https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Dominant-Y-DNA-haplogroup-J2-for-both-Greece-and-Turkey-How-did-this-happen-Are-the-Levant-or-Israel-in-J2-too/answer/JJ-Cohn?share=6274e032&srid=bEqh Quora answer
This goes much deeper than just (modern) Greeks and Turks. If you look at this page for instance: Haplogroup J2 (Y-DNA) From that link, “ J2 is thought to have appeared somewhere in the Middle East towards the end of the last glaciation, between 15,000 and 22,000 years ago…Notwithstanding its strong presence in West Asia today, haplogroup J2 does not seem to have been one of the principal lineages associated with the rise and diffusion of cereal farming from the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia to Europe. It is likely that J2 men had settled over most of Anatolia, the South Caucasus and Iran by the end of the Last Glaciation 12,000 years ago. It is possible that J2 hunter-gatherers then goat/sheep herders also lived in the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic period, although the development of early cereal agriculture is thought to have been conducted by men belonging primarily to haplogroups G2a (northern branch, from Anatolia to Europe), as well as E1b1b and T1a (southern branch, from the Levant to the Arabian peninsula and North Africa)…. “… second expansion would have occured with the advent of metallurgy. J2 could have been the main paternal lineage of the Kura-Araxes culture (Late Copper to Early Bronze Age), which expanded from the southern Caucasus toward northern Mesopotamia and the Levant. After that J2 could have propagated through Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean with the rise of early civilizations during the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. “Quite a few ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilisations flourished in territories where J2 lineages were preponderant. This is the case of the Hattians, the Hurrians, the Etruscans, the Minoans, the Greeks, the Phoenicians (and their Carthaginian offshoot), the Israelites, and to a lower extent also the Romans, the Assyrians and the Persians. All the great seafaring civilisations from the middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age were dominated by J2 men… “Outside the Caucasus, the highest frequencies of J2 are observed in Cyprus (37%), Crete (34%), northern Iraq (28%), Lebanon (26%), Turkey (24%, with peaks of 30% in the Marmara region and in central Anatolia), Greece (23%), Central Italy (23%), Sicily (23%), South Italy (21.5%), and Albania (19.5%), as well as among Jewish people (19 to 25%)…” Therefore, there clearly would have already been ‘shared’ J2 (deep) paternal ancestry among Greek and Anatolian men, for example (whether the ancient Anatolians in question would have self-identified at the time as ‘Greek’ at all or not…). In other words there is the real possibility that today’s Turks, though they do of course have some level of descent from and genetic affinity towards Central Asiatic sources (and incidentally those medieval central Asian Turks were likely themselves already genetically influenced by South Asiatic sources), could really be as much or arguably even more genetically similar to the pre-Turkic Anatolian (and thereby other Eastern Med) peoples of the region. As opposed to being more overall genetically similar to actual modern-day central Asian Turkic peoples today. See also: Genetic studies on Turkish people - Wikipedia from there, “The largest autosomal study on Turkish genetics predicted that the weight of Central Asian migration legacy of the Turkish people is estimated at 21.7%.[4] …Several studies have concluded that the genetic haplogroups indigenous to Western Asia have the largest share in the gene pool of the present-day Turkish population.[2][2][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] “An admixture analysis determined that the Anatolian Turks share most of their genetic ancestry with non-Turkic populations in the region and the 12th century is set as an admixture date.[14]…” So if Turkish men have a decent % of J2 (according to this: European Y-DNA haplogroups frequencies by country , around a quarter of the tested Turkish men were J2), then it could very well indicate that those J2 Turks’ paternal ancestor(s) were from the original (non-Turkic) more deeply-rooted Anatolian inhabitants of the region. That is, they were probably arguably more genetically similar to the Eastern Med Greeks already (some of whom after all had dwelt in Anatolia — what is now mainland and western coastal Turkey — for many generations and in very ancient times as well). But Turkish men also carry however, per the chart cited above, 2% (out of those sampled) of the paternal group Q (which is East/northeast Asiatic, Mongol, as well as Native American), and 4% of the group N (which has a Siberian and/or Uralic/Finnic pull). 1% of the group R2 (which is South Asian), 1.3 or 1.5% of the group C (which is Mongol; Genghis Khan’s likely paternal group was a certain subtype of C in fact). Whereas no tested Greek men were found carrying those. The page above also lists this note, on Turkey, beneath the charts: “Turkey is the only [listed on the chart as “European”] country that includes a sizeable percentage of Asian and African haplogroups not listed in this table (A, ExE1b1b, C, H, L, O, R2) representing 8.5% of the total. Haplogroup L-M20 - Wikipedia alone makes up 4% of the Turkish population.” As for the Levant, Lebanon is about 25 or 26% J2; Palestinians and Syrians at about 17% J2; and Jews (since there is no separate category on the chart above for Israel), tested Sephardi Jews were found to be carrying J2 at slightly higher %’s than Ashkenazi Jews (25% compared to 19%). Ashkenazi men on the other hand had a higher % than Sephardis of certain types of E1b1b, as well as a higher % of the haplogroups R1a, I, and Q. I might add my own paternal group, as an Ashkenazi, is J1. 97 Views ·
