
was no mass migration out of Palestine at the 7th century, what happened to the
ancient Judeans?
And
crucially for Dr Elhaik, how would these new findings affect disease studies on
Jews and Eurasian populations?
"Epidemiologists
studying genetic disorders are constantly struggling with questions regarding
ancestry, heterogeneity, and how to account for them," he says. "I
hope this work will open up a new era in genetic studies where population
stratification will be used more correctly."
The Lost
Capital of the (Jewish) Khazars
A
Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a
powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000
years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.
Dmitry
Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year
excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a
triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings,
and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.
By
law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said. The
general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval
chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.
"The
discovery of the capital of Eastern Europe's first feudal state is of great
significance," he told The Associated Press. "We should view it as
part of Russian history."
Kevin
Brook, the American author of "The Jews of Khazaria," e-mailed
Wednesday that he has followed the Itil dig over the years, and even though it
has yielded no Jewish artifacts, "Now I'm as confident as the
archaeological team is that they've truly found the long-lost city,
The
Khazars were a Turkic tribe that roamed the steppes from Northern China to the
Black Sea. Between the 7th and 10th centuries they conquered huge swaths of
what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central
Asia as far as the Aral Sea.
Itil,
about 800 miles south of Moscow, had a population of up to 60,000 and occupied
0.8 square miles of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of
Astrakhan, Vasilyev said.
It
lay at a major junction of the Silk Road, the trade route between Europe and
China, which "helped Khazars amass giant profits," he said.
The
Khazar empire was once a regional superpower, and Vasilyev said his team has
found "luxurious collections" of well-preserved ceramics that help
identify cultural ties of the Khazar state with Europe, the Byzantine Empire
and even Northern Africa. They also found armor, wooden kitchenware, glass lamps
and cups, jewelry and vessels for transporting precious balms dating back to
the eighth and ninth centuries, he said.
But
a scholar in Israel, while calling the excavations interesting, said the
challenge was to find Khazar inscriptions.
"If
they found a few buildings, or remains of buildings, that's interesting but
does not make a big difference," said Dr. Simon Kraiz, an expert on
Eastern European Jewry at Haifa University. "If they found Khazar
writings, that would be very important."
Vasilyev
says no Jewish artifacts have been found at the site, and in general, most of
what is known about the Khazars comes from chroniclers from other, sometimes
competing cultures and empires.
"We
know a lot about them, and yet we know almost nothing: Jews wrote about them,
and so did Russians, Georgians, and Armenians, to name a few," said Kraiz.
"But from the Khazars themselves we have nearly nothing."
The
Khazars' ruling dynasty and nobility converted to Judaism sometime in the 8th
or 9th centuries. Vasilyev said the limited number of Jewish religious
artifacts such as mezuzas and Stars of David found at other Khazar sites prove
that ordinary Khazars preferred traditional beliefs such as shamanism, or newly
introduced religions including Islam.
Yevgeny
Satanovsky, director of the Middle Eastern Institute in Moscow, said he
believes the Khazar elite chose Judaism out of political expediency — to remain
independent of neighboring Muslim and Christian states. "They embraced
Judaism because they wanted to remain neutral, like Switzerland these
days," he said.
In
particular, he said, the Khazars opposed the Arab advance into the Caucasus
Mountains and were instrumental in containing a Muslim push toward eastern
Europe. He compared their role in eastern Europe to that of the French knights
who defeated Arab forces at the Battle of Tours in France in 732.
The
Khazars succeeded in holding off the Arabs, but a young, expanding Russian
state vanquished the Khazar empire in the late 10th century. Medieval Russian
epic poems mention Russian warriors fighting the "Jewish Giant."
"In
many ways, Russia is a successor of the Khazar state," Vasilyev said.
He
said his dig revealed traces of a large fire that was probably caused by the
Russian conquest. He said Itil was rebuilt following the fall of the Khazar
empire, when ethnic Khazars were slowly assimilated by Turkic-speaking tribes,
Tatars and Mongols, who inhabited the city until it was flooded by the rising
Caspian Sea around the 14th century.
The
study of the Khazar empire was discouraged in the Soviet Union. The dictator
Josef Stalin, in particular, detested the idea that a Jewish empire had come
before Russia's own. He ordered references to Khazar history removed from
textbooks because they "disproved his theory of Russian statehood,"
Satanovsky said.
Only
now are Russian scholars free to explore Khazar culture. The Itil excavations
have been sponsored by the Russian-Jewish Congress, a nonprofit organization
that supports cultural projects in Russia.
"Khazar
studies are just beginning," Satanovsky said.
