Re: [Cz-L] Our origin.

Dear Alex,

You are perfectly correct.
DNA testing mostly tests for genetic markers.
Mitochondrial DNA is passed intact from mother to child.
King David's descendants would have had to intermarry among
themselves after about 15 generations, which would greatly
have reduced the number of his descendants by now.

Except in jest, I am not proud to be a descendant of either
king David, or Rashi or even Ezikiel Landau.
I am afraid that I might have identical ancestors with Meir Kahane.

I am proud of my parents and my grandparents.

But consider: we each have 2 parents, 4 grandparents,
8 great-grandparents, 16 in the generation before, 32 in the previous
and so on. If we know that one of our ancestors was somehow great,
his or her DNA did not necessarily pass on to us, but some of our
less illustrious ancestors, may have contributed much more
to our genetic make up.

Mimi
On Apr 22, 2012, at 9:31 AM, alexander rosner wrote:

> Let me add another 3 cents to the discussion about our origin as a
> reply to Cornel and Mimi.
>
> Cornel, the offered (and quite expensive) DNA analysis is usually
> one of two methods or a combination of both: The analysis of the Y-
> chromosomal DNA which is passed from father to son unchanged
> (except. mutations) and mDNA which is passed from mother to the
> children, also usually unchanged. This way one can maybe find his
> patrilineage and matrilineage. Your example with the Cohen marker
> is true and interesting.
>
> However, you have many other lineages which are not tested, not
> analysed by these offered tests, to begin with the matrilineage of
> your father and the patrilineage of your mother. In every
> generation back you have more lineages, missed by these tests,
> which will never show all of your ancestors, probably only a small
> part of them.
>
> On the other hand lineages will probably cross several times many
> generations back, just because there never have been so many people
> in the past to have for instance 100 generations of not related
> ancestors. I read somewhere that a big chunk of Ashkenazim descend
> (matrilieage) from only 4 female ancestors which originated in the
> Middle East. This way many of us may be somehow related :-)
>
>
> In addition to this I tried to explain in my last mail, that some
> true ancestors (in rare occasions) may not pass any DNA information
> to us (not true for Y-chromosome and mDNA). These ancestors will
> never be discovered by any test, beside the fact, that the usual
> tests wouldn't even try to provide this info.
>
>
> Mimi, to have Rashi as an ancestor can make one very proud, even
> without the speculation of King David descent.
> It is probably not true that all Jews at any time were or are of
> King David descent, just because the number of Jews is or was less
> than the number of his possible descendants. During the last 3000
> years the lineages of different Jews from his times may have
> crossed more than one time, so we never know individually, and for
> Jews as a collective, I would say, this is something for an expert
> on statistics.
>
> Alex
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Received on 2012-04-22 10:53:39