# Population Genetics > mtDNA Haplogroups > K >  K1a4a1- Jewish or not?

## Nasturtium

My grandfather's results have come in from 23andme and I'm confused about how to interpret his results. 23andme says the haplogroup occurs over a wide range of Europe and the Middle East, but it's reference population are Ashkenazi, Druze, and Kurds. Yet here is what Wikipedia says:

"Haplogroup K represents a sizeable fraction of the Western Eurasian genetic pool. In Europe, it is particularly common around the Alps and the British Isles. It is found in lesser frequency in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Approximately 32% of the haplotypes of modern people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are in haplogroup K. This high percentage points to a genetic bottleneck occurring some 100 generations ago and likely due to low admixture with non-Jewish populations.[5]
Other Non-Jewish populations with large representation of Haplogroup K are the Druze of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, of which 16% belong to haplogroup K. In the British Isles over 10% of the population belongs to K. It was also found that a significant group of Palestinian Arabs belonged to K[6]. The general European population has about of 6% of its members in Haplogroup K[7]. Though, with such a large population to draw from (more than 400 million), a mere 6% of Europeans in K far outstrips the number of Ashkenazi Jews represented in K by a factor greater than 10 to 1."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_K_(mtDNA)

The haplogroup comes from a woman born in London, England, who was not Jewish. Should I be reading Jewish ancestry based on this haplogroup, or is that a stretch?

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## Wilhelm

According to Eupedia : 

"Most K1a4, K1a10, K1b, K1c and K2 subclades are typically European. K1a1b1a and K1a9 are found primarily among Ashkenazi Jews. " 

23andMe : 

"A few branches of haplogroup K, such as K1a9, K2a2a, and K1a1b1a, are specific to Jewish populations and especially to Ashkenazi Jews, whose roots lie in central and eastern Europe. These branches of haplogroup K are found at levels of 30% among Ashkenazi. But they is also found at lower levels in Jewish populations from the Near East and Africa, and among Sephardic Jews"

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## Maciamo

K1a4 and subclades are definitely not Jewish. They are typical of Central and North-West Europe. 

However haplogroup K originated in the Middle East, and K1a could have developed among the early farmers in the Levant. I can well imagine that the branch that became K1a4 and K1a10 was part of the Neolithic farmers who moved to Europe, while the Jewish K1a1 and K1a9 are the descendants of those who remained in the Levant. 

K1a4's distribution in Europe hints at a dispersal during the Neolithic LBK culture. LBK represents the very diffusion of farming throughout Germany, the Benelux and northern France. It is from this culture that agriculture reached the British Isles and Scandinavia.

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## plumskiter

So my maternal subclade is Ka1, 9,10. What is the likelihood that my maternal ancestors were Ashkenazi Jews?

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## plumskiter

Re: previous post. I guess I should have written my subclade as Ka19,10.

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## Melusine

DNA testing does not "reveal" a Religious affiliation (Jewish, Christian, etc)

If one has a family background that shows or suggests via customs, oral tradition, and or self identified/practicing as being of a particular religion such as being Jewish, then MTDNA and or Y-DNA results may confirm that ones family originated in areas that are Semitic and were at one time or presentally practicing the Jewish faith, or from "other" areas of the world (however keep in mind that thoughtout history, even the Isralites took slaves and neighbors that became adherents of the Jewish faith, so the descendants of these people may not today share the typical Semitic markers, such as J, and E3b etc. 

Also, many people of the Moslem faith, have the same "Semitic" markers as the people who self identifiy themselves as Jews because they all originated in the Middle East before there were organized religions such as Jewish, Moslem, Christian.

For those who may be Christians, do recall that Jesus was a practicing Jew, and so were all his followers. That may account for the many Christians in the early centuries that ended up in Rome, who were of Semitic origins passing on their DNA to present day Europeans /etc (and one may not know this today, until they test).

An example: Hitler, there was early information in Germany that his paternal ancestor was a Jew, who begat a son by an unwed women, thus it should be no surprise that a paternal cousin line of Hitler tested and is of Semitic origins. In this case the oral history and the y-dna results confirm Hitler's Jewish background, but not his personal religion.

Melusine

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## willy

in fact we find same haplogroups in the near eastern Jews or no Jews there is NOT a particular or some special "Jewish" haplogroups but there was some founder effects in particuliar subclades of these near eastern haplogroups as G2c about the haplogroup G and the same things about J1 J2 E1 R1a etc .. This is important to understand this . So this is quite logical because the Western R1b1b2 ht15 was earlier in Europe as I1 have no many Jews Judaism appears after the neolithic migration . ..

