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| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋu |
2001.11.20, (The Jerusalem Post, p.4), Prof. Ariella Oppenheim, Hebrew Univ. and Hadassah-Univ. Hospital (Ein QërꞋëm) in The American Journal of Human Genetics – These articles publish additional evidence that [a] the Jewish people descended from a common ancient Israeli patriarch and [b] Sᵊphâ•râd•imꞋ Jews are very closely related genetically to Jews from Kurdistan. Additionally, only slight differences exist between these two groups and Ash•kᵊnazꞋim Jews from Europe.
Surprisingly, the study shows a closer genetic affinity by Jews to the non-Jewish, non-Arab populations in the northern part of the Middle East than to Arabs… and indicate that the Jews are direct descendants of the early Middle Eastern core populations…
…there was practically no genetic intermixing between [Diaspora Jews] and the host populations among which they were scattered during their dispersion – whether in Eastern Europe, Spain, Portugal or North Africa. Of course, intermixing has become rampant more recently in the Diaspora, particularly in North America.
A particularly intriguing case illustrating [the genetic non-intermixing] is that of the Kurdish Jews, said to be the descendants of the Ten Tribes of Israel who were exiled in 723 BCE to the area known today as Kurdistan, located in Northern Iraq, Iran and Eastern Turkey. They continued to live there as a separate entity until their immigration to Israel in the 1950s. The Kurdish Jews of today show a much greater affinity to their fellow Jews elsewhere than to the Kurdish Moslems.
2013 Nature Communications Research: "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. …
Our results… suggest that most Ashkenazi maternal lineages trace their ancestry to prehistoric Europe. Previous researchers proposed a Levantine origin for the three Ashkenazi K founders from several indirect lines of evidence: shared ancestry with non-Ashkenazi Jews, shared recent ancestry with Mediterranean samples, and their absence from amongst non-Jews2, and this suggestion has been widely accepted4. However, our much more detailed analyses show… Overall, it seems that at least 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry is due to the assimilation of mtDNAs indigenous to Europe, most likely through conversion." (Costa, M.D. et al., A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages. Nat. Commun. 4:2543 doi: 10.1038/ncomms3543 (2013)).
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