This week saw the release of yet another study on the origins of European Jews (in fact, a pre-print). This one's called "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses".
The author seems quite content that he's demonstrated an unambiguous genetic link between European Jews and the Khazar Empire. But has he really?
I do like the analysis presented is this paper. It's varied, thorough, and looks at Central European Jews separately from Eastern European Jews, with some interesting outcomes. But in the end, I think the author fumbled his interpretation of the results.
His mistake was treating the Armenian reference sample as a Caucasus group and a proxy for the gene pool of the Khazar Empire. Thus, when the Jewish samples showed strong affinity to the Armenians, the author mistook this as a signal of Khazar ancestry in Jews, because the Khazar Empire included parts of the Caucasus.
But what do modern Armenians of the South Caucasus have to do with ancient Khazars of the Pontic Caspian Steppe? Not much, I'd say. Armenians aren't even a useful Caucasian reference set in my opinion. They're better treated as an Eastern Anatolian group, due to their high affinity to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern populations.
Moreover, they show low North/East European genetic ancestry, and very little East Eurasian admixture, which is actually the sort of stuff we'd want in a proxy for the largely Turkic inhabitants of the Khazar Empire in what is now Southern Russia.
Based on my own analyses of Jewish genomes, I'd say that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically an Eastern Mediterranean group, but with various other admixtures, like Western European, Eastern European, Eastern Anatolian, and even African and East Asian. Does that mean ancestry from the Khazar Empire? Perhaps in part, but it's hard to say for sure.
So, what could be a sure signal of Khazar influence in modern Jews? The best bet is probably Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a-Z94, which reaches a high frequency among Ashkenazi Levites. This marker is also very common among modern Indo-Iranian and Turkic groups, so it's not difficult to imagine its presence in ancient Khazaria. The only problem is that it's also found among Arabs, who obviously share deep Semitic roots with the Jews. That's why it's not possible to say at the moment if the Jewish R1a-Z94 is of Semitic, Khazar or some other origin, like, for example, Persian. Someone should look into that.
By the way, as per the supervised ADMIXTURE bar graph from the study, it's interesting to see the much higher levels of “Eastern European” influence in Eastern European Jews than in Central European Jews. I suppose that’s to be expected, considering the geography, but the reason I find it interesting is that it indicates recent Slavic introgression into the Eastern European Jewish gene pool. That's because if it was older, like from Khazaria, then Central European Jews would also carry it at decent levels.
Eran Elhaik, The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses, Submitted on 6 Aug 2012, arXiv:1208.1092v1 [q-bio.PE]
Update 22/01/2013: The full study is now out at Oxford Journals as a free article. See here.
I think author misinterpreted results of his own research.
ReplyDeleteThe Caucasian component in Jewish DNA comes from Hurrians [1] of Southern Trans-Caucasus (roughly modern Kurdistan) and not from Khazars (who most likely where predominantly Turkic, Uralic or of mixed Caucasian origin).
Hurrians spoke language similar to the language of modern Lezgins of the Northern Caucasus.
This is also confident with biblical accounts, that Abraham "made souls in Haran". [2]
Also in his estimation the geographical origin of EEJ and CEJ clustered in Turkey and Kurdistan, more than thousand of kilometers from Volga delta. The previous publications also found link between Jews and Kurds/Anatolian Turks.
The ancient Judeans/Israelites most likely where Caucasian people who adopted local Semitic language of Canaan [3].
There is geographic proximity and large area overlap between Southern Caucasus and Northern Meopotamia ("Aram Naharaim"), so this explains author's mistake.
Also large part of Armenians are Jews who forced to convert to Christianity in ancient times.
There are also was Adiabene - Jewish Kingdom in Assyria (modern Kurdistan), who's population converted to Judaism.
There are some places in the paper, where author stretching too much and making assumptions, without supporting them.
Equating Armenians and Georgians with Khazars is one of them. Mentioned "banks of Volga" in the context of Caucasus is another. Volga is not in Caucasus.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrians
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haran_(biblical_place)
Nonaname is stretching too much and making assumptions, based on popular scientific sources, not on supporting evidence.
DeleteThe aim of the posting is overly transparent: attempt to save what can be saved from a Zionist (not Jewish!) point of view from the myth of A common Judean root of the whole "Jewish people", no matter where they are nowadays in the world. Harran and the Hurrians aren't a valid explanation for the admixture, and the Kurdish admixture elements aren't a temporal fit.
Robert, "saved from Zionist point of view", ok. So all this "research" is politically driven to manipulate and confuse the public. Khazars theories are so discredited that everyone who pushing this ideas are seen as a hired guns to promote political agenda. Everyone in the region has oriental/mongoloid admixtures. You can see it in their faces without looking for genetic markers. For example 1/3 of Iranian population was exterminated by Mongols and what happened with rest is anybody’s guess. Despite that Iranians, like Jews, manage to preserve their identity and core values.
DeleteI understand from the review above that Elhaik proved Khazar affinity to presentday Ashkenazi Jews by taking Armenians as representing Khazars. He had to do that since Khazars disappeared as a people long ago. But as the review points out, this assumption is really not tenable for various reasons given --and others. Yet the Armenian genetic link to Jews is supported by ancient written historical testimony. Not only were Israelites deported by Assyrians & Babylonians to the regions of northern Mesopotamia & Kurdistan & eastern Turkey of today [as per the Bible], but Jewish rebels were deported by the Persian Empire from Judea [Yehud in the Aramaic used in that empire; found on early coins] to the area between the Caspian & Black seas. This happened in the reign of Artaxerxes III [called Oco] according to the Chronography of Eusebius. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05616a.htm
ReplyDeleteAt best, Elhaik is reinventing the wheel since Armenian-Jewish [& Kurdish-Jewish] genetic affinities have already been pointed out in earlier studies of Jewish genetics. But to my knowledge, nobody before assumed that the Armenians could be equated or even approximated with the Khazars. The next problem for Elhaik is to disprove the Jewish [including Ashkenazic] genetic affinity with many Syrian & Palestinian Arabs, as shown in prior studies. Did Elhaik deal with this problem for his thesis?
I agree with your analysis. European Jews show clear evidence of admixture with their host populations (i.e. Western European populations and as you point out in some cases Eastern European populations). This artifically creates a proximity with Armenian populations but between this and reaching the conclusion that there is evidence of Khazar ad-mixture is the most ridiculous conclusion I've ever come across - I'm really surprised at how geneticists with clearly no grasp of history or geography happily jump to conclusions.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame that Elhaik hadn't carried out even the most basic research on the Armenians. The Armenians have had a distinct national identity since around a 1,000 BC and during the period of the Khazar kingdom had an independant state - they have never lost this national identity and while they have from time to time been under Byzantine, Arab and Turkish control have always maintained a distinct identity.
A very very poor work of scholarship by Elhaik. I would be embarrased to have such a paper under my name.