Turkic-speaking Groups Research Articles

Inferring the population history of Kyrgyz in Xinjiang, Northwest China from genome-wide array genotyping.

Xinjiang plays a vital role in the trans-Eurasian population migration, language diffusion, and culture and technology exchange. However, the underrepresentation of Xinjiang's genomes has hindered a more comprehensive understanding of Xinjiang's genetic structure and population history. We collected and genotyped 70 southern Xinjiang's Kyrgyz (SXJK) individuals and combined the data with modern and ancient Eurasians published. We used allele-frequency methods, including PCA, ADMIXTURE, f-statistics, qpWave/qpAdm, ALDER, Treemix, and haplotype-shared methods including shared-IBD segments, fineSTRUCTURE, and GLOBETROTTER to unveil the fine-scale population structure and reconstruct admixture history. We identified genetic substructure within the SXJK population with subgroups showing different genetic affinities to West and East Eurasians. All SXJK subgroups were suggested to have close genetic relationships with surrounding Turkic-speaking groups that is, Uyghur, Kyrgyz from north Xinjiang and Tajikistan, and Chinese Kazakh, suggesting a shared ancestry among those populations. Outgroup-f3 and symmetrical f4 statistics showed a high genetic affinity of SXJK to present-day Tungusic, Mongolic-speaking populations and Ancient Northeast Asian (ANA) related groups. Allele sharing and haplotype sharing profiles revealed the east-west admixture pattern of SXJK. The qpAdm-based admixture models showed that SXJK derived ancestry from East Eurasian (ANA and East Asian, 42.7%-83.3%) and West Eurasian (Western Steppe herders and Central Asian, 16.7%-57.3%), the recent east-west admixture event could be traced to 1000 years ago based on ALDER and GLOBETROTTER analysis. The high genetic affinity of SXJK to present-day Tungusic and Mongolic-speaking populations and short-shared IBD segments indicated their shared common ancestry. SXJK harbored a close genetic affinity to ANA-related populations, indicating the Northeast Asian origin of SXJK. The West and East Eurasian admixture models observed in SXJK further provided evidence of the dynamic admixture history in Xinjiang. The east-west admixture pattern and the identified ancestral makeup of SXJK suggested a genetic continuity from some Iron Age Xinjiang populations to present-day SXJK.

Погребения с изделиями из шелка эпохи Золотой Орды: проблемы интерпретации

Introduction. The Golden Horde epoch in the East European steppe was marked, among other things, by the emergence of urban culture in the region. The urban centers and, first of all, the Golden Horde capital in the Lower Volga were the seats of the ruling elite, but also the centers of trade and crafts people coming from all over the places. Around the towns, there were cemeteries with hundreds of burials that were opened and examined by specialists. In the steppe, near the bank of the river, the Golden Horde epoch is represented by a limited number of burials scattered among a variety of kurgan groups. The article aims to examine Golden Horde burials which comprise silk items; these Volga-Manych sites have previously been part of the studies of steppe elite burials. Materials and methods. The grave goods of most sites in question comprised weaponry, ceramics, and animal bones, the traces of funeral feasts, while luxury items were few. Of much interest in this respect are a Volga-Manych series of Golden Horde burials that comprised silk items. According to numerous data of the written sources, silk was equaled to gold in the medieval time. The fact that the Volga-Manych nomads had clothes made of silk was not only the evidence of their high social status and wealth but also a mark that they were the subjects of the Mongolian Empire. Results. In the burials under study, the silk finds were exclusively the clothing and headdress items of the buried. The fabric originated from the eastern (China, Egypt) and western (Byzantium) production centers. Remains of silk products were found both in the burials of men and women. These were both latitudinal-oriented graves, in which the buried were laid with their heads to the west, and meridionally-oriented graves, with the person’s head to the north. According to the present authors, the latter type may be interpreted as a feature characteristic of ethnic Mongolians’ funeral practice, while the former type graves were those of the Polovtsy and other Turkic-speaking groups.

