re: Jordan Peterson is bitching about anti-semitism again

quote:

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Isn't their "ethnicity" basically hundreds of years of inbreeding? That's why they all have that distinctive look, right? I'm really asking this in good faith. I thought Jews slowly migrated and settled in western and central Europe after running away from the Middle East. Wasn't their gene pool extremely limited at one point?

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Pretty much. Jews were always insular historically, placing heavy emphasis on marrying within the community and shunning outsiders. There have also been many many wars lost by Jews as well as countless diasporas, pogroms, and ethnic cleansings, which resulted in demographic/genetic bottlenecks at multiple periods of time. One of those bottlenecks just happened to have occurred only 80 years ago.

So, a population routinely exposed to massacres and diasporas plus an insular culture with a heavy emphasis on marrying within the culture and shunning outsiders, equals a whole lot of in-breeding, and thus, distinct genetic traits that differ noticeably from neighbors not in the same culture. Up until the 1970’s, it was exceptionally rare for a Jewish person to marry a non-Jewish person.