# Population Genetics > Autosomal Genetics >  Hungarians have the most Ashkenazi admixture

## Angela

See:
https://blog.myheritage.com/2019/08/...by-myheritage/


"Our analysis of a huge cohort of 1.8 million anonymized DNA tests — the first of its kind in Jewish demography research — has revealed that the country with the highest proportion of Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity after Israel is Hungary, and not the United States as was previously believed. After Israel, the top countries in terms of significant Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity were Hungary and Russia, followed by Argentina, South Africa, Ukraine, and then the USA. This shows that there is a significant number of people in Hungary who have a Jewish heritage background that they do not acknowledge, are not aware of, or that their ancestors intentionally repressed."

" 7.6% of the 4,981 people living in Hungary who took the MyHeritage DNA test were found to have 25% or more Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity (equivalent to having at least one grandparent who is fully Ashkenazi Jewish). This is a significantly higher percentage than the 3.5% observed in DNA test-takers living in the USA and the 3.0% in Canada."

"Hungary’s lead grows further at lower thresholds for Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity. 12.5% of the people tested in Hungary have 10% or more Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity, compared to only 4.7% of people in the USA and 4.0% in Canada. Meanwhile, 4.2% of people tested in Hungary have 50% or more Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity (equivalent to having at least one parent who is fully Jewish), compared to 2.3% in the USA."


I don't know why this is controversial. Ashkenazi were a much bigger percentage of the population in eastern Europe than they are in the U.S., where all Jews form only about 5% of the population.

Then there's the fact that there was a lot of assimilation in Hungary, encouraged by the government. 

Of course, the actual numbers might be a little lower, as people with some knowledge of Ashkenazi ancestry might be more likely to test.

----------


## Joey37

And also Jews in the United States were able to live more openly than in Eastern and Central Europe, so if a person had a Jewish ancestor they would most likely know. Of course in Hungary there was the case of a far-right politician, Csanad Szegedi, who found out he was Jewish from his mother (which, of course, would make him a Jew according to Jewish Law), and he did wind up embracing his Jewish roots, getting circumcised, visiting Israel, and becoming a practicing Jew.

----------


## Angela

> And also Jews in the United States were able to live more openly than in Eastern and Central Europe, so if a person had a Jewish ancestor they would most likely know. Of course in Hungary there was the case of a far-right politician, Csanad Szegedi, who found out he was Jewish from his mother (which, of course, would make him a Jew according to Jewish Law), and he did wind up embracing his Jewish roots, getting circumcised, visiting Israel, and becoming a practicing Jew.


The fear existed in Eastern Europe until very recently, and probably still exists. I posted an article some while ago about some Polish women who "came out of the closet" about their "Jewishness" only recently. They or their mothers had gone underground during the second world war and never felt safe enough to tell even their husbands and children that they were Jewish.

Imo, they should have taken the secret to their graves unless both they and their children were leaving. I wouldn't trust Europeans about this. It's like a mental disorder. They're still foaming at the mouth about Jews when there aren't even any left.

----------


## Ailchu

in south eastern europe ashkenazi ancestry is also very common. i think it is also wide spread in lower frequencies in parts of central europe(switzerland/austria/parts of germany). interesting that south africa has also a lot jewish ancestry.

----------


## kingjohn

> The fear existed in Eastern Europe until very recently, and probably still exists. I posted an article some while ago about some Polish women who "came out of the closet" about their "Jewishness" only recently. They or their mothers had gone underground during the second world war and never felt safe enough to tell even their husbands and children that they were Jewish.
> 
> Imo, they should have taken the secret to their graves unless both they and their children were leaving. I wouldn't trust Europeans about this. It's like a mental disorder. They're still foaming at the mouth about Jews when there aren't even any left.



from the link you gave russia also have a nice number of aschenazi descendnets 
infact they have 7.5% of the testers with my heritage from russia with 25% aschenazi ancestery 
so they are up there just under hungarians ........
*about poland only 1 % of the testers with my heritage have 25% aschenazi ancestery extremely low* .........
which is surprising the nazis did there job leaving almost no trace ......
truly mind blowing ....... 
as 1/4 aschenazi myself i find this article interesting...... 
so hungary and russia are at the top 

p.s
and yes till this day there some obsession in eastern europe of the option of having ashkenazi genes 
like they are not people and a disease ......  :Sad: 
so in hungary no wonder that they hide it .....

----------


## Lenab

> in south eastern europe ashkenazi ancestry is also very common. i think it is also wide spread in lower frequencies in parts of central europe(switzerland/austria/parts of germany). interesting that south africa has also a lot jewish ancestry.


It's the other way around. The part of Ashkenazis that are ''European'' generally matches up with South Eastern Europe especially close to Sicily South Italy. Interestingly they don't generally match up with Baltid Slavic states like Poles or C Republics. They rarely match up with Russians although I have seen them score 10 to 15 percent Russian in some cases respectively if they are ''Eastern European Jews'' but yeah they do tend to match up in the most Southern parts of Europe from their Maternal line.

