For years, Jason Malloy has been one of the outstanding commenters on the Internet, but he's always maintained a low profile in terms of having his own site. Now he has a small webpage with links to important news stories in the human sciences.
If you are unfamiliar with the Khazarian Hypothesis: Basically Khazar, a powerful state north of the Black sea and between the Black and Caspian seas, treading between Muslem/Arab-advance and Christian (Byzantine) power politics, adopted Judism as the state religion. The Khazars were debilitated fighting the Muslems (and stopping them from advancing north) and were later defeated by the early Russians. By this time many Jewish refugees from the Arab conquests and Persia likely had fled to Khazaria. Up to this point there's little controversy. The theory is that after their defeat either much of the population or the ruling elite fled to eastern europe. Perhaps there was another wave of refugees after the Mongols took over. (The Mongols had some sort of court on the Caspian.)
"That Elhaik paper is old news, and his work is of limited value because he doesn't have much historical background at all."
My impression from glancing at the links you cited is it's still an open issue all around. (I think the reason for the Malloy link is that the paper was finally published in December 2013, but was circulating in some form since August.)
"Overall I still commend the author for putting this up on arXiv. I hope this sort of feedback will result in some revision, and we’ll get a better handle on what’s going on here."
The second to the last paragraph in the second link starts:
"On the other hand, there may be something to the Khazar story (but in the sense of admixture, rather than replacement)."
It sounds like nobody really knows at this point. The author is a geneticist, not a historian. It might be interesting to see what someone finds without looking at history at all.
One of the comments from the above brought to my attention the Knaanic language, "an extinct West Slavic Jewish language, formerly spoken in the lands of the Western Slavs..." and "Another hypothesis... is that Knaanic is indeed the direct predecessor of Yiddish...". Again it sounds like no one really knows. Wikipedia's article on the Khazars has a lot of info, but a lot of it is of the "open issues" or speculation variety.
Did you read their posts carefully all the way through? Elhaik's history is muddled, and there are no Greek or Italian reference populations to test the Greco-Roman admixture hypothesis. He makes a big point of Ashkenazi connection to Caucasus population due to similarities with Armenians, who historically were concentrated in southeast Anatolia rather than the Caucasus. Razib points out that this similarity may reflect the pre-admixture Near Eastern component of Ashkenazi ancestry. Of course, Elhaik used Palestinians, who have significant sub-Saharan admixture, to ascertain that - yet another problem. This paper is a mess.
The problem here is the demographics. Hundreds of thousands of Jews in the heartland of the old Khazar empire could not possibly haagedneen ve come from a small trickle of German Jews moving eastward. Even if we factor in Jews from Byzantium moving northward, the only reasonable explanation for the demographics is the Khazars and their subject Slavic tribes.
Thank you for the kind words; I've kept a daily newsfeed for seven years. Primarily for my own benefit.
ReplyDeleteSome time in the next few weeks Chuck and I should have some sort of research blog.
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/01/lexicon_valley_on_creaky_voice_or_vocal_fry_in_young_american_women.html
ReplyDeleteI noticed this 10 yrs ago.
Some time in the next few weeks Chuck and I should have some sort of research blog.
ReplyDeleteWho's Chuck?
@anonymous - "Who's Chuck?"
ReplyDeletechuck the occidentalist.
@jason - "Some time in the next few weeks Chuck and I should have some sort of research blog."
let us know when that's up and running! (^_^)
Thanks for the tip. Jason's amazing.
ReplyDeleteHi Jason! Remember that time you beat me up? :)
ReplyDeleteOne of the stories linked to at Malloy's web page, "The Jewish people's ultimate treasure hunt", is about a genetic study that claims it has further distangled Jewish genetics and finds it mixed, but likely predominately Khazar. The author is a population genetics researcher. The paper that the news story is likely based on is online: The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses.
ReplyDelete"... Recent sequencing of modern Caucasus populations prompted us to revisit the Khazarian Hypothesis and compare it with the Rhineland Hypothesis. We applied a wide range of population genetic analyses to compare these two hypotheses. Our findings support the Khazarian Hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry."
If you are unfamiliar with the Khazarian Hypothesis: Basically Khazar, a powerful state north of the Black sea and between the Black and Caspian seas, treading between Muslem/Arab-advance and Christian (Byzantine) power politics, adopted Judism as the state religion. The Khazars were debilitated fighting the Muslems (and stopping them from advancing north) and were later defeated by the early Russians. By this time many Jewish refugees from the Arab conquests and Persia likely had fled to Khazaria. Up to this point there's little controversy. The theory is that after their defeat either much of the population or the ruling elite fled to eastern europe. Perhaps there was another wave of refugees after the Mongols took over. (The Mongols had some sort of court on the Caspian.)
That Elhaik paper is old news, and his work is of limited value because he doesn't have much historical background at all.
ReplyDeleteThis is a review of the paper by Razib Khan of Gene Expression at Discover Magazine Blogs:
Ashkenazi Jews are probably not descended from the Khazars
At the end of this post, anthropology and genetics blogger Dienekes Pontikos discusses the Elhaik paper and its limitations:
Origins of North African and Central/East European Jews
"That Elhaik paper is old news, and his work is of limited value because he doesn't have much historical background at all."
ReplyDeleteMy impression from glancing at the links you cited is it's still an open issue all around. (I think the reason for the Malloy link is that the paper was finally published in December 2013, but was circulating in some form since August.)
The last paragraph of the first link is:
"Overall I still commend the author for putting this up on arXiv. I hope this sort of feedback will result in some revision, and we’ll get a better handle on what’s going on here."
The second to the last paragraph in the second link starts:
"On the other hand, there may be something to the Khazar story (but in the sense of admixture, rather than replacement)."
It sounds like nobody really knows at this point. The author is a geneticist, not a historian. It might be interesting to see what someone finds without looking at history at all.
One of the comments from the above brought to my attention the Knaanic language, "an extinct West Slavic Jewish language, formerly spoken in the lands of the Western Slavs..." and "Another hypothesis... is that Knaanic is indeed the direct predecessor of Yiddish...". Again it sounds like no one really knows. Wikipedia's article on the Khazars has a lot of info, but a lot of it is of the "open issues" or speculation variety.
Did you read their posts carefully all the way through? Elhaik's history is muddled, and there are no Greek or Italian reference populations to test the Greco-Roman admixture hypothesis. He makes a big point of Ashkenazi connection to Caucasus population due to similarities with Armenians, who historically were concentrated in southeast Anatolia rather than the Caucasus. Razib points out that this similarity may reflect the pre-admixture Near Eastern component of Ashkenazi ancestry. Of course, Elhaik used Palestinians, who have significant sub-Saharan admixture, to ascertain that - yet another problem. This paper is a mess.
ReplyDeleteThe problem here is the demographics. Hundreds of thousands of Jews in the heartland of the old Khazar empire could not possibly haagedneen ve come from a small trickle of German Jews moving eastward. Even if we factor in Jews from Byzantium moving northward, the only reasonable explanation for the demographics is the Khazars and their subject Slavic tribes.
ReplyDelete