Endogamy and the Melungeons

Alice C. Linsley

The term "Melungeon" refers to an Appalachian ethnic group with distinct physical, cultural, historical and genetic characteristics. These characteristics served to set Melungeons apart from other peoples dwelling in southeastern North America from the 1500's onward.

Today most Melungeons live in Kentucky. They practiced cousin marriage over an extended period of time (in some cases 400 years). Their marriage pattern is consistent with that of Sephardic Jews, Moors and Arabians. This makes sense since they are descendants of Semitic peoples, mostly Sephardic Jews and Moors banished from Spain. Many came to the United States via France and England. Having intermarried with Native Americans and converted mainly to the Primitive Baptist religion (some with serpent veneration), the Melugeons represent an isolated and mostly forgotten people. When remembered it is usually to crack a joke about them as backward people due to in-breeding (endogamy).

In his book The Genetic History of the Jewish People Harry Ostrer notes that the Sephardic Jews who were the focus of harsh treatment in Spain during the Inquisition, were more prone to marry outside their bloodlines whereas the Ashkenazim are relatively homogeneous despite the fact that they are spread throughout Europe and immigrated to the Americas. He reports that DNA studies confirm that there is a distinctive Jewish "race" but fails to mention that the Kohen Modal Haplotype is also found among Arabs of Horite blood.

Harry Ostrer, director of the human genetics program at the New York University School of Medicine, led one of the studies that compared the genetic makeup of Jewish populations from around the world with African populations. Ostrer found that modern Jewish populations have African ancestry. This confirms the Genesis 10 information that indicates Abraham's ancestors were Nilotes and Proto-Saharans.


Here is a review of Harry Ostrer's Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People.
(Oxford University Press, 288 Pages, $24.95)

In his new book, “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People,” Harry Ostrer, a medical geneticist and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, claims that Jews are different, and the differences are not just skin deep. Jews exhibit, he writes, a distinctive genetic signature. Considering that the Nazis tried to exterminate Jews based on their supposed racial distinctiveness, such a conclusion might be a cause for concern. But Ostrer sees it as central to Jewish identity.

“Who is a Jew?” has been a poignant question for Jews throughout our history. It evokes a complex tapestry of Jewish identity made up of different strains of religious beliefs, cultural practices and blood ties to ancient Palestine and modern Israel. But the question, with its echoes of genetic determinism, also has a dark side.

Geneticists have long been aware that certain diseases, from breast cancer to Tay-Sachs, disproportionately affect Jews. Ostrer, who is also director of genetic and genomic testing at Montefiore Medical Center, goes further, maintaining that Jews are a homogeneous group with all the scientific trappings of what we used to call a “race.”

Read it all here.


Related reading:  Eastern Kentucky Language; The Bible and the Question of Race; Hebrew, Israelite or Jew?; Sub-Saharan DNA of Modern Jews; DNA Studies Confirm Mixed Ancestry of Jews; Abraham: Descendant of Both Shem and Ham

Ethiopian DNA Study Ignores Significant Data

Ethiopians are described by representatives of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, one of the organizations involved in the study, as one of the most genetically diverse cultures in the world. By studying their DNA, the researchers detected mixing from some Ethiopians and non-Africans dating back to approximately 3,000 years ago.

“The origin and date of this genomic admixture, along with previous linguistic studies, is consistent with the legend of the Queen of Sheba, who according to the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast book had a child with King Solomon from Israel and is mentioned in both the Bible and the Qur’an,” the Institute said in a press release.

As part of their work, which is detailed in the American Journal of Human Genetics, the scientists studied the DNA of more than 200 subjects from 10 Ethiopian and two neighboring African populations, Helen Briggs of BBC News reported on Thursday. Approximately one million genetic letters in each genome were analyzed in what is being called the largest Ethiopian-centered genetic investigation of its kind.

Read it all here.

I reserve skepticism about this study.  The oldest common ancestor of the subjects studied would have to date to at least 6000 years ago, about 3000 years before Solomon.

Further, we have no proof that the Queen of Sheba came from Ethiopia. She may have come from the kingdom of Sheba in Arabia.

