Thomas Jefferson: BERBER or ARAB

[annienormanna]

dienekes.blogspot.com/2005/06/thomas-jeffersons-patrilineal-origin.html

"As part of our genetic analyses for the film SEARCH FOR ADAM, we analyzed additional markers on Jefferson's Y-chromosome in an effort to determine why it is so unusual. If you recall the original Hemmings paper in Nature by Foster et al., the haplotype was 'rare', which is what enabled them to implicate Jefferson as the source rather than another European. At the time there were no matches among the 607 European men (Jefferson's father claimed Welsh ancestry) who had been genotyped for the same 11 microsatellites. Recent searches of more comprehensive databases have turned up related haplotypes belonging to haplogroups O, K and Q. We investigated the 12 microsatellites routinely typed by FTDNA, which did not add to the haplogroup resolution. SNP testing, however, revealed that Jefferson's Y is positive for M70, which places him in haplogroup K2. K2 is rare in northern Europe (only one K was found among 1772 British men surveyed by Capelli et al., but it wasn't typed for M70) but quite common in the Middle East and northeast Africa, where it reaches frequencies of 10% or more. Interestingly, another person typed in the film, the Ethiopian prince, is also K2, but many mutational steps removed from Jefferson. We are currently looking at potential source populations for Jefferson's K2 as part of a broader survey of Y-chromosome variation in the Middle East and North Africa, and expect to submit a publication by the end of the year. I'm sure that all of you will appreciate the amount of effort that has gone into launching The Genographic Project, and hope that you will understand that our publication schedule has been somewhat delayed as a result.

archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2005-06/1119986760

[tyrannos]

Oh I remember this one..

How common on those markers in Britain anyway?

[drooperdoo]

It just makes sense to me that--as a Welshman--Jefferson's ancestors were, at one time, in Iberia. The movement of the population up the Atlantic Coast from Iberia to the British Isles has been well-established.

Perhaps one of his Iberian ancestors had distant Berber ancestry.

That makes a lot more sense than trying to make him Arab--which entails an ancestor from half-way around the world.

From Berber North Africa to Iberia, and from Iberia to Wales is a short trip--and one that remains on a straight Atlantic trajectory.

* Certain archaeologists have also made much of dolmens from North Africa which look remarkably like Stonehenge. Dozens of examples of these rock structures speckle the Atlantic Coast from Africa to Spain to England. Sir Christopher Wrenn attested to having seen many Stonehenge-like megalithic structures in Africa, and here's an example of one such site from Spain.



And here's an article on England's megalithic structure--Stonehenge--where archaeologists observe that the copper used in the blades of the builders was from Spain: www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/ston-f24.shtml

[tyrannos]

38.9% of Y-chromosome lineages in the North Welsh town of Abergele were found to belong to North African-specific haplogroup 21. This frequency may have been somewhat inflated by genetic drift and sampling error, but it nevertheless shows clearly the presence of a non-European Mediterranean element in the aboriginal populations of Britain. The study in question also found North Wales to have been much less affected by Anglo-Saxon and Celtic invasions than surrounding areas, which would make the people there representative of Ancient Britons as a whole.

(Weale et al., Mol Biol Evol, 2002)

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"Today, just under 17 per cent of native Europeans that we have sampled are in the clan of [Middle-Eastern] Jasmine (mtDNA J). Unlike the other six clans, the descendants of Jasmine are not found evenly distributed throughout Europe. One distinctive branch follows the Mediterranean coast to Spain and Portugal, whence it has found its way to the west of Britain where it is particularly common in Cornwall, Wales and the west of Scotland."
(Brian Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve)

[tyrannos]

Seems it wasnt the Phoencians though...


The appropriation of the Phoenicians in British imperial ideology
Timothy Champion Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK

Abstract
The Phoenicians played ambivalent roles in Western historical imagination. One such role was as a valued predecessor and prototype for the industrial and maritime enterprise of nineteenth-century imperial Britain. Explicit parallels were drawn in historical representations and more popular culture. It was widely believed that the Phoenicians had been present in Britain, especially in Cornwall, despite a lack of convincing historical evidence, and much importance was placed on supposed archaeological evidence. Ideological tensions arose from the need to reconcile ancient and modern Britain, and from the Semitic origin of the Phoenicians. This example shows the power of archaeological objects to provide material support for national and imperial constructions of the past.

www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1469-8219.00027?cookieSet=1&journalCode=nana

[Clemo]

BBC article says Welsh- a K2 presence in Western Europe for 40,000 years. But it could also be Phoenician or Egyptian or........well here is the article.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6332545.stm