Michael Hammer's study, 2000
Rachel Fleaux. "Chercher ses racines par l'ADN: En quЙte d'identite." Sciences et Avenir No. 650 (April 2001). Excerpts:
"La diaspora juive est l'autre communautИ directement intИressИe par les technologies ADN. Family Tree DNA en a fait son point fort. Il est vrai que cette compagnie texane, qui se flatte d'" offrir les tests du chromosome Y les plus prИcis de toute l'industrie ", est associИe au gИnИticien Mike Hammer de l'universitИ d'Arizona, dont c'est prИcisИment la spИcialitИ. Le chercheur a ainsi publiИ il y a quatre ans, dans la revue Nature, une Иtude portant sur les Cohanim ou Cohen, ces grands prЙtres juifs qui se transmettent leur titre de pХre en fils depuis 3300 ans, selon la tradition biblique. Analysant le chromosome Y des derniers Cohanim, Mike Hammer a montrИ que l'on pouvait bel et bien remonter leur lignИe paternelle jusqu'Ю un ancЙtre mБle, peut-Йtre cet Aaron dИcrit dans la Bible comme le premier des grands prЙtres. Finalement, tant chez les SИfarades que chez les AshkИnazes, les Cohen portent la mЙme signature chromosomique, trХs distincte des autres. Le gИnИticien d'Arizona a Иgalement ИlucidИ le mystХre des Khazars (lire p. 123), dИmontant la thИorie selon laquelle cette tribu d'Europe centrale pourrait Йtre Ю l'origine des AshkИnazes. Sourd aux critiques d'une fraction de la communautИ juive, qui redoute un fichage gИnИtique, Mike Hammer a lancИ en collaboration avec le Dr Harry Ostrer, de l'Ecole de mИdecine de l'universitИ de New York, le projet " Jewish Genetic Origins ". Son ambition est de suivre la diaspora Ю la trace, de permettre Ю chacun de ses membres de retisser, depuis le XVIIIe siХcle au moins, l'histoire et l'origine d'une famille ИclatИe. Huit cents hommes et femmes ont dИjЮ fait don de leur ADN accompagnИ de l'arbre dИtaillИ de leur famille (2)."
Nadine Epstein. "Family Matters: Funny, We Don't Look Jewish." Hadassah Magazine 82:5 (January 2001). Excerpts:
"...As the fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of a woman who looks more Nordic than Jewish, I always wondered if I was really Semitic. My siblings and I didn't look much like most other Jews - Ashkenazic or Sefardic... As a child, I blamed our looks on Cossack rapes. When I read Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe, I bought his theory that Ashkenazim were descended from the Khazars, a Caucasian people who had converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages. The search for genetic knowledge strikes a deep chord among Jews. Last year, through my local genealogy society, I met Dr. Harry Ostrer, head of the Human Genetics Program at the New York University School of Medicine... The study of evolutionary and genetic history through DNA analysis is transforming what we know about ourselves... In 1997, Karl Skorecki in Haifa, Michael Hammer in Tucson and several London researchers surprised everyone by finding evidence of the Jewish priestly line of males, the Kohanim. Half of Ashkenazic men and slightly more than half of Sefardic men who claimed to be Kohanim were found to have a distinctive set of genetic markers on their Y chromosome, making it highly possible that they are descendants of a single male or group of related males who lived between 1180 and 650 B.C.E., about the time of Moses and Aaron. The Kohen marker is but a fragment of the information gleaned from DNA analysis... A study published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science looked at the Y chromosomes of 1,371 males from seven Jewish population groups and came up with a profile of Jewish genes. They found 13 major Y-chromosome patterns or signatures, called haplotypes. 'The haplotypes of all but Ethiopian Jews shared a similar pattern,' says Ostrer, a member of the study team led by Hammer and Batsheva Bonne-Tamir of Tel-Aviv University. 'This means we are not descended from one person or 12 tribes but 13 founder males.' The same 13 haplotypes, by the way, are common among Middle Eastern Arabs including Palestinians and Syrians. They also show up in Greeks and other ancient Mediterranean lines, who may date from the time before Jews emerged as a people... 'We are definitely Jews,' says Ostrer. 'We share Jewish haplotype patterns.' Ostrer estimates the European admixture over 80 generations is an extremely low 0.5 percent. The study also found that male Jews of Russian and Polish ancestry do not have a chromosome profile similar to Russian and Polish non-Jews. Haplotypes have also helped the identity seekers to retrace the path of the wandering Ashkenazic Jew. We who hail from East Europe most likely migrated there from Alsace and Rhineland, says Ostrer, as confirmed by Yiddish, a form of low German. Based on his study of Roman Jews, Ostrer concludes that Ashkenazim lived in Italy for a thousand years before they migrated into Alsace and Rhineland. 'There's no genetic difference between Ashkenazic and Roman Jews, who say they have lived in Italy for 2,000 years,' he observes. Ostrer and Hammer are now conducting the largest study of Jewish genetics so far, trying to determine how we are all related, and tracing the migrations that formed communities during the 2,000 years of diaspora... 'Being Jewish is a spiritual, metaphysical state and DNA is a physical characteristic, like nose size,' said Skorecki in an interview in The Jerusalem Report. 'But we wouldn't dare go around saying we're going to determine who is Jewish by the length of their nose. Similarly we're not going to determine who is Jewish by the sequence of their DNA.'... And so for me, the positives of Y-chromosome analysis far outweigh the possible negatives. We are an ancient group of clans descended from 13 polygamous men, and our genetic history is part of the redefinition of humanity... 