Tracing Your Jewish DNA For Family History & Ancestry: Merging a Mosaic of
Communities, by Anne Hart, ASJA Press imprint, iUniverse, Inc., 268 pages, June 2003, paperback, ISBN: 0-595-28127-3. Tracing Jewish genes/DNA through 3,000 years of history presents patterns of merging mosaic Communities. The perfect book for beginners in combining genealogy, ancestry, family history, genetics, and interpreting the results of your DNA tests.
Here's how to trace Jewish DNA specific to Eastern European Ashkenazim through a history of migrations toward a merging mosaic of communities. A perfect book for beginners in interpreting your DNA test results for family history and ancestry and taking a closer look at the founding mothers of Eastern European Jewish communities as well as the fathers. Where did the women originate? What directions were the migrations in ancient, medieval, and later times?
And how did this bring about the particular DNA/genetic patterns we see today in the diverse Eastern European Jewish communities now found all over the world. Look up the genealogy of Jewish genes/DNA through 3,000 years of history. Here's how to interpret your own results. You don't need a science background to match your DNA to your most recent common ancestor who lived 250 or 100 or 1,000 years ago.
Scientists speak out on the founding mothers and fathers of the Ashkenazic Jewish communities. The book looks at various studies up until 2003 on the origins of Ashkenazim, including female and male ancestries. Looking at later research studies, interestingly, as late as 2006, DNA studies showed that 42% of Ashkenazim of Eastern and Western Europe were descended on the female side from only four women originating in the ancient Middle East (Levant) who migrated to Germany, possibly from northern Italy in early medieval times.
These women have a specific matrilineal DNA (mitrochondrial DNA called mtDNA haplogroup in the K1a1b1 haplogroup with similar sequences found primarily among Ashkenazim. The entire study can be read at http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/43026_Doron.pdf. The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event (article) further updates this 2003 book with new, 2006 findings.
The 2006 article notes that “K1a1b1a is marked by two coding-region transitions, 10978 and 12954, and includes 14 of the 121 complete sequences. Seven of these are reported for the first time herein and are from Ashkenazi subjects, whereas the other seven were reported elsewhere as forming a specific cluster termed “K1a” (Herrnstadt et al. 2002).” This shows that 42% of Ashkenazim today are descended from four women, three of whom have the Ashkenazi-specific K haplogroup sequences.
The three Ashkenazi-specific sequences in the K haplogroup are: three Ashkenazi K subbranches—K1a1b1a, K1a9, and K2a2a. The fourth haplogroup of MtDNA is N1b, representing 10 percent of Ashkenazim on the female lineages. Those findings also revealed that 10 percent of Ashkenazim females descend from the N1b haplogroup, and N1b is today and in the past found all over the Middle East.
In the past, Y chromosomes of Ashkenazim males were tested, and most were found to have had arisen in the Middle East from a common ancestor, about 7,800 years ago. Fifty-four percent of Ashkenazim Levite males were found to have a Y chromosome R1a1, which may or may not have arisen in the Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, or Eastern Europe. But R1a1 also is found in Pakistan, showing, perhaps an ancient origin in the India/Pakistan area for R1a1 males more than 50,000 years ago.
Other male haplotypes in Ashkenazim include the J1 and J2 types, including the Cohen Haplotype, similar to J1, but also found in specific sequences of J2 which also is found in many Mediterranean area males, including Middle Eastern, Greek, North Indian, Balkan, and Italian males. In the Neolithic area, the Balkans and Hungary were settled from grain-belt farmers of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterreanean agricultural settlements that began around 11,000 years ago and stretched from the Levant and Anatolia to the Fertile Crescent and onto the Indus Valley.
The conclusion is that although non-Ashkenazim women had lineages related to Middle Eastern or local area host country women, 52% of Ashkenazim women had female lineages originating in the Middle East or Levantine areas.
The rest may have originated in the host country or elsewhere as Jews migrated in the past 2,000 years from the Levant to Italy and Greece and then to Spain and Germany, finally reaching Eastern Europe in the late middle ages. History also finds in Eastern Europe, Jews who had migrated from Greece. This would include especially migrations from Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire to Russia and the Balkans in the 9th century, before the Rus converted to Christianity.
Interestingly, in another study, a few Polish Roma (Gypsies) had both specific M5 Indian mtDNA as well as a very few Ashkenazi haplotype sequences, surmising perhaps that Ashkenazi girls may have been raised in medieval times, possibly hidden due to pogroms, by Rroma (Polish Gypsy) families whose own mtDNA related to northwest India-specific sequences. Or some Rroma may have had females that originated in ancient times in the Levant or other parts of the Middle East.
Khazars were composed of peoples of many diverse ethnic origins before the conversion of the royal court to Judaism. Browse the book at: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-28127-3