Лексическо-семантические параллели якутской и теленгитской фольклорной прозы

Interest in the research topic arose as a result of studying the texts of folklore prose of the Yakuts and Telengits. Used method, i.e. reliance on scientific works, collection of facts, comparative analysis of lexical-semantic parallels led to interesting results. The identified samples from the folklore of peoples separated by a huge distance and an independent history of development indicate the presence of common roots. Legends reflect the peculiarities of the ideological ideas of ethnic groups, spiritual and moral values, religious views; at the same time, commonality is found not only in the lexico-semantic plan, but also in the compositional structure of the presentation of the material and the syntax of texts. The changes are quite insignificant, for example, in the Yakut version of the legend «Dispute» the image of a large animal is transformed in accordance with the realities of the Arctic nature, for example, a camel turns into an elk. The thematic approach to the consideration of examples allows us to come to the conclusion that most of the coincidences fall on the texts of religious and everyday content. Some examples from onomastics also speak of ancient linguistic contacts or testify to migration processes among the Turkic-speaking ethnic groups, which have not yet received proper coverage in historical science. In the conclusion of the article, it is said about the need to attract more extensive material to the comparative historical study of the phenomenon. Based on the comprehension of the collected material, an assumption is made about the stability of individual lexemes and lexical-semantic constructions in the translation of the traditional beliefs of the people.

In Bartók’s Footsteps A Folk Music Research Series Among Turkic People (1936–2019)

The Hungarian language belongs to the Finno-Ugric linguistic family, but several pre-Conquest strata of Hungarian folk music are connected to Turkic groups. Intrigued by this phenomenon, Hungarian folk music researchers launched thorough comparative examinations. Investigations authenticated by fieldwork have also been ongoing to the present day, parallel to theoretical research. Initially, the main goal was to explore the eastern relations of Hungarian folk music, which gradually broadened into the areal research of the Volga-Kama-Belaya region. I further expanded this work to encompass the comparative investigation of Turkic-speaking groups living over the vast Eurasian territory. This paper provides a summary of the findings of this field research examining the folk music of Anatolian Turk, Azeri, Karachay, Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbek and Kyrgyz people. I briefly describe the sources, the fieldwork, the methods of processing the collected material, and most interestingly, I summarize new findings. After providing an overview of traditional songs of several Turkic peoples, selected results are provided in three tables: 1) a grouping of Turkic folk-music repertoires; 2) Turkic parallels to Hungarian folk music styles; and 3) the current state of Turkic folk music research conducted by Hungarian scholars.

Монгольский генетический компонент в генофонде коренных народов Сибири, Средней Азии и Восточной Европы

Выявлен вклад монгольского по происхождению компонента в генофонд различных этносов Сибири, Средней Азии и Волго-Уральского региона, который присутствует у монголоязычных и тюркоязычных этносов. Анализ состава различных сублиний гаплогрупп Y-хромосомы показывает, что привнесение этого генетического компонента было связано с различными по времени миграционными событиями и разными по происхождению родоплеменными группами. The contribution of the Mongolian component to the gene pool of various ethnic groups of Siberia, Central Asia and the Volga-Ural region, which is present in the Mongol-speaking and Turkic-speaking ethnic groups, is revealed. An analysis of the composition of the various sublines of the Y-chromosome haplogroups shows that the introduction of this genetic component was associated with time-varying migration events and tribal groups of different origin.

