What is the currently accepted explanation for the Sicilian/Ashkenazi genetic similarity?

[Sikeliot]

Sicilians just don't apply themselves but in school I outperformed almost every Jew I know.

[Longbowman]

Longbowman what do you think about the idea that AJs and SJs are ultimately from different ancestors - maternally we know AJs are from 4 Italian women - three of haplogroup K and one of haplogroup N1b. Incidentally, K has been associated with higher brain pH levels, which supposedly strengthens/increases neural connectivity - thereby increasing intelligence. Don't know how credible that is. Paternally, AJs are Levantine, as are SJs, so the current theory is that the group split when some male Jews married some non-Jews et viola - Ashkenazi was born. However, AJs and SJs vary dramatically in terms of cephalic index - with Sephardim having low and Ashkenazim having high cephalic indexes respectively. Moreover, facial features seem rather different, with Ashkenazi Jews having more hooked noses with a noticeably thicker bottom lip (as with mine) whilst Sephardi Jews have straighter noses with far thinner lips. Could it be, that Sephardi Jews are true Hebrews (with admixture however), whilst Ashkenazi Jews are Jews who - on the way, during, and on the way back from the exile in Babylonia - mixed an awful lot with some kind of group, potentially Armenoids. However, some guys found skulls of the Hebrews and of very old AJs, and both were brachycephalic. Maybe the AJs are the true Hebrews, and SJs are merely Arabs. Whatever the case, in my opinion, it is clear the AJs and SJs are not from the same parent race - due to general appearance but also a stark contrast in cephalic index. If I had to guess, I would say that AJs are more related to Kurds and Druze (and Greco-Romans, who shared Northern Middle-Eastern DNA (Syria, Armenia, Eastern Turkey etc.)) due to the sharing of Haplogroup K, and that SJs are more related to true Middle-Easterners due to the similar appearances. I'm likely wrong. However, one of the four haplogroups of AJs was N1b, which is of Turkic origin. Could this haplogroup be of Khazarian origin? I have no clue - I just want to know what you think, Longbowman (I am anticipating that you correct me A LOT; you know a lot more about this than me). Thanks!

Well, just for one personal example - I'm Sephardic along the maternal line, but you might have noticed I have a typically Ashkenazi clade. The groups certainly have at least some shared ancestry. It is true that my K1a1b1a has some unusual mutations - 2,000 years will do that to you - but Sephardics share Ashkenazi clades (except R1a1a and the like).

K is unusually common amongst AJs at around 1/3 but it's pretty high throughout Europe, particularly the UK, and also the Middle East, in particular - frequency of K alone doesn't help much, it's a very common subgroup of U found throughout Western Eurasia and into North Africa. What matters is the relevant subclades. And what matters more is SNP sharing.

Paternally both AJs and SJs are primarily Levantine in origin, though AJs in particular have picked up quite some non-Levantine clades - around 12.5% of the total if you believe Behar, which I don't, but it's true that R1a1a is about 8% in AJs and probably Eastern European, perhaps even Khazar (no, not Turkic, no more non-European than the Hungarians are) in origin, as it's most prominent amongst Levites. Mark has R1a1a, for example. Other clades are less common but present in AJ populations. Conversely, SJs also have admixture, both Iberian (Iberian R1b clades are almost 30% amongst Belmonte Jews, but less amongst other Sephardics) and to a lesser extent North African, Balkanic, Turkic and others depending on where they settled.

The general understanding is that the AJ, SJ and Italqim were originally one group that broke into three when the proto-Sephardics moved to Spain and the Ashkenazi later moved to the Rhine. But it's likely there were previous Jewish groups, both converts and immigrants, in Spain, and there were certainly Kana'anim, 'Slavic Jews,' pre-Ashkenazi that were assimilated, and perhaps also the remnants of the Khazars. Plus there were population exchanges, with documented examples of Iraqi Jews fleeing to Spain during the Golden Age, and Sephardics fleeing to the East after 1492.

However, of course, these groups, whilst related - closely, I might add - are not the same. Ashkenazis are significantly more European-shifted than Sephardics - probably due to minor later admixture, post-relocation, I would say, due to aforementioned probability of admixture with Eastern Europeans. Bear in mind the population of Ashkenazis was only a few hundred into the second millennium. It would have taken only about ten gentiles to shift their population a few percentage points more towards Europe. But Sephardics aren't 'true Hebrews.' They might be less European-shifted but they're still heavily European shifted. When compared to, say, Samaritans - not a perfect proxy, but a group that shows no strong evidence of admixture - or even other Levantine groups, you can see their WHG (for example) is double any other Near Eastern group and three or four times the Samaritans'. For them to be 'true Hebrews' a lot of population shifting would have had to have gone down in what is now Israel.