'Blonde genes occur in Middle Eastern groups as well,' he [Ostrer] explains. 'There is no evidence that white skin and blue eyes originated in northern Europe. That is a Nordic myth. Semitic people had the whole range.'... Researchers have only begun to study the mitochondria of Jewish women... Mitochondria will likely reveal different data: Women were more likely than men to relocate and convert due to marriage... My father and brother are descendants of the clan known as Haplotype Four, the second largest group of Ashkenazim, and common among Middle Eastern and southern European populations. My son is descended from a clan that is part of Haplotype One, which has a Y-chromosome pattern common in central and western Asian populations... 'These clans were formed a long time ago,' says Ostrer. 'They all ended up in the Middle East and landed in Ur where Abraham lived. He convinced some of them to adopt [the God of Israel] and when they did, they brought their Y chromosomes with them. Their next-door neighbors waited for Allah. They brought their chromosomes with them, too.'"
The assertion of Ostrer that Yiddish comes from Alsace and Rhineland has been debunked by solid research showing that Yiddish derives from Bavaria. Yiddish is clearly a form of High German, too, and not Low German. Epstein's article demonstrates a lack of linguistic knowledge.
Christopher Hitchens. "The Part-Jewish Question: Double the Pleasure or Twice the Pain? Of 'Semi-Semites' and Those Who Fear Them." Forward (January 26, 2001). Excerpts:
"Recent advances in DNA testing have either simplified or complicated the claims of holy books and founding texts. A riveting recent essay in Commentary described the results of a match-up between the genetic database of the Kohanim - those whose Jewish ancestry is supposedly the strongest and best-attested - and that of a "lost tribe" in Namibia that has long claimed Jewish descent. The fit was amazingly close. So it is with other groups in the Asian diaspora, many of whose folk stories had been thought to be merely legendary. It also turns out that there is a close DNA affinity between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs... How long before we can codify Khazar DNA and find out if Koestler was right or if the Ashkenazim have any genetic claim to Gaza? (The learned author of the Commentary article, eventually concluded that enough was enough already, and that better uses could be found for the research money than the infinite theoretical expansion of the prolific seed of Abraham.)"
Hillel Halkin. "Wandering Jews -- and Their Genes." Commentary 110:2 (September 2000): 54-61. Excerpts:
"Finally, published in last June's Proceedings of the National Academy of Science were the results of a study conducted by an international team of scientists led by Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona and Batsheva Bonne-Tamir of Tel Aviv University... Based on genetic samples from 1,371 males... its main conclusions are: 1. With the exception of Ethiopian Jews, all Jewish samples show a high genetic correlation... 3. In descending order after these Middle Easterners, Ashkenazi Jews correlate best with Greeks and Turks; then with Italians; then with Spaniards; then with Germans; then with Austrians; and least of all with Russians... And on the other hand again: whereas the traditional explanation of East European Jewish origins was that most Ashkenazi Jews reached Poland and Russia from... the Rhineland; Rhineland from northern France... this version has come under increasing challenge in recent years on both demographic and linguistic grounds. Most Jews, the challengers maintain, must have arrived in Eastern Europe not from the west and southwest but from the south and east - that is, via northern Italy and the Balkans; Asia Minor and the Greek Byzantine empire; the Volga kingdom of the Khazars...; or a combination of all three. Now comes the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science report, which appears to bear out the newer version of events. Ashkenazi Jews, it informs us, have a more significant admixture of Italian, Greek, and Turkish genes than of Spanish, German, or even Austrian ones. Of course, things are not so simple. Even without questioning the study's highly technical procedures, different interpretations could be put on them. It could be argued, for example, that the resemblance of Jewish to Greek and Italian Y chromosomes is traceable to proselytization in the Mediterranean world during the period of the Roman Empire... What must also be remembered is that Y chromosomes tell us only about males. But we know that in most societies, women are more likely to convert to their husband's religion than vice-versa... If true, this might also explain a number of differences between the Hammer/Bonne-Tamir study and earlier research on the geographical distribution of specific Jewish diseases, blood types, enzymes, and mitochondrial DNA... a predominance of female converts might provide the answer. It might also explain opposed findings on Jews from Yemen, who in earlier tests matched poorly with other Jews. This particular result was understood to support the theory that Yemenite Jewry originated in the widespread conversion of non-Jews under the Himyarite kings of southern Arabia in the first centuries of the Common Era. But now the Hammer/Bonne-Tamir report shows that the Y chromosomes of Yemenite Jews have typically Jewish haplotypes. The contradiction could be resolved by positing that Jewish men... reached Yemen... married local women..."
