October
10
/ 2013
A new study published in the leading journal Nature Communications has discovered that Ashkenazi Jews, a Jewish ethnic group who trace their origins to the indigenous tribes of early Israel, have a maternal lineage that comes largely from Europe. According to the mainstream hypothesis, Jews arrived in central Europe following the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, and began settling in Germany during the early Middle Ages. Today, "Ashkenazi Jews" is a descriptive term for descendants of these Jews, including those who established communities in Central and Eastern Europe centuries later. With them, they took and diversified Yiddish, a High German language written using the Hebrew alphabet, and heavily influenced by classical Hebrew and Aramaic. Though the Ashkenazi Jews have lived in
