Unusual looking Ashkenazi

**waam** · 01-08-2018, 05:10 PM

When I first saw her I was sure her DNA would come up completely gentile however her Jewish percentage is even higher than the very Jewish looking dude sitting beside her at 94% (compared to his 85%).
How is it possible for someone almost pure ashkenzai to look this gentile? I know Ashkenazis are made up of around 50% or more non-jewish DNA but usually even half Ashkenazis look more semite than this haha.

Any thoughts?

**~~Acquisit0r~~** · 01-08-2018, 05:12 PM

anahnu rotsim yordim mi haaretz ;D

**~~kingjohn~~** · 01-08-2018, 05:30 PM

look doesn't always go hand in hand with genetics

**Sp_loa** · 01-08-2018, 05:35 PM

I know many Russian jews looking like her, and I have seen many Ashkenazi and Sephardi jews looking like native europeans.. don’t forget that the amount of genes responsible for phenotype is very low (relatively) so sometimes even if you are 50% of something you can look like 100% of that something.
I don’t know where you live if she looks like atypical Russian jewish to you.

**waam** · 01-08-2018, 06:21 PM

Yeah true. Although most Russian jews I know look jewish to be honest, with the exception of mixed Russian jews with actual ethnic Russians in which case yeah some look non-jewish and I'm not surprised by that. However yeah I have seen non jewish-looking Ashkenazis and Sephardis.

**RN97** · 01-08-2018, 06:51 PM

Likely she has the genes that makes her face look less jewish i.e. non-hooked nose, brown hair and blue eyes whilst the other dude does not. However genes are not only what makes your face look a certain way. It's predisposition to diseases (genetic), being lactose tolerant/ intolerant, height, musculature, predisposition to gain/ lose weight, teeth shape and so on. His face might look superficially more jewish than hers, but she shares more allele sequences with jews than he does. Most DNA tests also tests your overall genome and some might argue that there are certain genes that are more "important" than others in terms of significance, but we don't know what most genes do so we can't even control for that if we wanted. That's just my opinion.