Ashkenzi Jewish with 4% Scandinavian

[khazaria]

My "My origins" didn't change, still 96% Ashkenazi and 4% Scandinavian, perhaps this means that this is really Scandinavian ancestry I have there.

I'm not sure. I have my doubts.

Out of nearly 400 kits I have examined belonging to people with 4 Ashkenazi grandparents (Ashkenazi score ~25% or higher), only very few show a proposed "Norwegian" and/or "North_Swedish" affinity in any part of Eurogenes K13's oracle-4.

There are some Ashkenazim who have very small amounts of Scandinavian predicted for them by 23andMe.

The per-chromosome numerical percentage tables are known to be prone to noise. As David Wesolowski said, "Per chromosome is more noisy and uncertain because the algorithm has fewer markers to work with."

I checked my own MyOrigins screen twice tonight and it still guesses that I have 4% Scandinavian, but because it vanished from my mother's results I suspect that when/if it reconsiders my genetic profile it may remove it.

[NCroots]

Is it possible the Scandinavian result is really German? I have significant German ancestry, yet show no German (Central European) at all on my FTDNA results; I do show 36% Scandinavian. I believe myOrigins is interpreting my German as Scandinavian. Perhaps it's possible that 4% Scandinavian could be North German? That would make sense in a person of Ashkenazi heritage.

[khazaria]

Is it possible the Scandinavian result is really German?

Yes it is possible. I have seen some Ashkenazim with signs of distant German admixture. In Eurogenes K13's oracle-4 this shows up as "West_German" or "North_German" and is sometimes interchangeable with "South_Dutch", "North_Swedish", "Danish", or "Orcadian". This really jumps out when I see it on the screen because most of the time Ashkenazim's affinities in this oracle are 4-part combinations of all Mediterranean region/climate peoples like "Samaritan", "Lebanese_Christian", "Spanish_Galicia", "Italian_Jewish", "Tuscan", "Bulgarian", and the like.

Also remember that when John looked through his Family Finder matches he told us he found one person who may be Scandinavian, and we don't know that that person isn't partly Ashkenazi.

Ashkenazim have a much longer history in the German lands than in Scandinavia. Per Jacqueline Shields writing for the Jewish Virtual Library, "Denmark was the first of the Scandinavian countries where Jews were permitted to settle. Jews were first invited by King Christian IV, who sent a message on November 22, 1622". The 1620s to the present day is all within the genealogical timeframe where autosomal DNA can find truly Scandinavian IBD matches if there are any.

I would like to clarify something for people new to my writings on this forum. This morning, when I wrote a 25% or higher Ashkenazi score equals having 4 grandparents who were all predominantly Ashkenazic, I meant in Jtest, which has weird scaling, not in FTDNA where 25% really means 25%.

David Wesolowski is Eurogenes's creator.

[khazaria]

Apparently because of the problems with some kits discussed in http://forums.familytreedna.com/show...t=38019&page=6, not because of the addition of any new reference populations or because of anything wrong with her particular kit this month, on July 16th my mom's MyOrigins estimates were run a third time. The spurious Scandinavian element is still gone and the spurious Finnish element disappeared.

As of June 1, 2015: 89% Ashkenazi, 2% North African, 8% Scandinavian, 1% Asia Minor
As of July 9, 2015: 92% Ashkenazi, 2% North African, 4% East Europe, 2% Finland
As of July 16, 2015: 90% Ashkenazi, 2% North African, 8% East Europe

I believe the latest estimates are the most accurate as her ancestry is known to consist of:
1. Predominantly Ashkenazic lineages with Yiddish names, language, and culture and all her Old World ancestors going back multiple generations are listed in the Jewish vital record books;
2. One Sephardic family name from a shtetl with Sephardic settlers and a region that had Sephardim in other towns too;
3. She had a grandfather who claimed to be partially Polish not only linguistically.

Now let's see whether the DNA matching evidence fits:
1. Yes. The vast majority of her DNA matches do have Ashkenazic ancestry.
2. Yes. She possesses DNA blocks that form IBD-quality phased triangulating groups simultaneously including Ashkenazim and Mexican Catholics. Many of those Mexicans have now identified specific Sephardic ancestors from Spain they descend from using paper trail evidence. One of my mom's Mexican matches shares 6 pages worth of matches in common with her. Another of her Mexican matches shares just 5 pages in common. She shares a 7.81 cM block and 2 pages in common with a Portuguese Catholic with roots in the Azores where some Sephardim had settled. Her matches with Ashkenazic ancestry share many more pages ICW than these people do. "North African" and "Ashkenazi" are known to be among the current stand-in designations for Sephardic ancestry in FTDNA in the absence of any Sephardic reference population.
3. Yes or maybe. She shares a 8.52 cM block and 20.71 total cMs with a man with Christian Polish roots from Lublin Voivodeship in SE Poland with whom they share only 9 pages in common. She shares a 17.92 cM block and 40.03 total with a proposed "3rd-5th cousin" estimated to be 0% Ashkenazi with known Christian Polish roots with whom they share only 7 pages in common. She shares a 7.78 cM block and 26.39 total with a woman with a Polish surname with whom they share only 3 pages in common. She shares a 9.54 cM block and 26.84 total with an ethnic Ukrainian with whom they share only 3 pages in common. EUtest's oracle in mixed mode thinks my mom has the potential to be 1.6% Polish. My mom's South Baltic affinity is 7.19% in EUtest (6.51% in Jtest) and her East Euro affinity is 4.80% in EUtest (3.16% in Jtest).