Multiple letters in response to Hillel Halkin's article were published in Commentary's December 2000 issue.
Michael F. Hammer, Alan J. Redd, Elizabeth T. Wood, M. R. Bonner, Hamdi Jarjanazi, Tanya Karafet, Silvana Santachiara-Benerecetti, Ariella Oppenheim, Mark A. Jobling, Trefor Jenkins, Harry Ostrer, and Batsheva BonnИ-Tamir. "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish Populations Share a Common Pool of Y-chromosome Biallelic Haplotypes.", PNAS 97:12 (June 6, 2000): 6769-6774. Summary:
This study alleges that Jews around the world, both Sephardic and Ashkenazic, are more closely related to one another than to non-Jews tested in the study, and that converts and intermarriages played little role in Jewish population history. But the study does not test peoples who are at all related to the Khazars, so the genetic distance between European Jews and Khazars was left untested, and the focus is on paternal rather than on maternal lines.
According to Mark Jobling, "Jews are the genetic brothers of Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians".
Some revealing comments from the study's geneticists: Dina Kraft's May 9, 2000 article in the Associated Press quotes Hebrew University geneticist Howard Cedar who "said even though Y chromosomes are considered the best tool for tracing genetic heritage, researchers still don't know what the history is behind the variations. As a result, it is difficult to draw conclusions about genetic affinity.." The article also quotes Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, a Tel Aviv University geneticist, who "cautioned that the techniques were new and that until the human genome is mapped, it will be difficult to be certain about the conclusions."
"To say that Jews are somehow homogeneous across the entire diaspora is completely fallacious," says Ken Jacobs of the University of Montreal. "There is so much incredible genetic heterogeneity within the Jewish community -- any Jewish community." Jewish people simply don't exhibit the genetic homogeneity that [Kevin] MacDonald ascribes to them, Jacobs says. According to an Jacobs' views as summarized in an article in the New Times Los Angeles Online (April 20-26, 2000), "Witness For The Persecution" by Tony Ortega: "The only Jewish subgroup that does show some homogeneity -- descendants of the Cohanim, or priestly class -- makes up only about 2 percent of the Jewish population. Even within the Cohanim, and certainly within the rest of the Jewish people, there's a vast amount of genetic variation that simply contradicts MacDonald's most basic assertion that Jewish genetic sameness is a sign that Judaism is an evolutionary group strategy." In H-ANTISEMITISM, Ken Jacobs added: "Hammer's Jewish samples are heavily skewed towards the Kohanim... This is bound to reduce within-population variance in the Jewish sample... I pointed out solely that the data reported for the Jewish samples in the recent PNAS were remarkably similar to those published previously in studies of which Hammer was a co-author, the focus of which was the Kohanim... There is an ahistorical aspect to this work, as well as a serious conflation of genes, ethnicity, and religious belief. For example, as used in Hammer's study, the distinction between 'Syrian' and 'Palestinian' is based on fairly recent geo-political constructs that have little or no bearing on the patterns of gene flow in the region prior to 1000 CE.... In the original Lemba study, the complex of Y-chromosome genes was found in 45% of Kohanim among Ashkenazim, the percentage was 56% of Kohanim among the Sepharad, and 53% among the Buba clan of the Lemba. Among non-Kohanim the average Jewish % for this gene complex is less than 5%. One does not have to understand the lingo to see that there was inbreeding in one part of the dispersed Jewish communities and a certain level of outbreeding in the rest."
John Tooby, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is quoted in an article for Slate's "Culturebox" by Judith Shulevitz as saying: "The notion that Jews are a genetically distinct group doesn't make it on the basis of modern population genetics."
Chris Garifo. "U of A researcher heads breakthrough genetic study." Jewish News of Greater Phoenix 52:37 (May 19, 2000). Excerpts:
"'Our work definitely refutes a lot of that discussion of alternate origins for Jewish populations,' Hammer says. 'It shows that we really are a single ethnic group coming from the Middle East. Even if you look like another European with blue eyes and light skin, your genes are telling that you're from the Middle East.'.... Hammer says one reason he began the research was his curiosity about his own Jewish roots."