----------


## Lenab

> from the link you gave russia also have a nice number of aschenazi descendnets 
> infact they have 7.5% of the testers with my heritage from russia with 25% aschenazi ancestery 
> so they are up there just under hungarians ........
> *about poland only 1 % of the testers with my heritage have 25% aschenazi ancestery extremely low* .........
> which is surprising the nazis did there job leaving almost no trace ......
> truly mind blowing ....... 
> as 1/4 aschenazi myself i find this article interesting...... 
> so hungary and russia are at the top 
> 
> ...


Their general mixes seem to be either Sicilian Russia and maybe Hungary. They generally don't match up to British people Germans Polish etc and I personally find that interesting too as they have been here just as long if not longer and in America than other nations.

----------


## Angela

Lenab, you are completely confused as to what is being discussed here. They're talking about RECENT admixture of Ashkenazi Jews and the "local" people of the host country. 

It has NOTHING to do with ancient origins or even overall similarity of Ashkenazim to various European nations.

----------


## Lenab

> Lenab, you are completely confused as to what is being discussed here. They're talking about RECENT admixture of Ashkenazi Jews and the "local" people of the host country. 
> 
> It has NOTHING to do with ancient origins or even overall similarity of Ashkenazim to various European nations.


I am talking about ''recent'' Ashkenazis there are a bunch of videos online from their Myheritage scores. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc2upvGd5eQ

And Ashkenazis having some connection to South Europe wouldn't be more or less ancient than having a connection to East Europe much less Hungary. Nothing to do with Israel located there nothing to do with the Levant. Ashkenazis generally have South Italian/Sicilian from their European side or the Balkan part of East Europe. If it was anything to do with spontaneous admixture it would be exactly that. They aren't mixed in with every country they settled in.

----------


## Angela

You still don't get it. They're talking REALLY RECENT admixture, i.e. last 10 generations or 300 years, or companies like 23andme and MyHeritage wouldn't be able to find IBD segments.

One more time: this isn't about ancient admixture or even Roman Era admixture, and it's not about general autosomal similarity or IBS segments or anything of the sort.

----------


## Lenab

> You still don't get it. They're talking REALLY RECENT admixture, i.e. last 10 generations or 300 years, or companies like 23andme and MyHeritage wouldn't be able to find IBD segments.
> 
> One more time: this isn't about ancient admixture or even Roman Era admixture, and it's not about general autosomal similarity or IBS segments or anything of the sort.


So how do they find that admixture through the segment samples when samples per nation even on MyHeritage MyAncestry etc are usually only 200 matches per country?

Ancestry for example uses less than 200 matches per country I don't know why people take a website that does things like that so seriously when a country generally has millions. So unless we have websites like the above yes or Ged match or even better this ''MyTrueAncestry'' to narrow it then yes. I wonder how many of the population of the Ashkenazis took samples from.

----------


## Joey37

I can vouch for Lenab's first statement; I forget which one but one of the GEDmatch oracles I get frequently has Ashkenazi as one of the populations in the two-population mix you are genetically closest to in the same proportion as my Sicilian ancestry (with the other population being closer to my remainder Northwest Euro genes, usually Belgian, Dutch, or Southeast English)

----------


## Angela

Oh lord...

"Our analysis of a huge cohort of 1.8 million anonymized DNA tests."

Is that enough samples for you?

It's not hard to find actual, recent, Ashkenazi ancestry if you indeed have it. 23andme does it all the time. It's because it's distinctive as a result of their bottleneck, and they have lots and lots of Ashkenazi clients. So does My Heritage, which is actually based in Israel if I'm not mistaken. 

The very fact that gedmatch still has Davidski's J test up is ridiculous. It's total garbage.

If someone wants to know if they have RECENT Ashkenazi ancestry, 23andme and MyHeritage will tell them. 

More and more of these kinds of analyses are being done. 23andme did one for the U.S. and it can pick up recent African and Amerindian ancestry. The same has been done for various areas in Latin America. It's no longer rare to be able to do this when the different ancestries are distinctive enough from one another.

Again, this only works for the last 3-400 years maximum for IBD analysis of the kind which these companies are able to do.

Graham Coop was able to do it going back to 500 BC, but he never got into the quagmire of Jewish genetics, to my knowledge. It would be nice if he had.

----------


## Lenab

> Oh lord...
> 
> "Our analysis of a huge cohort of 1.8 million anonymized DNA tests."
> 
> Is that enough samples for you?
> 
> It's not hard to find actual, recent, Ashkenazi ancestry if you indeed have it. 23andme does it all the time. It's because it's distinctive as a result of their bottleneck, and they have lots and lots of Ashkenazi clients. So does My Heritage, which is actually based in Israel if I'm not mistaken. 
> 
> The very fact that gedmatch still has Davidski's J test up is ridiculous. It's total garbage.
> ...