Inferring the Genetic Ancestry of Ubykh People from North Caucasus

Ubykh people inhabited the area of what now is Greater Sochi, one time being neighbors of the Abkhaz and Adyghe. In 1864, after the Caucasian War, a small group of Ubykh survivors migrated to Turkey. The Ubykh language is a branch of the Northwest Caucasian (Abkhazo-Adyghe) languages, which is either placed in the Abkhaz or Adyghe subgroup or distinguished in a separate subgroup, according to various classifications. All this makes Ubykhs an important but genetically unexplored part of the gene pool of the Caucasus population. We collected an exclusive sample (N = 36) of Ubykh individuals, mainly from their diaspora in Turkey. Application of a high resolution panel of Y-chromosome markers (59 SNP and 17 STR) revealed the major West Caucasus haplogroup G2 (75% of the Ubykh population) and pan-Eurasian haplogroup R1a (19%). Within the G2 haplogroup, we identified 14 branches and genotyped 14 branch-defining markers. The frequencies of the same 14 markers in 19 other populations of the Caucasus were included for comparison. Both the genetic distances and the gene geographical map of the most frequent subhaplogroup (defined by the YY1215 marker at the GRCh37 position 8903699, comprising 50% of the Ubykh sample) revealed similarity of the Ubykh and Adyghe populations. Other Abkhaz-Adyghe-speaking populations appear to be at a greater genetic distance from the Ubykhs, similar to the distance to the Turkic-speaking groups of the North Caucasus. The Ossetian gene pool has little in common with Ubykhs, thus contradicting the hypothesis of the Alanian substrate in Ubykhs. Other populations of the Caucasus and Transcaucasia (of Nakh-Daghestanian and Kartvelian linguistic groups) do not show apparent genetic similarities to Ubykhs.

Glimpses of Loptuq Folk Botany: Phytonyms and Plant Knowledge in Sven Hedin’s Herbarium Notes from the Lower Tarim River Area as a Source for Ethnobiological Research

This interdisciplinary study discusses the vernacular phytonyms and other ethnobiological aspects of vegetation in the Loptuq (Loplik) habitat on the Lower Tarim River. This small Turkic-speaking group lived as fisher-foragers in the Lopnor (Lop Lake) area in East Turkestan, now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Information about this unique group, and especially the folk knowledge of plants in the area, is scant. In 1900, Swedish explorer Sven Hedin collected plant voucher specimens for the Swedish Natural History Museum in Stockholm. He noted local names on herbarium labels, thus providing modern researchers a rare glimpse into the Loptuq world. As the traditional way of life is already lost and the Loptuq language almost extinct, every trace of the former culture is of significance when trying to understand the peculiarities of human habitats and survival in arid areas. The ethnobiological analysis can further contribute to other fields, such as climate change, and define the place of the Loptuq on the linguistic and cultural map of Central Asia.

Этническая самоидентификация алтай-кижи в контексте устных исторических преданий

The article is devoted to the analysis of ethno-marking and integration plots of Altai historical legends. The author characterizes the historical circumstances of the formation of the corpus of Altai historical legends, attempts to systematize the stories on the content and highlights the signs of ethnic identity for Altai-kizhi on the basis of folklore texts: language, lifestyle, type of management, clothing, hairstyle. A debatable question about ethnic borders of Altai-kizhi and relations with local sub-ethnic groups is presented. The author insists on the incompleteness of the integrative pro- cesses taking place in the territory of the Altai Mountains in the post-Oirot period, which currently lead to the inclusion of various small ethnic and sub-ethnic turkic-speaking groups in the Altay-kizhi people. The importance of knowledge of specific folklore subjects, and not only the Altai language for ethnic identification is emphasized. Historical legends are presented as a marker of ethnic boundaries in a multi-ethnic population. The mechanisms of formation of traditional ethical prohibitions and their significance for the definition of their "own" and "others" are described. The stages of integration of migrants into the structure of exogamous genera of Altay-kizhi are described in detail on the example of the texts of legends. The author illustrates the process of population recovery through incorporation and natural growth and describes the cultural attitudes that allow to preserve ethnic identity after depopulation and civil war. Question of bilingual existence of Altai folklore texts is considered. The relevance of historical legends in the modern community is noted. Thus, folklore texts could be considered not only as examples of folk literature, but also as a source of ethnic history.

