Ashkenazi-jødernes overraskende oprindelse

April Holloway
Ancient Origins
tor, 19 apr 2018 00:00 UTC

© 1878 painting by Maurycy Gottlieb

Detalje af 'Ashkenazi-jøder, der beder i synagogen på Yom Kippur.

Ashkenazi-jøder er en jødisk etnisk gruppe, som har deres tidligste forfædre fra de indfødte stammer i Israel ... i hvert fald på den ene side af stamtræet. En undersøgelse offentliggjort i 2013 i Nature Communications har vist, at deres mødres slægt kommer fra en anden, og muligvis uventet, kilde.

Forskningen viser, at oprindelsen af ​​den matrilineære linje for Ashkenazi-jøderne kommer fra Europa. Dette strider imod den almindelige tro på, at jøder først ankom til Centraleuropa efter den byzantinsk-sasanske krig i 602-628 og først begyndte at bosætte sig i Tyskland i middelalderen.

Ashkenazi-jøder er det udtryk, der bruges i dag til at beskrive disse jødiske mennesker - individer, der byggede religiøst baserede samfund århundreder senere i Central- og Østeuropa. En af de ting, de er anerkendt for, er brugen af ​​jiddisch - et højtysk sprog skrevet i det hebraiske alfabet og påvirket af klassisk hebraisk og aramæisk.

Kommentar: Delvist oversat af Sott.net fra The surprising origins of Ashkenazi Jews

The Yiddish calligraphic segment in the Worms Mahzor.

The 2013 study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield in England, said that while Ashkenazi Jews have lived in Europe for many centuries, the results of the study using DNA samples show that most European Jews descend from local people who converted to Judaism, not individuals who left Israel and the Middle East around 2,000 years ago.

Ashkenazi Jews were declared a clear, homogeneous genetic subgroup following a 2006 study. Ashkenazi Jews come from the same genetic group, no matter if their ancestors were from Poland, Russia, Hungary, Lithuania, or another place with a large historical Jewish population. They are all in the same ethnic group.

How could it be that Ashkenazi Jews are just one genetic group? The answer is a relatively simple one: they didn't reproduce at a noticeable level with others outside their group (not even with other Jewish people). Researchers have shown Ashkenazi Jews were a reproductively isolated population in Europe for about 1000 years.

Read the rest of the article here.

Kommentar: Genetic study: Ashkenazi Jews are substantially of Western European origin

Richards and his colleagues analyzed mitochondrial DNA, which is contained in the cytoplasm of the egg and passed down only from the mother, from more than 3,500 people throughout the Near East, the Caucasus and Europe, including Ashkenazi Jews.

The team found that four founders were responsible for 40 percent of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA, and that all of these founders originated in Europe. The majority of the remaining people could be traced to other European lineages.

All told, more than 80 percent of the maternal lineages of Ashkenazi Jews could be traced to Europe, with only a few lineages originating in the Near East.

Virtually none came from the North Caucasus, located along the border between Europe and Asia between the Black and Caspian seas.