NDLI: Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz

Content Provider	PubMed Central
Author	Das, Ranajit Wexler, Paul Mehdi, Pirooznia Elhaik, Eran
Copyright Year	2016
Abstract	The Yiddish language is over 1,000 years old and incorporates German, Slavic, and Hebrew elements. The prevalent view claims Yiddish has a German origin, whereas the opposing view posits a Slavic origin with strong Iranian and weak Turkic substrata. One of the major difficulties in deciding between these hypotheses is the unknown geographical origin of Yiddish speaking Ashkenazic Jews (AJs). An analysis of 393 Ashkenazic, Iranian, and mountain Jews and over 600 non-Jewish genomes demonstrated that Greeks, Romans, Iranians, and Turks exhibit the highest genetic similarity with AJs. The Geographic Population Structure analysis localized most AJs along major primeval trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages with names that may be derived from “Ashkenaz.” Iranian and mountain Jews were localized along trade routes on the Turkey’s eastern border. Loss of maternal haplogroups was evident in non-Yiddish speaking AJs. Our results suggest that AJs originated from a Slavo-Iranian confederation, which the Jews call “Ashkenazic” (i.e., “Scythian”), though these Jews probably spoke Persian and/or Ossete. This is compatible with linguistic evidence suggesting that Yiddish is a Slavic language created by Irano-Turko-Slavic Jewish merchants along the Silk Roads as a cryptic trade language, spoken only by its originators to gain an advantage in trade. Later, in the 9th century, Yiddish underwent relexification by adopting a new vocabulary that consists of a minority of German and Hebrew and a majority of newly coined Germanoid and Hebroid elements that replaced most of the original Eastern Slavic and Sorbian vocabularies, while keeping the original grammars intact.
Related Links	http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evw046
Ending Page	1149
Page Count	18
Starting Page	1132
File Format	PDF
ISSN	17596653
e-ISSN	17596653
Journal	Genome Biology and Evolution
Issue Number	4
Volume Number	8
Language	English
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Publisher Date	2016-04-01
Access Restriction	Open
Rights Holder	Oxford University Press
Subject Keyword	Genetics Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Research in Higher Education
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Genetics Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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