Before the time of Solomon it is likely that Sheba controlled both sides of the mouth of the Red Sea. This is suggested by the archaeological and linguistic evidence connecting Sheba in Arabia to East African settlements.

The connection between Sheba and Jerusalem is evident in the time of Abraham. Melchizedek was the priest-king of Jerusalem and the son of Sheba. It appears that Solomon's sexual liaison with a royal daughter of the House of Sheba was intended to ease tensions after David had Sheba killed at Abel beth Maachah and to add the clout of the House of Sheba to Solomon's dynastic claims.


Related reading: Biblical Sheba and East African Settlements Linked; 7000 BC Horse Burial Linked to Sheba; Jebusites: Extant Biblical Tribe; Lamech Segment Analysis

About Race, Human Populations, and the Purpose of Mankind

Alice C. Linsley


Part 7: Answers to Questions about Race and Population
This continues the series "Answers to Hign Schoolers' Questions About Genesis."

Part 1: About God
Part 2: About Adam and Eve
Part 3: About the Serpent
Part 4: About the Flood
Part 5: About the Earth
Part 6: High Schoolers Wonder "Why Abraham?"



Q:  How did the different races come about?

A:  The modern conception of race is not biblical. This explains why the term "race" does not appear in the Bible. All humans share common ancestry and our point of origin is Africa millions of years ago.

Instead of race, the Bible speaks of ethnicities. In fact it mentions many ancient populations and cultures.

In Genesis 25, we find the words goyim and leumim (peoples) to describe two peoples who descend from Jacob by Rebekah. 

In the New Testament, the Greek word ethnos is used for peoples or nations. The Hebrew goyim is used to distinguish non-Jews from Jews. Both goyim and ethnos refer to peoples or nations, not to races.

The term "race" is misleading. Today molecular genetics classifies populations by "haplogroups" and people who look very different can be in the same haplogroup.

Haplogroups characterize the early migrations of human populations and can be used to connect ancestry with a geographical region or regions. A haplogroup identifies the descendants of a single individual who first showed a particular single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP. An SNP is a point on the DNA where a single base changes. This SNP change is passed through generations of the family, clan or caste, and can be used to genetically define populations. Individuals with the same genetic SNP mutation or "marker" can be linked back to the population where the marker first made an appearance. 

Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups have different haplogroup designations. The Y-chromosome traces paternal ancestry and the mt-DNA traces maternal ancestry.

Genesis does not tell us about all the haplogroups. It tells us about the peoples in Y-DNA haplogroup A, the lineage of all human males. 

It also tells us about the dispersion of the Y-DNA R1 populations out of Africa, shown on this map.

The dark red spot in central Africa is Noah's homeland, the region of Bor-No.

Mitochondrial Eve

"Mitochondrial Eve" lived about 200,000 years ago. She is the most recent female common ancestor. Found in the energy-producing centers of cells, mitochondrial DNA is passed down the maternal line, and can be traced back to one woman. Both males and females inherit the Mt-DNA from their mothers, but only females pass it on to their children. The people of Genesis are grouped according to their clan mothers: J1, N, X and L1, L2 and L3. 

In these haplogroups we find every "racial" feature: black, white, yellow, and red skin tones; brown, blue, and green eyes; woolly, wavy, and straight hair; facial hair and no facial hair; slanted almond-shaped eyes, round eyes, heavy lids; high foreheads and low foreheads, thick lips and thin lips, prominent noses and flat noses, and every head shape.

The fact that the lines of Ham and Shem cannot be separated linguistically or genetically underscores that their lines intermarried. It also testifies to the biblical assertion of Genesis 11:1 that all the peoples listed in the Table of Nations were one people with common ancestry. The lines of Ham and Shem intermarried as demonstrated by analysis of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of Abraham's ancestors.

Q:  If Adam and Eve's children married each other, isn't that the sin of incest?

A:  Incest is universally defined as sexual relations between parent and child, not between siblings. In the culture of Abraham's Horite Hebew people, the preferred marriage arrangement for the first wife was a half-sister. Sarah was Abraham's first wife and his half-sister. Jochebed was Amram's half-sister and his first wife. However, sex between parent and child was taboo and forbidden. Such perversion was regarded as so despicable that it was used to slander Lot's Ammonite and Moabite descendants (Gen. 19: 30-38).