Ivan Oransky. "Tracing Mideast Roots Back to Isaac and Ishmael: Study of Y Chromosome Suggests a Common Ancestry for Jews and Arabs." The Forward (May 19, 2000). Excerpts:
"The study also found the degree of intermarriage by the Askenazi Jewish population over the past 2000 years to be remarkably small. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by University of Arizona geneticist Michael Hammer and colleagues from Italy, Israel, England and America, refutes some earlier studies which suggested that modern Jews were mainly descendants of converts -- paticularly the Turkish Khazars -- with high rates of intermarriage.... The director of the human genetics program at the New York University School of Medicine and a co-author of the paper, Harry Ostrer, told The Forward that... the story provides a useful allegory for the roots of Jews and Arabs. 'We're the children of a discrete number of founders who lived in the Middle East, where these Y chromosomes originated and became concentrated.', Dr. Ostrer said.... Dr. [Arno] Motulsky, who was not involved with the study, said that the results suggest that genes from non-Jewish males have not entered the Jewish population to any great extent.... The study could raise important questions about who is a Jew. For example, the results suggest that Ethiopian Jews, thought to be long separated from other Jewish groups, may be more closely related to North African non-Jews than to other Jews. Follow-up studies are already being planned. Dr. Ostrer is hoping to collect genetic information from 1000 Askenazi Jews to study migrational patterns across Europe. Dr. Hammer said he will study the DNA for mitrochondria... This will shed light onto the rate than which women intermarried into Jewish communities, since these genes are strictly passed by the mother."
Hillary Mayell. "Genetic Link Established Between Jews and Arabs." National Geographic News (May 10, 2000).
"Jews and Arabs are 'genetic brothers'." BBC News (May 10, 2000). Excerpts:
"...The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that Jewish men shared a common set of genetic signatures with non-Jews from the Middle East, including Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. These signatures were significantly different from non-Jewish men outside of the Middle East. This means Jews and Arabs have more in common with each other, genetically speaking, than they do with any of the wider communities in which they might live. Dr Mark Jobling of Leicester University, UK, one of the authors of the new study, told the BBC: 'The kind of DNA we have used to analyse this question is the human Y chromosome. This represents only 2% of our genetic material and it is passed down from father to son... The fact that we don't see it [signals of genetic mixture between Jews and non-Jews] suggests that after the Diaspora these populations really have managed to maintain their Jewish heritage."
Nicholas Wade. "Y Chromosome Bears Witness to Story of the Jewish Diaspora." The New York Times (May 9, 2000): F4 (col. 1). Excerpts:
"The analysis provides genetic witness that these communities have, to a remarkable extent, retained their biological identity separate from their host populations, evidence of relatively little intermarriage or conversion into Judaism over the centuries.... The results accord with Jewish history and tradition and refute theories like those holding that Jewish communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, or that they are descended from the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe that adopted Judaism.... But present-day Ethiopian Jews lack some of the other lineages found in Jewish communities, and overall are more like non-Jewish Ethiopians than other Jewish populations, at least in terms of their Y chromosome lineage pattern.... Roman Jews have a pattern quite similar to that of Ashkenazis, the Jewish community of Eastern Europe. Dr. Hammer said the finding accorded with the hypothesis that Roman Jews were the ancestors of the Ashkenazis. Despite the Ashkenazi Jews' long residence in Europe, their Y signature has remained distinct from that of non-Jewish Europeans."
Norton Godoy. "Judeus e arabes: irmaos." IstoE (2000).
R. Highfield. "Jews, Arabs share ancestral link, study says." Calgary Herald (May 9, 2000): A19.
Marilynn Larkin. "Jewish-Arab affinities are gene-deep." The Lancet 355 (2000): 1699.
Maggie Fox. "Middle Eastern Roots: Shared Y Chromosome Illustrates Genetic Map of the Past." Reuters (May 9, 2000).
Joel J. Elias. "The Genetics of Modern Assyrians and their Relationship to Other People of the Middle East." Assyrian Health Network (July 20, 2000). Excerpts:
"Based on earlier studies using classical genetic methods7, Cavalli-Sforza et al. came to the conclusion 'that Jews have maintained considerable genetic similarity among themselves and with people from the Middle East, with whom they have common origins.' Evidence for the latter concept was very convincingly made and extended by an international team of scientists [Hammer et al.] in a very recent research article8, widely reported in the press, in which the genetics of different Middle Eastern populations were studied using a completely different method than the classical methods that form the great majority of papers in the Cavalli-Sforza et al book. The research involved direct DNA analysis of the Y chromosome, which is found only in males and is passed down from father to son. Seven different Jewish groups from communities in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East were compared to various non-Jewish populations from those areas. The results showed, first of all, that 'Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level.' Furthermore, the genetic characteristics of Jews were shown to be distinctly different from (non-Jewish) Europeans, suggesting that very little admixture occurred between Jews and Europeans, even after about 80 generations of Jews in Europe.... In fact, the Palestinians and Syrians were so close to the Jews in genetic characteristics that they 'mapped within the central cluster of Jewish populations.'"
7. Carmelli, D. and Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. The genetic origin of the Jews: A multi-variate approach. Hum. Biol., 51:41-61. 1979.
8. Hammer, M.F. et al. [12 authors]. Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes. Proceedings National Academy Sciences USA...
