So, you admit you’re a moron. The “D” in your DNA stands for Dumbass.
Newsweek: The DNA of Abrahams Children, Analysis of Jewish genomes refutes the Khazar claim.
Jews have historically considered themselves people of the book (am hasefer in Hebrew), referring to sacred tomes, but the phrase is turning out to have an equally powerful, if unintended, meaning: scientists are able to read Jewish genomes like a history book. The latest DNA volume weighs in on the controversial, centuries-old (and now revived in a 2008 book) claim that European Jews are all the descendants of Khazars, a Turkic group of the north Caucasus who converted to Judaism in the late eighth and early ninth century. The DNA has spoken: no.
The DNA analysis undermines the claim that most of todays Jews, particularly the Ashkenazi, are the direct lineal descendants of converted Khazarswhich has angered many in the Jewish community as an implicit attack on the Jews claim to the land of Israel, since it implies that todays Jews have no blood ties to the original Jews of the Middle East. Instead, find the scientists, at most there was limited admixture with local populations, including Khazars and Slavs ... during the 1,000-year (second millennium) history of the European Jews.
Analysis of Jewish genomes has been yielding fascinating findings for more than a decade. A pioneer in this field, Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona, made the first big splash when he discovered that genetics supports the biblical account of a priestly family, the Cohanim, descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses: one specific genetic marker on the Y chromosome (which is passed on from father to son, as membership in the priestly family would be) is found in 98.5 percent of people who self-identify as Cohanim, he and colleagues reported in a 1997 paper in Nature (the PBS science series Nova did a nice segment on that work, summarized here). The Cohanim DNA has been found in both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, evidence that it predates the time when the two groups diverged, about 1,000 years ago. DNA can also be used to infer when particular genetic markers appeared, and suggests that the Cohanim emerged about 106 generations ago, making it fall during what is thought to be the period of the exodus from Egypt, and thus Aarons lifetime.
What We Can Learn From the Jewish Genome
