THE GENETICS OF CRIMEAN KARAITES

Abstract

The ancestral origins of the Turkic-speaking Crimean Karaites have at times been contentious with several competing theories. This study uses genetic science to help clarify to what extent, if any, these people are related to other Karaite communities and/or to Rabbinical Jews who had ancestors who lived in ancient Israel. The main alternative theory contends that they may descend from the Turkic-speaking Khazars who converted to Judaism prior to the documented establishment of any Karaite communities north of the Black Sea. The data set used to make genetic comparisons between populations contains hundreds of thousands of samples from around the world. Some of the samples come from people whose ancestors lived on the Crimean peninsula (including, but not limited to, Crimean Tatars, Crimean Rabbinical Jews, and Crimean Armenians) while others came from members of ethnic groups (Karachays, Uygurs, Kazakhs, Chuvashes, Ossetians, and many others) who inhabit the North Caucasus, the Volga River region, and Central Asia, some of whom may have had a genetic affinity with the Khazars. 33 Crimean Karaite uniparental lineages (19 Y-DNA and 14 mtDNA), two Lithuanian Karaite Y-DNA lineages, and one Western Ukrainian Karaite mtDNA lineage are compared to the other data. By and large, the results show that Crimean Karaites are often closely related to other Jews, both Karaite and Rabbinical, but have little affinity with other Turkic-speaking peoples or with non-Jewish peoples who inhabit lands that were once part of Khazaria.