Miscellaneous studies
Doron M. Behar, Ene Metspalu, Toomas Kivisild, Alessandro Achilli, Yarin Hadid, Shay Tzur, Luisa Pereira, Antonio Amorim, LluМs Quintana-Murci, Kari Majamaa, Corinna Herrnstadt, Neil Howell, Oleg Balanovsky, Ildus Kutuev, Andrey Pshenichnov, David Gurwitz, Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, Antonio Torroni, Richard Villems, and Karl Skorecki. "The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event." Print publication anticipated circa March 2006 in American Journal of Human Genetics
Judy Siegel. "40% Ashkenazim come from matriarchs." Jerusalem Post (January 13, 2006). Excerpts:
"...four Jewish "founding mothers" who lived in Europe 1,000 years ago have been credited with being the ancestors of nearly half of all Ashkenazi Jews... ...40 percent of Ashkenazi Jews currently alive - are descended from these matriarchs, who were among a small group, probably after migrating from the Middle East, according to the Israeli researchers, who also provide evidence of shared maternal ancestry between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi (Sephardi and Oriental) Jews. The studies that led to these findings were performed by Dr. Doron Behar as part of his doctoral thesis, and were done under the supervision of Prof. Karl Skorecki of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. ... Researchers from universities in Italy, Estonia, Portugal, France, the US and Russia contributed to the important study, which was published on-line by the prestigious American Journal of Human Genetics on Thursday and will appear in print in the March. ... The researchers' conclusions are based on detailed comparative analysis of DNA sequence variation in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) region of the human genome. ... Non-Ashkenazi Jews also carry low frequencies of these distinct mtDNA types, thus providing evidence of shared maternal ancestry of Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Jews. This is consistent with previous findings based on studies of the Y-chromosome, pointing to a similar pattern of shared paternal ancestry of global Jewish populations, originating in the Middle East. The researchers concluded that the four founding mtDNA - likely of Middle Eastern origin - underwent a major overall expansion in Europe during the last millennium."
Nicholas Wade. "New Light on Origins of Ashkenazi in Europe." The New York Times (January 14, 2006): A12. Excerpts:
"Until now, it had been widely assumed by geneticists that the Ashkenazi communities of Northern and Central Europe were founded by men who came from the Middle East, perhaps as traders, and by the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism. But the new study, published online this week in The American Journal of Human Genetics, suggests that the men and their wives migrated to Europe together. The researchers, Doron Behar and Karl Skorecki of the Technion and Ramban Medical Center in Haifa, and colleagues elsewhere, report that just four women, who may have lived 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, are the ancestors of 40 percent of Ashkenazis alive today. The Technion team's analysis was based on mitochondrial DNA... inherited only through the female line. ... Looking at other populations, the Technion team found that some people in Egypt, Arabia and the Levant also carried the set of mutations that defines one of the four women. They argue that all four probably lived originally in the Middle East. ... David Goldstein, now of Duke University, reported in 2002 that the mitochondrial DNA of women in Jewish communities around the world did not seem to be Middle Eastern, and indeed each community had its own genetic pattern. But in some cases the mitochondrial DNA was closely related to that of the host community. Dr. Goldstein and his colleagues suggested that the genesis of each Jewish community, including the Ashkenazis, was that Jewish men had arrived from the Middle East, taken wives from the host population and converted them to Judaism, after which there was no further intermarriage with non-Jews. The Technion team suggests a different origin for the Ashkenazi community: if the women too are Middle Eastern in origin, they would presumably have accompanied their husbands. ... Dr. Hammer said the new study "moves us forward in trying to understand Jewish population history." His own recent research, he said, suggests that the Ashkenazi population expanded through a series of bottlenecks - events that squeeze a population down to small numbers... But Dr. Goldstein said the new report did not alter his previous conclusion. The mitochondrial DNA's of a small, isolated population tend to change rapidly as some lineages fall extinct and others become more common, a process known as genetic drift. In his view, the Technion team has confirmed that genetic drift has played a major role in shaping Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA. But the linkage with Middle Eastern populations is not statistically significant, he said. Because of genetic drift, Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA's have developed their own pattern, which makes it very hard to tell their source. This differs from the patrilineal case, Dr. Goldstein said, where there is no question of a Middle Eastern origin."
Malcolm Ritter. "Study: Most Ashkenazi Jews from four women." Associated Press (January 12, 2006). Excerpts:
"...about 40% of the total Ashkenazi population ≈ are descended from just four women, a genetic study indicates. Those women apparently lived somewhere in Europe within the last 2,000 years, but not necessarily in the same place or even the same century, said lead author Dr. Doron Behar of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel. ... Each woman left a genetic signature that shows up in their descendants today, he and colleagues say in a report published online by the American Journal of Human Genetics. Together, their four signatures appear in about 40% of Ashkenazi Jews, while being virtually absent in non-Jews and found only rarely in Jews of non-Ashkenazi origin, the researchers said. Ashkenazi Jews are a group with mainly central and eastern European ancestry. Ultimately, though, they can be traced back to Jews who migrated from Israel to Italy in the first and second centuries, Behar said. Eventually this group moved to Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries and expanded greatly, reaching about 10 million just before World War II, he said. The study involved mitochondrial DNA, called mtDNA, which is passed only through the mother. ... Mike Hammer, who does similar research at the University of Arizona, said he found the work tracing back to just four ancestors "quite plausible... I think they've done a really good job of tackling this question." But he said it's not clear the women lived in Europe. "They may have existed in the Near East," Hammer said. "We don't know exactly where the four women were, but their descendants left a legacy in the population today, whereas ... other women's descendants did not." Behar said the four women he referred to did inherit their genetic signatures from female ancestors who lived in the Near East. But he said he preferred to focus on these later European descendants because they were at the root of the Ashkenazi population explosion."
