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Health > Genetics

Surprise: Ashkenazi Jews Are Genetically

European
News By Tia Ghose published October 08, 2013

 

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An Orthodox Jewish man with the traditional peyos, or long sidelocks. (Image credit: <a
href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-80313p1.html?cr=00&pl=edit-00">Kobby Dagan</a> / <a
href="http://www.shutterstock.com/?cr=00&pl=edit-00">Shutterstock.com</a>)

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The origin of the Ashkenazi Jews, who come most recently from Europe,
has largely been shrouded in mystery. But a new study suggests that at
least their maternal lineage may derive largely from Europe.

Though the �nding may seem intuitive, it contradicts the notion that
European Jews mostly descend from people who left Israel and the Middle
East around 2,000 years ago. Instead, a substantial proportion of the
population originates from local Europeans who converted to Judaism, said
study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of
Hudders�eld in England.

Tangled legacy

Little is known about the history of Ashkenazi Jews before they were
expelled from the Mediterranean and settled in what is now Poland around
the 12th century. On average, all Ashkenazi Jews are genetically as closely
related to each other as fourth or �fth cousins, said Dr. Harry Ostrer, a
pathology, pediatrics and genetics professor at the Albert Einstein College
of Medicine in New York and the author of "Legacy: A Genetic History of the
Jewish People" (Oxford University Press, 2012).

But depending on whether the lineage gets traced through maternal or

paternal DNA or through the rest of the genome, researchers got very
di�erent answers for whether Ashkenazi originally came from Europe or
the Near East.

Past research found that 50 percent to 80 percent of DNA from the

Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage,
originated in the Near East, Richards said. That supported a story wherein
Jews came from Israel and largely eschewed intermarriage when they
settled in Europe. [The Holy Land: 7 Amazing Archaeological Finds]

But historical documents tell a slightly di�erent tale. Based on accounts

such as those of Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, by the time of the
destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70, as many as 6 million Jews
were living in the Roman Empire, but outside Israel, mainly in Italy and
Southern Europe. In contrast, only about 500,000 lived in Judea, said
Ostrer, who was not involved in the new study.

"The major Jewish communities were outside Judea," Ostrer told

LiveScience.

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Maternal DNA

Richards and his colleagues analyzed mitochondrial DNA, which is

contained in the cytoplasm of the egg and passed down only from the
mother, from more than 3,500 people throughout the Near East, the
Caucusus and Europe, including Ashkenazi Jews.

The team found that four founders were responsible for 40 percent of
Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA, and that all of these founders originated in
Europe. The majority of the remaining people could be traced to other
European lineages.

All told, more than 80 percent of the maternal lineages of Ashkenazi Jews
could be traced to Europe, with only a few lineages originating in the Near
East.

Virtually none came from the North Caucasus, located along the border
between Europe and Asia between the Black and Caspian seas.

The �nding should thoroughly debunk one of the most questionable, but
still tenacious, hypotheses: that most Ashkenazi Jews can trace their roots
to the mysterious Khazar Kingdom that �ourished during the ninth century
in the region between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire,
Richards and Ostrer said.

The genetics suggest many of the founding Ashkenazi women were actually
converts from local European populations.

"The simplest explanation was that it was mainly women who converted
and they married with men who'd come from the Near East," Richards told
LiveScience.

Another possibility is that Jews actively converted both men and women
among local populations at this time, although researchers would need
more detailed study of paternal lineages to test that hypothesis, Richards
said.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow LiveScience @livescience,

Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

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Tia Ghose
Managing Editor

Tia is the managing editor and was previously a senior writer for Live
Science. Her READ
MOST work has appeared in Scienti�c American, Wired.com and
other outlets. She holds a master's degree in bioengineering from the
University of Washington, a graduate certi�cate in science writing from
UC Santa Cruz and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from
the University of Texas at Austin. Tia was part of a team at the
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