The Turkic Language in Greece Throughout History: The Hunic-Avaric-Bulghar Period

Contemporary Greece is an environment where varieties of Oghuz Turkic are spoken. However, it is known that different Turkic varieties, other than contemporary ones, were spoken in the country in the past. The emergence of the present scenery is a substantial outcome of the Ottoman period. Nevertheless, Turkic groups like the Huns, Avars, Oghurs, Bulghars, Pechenegs, Cumans, and the Oghuz had arrived in Greece and settled there. The former four spoke Bulghar Turkic (Proto-Bulgarian), as distinct from the rest, and had invaded and settled in Greece at different periods. The social influence of their languages varied in accordance with the manner they arrived in Greece. In this period, Turkic sometimes had served as an immigrant or a settler language, whereas sometimes it was used as the language of soldiery. Occasionally, it was solely used as a community language, whereas sometimes it was used as the language of the administration. As a matter of fact, it even had been used as a lingua franca, despite deep-seated languages like Latin and Greek. Naturally, the social strength of the language was directly related to the social status of its speakers. Therefore, Turkic had gained various social statuses in Greece during the Hunnic, Avaric, Oghur, and Bulghar periods. However, these statuses were sometimes influenced by each other. This work aims to establish the social influence and strength of Turkic in Greece during the invasion of these four Bulghar Turkic-speaking groups with reference to limited historical records on hand.

137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes.

For thousands of years the Eurasian steppes have been a centre of human migrations and cultural change. Here we sequence the genomes of 137 ancient humans (about 1× average coverage), covering a period of 4,000 years, to understand the population history of the Eurasian steppes after the Bronze Age migrations. We find that the genetics of the Scythian groups that dominated the Eurasian steppes throughout the Iron Age were highly structured, with diverse origins comprising Late Bronze Age herders, European farmers and southern Siberian hunter-gatherers. Later, Scythians admixed with the eastern steppe nomads who formed the Xiongnu confederations, and moved westward in about the second or third century BC, forming the Hun traditions in the fourth-fifth century AD, and carrying with them plague that was basal to the Justinian plague. These nomads were further admixed with East Asian groups during several short-term khanates in the Medieval period. These historical events transformed the Eurasian steppes from being inhabited by Indo-European speakers of largely West Eurasian ancestry to the mostly Turkic-speaking groups of the present day, who are primarily of East Asian ancestry.

Amazonki - mit czy reminiscencja zwyczajów koczowników

There is evidence (archaeological, historical, linguistic, iconographic, ethnological and other mentioned in this article) to show that the formation of the myth of the Amazons could be a result of observations of habits of Iranian nomads who used to live in the areas of the northern coast of the Black Sea and Central Asia in Antiquity. Some datum indicates that women from these communities (as in many other groups of nomads) had a much higher social status than in many settled communities such as the ancient Greeks and Romans. Women in the Iranianspeaking nomadic communities were likely to participate in hunting and, to some limited extent, in fighting. In addition, some of them might have become the heads o f these groups as queens (that is not as wives of kings but as independent rulers). All o f it influenced the imagination of people from Greek culture who had met the nomads. Stories about these warrior women spread into Greek ecumene, increasingly evolving and subject to distortion, thus affecting the myth of the Amazons. The Amazons in Greek mythology and art often have nomadic features - they ride on horseback, wear bows and “Scythian” costumes and weapons. Tales of warlike women did not only contribute to the mythology of the ancient world, but they were inherited by Turkic-speaking groups and are still present in the culture of Iran.

Review: China's Early Mosques, by Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt

Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt China's Early Mosques Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015, 368 pp., 8 maps, 140 color and 60 b/w illus. $160/£95, ISBN 9780748670413 This well-illustrated book is a most welcome addition to art and architectural history studies, especially in the fields of Islamic and Chinese art. I know this because I have had the opportunity to use the volume on several occasions. In one case, as I was preparing for a trip to Xinjiang, I found the book indispensable not only for my preparation to visit this area of Central Asian China but also for the accurate information it provided. Before the publication of China's Early Mosques , I had visited important early Muslim sites in southeast and north-central China, but until I read Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt's text, I had great difficulty sorting fact from fiction about the monuments I saw. There is absolutely no other book in English or any European language that covers China's mosques. Further, in addition to being unique, it is lucidly written, shedding light on a topic that might otherwise seem bewildering to the non-Islamic, non-China specialist. This volume will remain the standard work on Chinese mosques well into the future. Chapter 1 opens the book with an introduction to Islam in China, with its population of about 23 million Muslims, the majority of whom are Hui (about 10 million), followed by Uyghurs (about 8.4 million); the rest are largely members of other Turkic-speaking ethnic groups. The written record and material remains provide considerable evidence of trade between China and both South Asia …