Yes most Autosomal commercial test go back to no more than 500 years.

----------


## Lenab

> I can vouch for Lenab's first statement; I forget which one but one of the GEDmatch oracles I get frequently has Ashkenazi as one of the populations in the two-population mix you are genetically closest to in the same proportion as my Sicilian ancestry (with the other population being closer to my remainder Northwest Euro genes, usually Belgian, Dutch, or Southeast English)


Ged match is better but if you're more than one ethnicity their plotting can be somewhat spontaneous I suggest you try that ''my True Ancestry'' website that the users here have made a thread about. 

That J test is not designed for other ethnicity groups apart from Ashkenazis it's not designed to tally your ''Ashkenazi genetic ancestry'' even if you know you might be 1/8 Jewish or whatever.

Just try that MyTrueAncestry i'd say that's the best test so far up to date and you can actually see the time periods of where the people that you are related to settled which is great.

----------


## Ailchu

> It's the other way around. The part of Ashkenazis that are ''European'' generally matches up with South Eastern Europe especially close to Sicily South Italy. Interestingly they don't generally match up with Baltid Slavic states like Poles or C Republics. They rarely match up with Russians although I have seen them score 10 to 15 percent Russian in some cases respectively if they are ''Eastern European Jews'' but yeah they do tend to match up in the most Southern parts of Europe from their Maternal line.


maybe you could argue that certain parts of the european part of the ashkenazi ancestry were also bottlenecked and are now at highest frequency in ashkenazis so they get labeled as ashkenazis without really beeing ashkenazi ancestry. or maybe it can be explained by similar ancestry from neolithic populations in europe and levant?
i'm not sure if this actually works that way and if something like this is possible. but looking at italian and greek myheritage tests on youtube just now, they all seem to get around 10-20% north african/north african jew plus few more %ashkenazi jewish in southern italy for example which lets me doubt their analysis. though they are the professionals so they are probably right with their stuff.

----------


## Angela

How can people posting on pop gen sites not know the difference between IBS and IBD. 

Go back to the drawing board, people, and do some research. 

Start with the references in this article.
https://isogg.org/wiki/Identical_by_state

----------


## kuzmosi

Well, just an additive, how reliable autosomal tests are. I made some for myself:

1.) Genographic project Geno 2.0:

70% eastern europe
24% southern europe
3% jewish diaspora

2.) Family Tree DNA Family Finder:

62% east europe
20% west and central europe
15% southeast europe
<2% Finland
<2% Oceania
<1% asia minor
0% jewish diaspora

3.) MyHeritage:

63,6% east europe
14,5% italian
13,9% north and west europe
5,4% north africa
1,7% baltic
0,9% papua (under oceania)
0% jewish ancestry

4.) 23andMe:

52,8% eastern european
36,1% greek and balkan
2,6% broadly southern european
1,4% germany
2,6% broadly northwestern european
4,2% broadly european
0,1% manchurian and mongolian
0,1% broadly east asian and native american
0,1% unassigned
0% jewish diaspora

So who am I? Do I have ashkenazi or italian, papuan, north african or other? The result seems to depend only on the reference base used by the analyst. I think, the Y chr and mtDNA tests are more reliable.

My ancestors known paternal lines are: (according to YSEQ, FtDNA and YFULL):

E-V13-A19238. (celtic, or thracian/dacian or illyrian/thracian before the Roman Empire conquest Pannonia and Dacia.
I1-L22-FGC14412 (scandinavian/varangian from Kiew Rus or earlier from an eastern germanic tribe)
(3x) I2a-L621 (Y3118; A1328; A7358; indigenous east-european-probably slavic)
Q-L56-BZ3944 ( inner asian nomad, east-scythian or sarmata/alan)
R1a-L664-S2866 (western germanic from the coast of the north sea: vandalian, langobard or middle age hospes?)
R1a-M458-YP415. (western slavic, polish or rusyn)
(4x) R1a-CTS1211 (YP234; YP1701; PH864; Y3219; 3 east-slavic, 1 east-european, maybe hungarian)
R1a-Z92-Y138015 (east slavic)
R1b-U106-S22116 (proto-germanic before the germanic expansion)
R1b-U152-S8172 (hallstatt celtic)

I don't know whether I have jewish ancestry or not. But if I have, I will be proud for him, like the others. No one in Hungary should be ashamed of his religion. Before the conquest of the Carpathian basin, the hungarian tribes lived in the Khazar Empire, and 3 rebel khazar tribes joined the hungarians (the kabars). And what was the religion of the khazars?

----------


## Angela

Right, something that is only 2% of all your dna is more "reliable" than something that is 98% of your dna. All righty then. 

Without knowing anything about me, 23andme knows I'm Italian, and over and beyond that pinpoints the two regions of Italy from which I draw ancestry. 

