The Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish

Abstract

Recently, the geographical origins of Ashkenazic Jews (AJs) and their native language Yiddish were investigated by applying the Geographic Population Structure (GPS) to a cohort of exclusively Yiddish-speaking and multilingual AJs. GPS localized most AJs along major ancient trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages with names that resemble the word “Ashkenaz.” These findings were compatible with the hypothesis of an Irano-Turko-Slavic origin for AJs and a Slavic origin for Yiddish and at odds with the Rhineland hypothesis advocating a Levantine origin for AJs and German origins for Yiddish. We discuss how these findings advance three ongoing debates concerning (1) the historical meaning of the term “Ashkenaz;” (2) the genetic structure of AJs and their geographical origins as inferred from multiple studies employing both modern and ancient DNA and original ancient DNA analyses; and (3) the development of Yiddish. We provide additional validation to the non-Levantine origin of AJs using ancient DNA from the Near East and the Levant. Due to the rising popularity of geo-localization tools to address questions of origin, we briefly discuss the advantages and limitations of popular tools with focus on the GPS approach. Our results reinforce the non-Levantine origins of AJs.

Application of geographic population structure (GPS) algorithm for biogeographical analyses of populations with complex ancestries: a case study of South Asians from 1000 genomes project

“…It relies on extrapolating the genomic similarity between the query and reference populations to infer the likely biogeographical affinity of the former using the geographic locations (latitude and longitude) corresponding to the latter as a reference. GPS has been effectively employed for reconstructing the population history of several populations worldwide [ 2 , 6 , 7 , 9 – 11 ]. However, so far its utility and robustness in accurately localizing highly admixed populations whose genetic structure has been modified by significant demographic, biological and social factors has remained largely unexplored.…”

The Diversity of REcent and Ancient huMan (DREAM): A New Microarray for Genetic Anthropology and Genealogy, Forensics, and Personalized Medicine

“…Prediction of biogeographical origins is obtained by converting genomic information into geographical coordinates. All biogeographical inferences were carried out using the geographic population structure (GPS) tool, which matches the admixture proportions of a test individual with those of reference populations known to have resided in a certain geographical region for a substantial period of time ( Elhaik et al 2014 ; Das et al 2017 ). The efficacy of DREAM’s biogeographical predictions was assessed on 584 worldwide individuals from 33 countries ( fig.…”

“…GPS then converts the genetic distances between that individual and the nearest M = 10 reference populations into geographic distances. The reference populations can be thought of as “pulling” the individual toward their location in a strength proportional to the similarity of their admixture components until a “consensus” is reached ( Das et al 2017 ).…”

Diverse genetic origins of medieval steppe nomad conquerors – a response to Mikheyev et al. (2019)

“…Their analyses (Mikheyev et al (2019) Figure 1A) shows that Ashkenazic Jews cluster with North Ossetia and Caucasus populations, rather than their neighboring communities. It is difficult to reconcile this finding with the authors' beliefs that the high genetic-geographic correlation makes their populations "strongly informative about the geographic origins of the Khazars" and their criticism towards past studies that showed a Caucasus origin for Ashkenazic Jews (Das et al 2016;Das et al 2017).…”