Kosminski and Victim DNA Match on Shawl - Part 2

[Mrs Darrell]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but haven't read all of the thread. Is it correct to call those people descendants of Kosminski? I was under the impression he was childless. You're only a descendant of someone if you are of their bloodline. They may share a common ancestor with him, but they aren't descendants surely?

[pinkmoon]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but haven't read all of the thread. Is it correct to call those people descendants of Kosminski? I was under the impression he was childless. You're only a descendant of someone if you are of their bloodline. They may share a common ancestor with him, but they aren't descendants surely?

Considering the honesty and integrity of the rest of the story I wouldn't be to surprised if they were recruited at random from the nearest pub .

[Aldebaran]

One of the most intelligent questions asked here about the Kosminski DNA business [in the other closed thread] was something like "Couldn't you spot the mtDNA of a foreign element in a population?" After all, the Jews were booted out of England by Edward I in 1290, thereby rendering the country free of a Jewish presence for another 200 years. A minority in any case, even after effecting a return.

The thing about mtDNA is that it contains haplogroups. It's the haplogroups that indicate the place of origin of the distant ancestress. Aaron Kosminski was from Poland and was therefore considered an Ashkenazi Jew. One would think the Jews, having been brought by the conquering Romans to Europe as slaves from the Middle East, should be genetically different from the distant populations in which they found themselves, but it's not that simple. Not when it comes to mitochrondrial DNA.

Jewish males have yDNA, passed on from father to son in a chain that goes back indefinitely. It has been found that, in European Jewry, the yDNA haplogroups are overwhelmingly of Middle Eastern origin. Not so the mtDNA haplogroups. It is quite widely accepted that there were four founding females in Ashkenazi Jewish mtDNA, some being of European origin. Only about 8% of Ashkenazi Jews, males and females, bear a Middle Eastern mtDNA haplogroup--according to one study.

On the bright side, one could expect the mtDNA of Kosminski to fall into one of four groups. If mtDNA from the shawl in question matched to a relative of Aaron Kosminski, then that would be something. But that would only narrow it down to the Jews and the four founding mothers--maybe. Because some of those were women of European and not Middle Eastern origin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneti...Ashkenazi_Jews

"A 2013 study at the University of Huddersfield, led by Professor Martin B. Richards, concluded that 65%-81% of Ashkenazi Mt-DNA is European in origin, including all four founding mothers, and that most of the remaining lineages are also European. The results were published in Nature Communications in October 2013. The team analyzed about 2,500 complete and 28,000 partial Mt-DNA genomes of mostly non-Jews, and 836 partial Mt-DNA genomes of Ashkenazi Jews. The study claims that only 8% of Ashkenazi Mt-DNA could be identified as Middle Eastern in origin, with the origin of the rest being unclear.[61]

They wrote:


If we allow for the possibility that K1a9 and N1b2 might have a Near Eastern source, then we can estimate the overall fraction of European maternal ancestry at ~65%. Given the strength of the case for even these founders having a European source, however, our best estimate is to assign ~81% of Ashkenazi lineages to a European source, ~8% to the Near East and ~1% further to the east in Asia, with ~10% remaining ambiguous... Thus at least two-thirds and most likely more than four-fifths of Ashkenazi maternal lineages have a European ancestry."

Predictably, not all geneticists agree with this.

[Aldebaran]

Sorry, the Jews were absent from England for about 360 years following the expulsion of 1290--not merely 200 years. And here, mates, is the best analysis of the Kosminski-Eddowes shawl business I could dig up. And it's even in comprehensible language.

https://dna-explained.com/2014/09/08/jack-the-ripper/

[Aldebaran]

However, while that person who wrote the blog piece may not have come across any Jewish people with the mtDNA haplogroup of
T1a1 [which is what was on the shawl] that doesn't mean it hasn't been seen in Jews. Here are people listed by a DNA testing company. The
subjects gave the most distant ancestress they can recall and where she lived [if they know]. There are certainly Jewish women listed there
under that subgroup of T with first names like Malka, Fruma, Bella, and Chaya--typical Jewish feminine names. Yes, Kosminski could have had
T1a1.

https://www.familytreedna.com/public...tion=mtresults