There are no races

At his Informed Comment website, Professor Juan Cole offers this startling insight (my emphasis):

Brian Sykes found on looking at the mitochondrial DNA of Europeans that all the women had only one of 7 haplotypes or patterns in the chromosomes, and that the same 7 appeared in all linguistic and national groups, including e.g. the Basque, though the proportions varied. Germans are no different in this regard from the Irish or from Bulgarians. The vast majority of Ashkenazi Jewish women have one of the same 7 haplotypes rather than Palestinian ones. I.e. they are directly descended from Gentile great great grandmothers who married Jewish men. One only has to go back ten or twelve thousand years at most, probably, to find a common ancestor for all the Mediterranean populations. There are no races and all human beings are all mixed up in regard to ancestry. A recent excavation at Rome from the time of Augustus found a Chinese worker. How he got to the Roman Empire would make a great tale. But if he married a Roman woman and had children, likely all Italians now have some descent from him, and so are cousins of all the Chinese.