The return from the first Exile happened 400 years before Christ and probably about 700 before the AJs and SJs (and Italqim) split. Furthermore there is a serious problem with trying to synch up populations by using skull measurements - genetics is a much safer bet. Paternally, anyway, most major Jewish groups have similar ancestry, with some influence from their surroundings. Maternally, they seem to mainly have married native women. Also, N1b isn't Turkic.

There is also no reason to believe any Jewish group has maintained complete or near-complete homogeneity since Moses' time. First, they all plot differently to one another, so at least all but one of them have to be at least partially admixed. Considering that Jews proselytised a lot - the historical record is full of Roman converts, and some counts say 10 million in the centuries after Christ - and the only groups to have prohibited conversion are the Syrian Jews and Karaites, and neither of them for all of their history, it is, I think, wishful thinking to imagine any Jew is a good example of an ancient Judaean. Ashkenazis are no more Jewish than Beta Avraham or Subbotniks.

Also, 'Arab' is a linguistic more than a genetic term; Moroccans aren't Yemenites and Yemenites aren't Lebanese and Lebanese aren't Maltese.

[Longbowman]

Sicilians just don't apply themselves but in school I outperformed almost every Jew I know.

It's the Polish blood

[Dylan]

I can't comment on genotype since I don't know much on that but...

From my experiences, most Ashkenazis do not look like Southern Italians. I grew up in a town where close to half of the people in my high school classes were Askhenazi Jewish including a lot of my close friends. However there is definitely a visible minority of Ashkenazis who look like Southern Italians in terms of phenotype. I know my uncle who is Abruzzese was often thought to be Jewish when he lived in New York for example.

But overall most Ashkenazi didn't look Italian. Most of them descended from immigrants in Germany, Russia, and Poland. I think there must have been a decent amount of admixture in some Ashkenazi communities with these nationalities in some, but not all cases.

Most Ashkenazi that I know look different from other groups. I find it a lot easier to see if someone is ashkenazi or not than any other ethnic group in the world. But this is probably because this is the ethnic group I've been most exposed to.

[Hamlet]

I hardly call that proof, with the sample size population of sicilians being 1 - yourself. I am talking about intelligence here - the stuff evaluated by IQ tests. In terms of creativity, i think europeans may potentially pip AJs, as from my knowledge, although AJs absolutely crush other ethnic groups in fields such as physics, maths etc., in terms of inventors, the best are europeans. moreover, your statement can apply to anybody - i could be a nigerian with an iq of 180 and say what you said, replacing sicilian with nigerian. you cannot prove that sicilians are smarter, excluding creativity, as IQ tests are reasonably accurate, and any errors would not transcend the 25 point difference between sicilians and AJs. you can however prove creativity, and i'm sure, due to the clustering with the ancient romans and greeks, there are plenty of creative sicilians (e.g. inventors etc.)

[Sikeliot]

I can't comment on genotype since I don't know much on that but...

From my experiences, most Ashkenazis do not look like Southern Italians. I grew up in a town where close to half of the people in my high school classes were Askhenazi Jewish including a lot of my close friends. However there is definitely a visible minority of Ashkenazis who look like Southern Italians in terms of phenotype. I know my uncle who is Abruzzese was often thought to be Jewish when he lived in New York for example.

But overall most Ashkenazi didn't look Italian. Most of them descended from immigrants in Germany, Russia, and Poland. I think there must have been a decent amount of admixture in some Ashkenazi communities with these nationalities in some, but not all cases.

Most Ashkenazi that I know look different from other groups. I find it a lot easier to see if someone is ashkenazi or not than any other ethnic group in the world. But this is probably because this is the ethnic group I've been most exposed to.

What do southern Italians look like to you?

[Dylan]

What do southern Italians look like to you?

There's a wide variety of southern italian phenotypes so I can't describe a single type and be accurate.
Some Ashkenazis and some Southern Italians as well as other Italians definitely overlap. But for the most part this is not the case from my observations

[Hamlet]

Looking at appearances seems very unreliable - look at values that are independent of human perception

[Dylan]

Looking at appearances seems very unreliable - look at values that are independent of human perception

What do you mean by values independent of human perception?

[Longbowman]

What do you mean by values independent of human perception?

He means quantifiable values such as IQ.