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| "Cousin Al" (Photo by Sophie Delar) |
Fox News reports that Ashkenazi Jews, a population that hails from Central and Eastern Europe and comprises “about 80% of today’s Jews,” are all at least 30th cousins with one another.
What that means is that they can all rightfully refer to Einstein as “Cousin Al.”
Researcher Itsik Pe’er claims that Ashkenazi Jews all “have a stretch of the genome that is identical.” He
gleaned this “by comparing 128 Ashkenazi Jews’ genomes to 26 Belgian
Flemish genomes, identifying markers seen only among Ashkenazi Jews.”
Scientists theorize that there was a founding “bottleneck” population of “some 350” that “lived about 600 to 800 years – or 30 to 32 generations – ago.” This founding population
possibly descended from “European and Middle Eastern people.”
These findings are not only historically relevant, but also medically so.
They might help doctors to determine the risk for such “relatively common” Ashkenazi-prone diseases as “Tay Sachs and breast
cancer.”
Resources
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/09/11/european-jews-are-all-30th-cousinsor-closer-study/
Copyright September 12, 2014 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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