Some reasons I believe Scandinavian, Finnish, and Asia Minor were false elements and that it's correct they vanished:
No fully Finnish matches.
No Armenian matches.
No non-Jewish Turkish matches.
No fully German matches.
Some of her Swedish matches appear to have distant Ashkenazic ancestry based on the analysis I posted on June 21st.

[dna]

@khazaria - trying to confirm

Did you request a re-run for your mother kit or, as I understand the above post, there were two re-reruns that FTDNA did by themselves?

Thank you - W. (Mr.)

[khazaria]

Did you request a re-run for your mother kit or, as I understand the above post, there were two re-reruns that FTDNA did by themselves?

I didn't request any re-run. She was part of the FF batch that came in at the start of June where we had some missing matches.

A 4th run was performed today (July 17) for my mom and the ethnic results remain the same as in the 3rd run.

[dna]

I didn't request any re-run. She was part of the FF batch that came in at the start of June where we had some missing matches.

A 4th run was performed today (July 17) for my mom and the ethnic results remain the same as in the 3rd run.

Thank you!

I asked since this week an individual from my family had received results with 3% of Asia Minor. Asia Minor is not supported by the fairly complete paper trail, does not show in a sibling and cousins (various percentages of Western/Central/Eastern Europe), and nobody among 200 matches stands out.

I will e-mail the match (43 cM, Longest Block 14 cM, typical British first and family name) that shows 6% Asia Minor in My Origins... However, based on the paper trail, the relationship is probably more distant than the 3rd-5th cousin.

W. (Mr.)

P.S.
I have other (unrelated) lines in my family tree with stories of some ancestor who travelled as a merchant and brought back a wife from somewhere far far away. But nothing had come up for them

[dna]

What is Asia Minor according to Family Tree DNA ?

The heat map entitled Asia Minor clearly includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.

It is my understanding that both Azerbaijan and Turkey are populated by Turkic peoples. However, neither Armenians nor Georgians (Kartvelian people) are Turkic people.

There was a substantial influx of Armenians into Poland, then into the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, starting possibly as early as after 1080 AD.

There were some Georgians joining Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth military, however their more substantial influx into Central Europe started only in the 19th century when Russia extended from Central Europe to Caucasia (the influx continued later).

I can see how those whose ancestors lived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth can have Armenian admixture, and not be aware of it. Certainly most people would not think of Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Krzysztof Penderecki or Zbigniew Herbert having some Armenian ancestry.

Why Armenians and Georgians are lumped together?

Why FTDNA lumped Armenians and Georgians together with their Turkic neighbours?

How realistic can be an Asia Minor component as it is supposed to cover three distinct populations?

Scandinavians at FTDNA do not include Finns, but is it really that Danes, Norwegians and Swedes are all the same ?

W. (Mr.)

[Armando]

The per-chromosome numerical percentage tables are known to be prone to noise. As David Wesolowski said, "Per chromosome is more noisy and uncertain because the algorithm has fewer markers to work with."

I just read this. Is this something that he has posted online? It would be nice to have a list of caveats of the Gedmatch calculators and this one is very important since so many people are using the per chromosome test to "prove" certain ancestries.

[khazaria]

We're discussing a bunch of things at once.

Finns were usually endogamous. Most Finns have distinctive genetics compared to speakers of Germanic languages in Scandinavia, as well as from Russians and even from Saami. But some Finns did mix with Swedes especially in the cities.

Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians do have much in common but of course there's variation. Norwegians sometimes have Saami admixture and this even had an impact on some of their appearance including the shape of their nose.

I think the continuation of the Asia Minor topic properly belongs in a different thread but will reply to Mr. W about it here this time.
The only reference population for Asia Minor in FTDNA is Armenian, but it is known that Armenians and Anatolian Turks share much DNA in common.
I suppose there are a small number of Poles who don't know they had an Armenian ancestor until a DNA test matches them IBD with Armenians. If in the future you learn about examples of that kind of discovery, open a new thread to discuss them.

Armando, David made that comment I quoted to one of his public blogs, http://bga101.blogspot.com/2013/03/e...-gedmatch.html and his caveats about ignoring very small percentages in Jtest and Eurogenes K36 have also been helpful to remember such as what he wrote at http://bga101.blogspot.com/2012/09/e...est-files.html We can't successfully dissuade everybody who has wishful thinking or self-hatred. Some people are so predetermined they are Amerindian or Ashkenazi or Viking or whatever that they will latch onto any little scrap of noise that they think confirms their stories even when it doesn't.

[khazaria]

MyOrigins estimates have also changed for me following my kit's re-run.