Q:  How did the whole earth's population come from just Adam and Eve?

A:  The Bible does not say that all human populations came from Adam and Eve. It does state that all who live today are of "one blood." 

It also is not possible to say that the whole earth's population came from Noah's descendants after the flood. Noah lived about 3490-2800 BC when the Sahara experienced a wet period (the African Aqualithic). He lived at the same time as the Horite Hebrew shrine city of Nekhen.



Q:  Did other families exist on earth at the same time that Adam and Eve lived?

A: In the Bible, Adam and Eve are present different ways. Adam is posed as the archetypal first father and Adam and Eve as the original couple. This is an archetype, not to be taken as historical.

However, Adam and Eve are also presented as historical in the Bible. They are the parents of Cain and Seth who married the daughters of Enoch, a contemporary of Adam. The data of Genesis suggests that Adam and Enoch are the ancestors of the rulers listed in Genesis 4, 5 and 11. This may explain why the names Adam and Enoch are parallel in Psalm 8:4:

What is man (Enoch) that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man (ben adam) that you care for him?

The Apostle Paul speaks of Adam analogically. He draws and analogy between Adam by whom sin and death entered and Jesus Christ, the Second Adam, who overturns the curse, defeats death and restores paradise.



Q:  Did all the peoples of the earth come from Noah's three sons after the flood?

A:  No. Humans were already dispersed into Europe and Asia by 100,000 years ago, long before Noah's time. They were in the New World by 11,000 years ago.

Q:  How many generations are from Adam and Eve to Abraham?

A:  That is impossible to answer this because we cannot know when Adam and Eve existed. We also cannot say exactly how many generations from Cain to Abraham since the Genesis Kings lists do not correspond to generations, but to the reign and succession of the Horite Hebrew rulers.

Between 100,000 and 500 BC the average man lived less than 40 years and the average woman lived less than 38 years. These life spans would have been longer for rulers due to their superior diets and access to medical resources. So it is conceivable that the rulers named in Genesis lived relatively long lives, with the exception of those who died by assassination or in battle. We might estimate their life spans to be between 60 and 80 years (average would be 70). This would mean that a dynastic line of a depth of 10 rulers would represent between 300 and 400 years. 

One factor that must be considered is whether a ruler is the firstborn of the sister-bride or the cousin/niece bride. The sister-bride was the first wife and the wife of the ruler's youth. The cousin/niece bride was the wife that the heir married before ascending the throne. For the sister-wife's firstborn son, the father's age would be between 18 and 25 (median would be 21). So we can estimate that generally the firstborn son of the sister-wife would have been born when his father was about 21. For the cousin/niece bride's firstborn son the father's age would be between 45 and 60 (median would be 52). So we can estimate that the cousin-bride produced an heir or priest (for her father, not her husband) when her husband was about age 52.

We do not know how long the rulers of Genesis lived. Noah is said to have lived 950 years. Methuselah lived 969 years. Methuselah's son, Lamech the Younger, lived 777 years. Abraham's father, Terah, lived longer than Jacob by 58 years. The numbers assigned to the Genesis rulers are symbolic and some are linked to astronomical observations. Clearly, symbolic numbers cannot be used to determine actual life spans. 

Q:  Why were the men in Genesis so old?

A. The life spans assigned to the kings of Genesis are symbolic. Ancient clay tablets have been discovered that recount the greatness ofassign as much as a thousand years to some Sumerian and Akkadian rulers. However, all these lived normal live spans for rulers of the time. The average life span for rulers was between 73 and 75 years.

Paleontology indicates that the average lifespan of commoners was shorter. The life span of peoples living in the Nile Valley, Turkey and Mesopotamia during the time of the Genesis rulers was about 35 years for males and 30 years for females. This data corresponds to peoples in the Late Paleolithic (BC 30,000 to 9,000) when males lived about 34 years and females about 30 years. During the Mesolithic (BC 9,000 to 7,000) males lived about 33 years and females about 31 years. During the Early Neolithic (BC 7,000 to 5,000) males lived about 34 years and females about 30 years.

