In recent years, advances in genetics have enabled scientists to pinpoint our origins and relationships to specific geographic regions and ethnic groups with a fairly high degree of accuracy.
Geneticists nowadays examine mitochondrial DNA, which passes from mother to child, Y chromosomal DNA, which passes from father to son, and autosomal DNA, which derives from a multitude of ancestral lines and typically picks up portions of the genetics of all sixteen of an individualโs greatgreat-grandparents. By following the trails blazed by all three types of DNA, including patterns of mutations in the uniparental types, one can reconstruct a compelling narrative of migrations related to an individual or an ethnic group.
Jews of all kinds, but especially Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews, have been eager to take DNA tests to learn more about their deep ancestors and relatives, since the paper trail of vital records from the Russian and Austrian empires runs cold for most families before the early-to-mid 19th century and most surnames were adopted relatively recently.
Ashkenazim with ancestors from Eastern and Central Europe make up large portions of the testing pools of the top three American direct-to-consumer DNA testing companies โ Family Tree DNA, 23andMe, and Ancestry DNA โ and have been recruited for numerous genetic studies over the past two decades.
Much of this research has established that the vast majority of Ashkenazic lineages trace back to Europe and the Middle East 2,000 years ago, with a large portion coming from ancient Israel and its environs. But this research has also turned up traces of unexpected roots.
Many Ashkenazic people living in the West are interested in aspects ofย Chinese culture like the abacus, tai chi, and Chinese andย Chinese-American food. There has also been an increase in recent yearsย in so-called “intermarriage” between Ashkenazim and ethnic Chinese,ย exemplified by Facebook’s co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s marriage toย Priscilla Chan and CBS Corporation’s CEO Leslie Moonves’ marriage toย Julie Chen.
Nevertheless, China is understandably perceived by most Ashkenazim inย the West as an exotic “other”. Except it’s not entirely foreign afterย all.
Six scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences teamed up with theย British geneticist Martin Richards and the Dutch historian Jits vanย Straten to research the worldwide distribution of the mitochondrialย haplogroup called M33c. The team obtained new genetic samples toย supplement samples that had already been collected by others to buildย the most comprehensive analysis of M33c lineages to date.
The results of their work were published in February in their article “A Genetic Contribution from the Far East into Ashkenazi Jews via theย Ancient Silk Road” in Scientific Reports, an online journal from theย Nature Publishing Group.
The lead author Jiao-Yang Tian and his colleagues confirmed that M33cย originates in East Asia. They showed it’s mostly found among ethnicย groups living in China. Members of the Han, Zhuang, Yao, Miao,ย Kam-Tai, and Tibetan peoples were found to possess M33c.
Most, but not all, of those who belong to this lineage live inย southern regions of China. A few people from Thailand and Vietnam alsoย have it, but it reaches its highest genetic diversity inside China, soย that is believed to be where it began after it split off manyย thousands of years ago from the varieties of M33 that are found inย India.
The authors also found a branch of M33c they call M33c2 that’s sharedย in their data pool between a Han Chinese person from the Sichuanย province and fourteen Ashkenazim with maternal roots in towns that areย now located in Belarus, Russia, western Ukraine, Poland, Romania, andย Hungary. They estimate M33c2 entered the Ashkenazi population inย medieval times no later than the year 1400.
A Jewish merchant who traversed the trade routes connecting the Eastย and the West is plausibly the man who formed the relationship with theย Chinese woman to produce one or more half-Ashkenazi half-Chineseย children, including at least one daughter who was raised Jewish,ย married a Jew, and passed M33c2 along to successive generations.
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And he wasn’t alone, for there are two other mitochondrial DNAย haplogroups from East Asia — called A and N9a3 — that are likewiseย found in Eastern European Ashkenazi maternal lineages. However, theย genetic evidence suggests those women lived in more northernย territories, perhaps even in eastern Siberia.
Only about 1.1ย percentย of all Ashkenazic direct maternal lineages stem fromย these three Asian women, but many more Ashkenazim have indirectย maternal lineages descended from them, for example from having aย paternal grandmother who was N9a3.
Autosomal studies corroborate the fact that Chinese and Siberianย people form part of the ancestral heritage of Ashkenazim from Easternย Europe and that they are much less a part of the heritage of Ashkenazim from further west and not part of the formative heritagesย of Sephardic Jews, Bukharian Jews, Afghanistani Jews, or any otherย Jewish group aside from the Jews who stayed for centuries within Chinaย including the city of Kaifeng. Sephardim from Turkey bearing traces ofย this ancestry probably got it from having partial Ashkenazi ancestryย rather than from partial Turkish ancestry.
Laboratory research conducted by Doron Behar and his colleagues showedย that Eastern European Ashkenazi tend to show around 2.2ย percentย of Eastย Asian ancestry autosomally. This ancestry was also detected in theย genomes of many Eastern European Ashkenazim who joined National Geographic’s Geno 2.0 project, often in the proportion of 2ย percentย or 3ย percent. Itย was more faintly detected by many, but not all, of those who testedย through 23andMe, which uses a different analytical technique andย explores some different portions of a person’s single nucleotideย polymorphisms (SNPs).
Notables whose recent ancestors is all East-Central and Easternย European Jewish and carry traces of East Asian ancestry detected byย 23andMe include the writer Neil Gaiman, the playwright Tony Kushner,ย and the attorney Alan Dershowitz. 23andMe reported that only 0.1ย percentย ofย their SNPs as tested by the company’s techniques come from East Asia.
Finally, data compiled by Kenneth Kidd, a professor of genetics at theย Yale School of Public Health, show that about 1.7ย percentย of Ashkenazim carryย the East Asian-specific 1540C allele in the Ectodysplasin A Receptorย (EDAR). This allele is responsible for increased scalp hair thickness.
Found in large frequencies among modern East Asians like the Japaneseย and the Qiang of Sichuan province, and in smaller frequencies amongย peoples of Central Asia and Eastern Europe who have only partial Eastย Asian ancestry like Hazara, Hungarians, Finns, and Russians, it isย never found among Sephardic Jews, Yemenite Jews, Samaritans, Israeliย Bedouins, or Palestinian Arabs who all carry 1540T instead. This isย how we know 1540C didn’t come into the Ashkenazi population from theย ancient Israelites.
Jews in China whose ancestors had arrived from western lands,ย including Persia, sometimes married local Chinese women and over timeย the community became more and more Chinese ethnically and culturallyย whereas the opposite happened for the descendants of the Chinese woman whose family took root in Eastern Europe. So it was that the Kaifengย Jews and Ashkenazi Jews both ended up being heirs to the ancientย civilizations of China and Israel.
Sara Schechter-Schoeman, a proud descendant of a Jewish woman from theย Russian Empire whose direct maternal lineage has been confirmed by aย relative’s DNA sample to be M33c by Family Tree DNA, is delighted byย the evidence for her connection to China and possibly to the Silk Road and plans to celebrate each Chinese New Year with her Taiwaneseย daughter-in-law.
This article appeared originally here, and was reposted on GLP with permission of the author.
Kevin Alan Brook isย author of The Jews of Khazaria, which chronicles the history of the Khazars, a people who, in the early Middle Ages, founded a large empire in eastern Europe (located in present-day Ukraine and Russia). His website, Khazaria.com, is a definitiveย resource for Turkic and Jewish History in Russia and Ukraine.
