By NICHOLAS WADE Published: June 9, 2010
Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East share many genes inherited from the ancestral Jewish population that lived in the Middle East a 3000 years ago, even though each community has genes from other sources, usually the country where you live.
That's the conclusion of two new genetic research, the first to use scanning equipment to compare genome-wide many Jewish communities around the world.
A big surprise of both studies is the close genetic of the two Jewish communities in Europe, the Ashkenazi and Sephardic. The Ashkenazim flourished in Northern and Eastern Europe until its destruction by Hitler's regime, and now live mostly in the U.S. and Israel. The Sephardim were exiled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497 and moved to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa and the Netherlands.
The two genomes investigations extend previous studies based only on the Y chromosome, the genetic element carried by all men. They refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand in his book "The Invention of the Jewish people" that Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany de pueblos en Europa y Asia Central que se convirtieron al Judaísmo en distintas épocas.
Las comunidades judías de Europa, el Medio Oriente y el Caucazo todas tienen ancestria genética esencial que se retrotrae al Levante; los judíos etíopes y dos comunidades judaicas en India son genéticamente mucho mas cercanas con sus poblaciones anfitrionas.
Las encuestas proveen ricos datos acerca de la ancestria genética que es de gran interés para los historiadores. “Yo estoy constantemente impresionado por la forma en la cual los genetistas se mantienen avanzando con nuevos proyectos e iluminando lo que conocemos de historia,” dijo Lawrence H. Schiffman, un profesor de estudios judaicos en la Universidad New York.
A survey was conducted by Gil Atzmon College of Medicine Albert Einstein and Harry Ostrer, University of New York and appears in the current American Journal of Human Genetics. The other, conducted by Doron M. Behar's Health Care Campus in Haifa and Rambam Richard Villems of the University of Tartu in Estonia, was published in Thursday's issue of Nature.
Dr. Atzmon and Dr. Ostrer have developed a form of demographic events synced from genetic elements shared by different Jewish communities. Their calculations show that the Iraqi and Iranian Jews were separated from other Jewish communities around 2500 years ago. This genetic finding reflects a historical event, the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 587 BC Nebujadnezzar and exile of many Jews there at his capital in Babylon.
shared genetic elements suggest that members of any Jewish community are related to each other as closely as they are cousins \u200b\u200bin the fourth or fifth grade in a large population, which is about 10 times higher than the relationship between two persons elected randomly in the streets of New York, said Dr. Atzmon.
Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews are about 30% of European ancestry, with most of the rest of the Middle East, concluded the two investigations. The two communities seem very similar to each other genetically, which is unexpected because they have been separated for so long.
One explanation is that they come from the same source of Jewish population in Europe. Atzmon, Ostrer team found that the genomic signature of the Ashkenazi and Sephardic was very similar to that of Italian Jews, suggesting that an ancient population in northern Italy of Jews married to Italians could have been a common origin. The Ashkenazim are listed first in Northern Europe around 800 AD, but historians suspect they came from Italy.
Another explanation, which can be complementary to the first, is that there was much exchange and intermarriage between the two communities that are expected between the two communities in medieval times.
genetics confirms a trend noted by historians: there was more contact between Ashkenazim and Sephardim who suspected, with Italy as the key exchange, said Aron Rodrigue, a historian at Stanford University.
A common Jewish surname is Italian Morpurgo, which means someone from Marburg in Germany, too, Dr. Rodriguez said, one of the most common names among the Sephardim who settled in the Ottoman Empire Eskenazi, indicating that many Ashkenazim were joined the Sephardic community there.
Both genetic research indicates "that may have common roots shared by the two groups, but also had extensive contacts and arrangements," said Dr. Rodriguez.
The Hebrew could have served as the lingua franca among Ashkenazi community, speaking Idish, and Ladino-speaking Sephardic talking. "When Jews encountered each other, they spoke Hebrew," Dr. Schiffman said, referring to the medieval period.
Source: The New York Times
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