Help! My TBM friend insists the DNA controversy has been resolved by the identification of DNA in New York and that the site of the BOM has been re-revealed to be around Hill Cumorah. This has got to be BS. I can't find an answer on Google....so that I can sleep tonight, Help!

Yes it is bunk.

There is a lot of Jewish DNA in NYC.

That's like saying there is Jewish DNA in Hollywood. Tell them to produce the scientific study and we'll go from there.

Its BS. If it were real, the Jewish people themselves would be all over it.

Here are some links that might help you sleep tonight.

This one is a very good resource for the scientific work that has been done.
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts-jews.html

As for New York, here is a very good link about the history of the earliest Jewish people there.
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Modern_History/1700-1914/Emigration/To_America/Sephardic_Immigration.shtml

The important thing to remind your TBM friend is that DNA from human remains before Columbus has never shown Jewish or any other people except those from the accepted Asian migrations. DNA studies of living American Indian that do show Jewish ancestry can be dated to after Columbus.

Likewise, some American Indian DNA is found in Europe among living people. This simply indicates evidence of those that were taken to Europe as slaves or curiosities during the 16th century and later.

Others here at RFM can explain the details much better than I on how the dating method is done from living people.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/2010 12:31AM by michaelm.

Well, you must know the source of that information, so what is this source? If they say something like "I heard it from (insert person's name or title here) tell them hearsay proves nothing and you need an authoritative source. If they provide you with an actual source, then you can examine it for yourself. If they have no source at all, just say BS.

It is not up to you to disprove their claims, it is up to them to prove them.

There is a lot of Jewish DNA in New York; perhaps more than in Israel, but it all arrived in the New World after 1492.

Seriously, Rod Meldrum is such a big bullshipper they're shredding him at MA&D and the Maxwell Institute. He's a former used car salesman whose DNA expertise doesn't amount to knowing a nucleotide from a nitwit.

Here's the current state-of-the science understanding--and Jewish sequences have been extensively studied--involving autsomal DNA (the incredibly long and complex sequences within the nucleus that govern all heredity). BTW, a Cabbie honk of the horn to Simon Southerton for this one. I'm fairly confident I've translated this stuff correctly.

Autosomal DNA exists on paired chromosomes; humans receive one of each chromosome from their parents via meiosis and sexual reproduction. DNA on chromosomes is subject to "recombination," which means that lengths of it migrate from one chromosome to its corresponding partner, effectively swapping places. These "swaps" occur in the sequences involved in reproduction as well as elsewhere in the body. This recombination is what gives rise to the genetic variability that fuels evolution because of the survival advantage offered.

The numbers of nucleotide "letters" on these sequences are incredibly large, and without modern computers it would be impossible to categorize them. Their size makes the probability of an error involving identification--via duplicate sequences from another source--so minutely remote as to be non-existent.

So what we see in sequences that have been recently introduced via population inter-mingling are numbered lengths of letters that are really long; Simon Southerton--whose expertise on DNA and genetics is on par with anyone FAIR or the MI quotes (Meldrum is laughable)--notes that these sequences are readily identifiable by their length, and we can calculate how long ago there was identifiable population mixing.

Hypothetical sequences claimed to be of Hebrew origin would be much shorter because they would've been subject to further recombination in the intervening 2600 years since Lehi's mythical voyage.

They would, he notes, nevertheless "stand out like dog balls" to anyone who examined them and contrasted them with the original sequences that are found in Siberia (and not the Middle East). Those sequences have been subject to recombination for at least the 15-25,000 years since the original migration from Siberia across Beringia began.

In addition to autosomal DNA, both Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA passed on maternally) and y-Chromosome DNA are telling the same story about Native American orgins, even though both varieties are much less convoluted and complex than the chromosomal variety. Their "stories" are simpler, but the "themes" and "plot" are the same. As is the outcome...

Your TBM friend is probably simply repeating the twisted version of the story involving "Haplogroup X" of Native American mtDNA; a very distantly related variety of X is found among Middle Easterners and Europeans, but a much more closely related form was found among the Altai of Southern Siberia. And "X" is a very ancient sequence, so it's consistent with known theories of human migration out of Africa that point to divisions in the orginal founding populations.

I trust you'll be able to get some sleep after this...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/2010 01:14AM by SL Cabbie.

Great rebuttal, SL Cabbie. Thanks.

Thanks peeps--off to bed:)

Irish, German, English, French....

It is a veritable treasure trove. This will rewrite history...oh...wait....all of those people immigrated over the last 300 years. Never mind....

Your friend has been had. It sounds like someone was pulling his or her leg by bringing up the great ethnic diversity found in modern New York.