As of Dec. 30, 2014: 92% Ashkenazi, 4% Scandinavian, 4% Western/Central European (French and German reference samples)
As of July 20, 2015: 93% Ashkenazi, 7% Scandinavian

This should say "East Europe" instead of "Scandinavian" since my father bequeathed me some Southeast Polish linked to Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic families from Podkarpackie villages, even if my mother didn't share her own apparently-Polish portion with me, but it doesn't really matter. My father's DNA is currently being processed in the lab. In a few weeks I'll learn what MyOrigins estimates for my father and study his matches in comparison to mine taking into consideration phasing, block lengths, triangulation, geographic clustering, etc.

Eurogenes Jtest Oracle Mixed Mode (for me): 93.2% Ashkenazi (AJ), 6.8% Polish (PL) on line 8
Eurogenes Jtest Oracle Mixed Mode: 93.2% Ashkenazi (AJ), 6.8% Scottish on line 5
Eurogenes Jtest Oracle Mixed Mode: 93.8% Ashkenazi (AJ), 6.2% South and Central Swedish on line 20
Eurogenes Jtest Oracle Mixed Mode: 92.9% Ashkenazi (AJ), 7.1% West and Central German on line 17
Eurogenes EUtest Oracle Mixed Mode: 94.5% Ashkenazi (AJ), 5.5% Polish (PL) on line 5
Eurogenes K13 Oracle-4 3-Populations: 50% Italian Jewish, 25% Lebanese Druze, 25% South Polish

Eurogenes Jtest Oracle Mixed Mode for my closest "pure" Polish match: 88.3% Polish (PL), 11.7% North Swedish on line 15;
vs. 82.2% West Russian, 17.8% South and Central Swedish on line 2;
vs. 81.9% Belorussian, 18.1% Irish on line 1

Northern European elements are interchangeable with each other to a degree.

"The problem in this is that research studies typically take samples from well-traveled urban areas, neglecting rural and mountainous areas. These latter typically harbor remnants of more ancient demographic strata. ... Thus, a rural southern Pole might see 10% Scandinavian or British Isles on his MyOrigins--not because his ancestors came from those regions, but rather because (some of) the DNA in those regions came from southern Poland!" - Lawrence Mayka writing at http://forums.familytreedna.com/show...04&postcount=1

[josh w.]

MyOrigins estimates have also changed for me following my kit's re-run.

As of Dec. 30, 2014: 92% Ashkenazi, 4% Scandinavian, 4% Western/Central European (French and German reference samples)
As of July 20, 2015: 93% Ashkenazi, 7% Scandinavian

This should say "East Europe" instead of "Scandinavian" since my father bequeathed me some Southeast Polish linked to Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic families from Podkarpackie villages, even if my mother didn't share her own apparently-Polish portion with me, but it doesn't really matter. My father's DNA is currently being processed in the lab. In a few weeks I'll learn what MyOrigins estimates for my father and study his matches in comparison to mine taking into consideration phasing, block lengths, triangulation, geographic clustering, etc.

Eurogenes Jtest Oracle Mixed Mode (for me): 93.2% Ashkenazi (AJ), 6.8% Polish (PL) on line 8
Eurogenes Jtest Oracle Mixed Mode: 93.2% Ashkenazi (AJ), 6.8% Scottish on line 5
Eurogenes Jtest Oracle Mixed Mode: 93.8% Ashkenazi (AJ), 6.2% South and Central Swedish on line 20
Eurogenes Jtest Oracle Mixed Mode: 92.9% Ashkenazi (AJ), 7.1% West and Central German on line 17
Eurogenes EUtest Oracle Mixed Mode: 94.5% Ashkenazi (AJ), 5.5% Polish (PL) on line 5
Eurogenes K13 Oracle-4 3-Populations: 50% Italian Jewish, 25% Lebanese Druze, 25% South Polish

Eurogenes Jtest Oracle Mixed Mode for my closest "pure" Polish match: 88.3% Polish (PL), 11.7% North Swedish on line 15;
vs. 82.2% West Russian, 17.8% South and Central Swedish on line 2;
vs. 81.9% Belorussian, 18.1% Irish on line 1

Northern European elements are interchangeable with each other to a degree.

There are other possibilities. Scandinavians once controlled parts of northern Poland. Also there has been two way sea trade between Sweden and northern Poland.

[khazaria]

Josh, in my last message I wasn't talking about northern Poland, but instead farming villages in the southern half of the southeastern-most region of Poland. Poles and Rusyns.

And my two closest Polish matches' lists on Gedmatch include only small numbers of people with Scandinavian last names, none matching them that closely and some appear to be IBS.

[josh w.]

Josh, in my last message I wasn't talking about northern Poland, but instead farming villages in the southern half of the southeastern-most region of Poland. Poles and Rusyns.

And my two closest Polish matches' lists on Gedmatch include only small numbers of people with Scandinavian last names, none matching them that closely and some appear to be IBS.

I should have been more explicit. People in northern Poland could have migrated further south.

[josh w.]

I should have been more explicit. People in northern Poland could have migrated further south.

During the Deluge, the Swedish army went as far south as Krakow and Lublin. I am not suggesting that this is the explanation, merely that there is more than one possibility.