НАГАЙБАКИ: ОТ СОСЛОВИЯ К ЭТНОСУ (К ВОПРОСУ О ГЕНЕЗИСЕ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТИ)

The Nagaybaks are one of the Turkic-speaking groups of the Southern Urals, related to Christened Tatars of the Middle Volga, to Chuvash, and possibly to Udmurt and eastern Mari. The key factor in their origin was the emergence of Orenburg Cossack Host with a number of native troops in the 1730s. Unlike the Kalmyk, Bashkir, and Misher Tatar troops, which were ethnically homogeneous, the Nagaybaks served alongside Russian Cossacks. Owing to certain circumstances, specifi cally to the state policy of “organizing” the natives (Christening, recruiting for the Cossack Host, and geographic isolation from closest ethnic relatives), their ethnicity shifted from religious (“Christened Tatars”) and social (Tatar Cossacks) to ethic proper (Nagaybaks). This case exemplifi es the impact of state policy on the origins of new ethnic groups. Current Nagaybaks ethnicity includes geographic, religious, and social constituents. Recent scholarship and the last two censuses mention just one name, Nagaybaks, which, in essence, is an exoethnonym. This article discusses all exoethnonyms and endoethnonyms of that group.

Реформа графики в СССР в 1920-1930-х гг. как фактор формирования этнического самосознания тюркоязычных этносов Саяно-Алтая

Реформа графики в СССР в 1920-1930-х гг. как фактор формирования этнического самосознания тюркоязычных этносов Саяно-Алтая

The many faces of Turkish Odessa

The article discusses regional territoriality by looking at the heterogeneous community of Turkish male migrants and the multiple alliances they establish in post-Soviet Odessa, Ukraine. In its public image, the city plays down ideas of urban continuities with the Ottoman past, but new relations between Turkish newcomers and various Turkic-speaking groups in the area both create different and overlapping “ecumenical communities” and actualize long-forgotten connections or marginal historical visions. These migrants also generate important links to the area through marriage and intimate relations with Slav women. I argue that alliances between Turkish migrants and Turkic-speaking minorities and local women not only allow them to make the city their own, but also create a distance from wider Odessan society.

Everyday Life in Central Asia. Past and Present ed. by Jeff Sahadeo and Russell Zanca (review)

