>>126610968The Origins of Ashkenaz, Ashkenazic Jews, and Yiddish
Ranajit Das1, Paul Wexler2, Mehdi Pirooznia3 and Eran Elhaik4*
1Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, Manipal University, Manipal, India
2Department of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States
4Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/84338708.pdfCONCLUSION
The meaning of the term “Ashkenaz” and the geographical
origins of AJs and Yiddish are some of the longest standing
questions in history, genetics, and linguistics. In our previous
work we have identified “ancient Ashkenaz,” a region in
northeastern Turkey that harbors four primeval villages whose
names resemble Ashkenaz. Here, we elaborate on the meaning
of this term and argue that it acquired its modern meaning only
after a critical mass of Ashkenazic Jews arrived in Germany.
We show that all bio-localization analyses have localized AJs
to Turkey and that the non-Levantine origins of AJs are
supported by ancient genome analyses. Overall, these findings
are compatible with the hypothesis of an Irano-Turko-Slavic
origin for AJs and a Slavic origin for Yiddish and contradict the
predictions of Rhineland hypothesis that lacks historical, genetic,
and linguistic support (Table 1).