I don't think it can get much better than that. 

Looking at your results and not knowing anything else about you I'd say you were most probably central/Eastern European, i.e. Czechoslavakia, Hungary, somewhere around there. 

Oh, by the way, if I was adopted and went by uniparentals, I'd think I was probably German.

----------


## td120

23andme is the way to go for testing AJ ancestry.

If 23andme is unavailable, then look up your matches. If you have any real AJ ancestry the number of your "cousins" with Jewish roots will be overwhelming! Even a negligibly small % of true AJ ancestry will return abnormal, unproportionate percentage of Jewish matches !

It has been discussed ad nauseum that certain companies(alas,some of the "big four" too*...) tend to ascribe Jewish "ancestry" to certain SE populations. Ah yes, to Levantines and Maghrebis too. Take it as "genetic similarities"...
Any SEE or Mediterranean tester can be modelled as having Jewish ,eh, "ancestry" in various calculators-with good fit. 

*FTDNA used to ascribe certain one-digit % AJ to Blakan testers. Since last year they kinda dropped the idea, doubling the Sephardic %. As "authentic" as before...I have the grim suspicion that MyOrigins 3.0 will be just as bad.

----------


## Angela

> 23andme is the way to go for testing AJ ancestry.
> 
> If 23andme is unavailable, then look up your matches. If you have any real AJ ancestry the number of your "cousins" with Jewish roots will be overwhelming! Even a negligibly small % of true AJ ancestry will return abnormal, unproportionate percentage of Jewish matches !
> 
> It has been discussed ad nauseum that certain companies(alas,some of the "big four" too*...) tend to ascribe Jewish "ancestry" to certain SE populations. Ah yes, to Levantines and Maghrebis too. Take it as "genetic similarities"...
> Any SEE or Mediterranean tester can be modelled as having Jewish ,eh, "ancestry" in various calculators-with good fit. 
> 
> *FTDNA used to ascribe certain one-digit % AJ to Blakan testers. Since last year they kinda dropped the idea, doubling the Sephardic %. As "authentic" as before...I have the grim suspicion that MyOrigins 3.0 will be just as bad.


Very well put. You could also say: similar proportions of ancient peoples. 

It doesn't mean recent admixture.

----------


## Ailchu

> 23andme is the way to go for testing AJ ancestry.
> 
> If 23andme is unavailable, then look up your matches. If you have any real AJ ancestry the number of your "cousins" with Jewish roots will be overwhelming! Even a negligibly small % of true AJ ancestry will return abnormal, unproportionate percentage of Jewish matches !
> 
> It has been discussed ad nauseum that certain companies(alas,some of the "big four" too*...) tend to ascribe Jewish "ancestry" to certain SE populations. Ah yes, to Levantines and Maghrebis too. Take it as "genetic similarities"...
> Any SEE or Mediterranean tester can be modelled as having Jewish ,eh, "ancestry" in various calculators-with good fit. 
> 
> *FTDNA used to ascribe certain one-digit % AJ to Blakan testers. Since last year they kinda dropped the idea, doubling the Sephardic %. As "authentic" as before...I have the grim suspicion that MyOrigins 3.0 will be just as bad.


so they really are labeling certain genotypes as ashkenazi without it beeing "real" jewish ancestry in the sense of coming from jewish people and more like shared ancestry between jews and europeans? all companies are doing that with their labeling, it's almost impossible to not do it, but in that case, the numbers of this study are not very informative. and it's hard to say if they actually can back the demographic study of staetsky which is assuming recent ashkenazi ancestry.

----------


## Angela

I give up.

----------


## kuzmosi

I made a 23andMe test for me. The results said: I have Italian ancestry from two regions: strongly Veneto and weaker Puglia.

But few months later I made a test for my mother. And when the results were ready, I was no longer italian. They wrote this to me:
*"Imre, we could not detect any Italian ancestry for your DNA at this time."* I also lost my formerly ancestors: irish from Limerick, french from Alsace and german from Saxony. But that's when I won manchurian and mongolian ancestors.

And my mother's results?
Italy* Possible Match* 
Italy has 20 administrative regions, and we found the strongest evidence of your ancestry in the following 5 regions. 
CalabriaFriuli-Venezia GiuliaCampaniaSicilyAbruzzo


So my 23andMe results changed after my mother's results arrived. Why? Have my autosomal DNA changed? What is the reason why I lost my genetic connection with Puglia and Veneto? Is this reliable? Meanwhile on MyHeritage, I'm 14,5% italian.

Another example: My paternal grandfather's brother has irish ancestry. (How could this happened I don't know) 9-23% on different companies. But I have zero irish ancestry (but 0,1% manchurian and 0,9% papuan yes) How is it possible? We have the same Y chr (E-V13-A19238) and 12,9% of our genes are common (according the MyHeritage), so he was really a brother of my grandfather. 