St. Jerome notes: "I am reviewing carefully the places in Scripture where I might find old age mentioned for the first time. Adam lived for 930 years, yet he is not called an old man. Methuselah's life was 969 years, and he is not called an old man. I am coming down all the way to the flood, and after the flood for almost three thousand years, and I find no one who has been called old. Abraham is the first, and certainly he was much younger than Methuselah." (Homilies on the Psalms 21)

Jerome observes that Abraham is the first man described as "old" in Genesis. Those who lived before him are not called old because the numbers assigned to them are symbolic. 



Q:  Why did God create Mankind?

A: The answer to this question varies from religion to religion. Islam teaches that Mankind was created to live in submission to Allah and for the purpose of worshipping Allah. Qur'an 51:56 states, "I have created the jinn and humankind only for My worship."

The Jinn are divided into followers of Islam and followers of the abased Iblis (a sort of fallen angel). The Jinn were commanded to bow down before Adam, but Iblis refused. God said, "What prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you?" He replied, "I am better than him. You created me from fire and You created him from clay." God said, "Descend from heaven. It is not for you to be arrogant in it. So get out! You are one of the abased." Surah 7 (al-A`raf), 11-13.

In Judaism, Man exists at God's pleasure and has liberty to obey or not to obey God's commands. The rabbis say that "Adam was created from the dust of the place where the sanctuary was to rise for the atonement of all human sin," and this means that sin should not be a permanent or inherent part of man's nature. 

Genesis 1 claims that humans are a special creation, fashioned in the image of the God. Christians believe that Mankind was created to enjoy perfect fellowship with God in Three Persons (the Trinity), in whose image and likeness we were made. When we seek God, we are renewed in our intended nature through Jesus Christ, and grow more like Him by the in-dwelling Holy Spirit. 


Related reading: Three Portraits of Adam; The Historicity of Noah's Flood; The Marriage and Ascendancy Pattern of Abraham's People; Thoughts on Calculating the Dates of the Patriarchs; Lifespans of Archaic Peoples: John Calvin on God's Motive in Creation

Blood and Crosses

Alice C. Linsley


The association of blood and crosses can be traced to prehistoric times. The first man was formed from the red earth (Gen. 3). This is the etiology of the word Adam, or ha-dam, meaning the blood. The Hebrew word for red/ruddy is edom. The word edom and the Hausa odum and the Hebrew adam originally referenced the red clay that washed down from the Ethiopian highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic cambisols have a strong red brown color.

Red and black Nubians
Detail from a Champollion drawing

The blood-colored substance that is found naturally around the globe is red ochre or hematite (from the Greek word for blood, haema). When hematite powder is mixed with water is looks like blood.

The oldest site of red ochre mining is in the Lebombo Mountains of southern Africa. This ore was ground to powder and used to paint sacred objects and to bury the dead. The red ochre represented blood and the power of blood as a symbol of life. It implies an impulse to immortality among archaic populations of Africa.

In the cosmology of the Nubian's southern ancestors blood was associated with crosses. This is evidenced on the Blombos Cave artifact found in southern Africa. It is a red stone etched with X around the edges (see right).

This is the oldest known symbolic artifact and the plaque was likely taken from mines that were in operation about 80,000 years ago in the Lebombo Mountains. This was the site of major mining operations, as Stan Gooch explains:

One of the largest sites evidenced the removal of a million kilos of ore. At another site half a million stone-digging tools were found, all showing considerable wear. All of the sites in fact produced thousands of tools and involved the removal of large quantities of ore; and while some were open quarries, others had true mining tunnels.

In Israel red ochre burial has been found at the Qafzeh Cave dating to 90,000-100,000 years.

In the Lebombo Mountains H.B.S. Cooke and his associates discovered a human burial dating between 46,000 and 80,000 years old. The burial is that of a small boy buried with a seashell pendant and covered in red ochre.

The use of red ochre in burial was widespread in prehistoric times. A man buried 45,000 years ago at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France, was packed in red ochre. “The Red Lady of Paviland” in Wales was buried in red ochre about 20,000 years ago. Her skeletal remains and burial artifacts are encrusted with the red ore.

Two flexed burials were found in Mehrgarh, Pakistan with a covering of red ochre on the bodies. These date from about 5000 BC. The ‘Fox Lady’ of Doini Vestonice, Czechoslovakia, who was buried 23,000 years ago, was covered in red ochre.

