And yet, I have sturdy Jewish peasant farmer genetic markers. So do Colbert and Otzi the Iceman.
Dad...
Branch: M35.1Age: 20,000 – 24,000 Years AgoLocation of Origin: East Africa
Members of this lineage were among the first farmers and helped spread agriculture from the Levant region into the Mediterranean region and beyond.
Today, in keeping with its place of origin, this line is common among Afro-Asiatic speakers. It represents almost 50 percent of some Albanian groups. It is part of multiple Jewish Diaspora, groups including Ashkenazi Jews (20 percent) and Sephardic Jews (8 to 30 percent).
Mom...
Branch: KAge: About 27,000 Years AgoLocation of Origin: West Asia
 Photograph by Julian Nieman, Alamy
Branch: KAge: About 27,000 Years AgoLocation of Origin: West Asia
Haplogroup K spawned from a group of individuals who descend from a woman in the U branch of the tree. Because of the great genetic diversity found in haplogroup K, it is likely that she lived around 27,000 years ago.
Her descendants gave rise to several different subgroups, some of which exhibit very specific geographic homelands. The very old age of these subgroups has led to a wide distribution; today they harbor specific European, northern African, and Indian components, and are found in Arabia, the northern Caucasus Mountains, and throughout the Near East.
While some members of your haplogroup headed north into Scandinavia, or south into North Africa, most members of your haplogroup K stem from a group of individuals who moved northward out of the Near East. These women crossed the rugged Caucasus Mountains in southern Russia, and moved on to the steppes of the Black Sea.
Around half of all Ashkenazi Jews trace their mitochondrial lineage back to one of four women, and your haplogroup K represents a lineage that gave rise to three of them. While this lineage is found at a smaller frequency in non-Ashkenazi Jews, the three K lineages that helped found the Ashkenazi population are seldom found in other populations. While virtually absent in Europeans, they appear at frequencies of three percent or higher in groups from the Levant, Arabia, and Egypt. This indicates a strong genetic role in the Ashkenazi founder event, which likely occurred in the Near East.
Political satirist and comedian Stephen Colbert is a member of this lineage, as is Katie Couric of the Today Show. The Neolithic-era man whose body was discovered in the Italian Alps in the 1990s, Ötzi the Iceman, also belongs to this line |
