On 2008.04.30, Judy Simon <heyjude0701@gmail.com> wrote:

Two thirds of the participants who have had their Y-DNA tested so
far have been able to confirm their Sephardic history.

I previously replied privately to the orginal post re the Caro
family, but feel I should reply publically to Judy's email.

I do not know about the individual cases quaoted here, but I offer a
short note of "customer caution," a Y-DNA test cannot "prove" that
one comes >from a Sephardic lineage. The test may offer a hypothesis,
or a likelihood to work from, but DNA mutations happen over such
long periods of time, that the YDNA lineages long predate the
Ashkenaz/Sepharad split of only 1000 years or so ago.

As I said in my private post, my own YDNA result showing it to
belong in Haplogroup E, indicates a North/African Middle-Eastern
background, being Jewish and researching further I suspect that
taking a higher resolution test would place me in group E3b

Wikipedia says of group E3b:

"The spread of E3b in Europe is attributed to ancient migrations

from East Africa mediated through North African and Middle Eastern

farmers during the Neolithic period. Among Jews both in Europe and
the Middle East, E3b is the second most common Y haplogroup after J"

The Neolithic period was long befoe the Ashkenaz/Sepharad split so
the test results are not proof of Sepahardic backgound, since the
movement of my middle-eastern/North-African ancestors to Poland
could have occured anytime between 5000 and 300 years ago.

I agree with Judy that a line where all mutations between a person
of confirmed and longstanding Sephardic background and a person of
Ashkenazi background with a Sephardi surname would prove that there
was a common ancestor, but I wouldn't say that this constitutes
proof that it was a common Sephardic ancestor.

For more information here are several interesting papers availabe
online regarding Ashkenazi/Sephardi genetics, including one at
FamilyTree DNA:
http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/Behar_contrasting.pdf

Hope this makes sense.

Shabbat Shalom all

Ben Forman