A 20,000 year old burial site in Bavaria reveals a thirty-year-old man entirely surrounded by a pile of mammoth tusks and submerged in red ochre powder.

The idea that blood is the substance of life seems obvious to us moderns who have learned some human anatomy and physiology. What is less obvious is the basis of blood for rebirth or life after death, a concept assigned to the realm of theology and therefore dismissed by most people.

From earliest times man observed that death occurred when an animal or human bled out. Blood was recognized as the substance of life.

Among Abraham's ancestors the resurrection of the ruler meant the salvation of the people. He was expected to lead them from life to the greater life, passing decisively through death. In pre-dynastic times and in the earliest dynasties people were believed to follow their deified ruler from this world to the next. Their immortality depended on the bodily resurrection of their king.

Proto-Saharan nobles were buried with red ochre at Nekhen in Sudan (3500 BC). Nekhen was a Horite shrine city dedicated to Horus whose totem was the falcon or hawk. Early dynastic Egypt adopted the Horite religion and never practiced cremation, as in the religions that seek to escape physical existence (samsara). Abraham and his Horite ancestors believed in the resurrection of the body and awaited a deified king who would rise from the grave and deliver his people from death.

Abraham's ancestors

Cultural anthropology and genetic studies shed light on the etiology of the association of blood and rebirth or resurrection. The anthropological, linguistic and genetic evidence indicates that Abraham's ancestors were Proto-Saharan and Nilotic peoples, probably Nubians. The Nubians have their own genetic marker which indicates migration from the sub-Sahara to the Nile and there has been virtually no immigration into the lower Nubia area from Asia according to the Y chromosome study done by Lucotte.

Among the Nubians the sun was a central symbol of life and was often shown as a red orb. This lent the additional association with the red eye of Horus. In this ancient Nubian relief we see baboons facing the sun. Baboons chatter at the rising sun. (In other versions two lions or two leopards face away from the sun. They are sentinels or guards.) The ankh or cross symbol is found over the heads of the baboons.

Between the baboons is the dung beetle or scarab. Among Abraham's Horite caste the heart was the single organ that was not extracted from the mummified body. All the other organs were removed and stored in canopic jars. The heart was the essential organ when it came to resurrection of the body, as it would be weighed in the afterlife. The body of the pure-heart would rise from the dead, as the sun rises in the morning. This is the significance of the dung beetle scarab placed over the mummy's heart.

Some claim that this image represents Duat which they interpret as the cycle of reincarnation or the transmigration of souls. However, the Duat of ancient Egypt is not the same as Samsara. It is about the mirror image of the cosmos patterned on the Sun's rising and setting. The long expected ruler rises from death with the sun on the third day.

Oh Horus, this hour of the morning, of this third day is come, when thou surely passeth on to heaven, together with the stars, the imperishable stars. (Pyramid Texts Utterance 667.1941b)

The body of the dead ruler was carried in procession to the tomb or pyramid, his retinue following behind. The procession to the tomb was the earthly journey that would be continued beyond the grave at the deified ruler's resurrection. This stands behind Paul’s description of Jesus Christ leading captives from the grave to the throne of heaven. This is why it says: When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men. (Ephesians 4:8)

In the image above, the eyes of Horus are seen to the right and left of the rising sun. This establishes the theological context as Horite. Abraham's ancestors were devotees of Horus, the seed or son of Ra. He was born of Hathor-Meri, a virgin queen who conceived by the overshadowing of the sun. Her totem was a cow and she is shown at Nile shrines holding her infant in a manger. Here we have elements of the Proto-Gospel and evidence that Messianic expectation is based on the Edenic Promise (Gen. 3:15) made to Abraham's Proto-Saharan and Nilotic ancestors.


Related reading: Of Dung Beetles and Red Herrings; Three Specimens to Ponder, Water and Blood; Resurrection as Mirrored Reality; The Scarlet Cord Woven Through the Bible; The Horite Ancestry of Jesus Christ; The Solar Imagery of the Proto-Gospel; Sheol and the Second Death; Christianity Lacks Originality; Life is in the Blood