And one more note. I made 11 MyHeritage DNA test (11/1.800.000) from my closer and distant relatives. (To find out they are my relatives or not. If yes, I ordered an Y chr test) I have experienced: if our last common ancestor born more than 200 years, we have no match for each other. One of my relative from direct paternal line (E-V13-A19238) is YF13045 on YFULL. Our last common father born 1772. I have 3659 DNA match on MyHeritage (at this time), but he is not. 

So the autosomal results are not reliable.

----------


## Tutkun Arnaut

It makes sense to me! Hungarians were more tolerant with jewish, so many jews left germany and judaism and converted in christianity. Being more racially mixed Hungarians absorbed many jewish

----------


## Angela

> I made a 23andMe test for me. The results said: I have Italian ancestry from two regions: strongly Veneto and weaker Puglia.
> 
> But few months later I made a test for my mother. And when the results were ready, I was no longer italian. They wrote this to me:
> *"Imre, we could not detect any Italian ancestry for your DNA at this time."* 
> 
> I also lost my formerly ancestors: irish from Limerick, french from Alsace and german from Saxony. But that's when I won manchurian and mongolian ancestors.
> 
> And my mother's results?
> Italy* Possible Match* 
> ...


If you wish to continue in this hobby you're really going to have to buckle down and get a book on population genetics and study it. Find out the difference between IBS and IBD. Find out what "phasing" does to one's results. Read ALL the major papers at the link below. Until you do so there's no point in responding to you. 

@Ailchu,
My patience quota for the day is not yet depleted so I'm going to give it one more try. 23andme compares the dna of testees to the dna of their extremely large sample of *Ashkenazi Jews*. They find that sometimes unbeknownst even to the testees themselves there is some dna matching, in GENEOLOGICAL time, to Ashkenazim. In other words, they absolutely descend, to some degree, in GENEOLOGICAL time, i.e. perhaps 3-400 years, from Ashkenazi Jews. If someone is in that category, they wind up with hundreds and hundreds of Ashkenazi cousins, usually of around the third to fourth cousin level. 

This doesn't work with "Sephardic" Jews, loosely defined, because, not going through that extreme bottleneck and subsequent drift, they're not distinct enough.

----------


## bigsnake49

> I made a 23andMe test for me. The results said: I have Italian ancestry from two regions: strongly Veneto and weaker Puglia.
> 
> But few months later I made a test for my mother. And when the results were ready, I was no longer italian. They wrote this to me:
> *"Imre, we could not detect any Italian ancestry for your DNA at this time."* 
> 
> I also lost my formerly ancestors: irish from Limerick, french from Alsace and german from Saxony. But that's when I won manchurian and mongolian ancestors.
> 
> And my mother's results?
> Italy* Possible Match* 
> ...


I have no idea why you can't find your ancestry. Did MyHeritage recognize most of your relatives as your relatives except for one? Maybe he was adopted or an out of wedlock child? On ancestry.com my wife's known relatives (from her family tree) were all correctly recognized as such. On MyHeritage and Ancestry I have found relatives from my mother's side of the family. Now autosomal admixture depends a lot on the reference groups.The more detailed and localized the reference groups the more defined and refined the admixture.

----------


## kuzmosi

Dear Angela!

No problem if you don't want or can't answer. I asked these questions to the professional geneticists of the Genographic Project, MyHeritage and 23andMe, also Dr. Anna Széchenyi-Nagy too. They tried to answer and I learned a lot from her and dr. Miguel Vilar (Genographic Project). 

I know from them that all autosomal results just depend on the reference database ie subjective. This is the reason, why I never got two identical results. 

Dear bigsnake49!

Just as you say. I just wanted to say: In 1772 born a man and he had two sons, and to both of them lives today a direct paternal line descendant. Both have the same family name and both of them Y chr is E-V13-A19238. (I think our direct paternal line father was thracian/dacian maybe, and this is a very rare subgroup. We have just 5 A19238+ sample from all the world and all of them named: Küzmös) But they are no match for each other on FtDNA Family Finder or MyHeritage results. This is the reason why I think, autosomal analysis can't dig deep like 200 years.

My first autosomal results came from Genographic project. 
68% eastern europe
25% southern europe
3% jewish diaspora
2% finland and siberia.

After I asked him why I got a very different results from MyHeritage, Dr. Vilar re-run my sample on their analytics program. The new results:
70% eastern europe
24% southern europe
3% jewish diaspora

So the database changed, the results will be changed too. My Finland and Siberia roots are disappeared.

