DNA History

Jews

• "23andMe’s relative matching method estimates that any two Ashkenazi Jews drawn at random should be on average fourth to fifth cousins. "

"A recent model using whole genomes from modern Ashkenazi Jewish populations yielded a minimum bottleneck number of 300 breeding individuals in 1250 AD. These 300 would then have gone on, over 500 years, to beget the millions of Ashkenazim that populated Eastern Europe on the eve of the Enlightenment."

"Several individuals buried in Norwich in 1190 AD were highly inbred; one had an inbreeding coefficient of 0.21, near the 0.25 level expected of someone with full siblings for parents. Two other individuals tested had coefficients of 0.094 and 0.12, considerably more than the expected values for offspring of conventional first cousins, which is 0.0625."

From A coat of many colors: medieval-DNA findings detect interwoven strands of Ashkenazi heritage: Digging into the exciting new findings from early Jewish samples," Razib Khan Dec 13, 2022).

Amish

"The Old Order Amish numbered 5,000 in 1920, and today are approaching 400,000, almost entirely through natural increase rather than conversion." From A coat of many colors: medieval-DNA findings detect interwoven strands of Ashkenazi heritage: Digging into the exciting new findings from early Jewish samples," Razib Khan (Dec 13, 2022).