New DNA research on Native American mummies

[Rajah Manchou]

8 hours ago, Belshazzar said:

How would we know though that the 50-90% would only be those particular haplotypes if they all died? We would have to sample all of them right? 

One of the illustrations from the paper does a decent job to help visualize the data:

I don't fully understand everything on the chart, but this is how I read it. 

Starting at the left and moving right, the black dots are where the Native American haplogroups (colored lines) diverge from the Siberian haplogroups (black lines). Moving down the branches to the right, the red lines represent ancient clades while the blue lines are clades found in modern Native Americans. I added a light blue line at the point we should expect to find Lehite/Mulekite haplogroups.

The black triangle around 8.5 ka is the most recent common ancestor found between ancient Native Americans and modern Native Americans. So every red line to the right of that triangle is a line that has not been found in modern samples.

Edited October 6, 2016 by Rajah Manchou

[cdowis]

On 10/4/2016 at 2:39 AM, Rajah Manchou said:

But one interesting thing, the Cochin Jews have traditions of Jewish migrations dating back to 600 BC and also traditions of Jewish colonies extending further east into China and the islands (see the supplementary text of the article linked to above).

 Lehi was not a Jew, genetically speaking.   Joseph married an Egyptian princess.

[Rajah Manchou]

On 10/7/2016 at 6:45 AM, cdowis said:

 Lehi was not a Jew, genetically speaking. Joseph married an Egyptian princess.

Ephraim and Manasseh were Jews even though Asenath was (possibly) Egyptian, so wouldn't Lehi also be a Jew genetically?

There are a couple of interesting groups that could offer some insight into the genetic makeup of the descendants of Manasseh. The Bnei Makir and the Bnei Menashe both claim descent from Manasseh, and they both share Haplogroup W.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=153402918147093&id=213894168674241

If there is any truth to their claims, could Haplogroup W be a marker for the Lehites?

 

[cdowis]

3 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Ephraim and Manasseh were Jews even though Asenath was (possibly) Egyptian, so wouldn't Lehi also be a Jew genetically?

Ephraim and Manasseh were  not of the House of Judah.  Asenath was an Egyptian princess, but you assert (possibly) that she may have been of the House of Judah?  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asenath 

I have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. 

There are a couple of interesting groups that could offer some insight into the genetic makeup of the descendants of Manasseh. The Bnei Makir and the Bnei Menashe both claim descent from Manasseh, and they both share Haplogroup W.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=153402918147093&id=213894168674241

If there is any truth to their claims, could Haplogroup W be a marker for the Lehites?

I give up, you tell us.  

I have the feeling this is simply going in a circle, so nail it down for us.  Do we or do we not know Lehi's DNA characteristics?

 

 

Edited October 8, 2016 by cdowis

[Rajah Manchou]

3 hours ago, cdowis said:

Ephraim and Manasseh were  not of the House of Judah. Asenath was an Egyptian princess, but you assert (possibly) that she may have been of the House of Judah?  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asenath I have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. 

Amigo, notice the question mark at the end of my question. I was asking, not asserting.

We often refer to Ephraimites like Ishmael and Manassehites like Lehi as Jews even though they were not of the House of Judah. Is it because they lived in the Kingdom of Judah? Is it because the practiced the Law of Moses?

I honestly don't know the answers, so I am asking the questions.

Was Lehi a Jew or not?

 

[Rajah Manchou]

3 hours ago, cdowis said:

I have the feeling this is simply going in a circle, so nail it down for us.  Do we or do we not know Lehi's DNA characteristics?

No we do not

[cdowis]

11 minutes ago, Rajah Manchou said:

Was Lehi a Jew or not?
 

Yes and no

[Robert F. Smith]

On 10/5/2016 at 10:29 AM, cdowis said:

This assumption fits the antiMormon narrative that DNA research disproves the BOM.  My answer was precisely this, that there was an issue with the sampling, using samples ONLY from modern AmierIndians and Jews.  Also we don't have the DNA characteristics fom Lehi.

 

On 10/5/2016 at 11:22 AM, Rajah Manchou said:

......................................................................

I suppose it is possible that other haplogroups did cross over to the New World at some point and went extinct, and haven't yet been found. But if there was Jewish/Semitic DNA, would it have been more resistant to European diseases and more likely to have survived?

Were we to find original skeletal remains of members of Clan Lehi (and their near term descendants), they would immediately be recognizable based on DNA as Hebrew-Canaanite.  We would not be able to define them narrowly as Manassite, and we need to bear in mind that the original Mulekites came from Judah along with an unknown ship's crew -- but all would likely fit within known ancient Middle Eastern and Jewish DNA sources.  There is no mystery about what the parameters would be.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 10/6/2016 at 5:45 PM, cdowis said:

 Lehi was not a Jew, genetically speaking.   Joseph married an Egyptian princess.