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## gwendaelin

As much as my brother and I can tell from our DNA research, so far, our K1a9,10 mtDNA is Celtic from the area of the Hebrides Islands, Scotland, Great Britain. We have matched ourselves to very few others with the same mtDNA and their families all originated from this area of GB. The most amazing thing is that my German maternal greatgrandmother came from Schotten, Germany to the USA in 1885. It is her mtDNA that we have. Schotten means Scotland in German and we discovered that it was founded by monks, from the Hebrides Islands, Scotland, Great Britian, invited by Charlemagne to set up a monastery there in the mid 700's. We were extremely surprised that our mtDNA is not from Central Europe but rather Celtic from either Ireland or Scotland and we have found others that match this, so far, rare K1a9,10 who are also from Ireland and Scotland. We presume that the monks traveled by sea and rivers to reach Schotten and took retainers from the islands with them, thusly the name of the town. This means that my Celtic/German family stayed in the same town/area from the mid 700's to present day. I would love to hear from any others with K1a9,10 mtDNA. My guess is that most present people from the islands are so rural, poor and uninvolved with DNA that not many are getting tested to get more results.

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## elghund

> K1a4 and subclades are definitely not Jewish. They are typical of Central and North-West Europe. 
> 
> However haplogroup K originated in the Middle East, and K1a could have developed among the early farmers in the Levant. I can well imagine that the branch that became K1a4 and K1a10 was part of the Neolithic farmers who moved to Europe, while the Jewish K1a1 and K1a9 are the descendants of those who remained in the Levant. 
> 
> K1a4's distribution in Europe hints at a dispersal during the Neolithic LBK culture. LBK represents the very diffusion of farming throughout Germany, the Benelux and northern France. It is from this culture that agriculture reached the British Isles and Scandinavia.


k1a-195c-16048a.jpg
From this map and discussions I've read of K1a10, it appears to have originated in Britain. How old is it? If it is older than 6000 years, wouldn't that put it in Britain before the neolithic?

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## Sile

> K1a4 and subclades are definitely not Jewish. They are typical of Central and North-West Europe. 
> 
> However haplogroup K originated in the Middle East, and K1a could have developed among the early farmers in the Levant. I can well imagine that the branch that became K1a4 and K1a10 was part of the Neolithic farmers who moved to Europe, while the Jewish K1a1 and K1a9 are the descendants of those who remained in the Levant. 
> 
> K1a4's distribution in Europe hints at a dispersal during the Neolithic LBK culture. LBK represents the very diffusion of farming throughout Germany, the Benelux and northern France. It is from this culture that agriculture reached the British Isles and Scandinavia.


Wife just got her results, she is just K1a4 .........other markers she has does not match any other from the new pylotree project 16.

Any links I can see on these would be helpful

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## MtDNA

Yes, haplogroup K1a is Hebrew, and haplogroup K is semitic.

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## John Doe

> Yes, haplogroup K1a is Hebrew, and haplogroup K is semitic.


Hardly, K1a is present all over west Eurasia, even in places such as northern Europe, some sublcades of K1a are exclusive to northern Europe, and K itself came to be long before there were Semitic languages, roughly 12,000 years ago in west Asia, and in fact, it's the subclade of U8b'K which arose in northeastern Italy.

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## MtDNA

I know that, but the majority of people of that haplogroup have direct Hebrew ancestry. Many jews converted to Christianity when they were in Europe, due to pogroms, economic reasons, discrimination, etc. Besides, origin-wise, this group (haplogroup U8) migrated from India, along with U2d, which is found within Palestinians. Sure, the mutation happened in South Europe, but the Ks retreated back to the Near East.

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## Sloven-Vened

Jews are not Semites. Semites have dark skin and black hair. Jews are Khazars. Khazars are Germanic nation. Language of Khazars is germanic Yiddish language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashken...zar_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_genetics_of_Jews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar...enazi_ancestry

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## alisonberlin

> So my maternal subclade is Ka1, 9,10. What is the likelihood that my maternal ancestors were Ashkenazi Jews?


Its just the preparation we made during mostly time

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## Aretas

There is an interesting paper on this subject published on Nature Communications website under title "*A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages".*

The introduction states:

"The origins of Ashkenazi Jews remain highly controversial. Like Judaism, mitochondrial DNA is passed along the maternal line. Its variation in the Ashkenazim is highly distinctive, with four major and numerous minor founders. However, due to their rarity in the general population, these founders have been difficult to trace to a source. Here we show that all four major founders, ~40% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation, have ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus. Furthermore, most of the remaining minor founders share a similar deep European ancestry. Thus the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Levant, as commonly supposed, nor recruited in the Caucasus, as sometimes suggested, but assimilated within Europe. These results point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities, and provide the foundation for a detailed reconstruction of Ashkenazi genealogical history."

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## [email protected]

Well, my maternal line is K1a4a1h and I have a good paper trail to Holstein, in northern Germany circa 1650 and there is good historical evidence they were in northern Germany in the 14th century. Not terribly Jewish, though there'd be nothing wrong if they were.

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## ntindeo

> According to Eupedia : 
> 
> "Most K1a4, K1a10, K1b, K1c and K2 subclades are typically European.
> (...) "


In "Csango" population from Romania, hg K1 (k1c) has a very high proportion of 23.1%.

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