Despite the voluminous research mapping the genes of the Jewish people, one unsolved mystery is the origin of Ashkenazi Jews. A new paper in the journal Nature Communications claims that Ashkenazi Jews can be traced back to Rome's early Jewish community. "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," the authors of the paper say. "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 paper reinforced the theory that many Jewish communities in the Diaspora were formed by Jewish men who had their wives undergo conversion. "There is surprisingly little evidence for any significant founder event from the Near East," the paper says. There is "a significant European component, with particularly close relationships to Italians," the authors note. The study was led by Professor Martin B. Richards, from the Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology at the University of Leeds. Richards wanted to analyze the lineage of mitogenomes of populations in Europe and Middle East (by analyzing mitochondrial DNA in cell samples). Past studies have shown that Jewish communities have been formed from men who had a Y-chromosome with genome characteristics of the Middle East. When the researchers looked at women founders of various genetic clusters in Europe, they could not identify the same mitogenome characteristics. In some cases they were more genetically similar to the local population, which indicated that local women had married Jewish men who arrived from outside the continent. Although "the identification of potential sources of the population was very challenging ... all four [genetic clusters studied for men] most likely arose in the Near East and were markers of a migration to Europe of people ancestral to the Ashkenazim." The four genetic clusters show that European Jewish communities were established 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. "Overall, it seems that at least 80 percent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry is due to the assimilation of [mitochondrial DNA] indigenous to Europe, most likely through conversion," the paper said. Some 8% can be traced to the Near East, "with about 10% remaining ambiguous."
Paper: Ashkenazi Jews can be traced to intermarriage in Europe
New study: Local women in Roman Empire who married exiled Jewish men are the origin of 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry • There is "a significant European component, with particularly close relationships to Italians," the authors note.
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