Maggie Fox. "Study finds why Jewish mothers are so important." Reuters (January 13, 2006). Excerpts:
"Four Jewish mothers who lived 1,000 years ago in Europe are the ancestors of 40 percent of all Ashkenazi Jews alive Friday, an international team of researchers reported Friday. The genetic study of DNA paints a vivid picture of human evolution and survival, and correlates with the well-established written and oral histories of Jewish migrations, said Dr. Doron Behar of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, who worked on the study. ... For their study, Behar and geneticist Karl Skorecki, with collaborators in Finland, France, Estonia, Finland, Portugal, Russia and the United States sampled DNA from 11,452 people from 67 populations. ... "I think there was some kind of genetic pool that was in the Near East," Behar said in a telephone interview. "Among this genetic pool there were four maternal lineages, four real women, that carried the exact specific mitochondrial DNA markers that we can find in mitochondrial DNA today." They, or their direct descendants, moved into Europe. "Then at a certain period, most probably in the 13th century, simply by demographic matters, they started to expand dramatically," Behar said. "Maybe it was because of Jewish tradition, the structure of the family that might have been characterized by a high number of children." But these four families gave rise to much of the population of European Jews - which exploded from 30,000 people in the 13th century to "something like 9 million just prior to World War II," Behar said. ... Behar said as they sampled people from Ashkenazi communities around the world, the same mitochondrial genetic markers kept popping up. They did not find the markers in most of the non-Jewish people they sampled, and only a very few were shared with Jews of other origin."
Donald Macintyre. "3.5 million Ashkenazi Jews 'traced to four female ancestors'." The Independent (January 14, 2006).
"'Four mothers' for Europe's Jews." BBC News (January 13, 2006). Excerpts:
"The Ashkenazis moved from the Mid-East to Italy and then to Eastern Europe, where their population exploded in the 13th Century, the scientists say. ... The four women are thought to have lived in the Middle East about 1,000 years ago but they may not have lived anywhere near [an]other, according to the study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. However, they bequeathed genetic signatures to their descendents, which do not appear in non-Jews and are rare in Jews not of Ashkenazi origin."
Almut Nebel, Dvora Filon, Marina Faerman, Himla Soodyall, and Ariella Oppenheim. "Y chromosome evidence for a founder effect in Ashkenazi Jews." European Journal of Human Genetics 13:3 (March 2005): 388-391. Preceded by advance electronic publication on November 3, 2004. This study focuses on one of the two main non-Mideastern Y-DNA lineages among Ashkenazic Jewish men: haplogroup R1a1 (the other is haplogroup Q). Abstract:
"Recent genetic studies, based on Y chromosome polymorphic markers, showed that Ashkenazi Jews are more closely related to other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than to their host populations in Europe. However, Ashkenazim have an elevated frequency of R-M17, the dominant Y chromosome haplogroup in Eastern Europeans, suggesting possible gene flow. In the present study of 495 Y chromosomes of Ashkenazim, 57 (11.5%) were found to belong to R-M17. Detailed analyses of haplotype structure, diversity and geographic distribution suggest a founder effect for this haplogroup, introduced at an early stage into the evolving Ashkenazi community in Europe. R-M17 chromosomes in Ashkenazim may represent vestiges of the mysterious Khazars."
