Re: [metatuning] Digest Number 74

Johnny: I've seen some numbers which I can't recall, but I think the
percentage of detectable Near Eastern ancestry (whatever that means) in
Ashkenazi jews was about 30%, but I may well be wrong. It's been a long
time since I did much reading in population genetics or taught it.

I was thinking of the Karaites, but I know very little about them.

As for blond or red-headed, blue-eyed individuals in central Asia, they
may be descendents of the Tokhars, a poorly-known group speaking an
Indo-European language related to Celtic. Some of their burials and
artefacts have been found in western China (a NOVA program, recently).
The group disappeared in the middle ages -- don't know whether the
Mongols or Moslems got them. Their language was written in a variant of
one of the Indian scripts, so deciphering the their few textual remains
wasn't difficult.

Some historians think they may have passed Graeco-Babylonian tuning lore
to China after Alexander's conquests in Central Asia.

One rumor is that some Afghans are descended from Alexander's troops.
Don't have any idea if this is true or not. The Scythians, Saka and
other nomadic tribes spoke Iranian languages, but may have included some
western Europeans as well.

I knew an American woman in Houston who had been married to an Afghan.
She had two blond, blue-eyed children by him before he decided that the
cultural gap was too great and divorced her.

Red hair is fairly widely distributed and not uncommon even among Malays
-- I don't know how they survive the tropical sun. I tend to stay out of
the sun as much as possible and I'm being to have skin problems just
from growing up in Nebraska and So. California.

--John