Correct.  He was Manassite.  It is true that his ancestor Joseph married the Egyptian daughter of the high priest of Heliopolis (bearing Ephraim & Manasseh), but that admixture would be greatly diluted over the following millennium and a half of inter-tribal marriage, so that we could fully expect a DNA heritage which would be strongly Israelite-Canaanite.  Skeletal remains from Manassite territory should be indicative and unsurprising.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 10/4/2016 at 0:39 AM, Rajah Manchou said:

.....................................................................................

Unfortunately, I don't believe Semitic DNA dating between 600 BC and 420 AD has been found anywhere beyond the Indian Ocean. The only solid genetic evidence of Jewish migrations dating back to that period is in the Cochin Jews of India.

.........................................................................  

As well as the Lemba tribe in Venda, South Africa.

[Rajah Manchou]

7 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

That admixture would be greatly diluted over the following millennium and a half of inter-tribal marriage

This is what I'm wondering. The Lehites seemed to believe they were descendants of the Jews. 

"And then shall the remnant of our seed know concerning us, how that we came out from Jerusalem, and that they are descendants of the Jews."

Could there have been a marriage with a woman from the House of Judah somewhere between Manasseh and Lehi? 

Would that resolve the question of how Lehi was from Manasseh and also a Jew by genetics as seems to be implied in 2 Nephi 30:4? Or am I reading too much into the verse?

[Rajah Manchou]

28 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

As well as the Lemba tribe in Venda, South Africa.

I suspect the Lemba (South Africa) and the Antemoro (Madagascar and Comoros) arrived around the same time and possibly from the same migrations. But the archeological evidence doesn't yet support an arrival before the closing of the Book of Mormon period.

As far as I know, the Cochin Jews are the only diaspora group that has been clocked to the Book of Mormon period.

[cdowis]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

 

Were we to find original skeletal remains of members of Clan Lehi (and their near term descendants), they would immediately be recognizable based on DNA as Hebrew-Canaanite.  

And what would that look like?  Basically the question is where would you get a sufficient number of  pre-Babalylonian captivity era  samples of DNA ?.  In Jerusalem?  Egypt?  Babylon?

According to this recent article, we are still struggling to obtain such samples of preClassic era AmerIndians.  We don't even have the complete basis for a comparison between the two groups == just the basics.

Edited October 8, 2016 by cdowis

[ERayR]

1 hour ago, Rajah Manchou said:

This is what I'm wondering. The Lehites seemed to believe they were descendants of the Jews. 

"And then shall the remnant of our seed know concerning us, how that we came out from Jerusalem, and that they are descendants of the Jews."

Could there have been a marriage with a woman from the House of Judah somewhere between Manasseh and Lehi? 

Would that resolve the question of how Lehi was from Manasseh and also a Jew by genetics as seems to be implied in 2 Nephi 30:4? Or am I reading too much into the verse?

IMNSHO you are reading too much into it.  To me it is simply saying they were from the Jewish political entity. i.e. the kingdom of Judah.

[cdowis]

2 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

This is what I'm wondering. The Lehites seemed to believe they were descendants of the Jews. 

Please give us your definition of the word "Jew" == an inhabitant of Israel, Jerusalem, etc,, regardless of which tribe they were affiliated with,  OR a descendant (DNA derived) of the House of Judah.

Edited October 8, 2016 by cdowis

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Rajah Manchou said:

This is what I'm wondering. The Lehites seemed to believe they were descendants of the Jews. 

"And then shall the remnant of our seed know concerning us, how that we came out from Jerusalem, and that they are descendants of the Jews."

Could there have been a marriage with a woman from the House of Judah somewhere between Manasseh and Lehi? 

Would that resolve the question of how Lehi was from Manasseh and also a Jew by genetics as seems to be implied in 2 Nephi 30:4? Or am I reading too much into the verse?

We need to bear in mind the political use of the term Yehudi "Jew" as based on the the southern kingdom of Yehuda Judah, even though Clan Lehi is explicitly descended from Manasseh, and were likely descended from refugees from the northern kingdom of more than a century earlier.  All members of the tribes of Israel are naturally going to have DNA which is nearly identical, and which is also basically Canaanite.

See for example the following:

“New study defines the genetic map of the Jewish diasporas,” ScienceDaily, August 6, 2012, online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120806151137.htm .

