Hmm, Ashkenazi Jews and Oriental Jews (defined by the article mostly as Turkish and Greek Jews, I believe) seem to have slightly different haplotype frequencies from the other three groups, which have extremely high levels of haplotypes VII and VIII. Oriental Jews have significantly higher frequency of haplotype VIII than haplotype VII. Ashkenazi Jews have considerably higher frequencies of haplotypes XI and XV than the other groups, though VII and VIII are still somewhat more common among Ashkenazim. Haplotype XI is apparently most common in Central Europe (especially Hungary), and Haplotype XV is most common in Western Europe, reaching a maximum frequency among Basques. Interesting. The researchers only tested one polymorphism, though.

Lucotte's earlier survey of the p49/Taq I polymorphism in Egyptians found that Haplotype XI was the second most frequent haplotype overall and was more common in southern Egypt than in northern Egypt. Given his statement in this article that Haplotype XI "predominates" in Central Europe, I'm wondering if we don't have another demonstration of the problem with using a single polymorphism to describe relationships between populations. The first and more egregious example was that terrible rescinded article purporting to show strong linkage between Greeks and sub-Saharan Africans that has now found its way to anti-Greek propaganda websites

>> defined by the article mostly as Turkish and Greek Jews, I believe

The Greek Jews are not Oriental Jews but Sephardim. There are very few of them.

>> I'm wondering if we don't have another demonstration of the problem with using a single polymorphism to describe relationships between populations

Y chromosome haplogroups are not subject to selection, as far as has been determined so far.

I had always thought of Greek Jews as Sephardim as well, but here are the authors' groupings from the article:

“the Jews were divided into the fol-lowing
three Jewish communities: (1) Oriental Jew (19 from Turkey, 10 from Greece, 12 from Iraq, 12 from Iran, and 3 from Syria); (2) Sephardic Jews (147 from Morocco, 43 Spanish Jews from Morocco, 58 from Algeria, 64 from Tunisia, 49 from the Djerba Island, Tunisia, 9 from Libya, and 11 from Egypt); (3) Ashkenazi Jews (127 from Poland, 14 from Romania, 56 from Germany, 30 from the former USSR, and 29 from Hungary).”

Regarding the single polymorphism issue, can you propose a plausible reason for the Haplotype XI-based link between southern Egyptians and central Europeans?

And I recall now that the Arnaiz-Villena article made use of HLA markers subject to selection. My apologies.

Greek, Turkish and Northern Syrian Jews are Sephardic.

They're racially different from North African Sephardim, though, because they absorbed earlier SE European/Near Eastern Jewish elements...the Hellenistic or 'Romagnote' Jews.