No evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazi Jews.

The origin and history of the Ashkenazi Jewish population have long been of great interest, and advances in high-throughput genetic analysis have recently provided a new approach for investigating these topics. We and others have argued on the basis of genome-wide data that the Ashkenazi Jewish population derives its ancestry from a combination of sources tracing to both Europe and the Middle East. It has been claimed, however, through a reanalysis of some of our data, that a large part of the ancestry of the Ashkenazi population originates with the Khazars, a Turkic-speaking group that lived to the north of the Caucasus region ~1,000 years ago. Because the Khazar population has left no obvious modern descendants that could enable a clear test for a contribution to Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, the Khazar hypothesis has been difficult to examine using genetics. Furthermore, because only limited genetic data have been available from the Caucasus region, and because these data have been concentrated in populations that are genetically close to populations from the Middle East, the attribution of any signal of Ashkenazi-Caucasus genetic similarity to Khazar ancestry rather than shared ancestral Middle Eastern ancestry has been problematic. Here, through integration of genotypes from newly collected samples with data from several of our past studies, we have assembled the largest data set available to date for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins. This data set contains genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms in 1,774 samples from 106 Jewish and non-Jewish populations that span the possible regions of potential Ashkenazi ancestry: Europe, the Middle East, and the region historically associated with the Khazar Khaganate. The data set includes 261 samples from 15 populations from the Caucasus region and the region directly to its north, samples that have not previously been included alongside Ashkenazi Jewish samples in genomic studies. Employing a variety of standard techniques for the analysis of population-genetic structure, we found that Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations and, among non-Jewish populations, with groups from Europe and the Middle East. No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews to populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region.

The family as the foundation of political rule in western philosophy: a comparative analysis of Aristotle's politics and Hegel's philosophy of right.

For both Aristotle and Hegel, the family is the foundation in which the universalized rule of law is validated according to the political structure of the 'Polis' or 'State' itself. This composite whole or structure of society (Ancient Polis/Modern State) is the political end of humanity for both philosophers, which in turn finds its primordial beginning in the family. For Aristotle, it is in the kingly rule of the household that the property-based distinction of citizenship is set for the rule of his ideal Polis. For Hegel, it is in the love affirmed through caring affection within the nuclear family that the dialectical framework for the freedom of civil society, and the rational unity of a congregational 'spirit' in the State, finds its foundation. For both thinkers, the family sets the base for a political theory that defines citizenship in a manner that transcends the particularities of kin bonds.

Integration versus apartheid in post-Roman Britain: a response to Thomas et Al. (2008).

The genetic surveys of the population of Britain conducted by Weale et al. and Capelli et al. produced estimates of the Germani immigration into Britain during the early Anglo-Saxon period, c.430-c.730. These estimates are considerably higher than the estimates of archaeologists. A possible explanation suggests that an apartheid-like social system existed in the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms resulting in the Germani breeding more quickly than the Britons. Thomas et al. attempted to model this suggestion and showed that it was a possible explanation if all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had such a system for up to 400 years. I noted that their explanation ignored the probability that Germani have been arriving in Britain for at least the past three millennia, including Belgae and Roman soldiers, and not only during the early Anglo-Saxon period. I produced a population model for Britain taking into account this long term, low level migration that showed that the estimates could be reconciled without the need for introducing an apartheid-like system. In turn, Thomas et al. responded, criticizing my model and arguments, which they considered persuasively written but wanting in terms of methodology, data sources, underlying assumptions, and application. Here, I respond in detail to those criticisms and argue that it is still unnecessary to introduce an apartheid-like system in order to reconcile the different estimates of Germani arrivals. A point of confusion is that geneticists are interested in ancestry, while archaeologists are interested in ethnicity: it is the bones, not the burial rites, which are important in the present context.

Herophilus of Chalcedon and the Hippocratic tradition in early Alexandrian medicine.

Herophilus of Chalcedon (c. 330-250 BC) is famous as one of the leading figures in the development of medicine in Ptolemaic Alexandria around the first half of the third century BC. However, his medical science seems to have intrinsic continuity of thought with Hippocratic medicine. Herophilus followed the medical principle formulated in the Hippocratic treatise "On the Nature of Man," when he made his methodological pronouncement to the effect that primary parts of the human body should be perceptible by the senses. Herophilus rejected cardiocentrism, introduced by his teacher Praxagoras into the medical school of Cos, and returned to Hippocratic encephalocentrism, as represented by the author of the Hippocratic treatise "On the Sacred Disease." Herophilus differentiated between the faculties of the soul and the ones attributed to the nature. In his differentiation between these two faculties, Herophilus probably had in mind the Hippocratic conception of nature as specifically applied to the domain of the human body, as distinct from the soul. Herophilus' commitment to Hippocratic medicine is confirmed by his literary works on some of the Hippocratic texts. It is probable that Herophilus regarded himself as a more faithful successor than his teacher to the tradition of Hippocratic medicine. His anatomical research on the structure and function of the brain, motivated by his loyalty to the Hippocratic tradition, led him to innovative contributions to the development of medicine.