Gil Atzmon, et al., “Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry,” American Journal of Human Genetics, 10 (June 2010):1016; “Common genetic threads link thousands of years of Jewish ancestry,” ScienceDaily, June 4, 2010.  Retrieved June 4, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100603123707.htm .

Priya Moorjani, et al., “The History of African Gene Flow into Southern Europeans, Levantines, and Jews.” PLoS Genetics, 7/4 (21 Apr 2011):1371-1373, online at http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/reich/Reich_Lab/Welcome_files/2011Moorjani_PLOS.pdf .

 “Population genetics reveals shared ancestries: DNA links modern Europeans, Middle Easterners to Sub-Saharan Africans,” ScienceDaily, May 24, 2011 (Harvard Medical School). Retrieved June 4, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com- /releases/2011/05/110524153536.htm .

S.M. Bray, et. al., “Signatures of founder effects, admixture and selection in the Ashkenazi Jewish population,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107/37 (14 Sept 2010):16222-16227, online at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2941333/ . 

Almut Nebel, et al., “The Y-Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East,” American Journal of Human Genetics, 69/5 (Nov 2001):1095-1112.

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, cdowis said:

And what would that look like?  Basically the question is where would you get a sufficient number of  pre-Babalylonian captivity era  samples of DNA ?.  In Jerusalem?  Egypt?  Babylon?

According to this recent article, we are still struggling to obtain such samples of preClassic era AmerIndians.  We don't even have the complete basis for a comparison between the two groups == just the basics.

I don't know where you are getting your info.  While it is true that NAGPRA makes it nearly impossible to obtain skeletal remains for DNA analysis in the USA (they must immediaely be turned over to nearby tribes for secret burial), it is also true that we have a lot of ancient skeletal remains which have  undergone DNA analysis:

Brian Handwerk, "'Great Surprise'—Native Americans Have West Eurasian Origins,” NationalGeographic Daily News, Nov 20, 2013, online at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131120-science-native-american-people-migration-siberia-genetics/ , based on “Skeletal remains of 24,000-year-old boy raise new questions about first Americans,” ScienceDaily.com, November 20, 2013, online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131120143631.htm .

Ripan S. Malhi, et al., "Mitochondrial Haplogroup M Discovered in Prehistoric North Americans." Journal of Archaeological Science, 34 (2007):642-648.

“New Evidence from Earliest Known Human Settlement in the Americas,” ScienceDaily.com, May 9, 2008, available online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080508143324.htm .

Felipe Vilchis, “HLA Genes and the Origins of the Amerindians,” Revista de investigación clínica; organo del Hospital de Enfermedades de la Nutrición, 53/3 (2001):274-275.

Jill Neimark, “Hair DNA Documents Forgotten Migration,” Discover, Jan-Feb 2011, 41, summarizing an article by Eske Willerslev in the Feb 2010 Nature.

Edited October 8, 2016 by Robert F. Smith

[bcuzbcuz]

9 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I don't know where you are getting your info.  While it is true that NAGPRA makes is nearly impossible to obtain skeletal remains for DNA analysis in the USA (they must immediaely be turned over to nearby tribes for secret burial), it is also true that we have a lot of ancient skeletal remains which have  undergone DNA analysis:

Brian Handwerk, "'Great Surprise'—Native Americans Have West Eurasian Origins,” NationalGeographic Daily News, Nov 20, 2013, online at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131120-science-native-american-people-migration-siberia-genetics/ , based on “Skeletal remains of 24,000-year-old boy raise new questions about first Americans,” ScienceDaily.com, November 20, 2013, online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131120143631.htm .

Ripan S. Malhi, et al., "Mitochondrial Haplogroup M Discovered in Prehistoric North Americans." Journal of Archaeological Science, 34 (2007):642-648.

“New Evidence from Earliest Known Human Settlement in the Americas,” ScienceDaily.com, May 9, 2008, available online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080508143324.htm .

Felipe Vilchis, “HLA Genes and the Origins of the Amerindians,” Revista de investigación clínica; organo del Hospital de Enfermedades de la Nutrición, 53/3 (2001):274-275.

Jill Neimark, “Hair DNA Documents Forgotten Migration,” Discover, Jan-Feb 2011, 41, summarizing an article by Eske Willerslev in the Feb 2010 Nature.

Thank you. Good information.

[cdowis]

25 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I don't know where you are getting your info.  

I don't know what you are talking about.  Quote exactly from my post what information you are talking about.

[Rajah Manchou]

1 hour ago, cdowis said:

Please give us your definition of the word "Jew" == an inhabitant of Israel, Jerusalem, etc,, regardless of which tribe they were affiliated with,  OR a descendant (DNA derived) of the House of Judah.

