Blood types of the ancient Hebrews

Share Button

In 1977, a study determined the ABO blood types of 68 skeletons of Jewish residents from 1,600 to 2,000 years ago in and around Jerusalem. 55 of those findings were diagnosable. And more than half of the ABO blood groups were found to be the otherwise rare AB blood group.

Sixty-eight ancient skeletons, unearthed at Jerusalem and En Gedi and, according to the archeological data belonging to Jewish residents of these places from about 1,600 to 2,000 years ago, were ABO-typed by means of the hemagglutination-inhibition test. The blood groups of 13 skeletons were undiagnosable and the remaining 55 showed the following distribution: 30.91% A-group, 14.54% B-group, 50.91% AB-group and 3.64% O-group. According to these findings, the population to which these skeletons belonged must have had a high frequency of genes IA and IB, and a low occurrence of O blood group and its related IO gene.

This of course is a small study and does not represent blood type frequencies of the ancient Hebrews in general. But the high AB frequency is interesting nonetheless.

Seen here: ABO-typing of ancient skeletons from Israel.

Continue here: Which were the blood types of the ancient Hebrews?

Read also: Is there a Basque-Jewish-Rh Negative connection?

You can also join an ongoing discussion on Facebook.

If you have any additional information, you can also leave a comment below or contact us in private.

There is also an interesting ongoing discussion on the Jewish Genealogy Portal on Facebook.

Share Button

26 Comments

  1. Amber Anderton July 15, 2018 Reply
    • Mike DammannAuthor July 19, 2018 Reply
      • Justin November 3, 2021 Reply
        • Jennifer January 18, 2022 Reply
      • Jim Rosenfield November 26, 2021 Reply
    • Dee Dee March 28, 2022 Reply
      • R April 1, 2022 Reply
  2. Anthony August 11, 2018 Reply
    • Tanya Morris September 29, 2018 Reply
    • Zimrat January 21, 2022 Reply
  3. MC September 17, 2018 Reply
    • Mike DammannAuthor September 18, 2018 Reply
      • Megan Wood January 23, 2021 Reply
  4. Cheryll Davis Williams October 17, 2018 Reply
  5. FP October 20, 2018 Reply
    • Mike DammannAuthor October 20, 2018 Reply
      • FP January 1, 2019 Reply
        • Mike DammannAuthor January 1, 2019 Reply
          • FP January 1, 2019 Reply
            • Mike DammannAuthor January 5, 2019 Reply
  6. Annie Stanfield December 31, 2018 Reply
  7. Addrienne Packer September 20, 2020 Reply
  8. Cathy Jones January 21, 2021 Reply
    • Christi D January 7, 2022 Reply
  9. M.A. January 31, 2022 Reply
  10. Sean November 25, 2024 Reply

Add a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.