Reviewed by: Everyday Life in Central Asia. Past and Present ed. by Jeff Sahadeo and Russell Zanca Dorena Caroli (bio) Jeff Sahadeo and Russell Zanca (Eds.), Everyday Life in Central Asia. Past and Present (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007). 401 pp. Maps, black and white photographic illustrations. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-0-253-21904-6. Everyday life in the Soviet Union and in the former Soviet republics has constituted a main field of investigation in recent decades and has disclosed the way in which the traditional and national cultures survived through socialism or were surpassed by a longing for modernity and modernization.1 This new and interesting volume edited by Jeff Sahadeo and Russell Zanca fills an important gap in the history of everyday life of Central Asia. This region was studied in past decades more from the point of view of building democracy, religious extremism and terrorism, natural resource holding, and the war in Afghanistan. The editors’ challenging task concerned not only the large variety of topics included in the collection but also the coordination of twenty-three well-known scholars dealing with the different aspects of everyday life in Central Asia, including the topics of Turkmen [End Page 464] nomads, Afghan villagers, Kazakh scientists, Kyrgyz border guards, Tajik “strongmen” and guardians of religious shrines in Uzbekistan. The volume also includes a very useful selected bibliography and index of names and topics. The introduction presents some reflections on “everydayness” in Central Asia, the geopolitical features of this huge region (located between the Caspian Sea, the Urals, the middle range of the Altai and Tien Shan mountains, and the Hindu Kush), and a historical survey covering the period from the 1930s to the beginning of the Afghan war. It is followed by five thematic sections dealing with gender, religion, power, culture, and wealth. As the editors argue in the introduction, the links between the past and the present constitute the core of the volume, revealing the “significance of the Soviet transformation of Central Asian culture and society”: In addition to political leaders and systems, the continuities of the Soviet era are anchored in multiple aspects of everyday life – the way people read, learn, work, and think. Soviet legacies go to the heart of modern identity of various Central Asian peoples. We focus specifically on what Central Asians themselves have to say about this identity issue, which varies, of course, depending on their level of interest in notions such as cultural dominance and transformation. We aim to impress upon readers the centrality of the intertwined Russian, Soviet, and Marxist transformations among ordinary people from the semi-desert environments of western Uzbekistan to the lush valleys of the Pamir Mountains shared by Tajiks and Kyrgyz, to say nothing of the cosmopolitan setting of Almaty and Tashkent … [I]mperial and Soviet experiences themselves were shaped at the level of everyday life by local customs, behaviors, and traditions (P. 9). The originality of this volume consists not only in the detailed and multidisciplinary presentation of everyday life in the region but also in the fact that “Ordinary people in Central Asia emerge … as agents in a series of complex transformations” (P. 9). The only chapter in the first section, by Scott Levi, deals with the role of the communities of Turks and Tajiks in Central Asian history. He looks for the key factors that have shaped the region over centuries, describing how modern-day Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, and Uzbeks were formed out of various Turkic-speaking groups, how [End Page 465] Iranian-speaking groups became Tajiks, and how the lines between ethnic groups shifted due to socioeconomic, political, and demographic factors. Islam, spreading across Central Asia from the eighth century to the eighteenth, also continually evolved, adopting beliefs and practices from older religious systems and adding those from new arrivals. (P. 13) The second section deals with communes, which have been of critical importance across Central Asia because they acted as “anchors” during the transition, and highlights how “group loyalties today remain multilayered, even as many residents of Central Asia identify themselves as Afghans, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks, Turkmen, or Uzbeks, or, in a larger sense, as Muslims” (P. 33). The four chapters constituting...

No Evidence from Genome-wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews

The origin and history of the Ashkenazi Jewish population have long been of great interest, and advances in high-throughput genetic analysis have recently provided a new approach for investigating these topics. We and others have argued on the basis of genome-wide data that the Ashkenazi Jewish population derives its ancestry from a combination of sources tracing to both Europe and the Middle East. It has been claimed, however, through a reanalysis of some of our data, that a large part of the ancestry of the Ashkenazi population originates with the Khazars, a Turkic-speaking group that lived to the north of the Caucasus region ~1,000 years ago. Because the Khazar population has left no obvious modern descendants that could enable a clear test for a contribution to Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, the Khazar hypothesis has been difficult to examine using genetics. Furthermore, because only limited genetic data have been available from the Caucasus region, and because these data have been concentrated in populations that are genetically close to populations from the Middle East, the attribution of any signal of Ashkenazi-Caucasus genetic similarity to Khazar ancestry rather than shared ancestral Middle Eastern ancestry has been problematic. Here, through integration of genotypes from newly collected samples with data from several of our past studies, we have assembled the largest data set available to date for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins. This data set contains genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms in 1,774 samples from 106 Jewish and non-Jewish populations that span the possible regions of potential Ashkenazi ancestry: Europe, the Middle East, and the region historically associated with the Khazar Khaganate. The data set includes 261 samples from 15 populations from the Caucasus region and the region directly to its north, samples that have not previously been included alongside Ashkenazi Jewish samples in genomic studies. Employing a variety of standard techniques for the analysis of population-genetic structure, we found that Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations and, among non-Jewish populations, with groups from Europe and the Middle East. No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews to populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region.

No evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazi Jews.