Just like word indian can mean so many different things, so can the word jew. I think I have a decent grasp on all the different usages, but will try to be more careful when using the word here on this board in the future.

As far as the usage intended in 2 Nephi 30:4, I have always read that as meaning the Lehites were genetic descendants from the House of Judah. Of course this is not possible through Manasseh, but I assumed there could have been intermarriage into Judah between Manasseh and Lehi.

But as noted above, I may have been misreading the verse.

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, cdowis said:

I don't know what you are talking about.  Quote exactly from my post what information you are talking about.

This was right there in front of you along with my response.  What part of your own words don't you understand?

 

Quote

 5 hours ago, cdowis said:

And what would that look like?  Basically the question is where would you get a sufficient number of  pre-Babalylonian captivity era  samples of DNA ?.  In Jerusalem?  Egypt?  Babylon?

According to this recent article, we are still struggling to obtain such samples of preClassic era AmerIndians.  We don't even have the complete basis for a comparison between the two groups == just the basics.

 

Edited October 8, 2016 by Robert F. Smith

[cdowis]

21 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

This was right there in front of you along with my response.  What part of your own words don't you understand?

Did you read the study mentioned in the OP?  It is right in from of you.  Do you not understand the words in this article???????

 

"A new ancient DNA study bolsters accounts that European arrival in the Americas decimated indigenous populations. 

An international team of scientists has sequenced mitochondrial DNA from skeletons and mummies of indigenous Americans ranging from 8,600 to 500 years ago. They compared this new data to the DNA of modern Native American populations and found that the old sequences were mysteriously missing.

This doesn't mean that all indigenous Americans died off, study lead author Bastien Llamas points out. There still are Native Americans alive today across both continents. But of the 92 archaic individuals that the team looked at, none of their mitochondrial sequences survived to the present day."

Robert, this is clearly a waste of time for both you and for me.  

[Robert F. Smith]

27 minutes ago, cdowis said:

Did you read the study mentioned in the OP?  It is right in from of you.  Do you not understand the words in this article???????

"A new ancient DNA study bolsters accounts that European arrival in the Americas decimated indigenous populations. 

An international team of scientists has sequenced mitochondrial DNA from skeletons and mummies of indigenous Americans ranging from 8,600 to 500 years ago. They compared this new data to the DNA of modern Native American populations and found that the old sequences were mysteriously missing.

This doesn't mean that all indigenous Americans died off, study lead author Bastien Llamas points out. There still are Native Americans alive today across both continents. But of the 92 archaic individuals that the team looked at, none of their mitochondrial sequences survived to the present day."

.....................................................

Yes, I read it, found it remarkable, and I enjoyed it.  It emphasizes my point, which is that ancient DNA is plentiful and preferable.

[Rajah Manchou]

On 10/9/2016 at 7:12 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, I read it, found it remarkable, and I enjoyed it.  It emphasizes my point, which is that ancient DNA is plentiful and preferable.

I stumbled on this paper (and accompanying website) the other day and have been tinkering around. Its interesting to see how much can be revealed through ancient and modern DNA. In particular, note the plotting for Indian Jews. Also, given our previous discussions about the potential relationship between the Maya and the Khmer, look at the results for Cambodia. 



The dates given for this admixture event are before Columbus. Also worth mentioning are recent studies (Pickrell and Pritchard, 2012) showing that over 16% of the Cambodian population is a result of admixture with a group from the Near East, sitting somewhere between Europeans and Afghans. (source)

We may not have genetic evidence for Middle Easterners in the Americas, but we're starting to see evidence of Middle Easterners migrating east as far as Cambodia (source) and admixing with groups that are known to be founding populations in the New World.



 

Edited October 10, 2016 by Rajah Manchou

[Johnnie Cake]

On ‎10‎/‎8‎/‎2016 at 2:06 AM, Rajah Manchou said:

Ephraim and Manasseh were Jews even though Asenath was (possibly) Egyptian, so wouldn't Lehi also be a Jew genetically?

There are a couple of interesting groups that could offer some insight into the genetic makeup of the descendants of Manasseh. The Bnei Makir and the Bnei Menashe both claim descent from Manasseh, and they both share Haplogroup W.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=153402918147093&id=213894168674241

If there is any truth to their claims, could Haplogroup W be a marker for the Lehites?

 

This is probably the best path forward for the church with respect to DNA...just come out and claim that Lehi was Native American in the first place and therefore we should expect to find Asian DNA commiserate with his forefathers having come to America via the Bering Strait populating American BEFORE they migrated to Jerusalem where Lehi was born.  There problem solved

Edited October 10, 2016 by Johnnie Cake