----------


## Ailchu

> @Ailchu,
> My patience quota for the day is not yet depleted so I'm going to give it one more try. 23andme compares the dna of testees to the dna of their extremely large sample of *Ashkenazi Jews*. They find that sometimes unbeknownst even to the testees themselves there is some dna matching, in GENEOLOGICAL time, to Ashkenazim. In other words, they absolutely descend, to some degree, in GENEOLOGICAL time, i.e. perhaps 3-400 years, from Ashkenazi Jews. If someone is in that category, they wind up with hundreds and hundreds of Ashkenazi cousins, usually of around the third to fourth cousin level.


here are my thoughts:
what they consider as ashkenazi ancestry is totally dependant on their dataset and their definition. an ashkenazi person might come out as 100% ashkenazi even though he or she has ancestry that entered the ashkenazi genepool from europe in the last 1000 years. because myheritage might label this ancestry as ashkenazi, for example if they do not have enough european samples with similar ancesry or if they do not analyse these segments for different variance in different populuations. or perhaps there are overlappings between certain populations that do not have to come from recent genetic exchange. 
this ancestry will be labeled as ashkenazi and because it will have a way higher abundance among the jewish people in myheritage dataset a european person who has a few segments of dna that resemble these originally european segements in ashkenazis might get a few % ashkenazi. 
for the same reason many people in italy, spain get greek results. it's not necessarily because they have recent "greek" ancestors but because those populations share similar ancestry that now gets labeled as greek.

----------


## Angela

> here are my thoughts:
> what they consider as ashkenazi ancestry is totally dependant on their dataset and their definition. an ashkenazi person might come out as 100% ashkenazi even though he or she has ancestry that entered the ashkenazi genepool from europe in the last 1000 years. because myheritage might label this ancestry as ashkenazi, for example if they do not have enough european samples with similar ancesry or if they do not analyse these segments for different variance in different populuations. or perhaps there are overlappings between certain populations that do not have to come from recent genetic exchange. 
> this ancestry will be labeled as ashkenazi and because it will have a way higher abundance among the jewish people in myheritage dataset a european person who has a few segments of dna that resemble these originally european segements in ashkenazis might get a few % ashkenazi. 
> for the same reason many people in italy, spain get greek results. it's not necessarily because they have recent "greek" ancestors but because those populations share similar ancestry that now gets labeled as greek.


Ailchu, you are confused, to put it kindly.

The Ashkenazi Jews have a very distinct genetic profile because they had an extreme bottleneck event around eight hundred years ago due to persecution, slaughter, really. Since then, those who stayed in the community, i.e. didn't convert and marry out, married only each other. THAT WAS THE LAW. It was a capital offense for a Christian and a Jew to marry unless the Jewish person converted to Christianity. The Christians were busy killing Jews, not marrying them, and, had a Christian tried to convert to Judaism he or she would have been executed as a heretic.

As a result, when a company like 23andme does an IBD, "NOT" IBS analysis comparing testees to their THOUSANDS of Ashkenazi Jewish samples, they can tell if the testee descends from ASHKENAZI Jews within genealogical time, i.e.3-400 years. Not only that: they can tell you if you're half Ashkenazi, one quarter, one eighth, all the way down to one-thirty secondth. After that, it becomes difficult to tell. 

The same can be done with Sub-Saharan or Amerindian ancestry in otherwise European ancestry people. 

There is just no question about this. It's fact.

----------


## kingjohn

> Dear Angela!
> 
> No problem if you don't want or can't answer. I asked these questions to the professional geneticists of the Genographic Project, MyHeritage and 23andMe, also Dr. Anna Széchenyi-Nagy too. They tried to answer and I learned a lot from her and dr. Miguel Vilar (Genographic Project). 
> 
> *I know from them that all autosomal results just depend on the reference database ie subjective*. This is the reason, why I never got two identical results. 
> 
> Dear bigsnake49!
> 
> Just as you say. I just wanted to say: In 1772 born a man and he had two sons, and to both of them lives today a direct paternal line descendant. Both have the same family name and both of them Y chr is E-V13-A19238. (I think our direct paternal line father was thracian/dacian maybe, and this is a very rare subgroup. We have just 5 A19238+ sample from all the world and all of them named: Küzmös) But they are no match for each other on FtDNA Family Finder or MyHeritage results. This is the reason why I think, autosomal analysis can't dig deep like 200 years.
> ...



in geno2next i dont get eastern europe like in ftdna my origins 2.0 test 
but i get 17% west central europe  out of nowhere ... :Thinking: 
so *big yes
* _it depends on the references each company use and
also in the type of algorithm each company use_