The origin and history of the Ashkenazi Jewish population have long been of great interest, and advances in high-throughput genetic analysis have recently provided a new approach for investigating these topics. We and others have argued on the basis of genome-wide data that the Ashkenazi Jewish population derives its ancestry from a combination of sources tracing to both Europe and the Middle East. It has been claimed, however, through a reanalysis of some of our data, that a large part of the ancestry of the Ashkenazi population originates with the Khazars, a Turkic-speaking group that lived to the north of the Caucasus region ~1,000 years ago. Because the Khazar population has left no obvious modern descendants that could enable a clear test for a contribution to Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, the Khazar hypothesis has been difficult to examine using genetics. Furthermore, because only limited genetic data have been available from the Caucasus region, and because these data have been concentrated in populations that are genetically close to populations from the Middle East, the attribution of any signal of Ashkenazi-Caucasus genetic similarity to Khazar ancestry rather than shared ancestral Middle Eastern ancestry has been problematic. Here, through integration of genotypes from newly collected samples with data from several of our past studies, we have assembled the largest data set available to date for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins. This data set contains genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms in 1,774 samples from 106 Jewish and non-Jewish populations that span the possible regions of potential Ashkenazi ancestry: Europe, the Middle East, and the region historically associated with the Khazar Khaganate. The data set includes 261 samples from 15 populations from the Caucasus region and the region directly to its north, samples that have not previously been included alongside Ashkenazi Jewish samples in genomic studies. Employing a variety of standard techniques for the analysis of population-genetic structure, we found that Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations and, among non-Jewish populations, with groups from Europe and the Middle East. No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews to populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region.

China under stress: The Xinjiang question

On 5 July 2009, the capital city of China's Xinjiang Province exploded in violence. The riots that took place on that summer's day in Xinjiang should have come as no surprise. Although things usually appear calm on the surface in Xinjiang, deep down there is tremendous discontent and resentment among Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group. The Chinese government needs to ask itself what caused such a horrific event to take place. If not, 5 July 2009 will be a prelude of what is to come. As of now, Xinjiang is not a place where terrorists or people with extremist views have a stronghold, but if the government continues in the same direction, it may produce people who espouse such views. This article will examine how the roots of Uighur rage are found in Beijing's long-established anti-Uighur policies, which are based on the idea of Han superiority.

Y-Chromosome Diversity in Modern Bulgarians: New Clues about Their Ancestry

To better define the structure and origin of the Bulgarian paternal gene pool, we have examined the Y-chromosome variation in 808 Bulgarian males. The analysis was performed by high-resolution genotyping of biallelic markers and by analyzing the STR variation within the most informative haplogroups. We found that the Y-chromosome gene pool in modern Bulgarians is primarily represented by Western Eurasian haplogroups with ∼ 40% belonging to haplogroups E-V13 and I-M423, and 20% to R-M17. Haplogroups common in the Middle East (J and G) and in South Western Asia (R-L23*) occur at frequencies of 19% and 5%, respectively. Haplogroups C, N and Q, distinctive for Altaic and Central Asian Turkic-speaking populations, occur at the negligible frequency of only 1.5%. Principal Component analyses group Bulgarians with European populations, apart from Central Asian Turkic-speaking groups and South Western Asia populations. Within the country, the genetic variation is structured in Western, Central and Eastern Bulgaria indicating that the Balkan Mountains have been permeable to human movements. The lineage analysis provided the following interesting results: (i) R-L23* is present in Eastern Bulgaria since the post glacial period; (ii) haplogroup E-V13 has a Mesolithic age in Bulgaria from where it expanded after the arrival of farming; (iii) haplogroup J-M241 probably reflects the Neolithic westward expansion of farmers from the earliest sites along the Black Sea. On the whole, in light of the most recent historical studies, which indicate a substantial proto-Bulgarian input to the contemporary Bulgarian people, our data suggest that a common paternal ancestry between the proto-Bulgarians and the Altaic and Central Asian Turkic-speaking populations either did not exist or was negligible.