Doron M. Behar, Daniel Garrigan, Matthew E. Kaplan, Zahra Mobasher, Dror Rosengarten, Tatiana M. Karafet, Lluis Quintana-Murci, Harry Ostrer, Karl Skorecki, and Michael F. Hammer. "Contrasting patterns of Y chromosome variation in Ashkenazi Jewish and host non-Jewish European populations." Human Genetics 114:4 (March 2004): 354-365. 442 Ashkenazi Jews were sampled for this study and differentiated according to geographic, religious, and ethno-historical subcategories like "Byelorussian Jews" and "Dutch Jews". In Table 2 on page 357 we see that the mutation lineage designation R-M17, corresponding to haplogroup R1a1 (most often found among Ashkenazi Levites), is found at a frequency of 0.075 among the Ashkenazi Jews as a whole in this study, and at a frequency of 0.264 among the Non-Jewish Europeans (French, Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, and Russians) in the study. Excerpts:
"Haplogroups J and E were by far the most prevalent haplogroups in AJ populations. Haplogroup J was present at similar frequencies in western AJ (41.1%) and eastern AJ (37.0%) populations, whereas haplogroup E-M35 was present at lower frequencies in western AJ than in eastern AJ populations (7.1% versus 19.1%, respectively). .... This survey of variation at 32 binary (SNP) and 10 STR markers in a sample of 442 Ashkenazi males from 10 different western and eastern Europe communities represents the largest study of Ashkenazi paternal genetic variation to date. .... The best candidates for haplogroups that entered the AJ population recently via admixture include I-P19, R-P25, and R-M17. These haplogroups were thought to represent the major Paleolithic component of the European paternal gene pool... Because haplogroups R-M17 and R-P25 are present in non-Ashkenazi Jewish populations (e.g., at 4% and 10%, respectively) and in non-Jewish Near Eastern populations (e.g., at 7% and 11%, respectively; Hammer et al. 2000; Nebel et al. 2001), it is likely that they were also present at low frequency in the AJ founding population. The admixture analysis shown in Table 6 suggests that 5%-8% of the Ashkenazi gene pool is, indeed, comprised of Y chromosomes that may have introgressed from non-Jewish European populations. In particular, the Dutch AJ population appears to have experienced relatively high levels of European non-Jewish admixture. ... However, Dutch Jews do not appear to have increased levels of European mtDNA introgression (Behar et al. 2004), suggesting that admixture in this population is mainly the result of higher rates of intermarriage between Jewish woman [sic] and non-Jewish men."
Doron M. Behar, Michael F. Hammer, Daniel Garrigan, Richard Villems, Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, Martin Richards, David Gurwitz, Dror Rosengarten, Matthew Kaplan, Sergio Della Pergola, Lluis Quintana-Murci, and Karl Skorecki. "MtDNA evidence for a genetic bottleneck in the early history of the Ashkenazi Jewish population." European Journal of Human Genetics 12:5 (May 2004): 355-364. (Advance online publication on January 14, 2004.) An observer who read the study indicates that the study shows that approximately 60 percent of European Jewish maternal roots come from European sources, with the other 40 percent from Middle Eastern or Asian roots. Abstract excerpt:
To test for the effects of a maternal bottleneck on the Ashkenazi Jewish population, we performed an extensive analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) hypervariable segment 1 (HVS-1) sequence and restriction site polymorphisms in 565 Ashkenazi Jews from different parts of Europe. These patterns of variation were compared with those of five Near Eastern (n=327) and 10 host European (n=849) non-Jewish populations. Only four mtDNA haplogroups (Hgs) (defined on the basis of diagnostic coding region RFLPs and HVS-1 sequence variants) account for approximately 70% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation. While several Ashkenazi Jewish mtDNA Hgs appear to derive from the Near East, there is also evidence for a low level of introgression from host European non-Jewish populations.
Dror Rosengarten. "Y Chromosome Haplotypes Among Members of the Caucasus Jewish Communities." Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Ancient DNA and Associated Biomolecules, July 21-25, 2002. Abstract excerpt:
"...buccal swab genomic DNA samples were collected from 51 unrelated males from the Mountain Jewish community and from 55 unrelated males from the Georgian Jewish community... Corresponding haplotype frequencies in other Jewish communities and among neighboring non-Jewish populations were derived from the literature. Based on a variety of genetic distance and admixture measures we found that majority of Kavkazi Jewish haplotypes were shared with other Jewish communities and were consistent with a Mediterranean origin. This result strengthens previous reports, which indicated a shared ancestral pool of genetic haplotypes for most contemporary Jewish communities. In the case of the Georgian Jewish samples, both Mediterranean and European haplotypes were found. This could indicate either a Mediterranean origin with a European genetic contribution or a European source with a Mediterranean contribution. Generally, Georgian Jews were found to be closer to European populations than to Mediterranean populations. Despite their geographic proximity, there was a significant genetic distance between the Mountain and Georgian Jewish communities, at least based on Y-haplotype analysis..."
Noah A. Rosenberg, Eilon Woolf, Jonathan K. Pritchard, Tamar Schaap, Dov Gefel, Isaac Shpirer, Uri Lavi, Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, Jossi Hillel, and Marcus W. Feldman. "Distinctive genetic signatures in the Libyan Jews." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS) 98:3 (January 30, 2001): 858-863. (Mirror) Excerpts:
"It is consistent with historical sources that the Libyan Jews should separate from and show strong differentiation from the other populations of our study. This population has a unique history among North African Jewish communities, including an early founding, a harsh bottleneck, possible admixture with local Berbers, limited contact with other Jewish communities, and small size in the recent past.... Ethiopian Jewish Y-chromosomal haplotypes are often present in Yemenite and other Jewish populations..., but analysis of Y-chromosomal haplotype frequencies does not indicate a close relationship between Ethiopian and other Jewish groups.... However, the evidence of an African contribution to the ancestry of Ethiopian Jews and the evidence of communication across the Red Sea suggest that gene flow between these populations would be a more plausible explanation for our clustering of some Yemenite Jews with some Ethiopian Jews. Recent studies suggest that the Lemba of southern Africa derive partly from Yemenite Jews or other Semitic peoples of this region (17), and that Ethiopians share a combination of African and Middle Eastern genotypes and languages.... Although gene flow between the Ethiopian and Yemenite Jewish populations is one explanation of our results, it is also possible that gene flow did not occur directly between these two populations, but rather took place between non-Jewish populations of Ethiopia and Arabia, between Ethiopian Jews and Ethiopian non-Jews, and also between Yemenite Jews and Yemenite non-Jews."
