More evidence of Sephardic ancestry in some new world Hispanic groups

Velez et al. The impact of Converso Jews on the genomes of modern Latin Americans. Hum Genet. 2011 Jul 26. [abstract]
Modern day Latin America resulted from the encounter of Europeans with the indigenous peoples of the Americas in 1492, followed by waves of migration from Europe and Africa. As a result, the genomic structure of present day Latin Americans was determined both by the genetic structure of the founding populations and the numbers of migrants from these different populations. Here, we analyzed DNA collected from two well-established communities in Colorado (33 unrelated individuals) and Ecuador (20 unrelated individuals) with a measurable prevalence of the BRCA1 c.185delAG and the GHR c.E180 mutations, respectively, using Affymetrix Genome-wide Human SNP 6.0 arrays to identify their ancestry. These mutations are thought to have been brought to these communities by Sephardic Jewish progenitors. Principal component analysis and clustering methods were employed to determine the genome-wide patterns of continental ancestry within both populations using single nucleotide polymorphisms, complemented by determination of Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA haplotypes. When examining the presumed European component of these two communities, we demonstrate enrichment for Sephardic Jewish ancestry not only for these mutations, but also for other segments as well. Although comparison of both groups to a reference Hispanic/Latino population of Mexicans demonstrated proximity and similarity to other modern day communities derived from a European and Native American two-way admixture, identity-by-descent and Y-chromosome mapping demonstrated signatures of Sephardim in both communities. These findings are consistent with historical accounts of Jewish migration from the realms that comprise modern Spain and Portugal during the Age of Discovery. More importantly, they provide a rationale for the occurrence of mutations typically associated with the Jewish Diaspora in Latin American communities.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting. Commenter "ben tillman" has mentioned this Sephardic element before.

Steve Sailer said...

I read in "Distant Neighbors," the 1986 best seller by the New York Times' Mexico correspondent that the two leading families of Monterrey industrialists were Sephardic converts who only married other Sephardic converts.

Anonymous said...

I read in "Distant Neighbors," the 1986 best seller by the New York Times' Mexico correspondent that the two leading families of Monterrey industrialists were Sephardic converts who only married other Sephardic converts.

Crypto-Jew communities and networks are not uncommon. In Turkey for example there are the Donmeh. They exist in Europe as well. Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni may be crypto-Jews:

http://www.ejpress.org/article/23927

Anonymous said...

Percentages?

Matra said...

From the link (Anonymous - July 29, 2011 6:36 AM) Carla Bruni was born Tedeschi, the name of a Jewish family from the northern Italian Piedmont region.

According to Carla’s sister, actress Valerie-Tedeschi Bruni, the paternal grandfather converted from Judaism to Catholicism during WWII. As a result of his marriage with a Catholic, the family lost contact with the Jewish community of Turin.


Carla was raised in a crypto-Jewish family, has a son with a Jewish man, and is married to Sarkozy, but I don't think she herself has any Jewish background. The paternal grandfather mentioned in the above quote has no genetic connection to Carla, who has a different father from Valeria. They have the same (non-Jewish) mother but Carla's father was the Italian businessman Maurizio Remmert.

n/a said...

Hail,

Table 5 appears to show the following admixture estimates.

"Lojanos" from Ecuador
34.2% Sephardic, 29.1% European, 36.7% Amerindian.

"Hispanos" from Colorado
23.2% Sephardic, 23.9% European, 53% Amerindian.

Mexicans
20.3% Sephardic, 22% European, 57.6% Amerindian.

But I have not looked at the authors' methods in detail and I doubt Sephardic ancestry is really that high in the general Mexican population, so these numbers probably represent overestimates for all these groups.

Anonymous said...

DANON dairy was also founded by a Catalan Jew.

Fuck!!!


-uh