----------


## Ailchu

> Ailchu, you are confused, to put it kindly.
> 
> The Ashkenazi Jews have a very distinct genetic profile because they had an extreme bottleneck event around eight hundred years ago due to persecution, slaughter, really. Since then, those who stayed in the community, i.e. didn't convert and marry out, married only each other. THAT WAS THE LAW. It was a capital offense for a Christian and a Jew to marry unless the Jewish person converted to Christianity. The Christians were busy killing Jews, not marrying them, and, had a Christian tried to convert to Judaism he or she would have been executed as a heretic.
> 
> As a result, when a company like 23andme does an IBD, "NOT" IBS analysis comparing testees to their THOUSANDS of Ashkenazi Jewish samples, they can tell if the testee descends from ASHKENAZI Jews within genealogical time, i.e.3-400 years. Not only that: they can tell you if you're half Ashkenazi, one quarter, one eighth, all the way down to one-thirty secondth. After that, it becomes difficult to tell. 
> 
> The same can be done with Sub-Saharan or Amerindian ancestry in otherwise European ancestry people. 
> 
> There is just no question about this. It's fact.


it's also fact that ashkenazim mixed with europeans. and how do you know that myheritage does the same analysis as 23andme? correct me if i'm wrong but all populations have IBD's if you go far enough back in time. they just vary in length depending on the number of generations since the last common ancestor. looking at myheritage results of italians, greeks, spanish on youtube with those high % of west asian/near east/north african and whidespread ashkenazi ancestry i think myheritage goes further back in time than just 1000 years.
we will see when myheritage publishes the numbers for other countries.

----------


## Angela

> it's also fact that ashkenazim mixed with europeans. and how do you know that myheritage does the same analysis as 23andme? correct me if i'm wrong but all populations have IBD's if you go far enough back in time. they just vary in length depending on the number of generations since the last common ancestor. looking at myheritage results of italians, greeks, spanish on youtube with those high % of west asian/near east/north african and whidespread ashkenazi ancestry i think myheritage goes further back in time than just 1000 years.
> we will see when myheritage publishes the numbers for other countries.


The fact that Ashkenazim mixed with Europeans is why some people are surprised to find out that they have Ashkenazi ancestry. Most of that admixture is very recent, however. I mean, think about it: in most of Europe Jews were locked into their ghettos most of the time.

Second of all, as I keep trying to explain, we're talking about IBD analysis, not IBS analysis, which is what you're talking about, and it doesn't work with Sephardic Jews or other kinds of Jews, just Ashkenazi Jews, who didn't exist before around 1200 AD.

Third of all, I never tested with MyHeritage and can't speak to their algorithm. I did test with 23andme, they've published a "white paper" on their method which I've read, and I know tons of Ashkenazi Jews who have tested with them. If they tell you you're 100% Ashkenazi, you are; if they say you have one Ashkenazi Jewish grandparent, then whether you know it or not, or accept it or not, you have one. That's what happened with a genetics researcher who published his entire genome for scientific purposes. Dienekes told him he was one quarter Ashkenazi. He had no idea. When he investigated, he found that his supposed Italian grandparent was actually Jewish. That was years ago. There's nothing new about it.

Back before 1600 or so the "IBD" segments are too small using the methods the commercial companies use, but it's meaningless anyway, because it would be such an infinitesimal part of your overall dna.

What is picked up in most autosomal IBS analyses is just "similar" ancient ancestry. 

I really don't know how to explain it better than that so I'm out.

----------


## Ailchu

> The fact that Ashkenazim mixed with Europeans is why some people are surprised to find out that they have Ashkenazi ancestry. Most of that admixture is very recent, however. I mean, think about it: in most of Europe Jews were locked into their ghettos most of the time.
> 
> Second of all, as I keep trying to explain, we're talking about IBD analysis, not IBS analysis, which is what you're talking about, and it doesn't work with Sephardic Jews or other kinds of Jews, just Ashkenazi Jews, who didn't exist before around 1200 AD.
> 
> Third of all, I never tested with MyHeritage and can't speak to their algorithm. I did test with 23andme, they've published a "white paper" on their method which I've read, and I know tons of Ashkenazi Jews who have tested with them. If they tell you you're 100% Ashkenazi, you are; if they say you have one Ashkenazi Jewish grandparent, then whether you know it or not, or accept it or not, you have one. That's what happened with a genetics researcher who published his entire genome for scientific purposes. Dienekes told him he was one quarter Ashkenazi. He had no idea. When he investigated, he found that his supposed Italian grandparent was actually Jewish. That was years ago. There's nothing new about it.
> 
> Back before 1600 or so the "IBD" segments are too small using the methods the commercial companies use, but it's meaningless anyway, because it would be such an infinitesimal part of your overall dna.
> 
> What is picked up in most autosomal IBS analyses is just "similar" ancient ancestry. 
> ...


but ashkenazis also have european admixture it wasn't just onesided. and i keep saying that myheritage probably goes further back in time than just 800 years or when ashkenazis were first settled in europe. you keep mentioning 23andme but i'm talking about myheritage dna results. i can't compare it to 23andme i only see those myheritage results on youtube without 23andme references. it seems like they look at admixtures that are ancient. part of the admixtures found in hungarians might very well be real ashkenazi ancestry. but i'm sceptical if those numbers from myheritage can be used for a demographic study about very recent ashkenazi heritage from staetsky.

