The West Indian Bene Israel Jewish community is a special people whose existence before the 18th century is largely unknown. Members of Bene Israel consider themselves to be Jewish descendants, but the identity of Jewish ancestors and their arrival time in India is uncertain, with estimates ranging from the 8th century BCE to the 6th century CE. By collecting and genotyping 18 Bene Israel individuals, we can classify the genetic profile of the people of Bene Israel. We used 486 individuals from 41 other Jewish, Indian, and Pakistani populations, as well as additional individuals from around the world, to conduct genome-wide analyses using FST, principal component analysis, ADMIXTURE, identity-by-descent sharing, admixture linkage disequilibrium decay, haplotype sharing, and allele sharing autocorrelation decay. Individuals from Bene Israel have genetics that is similar to those of local Indian groups, but they are a distinct and distinct group in India. They are the only Indian and Pakistani communities we studied that have significant genetic ancestry with other Jewish groups. When all of the findings are combined, Bene Israel appears to be an admixed population of Jewish and Indian origins, with significant genetic contributions from both of these ancestral groups. The admixture happened about 19–33 generations ago, in the last millennium. It was sex-biased, with more male Jewish and local female participation. It included Middle-Eastern Jews and was sex-biased. It was accompanied by a population bottleneck and high endogamy, which may lead to a rise in recessive disease prevalence in this population. This research demonstrates how genetic analysis can help us learn more about human history when other disciplines lack the necessary data.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4806850/