El parto de las mujeres cántabras en la obra de Estrabón / The cántabras women's labour in the work of Estrabón

Un texto del geógrafo griego Estrabón referente al parto de las mujeres cántabras (pueblo hispano prerromano), ha merecido en muchas ocasiones la atención de los investigadores. La mención de Estrabón ha sido considerada generalmente como una prueba de la posible existencia reciente de un matriarcado entre los pueblos cántabros. En el presente trabajo se discute dicha apreciación y se concluye que, con mucha más probabilidad, la alusión de Estrabón fue producto de la incomprensión de las costumbres y de los ritos de los cántabros, así como resultado de la visión etnocéntrica de los escritores greco-romanos (AU)

The text of the Greek geographer Strabon, refers to the labour of the women Cantabrians (Hispanic Pre-roman people) has deserved usually the attention of the investigations. The mention of Strabon has been considered generally as a proof of the possible recent existence of a matriarchy between the Cantabrians people. In this project this assessment is discussed and the conclusions is that more probability, the Strabon's allusion was a product of the incomprehension of the customs and the rites of the Cantabrians people, as well as the result of the ethnocentric view characteristic of the Greek-Romans writers (AU)

See Josephus: viewing first-century sexual drama with Victorian eyes.

This article looks first at how the art of J.W. Waterhouse responds to the classical world: how complex the scene of reception is, triangulated between artist, the ancient past, and his audiences, and extended over time. Second, it looks at how this scene of reception engages with a specific Victorian problematic about male sexuality and self-control. This is not just a question of Waterhouse using classics as an alibi for thinking about desire, but also of the interference of different models of desire and different knowledges of the classical world in the reception of the painting's narrative semantics.

["If a woman has a big head": physiognomy and feminine nature in an Assyro-Babylonian text]. / "Si una mujer tiene la cabeza grande": fisionomía y carácter femenino en un texto asiriobabilónico.

In Mesopotamia, the human body was understood as an object for divination, that is, a system of signs, which carried messages about the individual, and whose meaning had to be decoded by means of observation and interpretation. Taking the physiognomic series "Summa sinnistu qaqqada rabât" ("If a woman has a big head") as the main source of my article, I analyse, on the one hand, the processes that take part in the promotion of a particular perception of women based on a specific reading of the female body. On the other hand, I deal with the elements that characterize this female perception, basically, the image of the ideal woman centred on motherhood, and, in close relation to this, the dangers that threaten women's life during pregnancy.

Ancient mitochondrial M haplogroups identified in the Southwest Pacific.

Based on whole mtDNA sequencing of 14 samples from Northern Island Melanesia, we characterize three formerly unresolved branches of macrohaplogroup M that we call haplogroups M27, M28, and M29. Our 1,399 mtDNA control region sequences and a literature search indicate these haplogroups have extremely limited geographical distributions. Their coding region variation suggests diversification times older than the estimated date for the initial settlement of Northern Island Melanesia. This finding indicates that they were among the earliest mtDNA variants to appear in these islands or in the ancient continent of Sahul. These haplogroups from Northern Island Melanesia extend the existing schema for macrohaplogroup M, with many independent branches distributed across Asia, East Africa, Australia, and Near Oceania.

Exe(o)rcising power: women as sorceresses, exorcists, and demonesses in Babylonian Jewish society of late antiquity .

This article examines talmudic discussions and archaeological finds from Sassanian Babylonia to explore two distinct but related topics: how some actual women employed ritual practices to gain power (such as the recitation of incantations and the use of bowls with incantations written on them) and how some rabbis thought about women's relationship to ritual power. First exploring rabbinic statements and narratives about women as sorceresses, the article then turns to the incantation bowls, ordinary earthenware bowls inscribed with Aramaic incantations, which were buried on the thresholds or in the courtyards of dwellings. A comparative look at these two types of sources reveals that rabbinic accounts of witches are actually more nuanced than the bald talmudic statement (b. Sanh. 67a) that "most women are sorceresses" and reveals that both the incantation bowls and the talmudic sources give information about women who used incantations and amulets to protect themselves and their families from demons and illness.