A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages

• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3543
• Publication Date: 2013-10-08T15:05:40Z
• Authors: Marta D. Costa; Joana B. Pereira; Maria Pala; Verónica Fernandes; Anna Olivieri; Alessandro Achilli; Ugo A. Perego; Sergei Rychkov; Oksana Naumova; Jiři Hatina; Scott R. Woodward; Ken Khong Eng; Vincent Macaulay; Martin Carr; Pedro Soares; Luísa Pereira; Martin B. Richards
• Keywords: Male; Inheritance Patterns; 610; Genome Mitochondrial; DNA, Mitochondrial; MITOCHONDRIAL HAPLOGROUPS; Article; Ancient; DNA Mitochondrial/genetics; 03 medical and health sciences; Jews/genetics; Mitochondrial DNA variation; Humans; Jews/history; QH426; History, Ancient; Phylogeny; History, 15th Century; History 15th Century History; population genetic; 0303 health sciences; History Medieval; DNA Mitochondrial/history; QH; Bayes Theorem; Ashkenazi; mtDNA; ancestry; GF; Founder Effect; History, Medieval; MITOCHONDRIAL GENOME; Europe; Phylogeography; Haplotypes; Jews; Genome, Mitochondrial; Female; Genealogy and Heraldry

AbstractThe origins of Ashkenazi Jews remain highly controversial. Like Judaism, mitochondrial DNA is passed along the maternal line. Its variation in the Ashkenazim is highly distinctive, with four major and numerous minor founders. However, due to their rarity in the general population, these founders have been difficult to trace to a source. Here we show that all four major founders, ~40% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation, have ancestry in prehistoric Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus. Furthermore, most of the remaining minor founders share a similar deep European ancestry. Thus the great majority of Ashkenazi maternal lineages were not brought from the Levant, as commonly supposed, nor recruited in the Caucasus, as sometimes suggested, but assimilated within Europe. These results point to a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities, and provide the foundation for a detailed reconstruction of Ashkenazi genealogical history.