Aleza Goldsmith. Jews and Arabs share genes, Stanford research scientist says." Jewish Bulletin of Northern California (March 9, 2001). Excerpts:
"Peter Underhill, a senior research scientist in the department of genetics at Stanford University, has a reality check for the Middle East: 'No matter how you define yourself today -- whether Palestinian, Israeli, Syrian, Turkish -- Middle Easterners share much of the same gene pool.' Based on research on the Y chromosome, published by Underhill and Stanford colleagues in a recent issue of Nature Genetics.... Underhill, along with Stanford colleagues and geneticists in the United States, Europe, Israel and Africa, have been working with the paternally transmitted Y chromosomes of more than 1,000 men from 22 geographical areas...."
Peter A. Underhill, P. Shen, A. A. Lin, L. Jin, G. Passarino, W. H. Yang, E. Kauffman, Batsheva Bonne-Tamir, J. Bertranpetit, P. Francalacci, M. Ibrahim, T. Jenkins, J. R. Kidd, S. Q. Mehdi, M. T. Seielstad, R. S. Wells, A. Piazza, R. W. Davis, M. W. Feldman, Luca L. Cavalli-Sforza, and P. J. Oefner. "Y chromosome sequence variation and the history of human populations." Nature Genetics 26 (2000): 358-361. Sequence information for the 167 Y chromosome markers.
Lea Winerman. "Is Being Jewish All in the Genes?" New Voices: National Jewish Student Magazine 9:3 (January 2001): 8-13. Excerpts:
"The studies of the past several years have provided fascinating insights into Jewish history, but they've hardly closed the book on the question of modern Jews' ancestry. Right now, two separate research groups are taking a more in-depth look at the origins and migration patterns of Eastern European Jews. Michael Hammer and Harry Ostrer are leading one study; Dr. Vivian Moses and Dr. Neil || Bradman are conducting the other at the Center for Genetic Anthropology at University College-London. Vivian Moses suggests that the results of his study might diverge somewhat from what Hammer and his colleagues presented last June. 'I think perhaps we are using more DNA markers than they did,' he says, 'and therefore the results might not be exactly the same. We already have some preliminary indications of a link between [Eastern European Jews and] Slavs.'"
Nathaniel Pearson. "My Blood Brother in Samarkand." Stanford Magazine (May/June 1999). Nathaniel Pearson, a scientist who has studied at Stanford University and the University of Chicago, conducted research on genetics as part of the Human Genome Project. He traveled to Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East collecting genetic data using blood samples and cheek swabs. Some of his test subjects were North Caucasians, Turks, and Sino-Tibetans. (However, it needs to be noted that the haplotype Pearson describes has also been found among Moroccan Jews, and thus not only among Jews, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Indians. So the origin of the haplotype remains mysterious.) Excerpts:
"As population geneticists, Spencer Wells and I were working with Stanford emeritus professor Luca Cavalli-Sforza and others to study DNA variation among different groups... Our expedition eventually took us through the forests, steppes and deserts between the Black Sea and Central Asia's Altai Mountains. We collected hundreds of samples from people whose ancestors included nomads, farmers, sultans and serfs and whose genetic makeup had been shaped for millennia by waves of conquest and trade in this region of the Silk Road... [O]ur expedition rolled into the old oasis city of Samarkand... Back at Stanford, my labmates and I had compared hundreds of DNA samples from men around the world, focusing on about a dozen sites along the Y chromosome... Out of curiosity, I submitted my own sample to the database -- and discovered that I matched with four other donors. One was a Turkic-speaking man in western Uzbekistan, two lived in New Delhi, and one was a Tajik living in Samarkand... Sharif's Tajiks are Persian-speakers who moved east to Samarkand well before the arrival of Islam there about 1,300 years ago and the heyday of overland trade. They mixed with people already there and, later, with Turkic immigrants and others. My recent ancestors were Ashkenazi Jews in Ukraine; that population likely moved by several routes from the Middle East to Eastern Europe over the past couple of thousand years, mixing with Indo-European and Turkic people along the way. The common influence of Indo-European, Semitic and Turkic ancestry is one clue to how we might share a recent ancestor. That both Jews and Tajiks plied the Silk Road about a thousand years ago is another."
