Genetics lab now able to compare your modern DNA with ancient peoples

Dr. Eran Elhaik, a brilliant Israeli-American geneticist, who has radically changed our understanding of where people’s originated and Dr. Don Yates, Georgia-born geneticist, who pioneered serious genetic analysis of the Cherokees, have teamed up together to found Primeval DNA, Inc. The commercial lab’s new technology will be able to quickly compare your DNA to that of many ancient peoples. Their video below explains the process.

Eran Elhaik was born in Israel, but eventually moved to the United States, where he graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Houston. He is currently a professor at Sheffield University in the UK. There are many astonishing projects in Dr. Elhaik’s professional resume’, but the one, which has given him the most media coverage . . . and controversy . . . is the discovery that traced at least some of the ancestry of Ashkanazi Jews to the Southern Caucasian Mountains, a region formerly known as the Khazar Kingdom. Elhaik’s theory is that the Khazarian connection came from 8th century converts to Judaism. However, this is also the region to which many historians believed the “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel” migrated after being released from bondage in Babylonia.

Donald Yates and his wife, Teresa, formed DNA Consultants, Inc in 2003. The company is now located in Longmont, Colorado. Because Yates had known Cherokee and Creek ancestors . . . and there were a lot more potential customers, who thought, but could not prove that they were descended from a Cherokee Princess . . . the lab first focused on “The Cherokee DNA Project.” Yates was astonished with the number of “Cherokee” DNA samples that came back with substantial Semitic DNA markers. Many self-described or even federally-recognized Cherokees had twice as much Semitic, Middle Eastern and North African DNA than the average practicing American Jew. However, as his number of samples increased, he also found ancestry within many other indigenous American peoples.

The problem is that the Cherokees grew from a little known tribe in Quebec to a politically powerful tribe via assimilation . . . both voluntary and via the Native American slave trade. Perhaps the tribe labeled Cheraquet, east of Lake Erie, on mid-17th century French and Dutch maps, was a somewhat ethnically pure tribe, probably Algonquian. However, Yates now feels that it will be impossible to obtain a single Cherokee DNA marker because so many other ethnic groups entered their alliance in the late 1600s and early 1700s. The Jewish DNA comes from the hundreds, if not thousands of Semitic Jewish miners, who settled in the southern Appalachians in the late 1500s and 1600s, plus the many “white” Indian traders in the 1700s, who were actually of Jewish ancestry. For example, the famous Indian trader and historian, James Adair, probably came from an Irish or Scottish Jewish family. He married a Chickasaw woman in Northwest Georgia, whose father was a Jewish trader.

A similar situation occurred among the leadership of the Creek tribe in the late 1600s and 1700s. Emperor Brim, original principal chief of the Creek Confederacy was really named Bemarin. Bemarin is a French Sephardic Jewish family name.

The mother of Principal Chiefs Alexander McGillivray and grandmother of Principal Chief William Weatherford was Sehoy Marchand. Her father was Jean Baptiste Marchand. Marchand was at least officially a Roman Catholic, but his family name was French Sephardic Jewish.

The mother of the famous Creek mikko, William McIntosh, was Senoia. Senoia was named after the Jewish angel, Senoy, whose name was often carved on baby cradles. Senoia’s father was a Jewish trader.

In a telephone conversation the other day, I told Dr. Yates that what we desperately need are DNA markers for the Pre-Columbian indigenous peoples of the Southeastern United States that are location specific. You cannot just label all of them by the names of federally-recognized tribes. The modern Creek Confederacy, which was created in 1717, eventually grew to include the remnants of at least 40 provinces, many of which had distinctly different ethnic backgrounds.

• The aboriginal DNA of the Uchee was a mixture of Sami, Finnish, pre-Celtic Irish/Scottish and Basque.  They speak many words that were spoken in Bronze Age Sweden and Ireland. Over the past 2000+ years, they have also intermarried with American Indian tribes.
• The Muskogee Creeks, Cherokee, Shawnee and Algonquians use the same suffix for “people or tribe” that is used by modern speakers of Gaelic in Ireland and Scotland.  However, the Muskogees have also adopted many Itza Maya and Panoan words from the Eastern Creeks.
• Eastern Creeks were a mixture of Panoan (Peru), Itza Maya, Cho’i Maya, Zoque and Polynesian
• The Towns County (GA) Indians are a mixture Southern Arawak, Panoan and Itza Maya.
• Upper Creeks seem to be a mixture of Tolteca, Itza Maya, Kansa (Siouan) and Chickasaw.
• Muskogee Creeks often carry DNA markers from all over Mexico, but also ancient Irish DNA.

It’s a genetic jungle out there, folks!