Scientists reveal
Jewish history's forgotten Turkish roots
Israeli-born
geneticist believes the Turkish villages of Iskenaz, Eskenaz and
Ashanaz were part of the original homeland for Ashkenazic Jews
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David KeysArchaeology Correspondent @davidmkeys
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Tuesday 19 April 2016 23:15
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A group of Ashkenazic Jews in Jerusalem, circa 1885 ( Getty Images )
New research suggests that the majority
of the world’s modern Jewish population is descended mainly from people from
ancient Turkey, rather than predominantly from elsewhere in the Middle East.
The new research suggests that most of the Jewish
population of northern and eastern Europe – normally known as Ashkenazic Jews –
are the descendants of Greeks, Iranians and others who colonized what is
now northern Turkey more than 2000 years ago and were then converted to
Judaism, probably in the first few centuries AD by Jews from Persia. At that
stage, the Persian Empire was home to the world’s largest Jewish
communities.
According to research carried out by the geneticist,
Dr Eran Elhaik of the University of Sheffield, over 90 per cent of
Ashkenazic ancestors come from that converted partially Greek-originating
ancient community in north-east Turkey.
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His research is based on genetic, historical and
place-name evidence. For his geographic genetic research, Dr Elhaik used a
Geographic Population Structure computer modelling system to convert Ashkenazic
Jewish DNA data into geographical information.
Dr Elhaik, an Israeli-born geneticist who gained his
doctorate in molecular evolution from the University of Houston, believes that
three still-surviving Turkish villages – Iskenaz, Eskenaz and Ashanaz – on
the western part of an ancient Silk Road route were part of the original
Ashkenazic homeland. He believes that the word Ashkenaz originally comes from
Ashguza - the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian name for the Iron Age
Eurasian steppeland people, the Scythians.
Referring to the names of the three Turkish villages,
Dr Elhaik points out that “north-east Turkey is the only place in the world
where these place-names exist”.
Ulta-orthodox Ashkenazic Jews during a
protest in Jerusalem last year (Getty Images)
From the 690s AD onwards, anti-Jewish persecution
by the Christian Byzantine Empire seems to have played a part in forcing
large numbers of Jews to flee across the Black Sea to a more friendly state –
the Turkic-ruled Khazar Empire with its large Slav and other populations.
Some analyses of Yiddish suggests that it was
originally a Slavic language, and Dr Elhaik and others believe that it was
developed, probably in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, by Jewish merchants
trading along some of the more northerly Silk Roads linking China and Europe.
By the 730s, the Khazar Empire had begun to convert to
Judaism – and more people converted to the faith.
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But when the Khazar Empire declined in or around the
11th century, some of the Jewish population almost certainly migrated west into
Central Europe. There, as Yiddish-speaking Jewish merchants came into contact
with central European, often German-speaking, peoples, they began to
replace the Slav words in Yiddish with large numbers of German and
German-derived words, while retaining some of its Slav-originating grammar.
Many Hebrew words also appear to have been added by that stage.
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The genetic modelling used in the research was based
on DNA data from 367 Jews of northern and eastern European origin and more than
600 non-Jewish people mainly from Europe and western Asia.
Dr Elhaik says it is
the largest genomic study ever carried out on Ashkenazic Jews. His
research will be published in the UK-based scientific journal, Genome Biology
and Evolution.
Further research is planned to try to measure the
precise size of the Semitic genetic input into Jewish and non-Jewish genomes.
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