Re: No haplogroup belongs to ethnic or cultural origins known of today
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In reply to:
Re: No haplogroup belongs to ethnic or cultural origins known of today
Betty Catherwood 6/24/07
DNA has been a wonderful new way of exploring our roots and the world of our ancestors but we must also realize that they were real people living in a real world of famine, plague, war, refugees and population movements. So it is nice to have scientific language to explain some of it with ratios and probabilities but understanding the real history of a region can also help us sort things out. Spain for instance was explored by the Phoenicians, conquered by the Romans, the Visigoths (Germanic people), the Moors and Arabs, all in the last three thousand years. Under Roman rule slaves captured in may other parts of the empire were taken to other parts to build roads, cities and work for the officials.Merchants (including many Jews) moved about and settled all over the Mediterranean world under Roman rule.There were large Jewish communities all over the Mediterranean region by the first century of the Christian era. The Visigoths invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the fifth Century. In Jewish tradition one is considered Jewish if the mother is Jewish. Perhaps there is good reason for this- one can usually be sure of ones mother- it is harder to prove who ones father is.Given the often tenuous circumstances of Jewish life, where they were victims of rape and pillage, and enslavement one can see why this tradition developed.
In other words it would take only one brief love affair between a Jewish woman and a Visigoth soldier to produce one of your paternal ancestors 1500 years ago- or one Visigoth or other European who maybe had been a Roman soldier, to have deserted and joined a Jewish community for refuge- or one rape or one abandonned baby being found and raised the way Pharoah's daughter raised Moses.Any one of these things2000, 1500 or a thousand years ago could explain a haplogroup anomaly.People need to learn the history of the land of their ancestors of they really want to understand and appreciate their heritage.