and even if they analysed IBD's better all they could say that the last common ancestor lived around this many generation back in time. they still wouldn't know if this last common ancestor, from which the IBD's descend, was comming from a european source without comparing it to other IBD's of europeans and ashkenazis. or can you explain how they would know that without comparing those segments to other IBD's? i mean if for example a european person became jewish and had jewish children and and this person has a sibling who had children that stayed christian then you would have rather recent IBD's between the ashkenazi and the european population with the last common ancestor beeing the parents of those two persons. so you still have to compare those IBD's to the database meaning it it still dependant on your dataset and maybe your definition what you consider what. or what am i not getting here?

edit question: couldn't find the answer with a quick google search so i hope someone here knows. does identical by descent allow mutations? probably not right? i'm asking because the definition of IBD alleles allow mutations i think.

----------


## Tomenable

Jews lived mostly in towns and I checked how East Slavic were towns in Eastern Poland (now Ukraine/Belarus/Lithuania) before WW2. It turns out that there was not a single town over 15,000 inhabitants with majority East Slavic or/and Lithuanian population. All towns were >50% Polish-Jewish inhabited, so I suppose that any limited intermarriage between Jews and Christians in Eastern Poland before WW2 was mostly between Jews and Poles, rather than Non-Polish minorities.

*Percent of Polish and Jewish population in towns over 15,000 inhabitants in Former Eastern Poland (1931 census):*

*Town* / Population / Polish-speaking % (number) / Yiddish % (number) / Hebrew % (number) *===> Total % of Poles & Jews*

Lww (*Lviv*) / 312231 / 63.5% (198,212) / 21.6% (67,520) / 2.5% (7,796) *===> 88%*
Wilno (*Vilnius*) / 195071 / 65.9% (128,628) / 24.4% (47,523) / 3.6% (7,073) *===> 94%*
Stanisławw (*Ivano-Frankivsk*) / 59960 / 43.7% (26,187) / 34.4% (20,651) / 3.8% (2,293) *===> 82%*
Grodno (*Grodno*) / 49669 / 47.2% (23,458) / 39.7% (19,717) / 2.4% (1,214) *===> 89%*
Brześć (*Brest-Litovsk*) / 48385 / 42.6% (20,595) / 39.3% (19,032) / 4.7% (2,283) *===> 87%*
Borysław (*Boryslav*) / 41496 / 55.3% (22,967) / 24.4% (10,139) / 1% (399) *===> 81%*
Rwne (*Rivne*) / 40612 / 27.5% (11,173) / 50.8% (20,635) / 4.7% (1,922) *===> 83%*
Tarnopol (*Ternopil*) / 35644 / 77.7% (27,712) / 11.6% (4,130) / 2.4% (872) *===> 92%*
Łuck (*Lutsk*) / 35554 / 31.9% (11,326) / 46.3% (16,477) / 2.2% (790) *===> 80%*
Kołomyja (*Kolomyya*) / 33788 / 65% (21,969) / 19.3% (6,506) / 0.9% (292) *===> 85%*
Drohobycz (*Drohobych*)/ 32261 / 58.4% (18,840) / 23.5% (7,589) / 1.2% (398) *===> 83%*
Pińsk (*Pinsk*) / 31912 / 23% (7,346) / 50.3% (16,053) / 12.9% (4,128) *===> 86%*
Stryj (*Stryi*) / 30491 / 42.3% (12,897) / 28.5% (8,691) / 2.9% (870) *===> 74%*
Kowel (*Kovel*) / 27677 / 37.2% (10,295) / 39.1% (10,821) / 7.1% (1,965) *===> 83%*
Włodzimierz (*Vladimir*) / 24591 / 39.1% (9,616) / 35.1% (8,623) / 8.1% (1,988) *===> 82%*
Baranowicze (*Baranavichy*) / 22818 / 42.8% (9,758) / 38.4% (8,754) / 2.9% (669) *===> 84%*
Sambor (*Sambir*)/ 21923 / 61.9% (13,575) / 22.5% (4,942) / 1.7% (383) *===> 86%*
Krzemieniec (*Kremenets*) / 19877 / 15.6% (3,108) / 34.7% (6,904) / 1.7% (341) *===> 52%*
Lida (*Lida*)/ 19326 / 63.3% (12,239) / 24.6% (4,760) / 8% (1,540) *===> 96%*
Czortkw (*Chortkiv*) / 19038 / 55.2% (10,504) / 22.4% (4,274) / 3.1% (586) *===> 81%*
Brody (*Brody*) / 17905 / 44.9% (8,031) / 34% (6,085) / 1% (181) *===> 80%*
Słonim (*Slonim*) / 16251 / 52% (8,452) / 36.5% (5,927) / 4.7% (756) *===> 93%*

The only town in Former Eastern Poland with over 15,000 inhabitants that was close to being majority East Slavic, was Kremenets.

----------

