Nature Communications
By Marta D. Costa
& Joana B. Pereira
8 October 2013
The origins of Ashkenazi Jews remain highly controversial. Like Judaism, mitochondrial DNA is passed along the maternal line. Its variation in the Ashkenazim is highly distinctive, with four major and numerous minor founders. However, due to their rarity in the general population, these founders have been difficult to trace to a source. Here we show that all four major founders, ~40% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation, have ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus. Furthermore, most of the remaining minor founders share a similar deep European ancestry. Thus the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Levant, as commonly supposed, nor recruited in the Caucasus, as sometimes suggested, but assimilated within Europe. These results point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities, and provide the foundation for a detailed reconstruction of Ashkenazi genealogical history.
The origins of Ashkenazi Jews—the great majority of living Jews—remain highly contested and enigmatic to this day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. The Ashkenazim are Jews with a recent ancestry in central and Eastern Europe, in contrast to Sephardim (with an ancestry in Iberia, followed by exile after 1492), Mizrahim (who have always resided in the Near East) and North African Jews (comprising both Sephardim and Mizrahim). There is consensus that all Jewish Diaspora groups, including the Ashkenazim, trace their ancestry, at least in part, to the Levant, ~2,000–3,000 years ago 5, 12, 13, 14. There were Diaspora communities throughout Mediterranean Europe and the Near East for several centuries prior to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE (Common Era), and some scholars suggest that their scale implies proselytism and wide-scale conversion, although this view is very controversial 9, 15.
The Ashkenazim are thought to have emerged from dispersals north into the Rhineland of Mediterranean Jews in the early Middle Ages, although there is little evidence before the twelfth century 5, 15. After expulsions from Western Europe between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the communities are thought to have expanded eastwards, especially in Poland, Lithuania and then Russia. The implied scale of this expansion has led some to argue, again very controversially, for mass conversions in the Khazar kingdom, in the North Caucasus region to the north and east of the Black Sea, following the Khazar leadership’s adoption of Judaism between the ninth and tenth centuries CE 8, 9.
continue reading at: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131008/ncomms3543/full/ncomms3543.html
0 comments:
Post a Comment