Which Jewish diaspora is genetically the closest to ancient Hebrews?

**Etelfrido** · 01-25-2024, 07:01 PM

I've seen some people say its the Mizrahim because they're from the Middle East abut although they seem to be the most distinct out of Ashkenazim, Sephardim and North African Jews, it's probably because they've mixed with Middle Eastern peoples who aren't geentically similar to Levantines.

Most Jewish populations largely fall into four major cultural groups: Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, North African, and Sephardi. These groupings represent generally distinct geographic ancestries: Central and Eastern Europe for the Ashkenazi group; the Middle East, Caucasus, and Central Asia for the Mizrahi group; North Africa for the North African group; and Mediterranean regions inhabited by descendants of Jewish populations expelled from Iberia in the late 1400 s for the Sephardi group. [...] Four Jewish populations included in the study—Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews from Cochin, Indian Jews from Mumbai, and Yemenite Jews—are considered to be culturally distinct and not part of the Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, North African, or Sephardi groups; they are therefore not analyzed in sets (5)–(12).

Jewish populations in relation to non-Jewish populations of Africa, Asia, and Europe

We performed multidimensional scaling (MDS) using the allele-sharing distance [28] between pairs of individuals. Figure 1a shows an MDS plot for 2789 individuals from 114 populations from Africa, Asia, and Europe (population set 1). The plot shows a separation of individuals by geographic region with Jewish samples largely forming a cluster overlapping the European and Middle Eastern samples. Some Jewish samples lie outside this cluster: the two Indian Jewish populations, from Cochin and Mumbai, and the Ethiopian Jewish population lie among non-Jewish populations of Central and South Asia and Africa, respectively.

Fig. 1Multidimensional scaling analysis of population structure for Jewish populations and non-Jewish populations from specific regions.a Africa, Asia, and Europe (2789 individuals, 114 populations). b Europe, Middle East, and Central and South Asia (1656 individuals, 79 populations; Ethiopian Jews are excluded). c Europe and Middle East (1288 individuals, 64 populations; Ethiopian and Indian Jews from Cochin and Mumbai are excluded). In c, groups are color-coded: Europe, light blue; Middle East, olive green; Ashkenazi Jewish, dark blue; Mizrahi Jewish, red; North African Jewish, orange; Sephardi Jewish, purple; Yemenite Jewish, green. Population symbols often overlap due to similar placement.

[...] Relationships among Jewish populations
We further reduced the population set, exploring structure among Jewish populations, continuing to exclude Ethiopian and Indian Jews, and also excluding the relatively dissimilar Yemenite Jews (population set 4). We performed MDS and Structure analyses for this subset, which included 420 individuals from 27 Jewish populations.The MDS plot in Fig. 3a contains clusters representing Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, North African, and Sephardi populations. The Mizrahi cluster is relatively distant from the other three and most distant from the Ashkenazi and North African groups. Notably, the Sephardi populations form a cluster separate from the Ashkenazi and North African populations. The average linkage distance L0, measuring the distance between pairs of individuals, one from each group, is 0.0233 for Sephardi and Ashkenazi populations. This distance gives a significant separation; with group labels permuted (see “Materials and methods” section, multidimensional scaling), Sephardi–Ashkenazi L0 is always smaller than the unpermuted L0 (p < 0.001, 1000 permutations). Sephardi–North African L0 also indicates significant separation (L0 = 0.0250, p < 0.001).

Fig. 3
Population structure for Jewish populations.a Multidimensional scaling. Color codes follow Fig. 1c. b Unsupervised clustering using structure. Among 20 replicates, the major mode shown appears in 20, 20, 18, 15, 9, 14, and 10 runs for K = 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, respectively. Both plots include 420 individuals from 27 populations and exclude Ethiopian, Indian, and Yemenite Jewish populations.

Structure (Fig. 3b) confirms many of the distinctions observed with MDS. For K = 2, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews are largely assigned to separate clusters, with North African and Sephardi Jews having intermediate membership. For K = 3, North African Jews split into a new cluster that partially contains Sephardi Jews (blue). The new cluster at K = 4 separates Moroccan Jews from the other North African Jewish populations (green). For K = 5, Georgian Jews are assigned mostly to a new cluster that partly contains other Mizrahi populations (purple). At K = 6, the new cluster contains Sephardi Jews and contributions from some Mizrahi populations (pink). At K = 7, the Sephardi separation is less noticeable, with separation visible for Azerbaijani and Uzbek Jews (red). At K = 8, the partial Sephardi separation reappears (light green).

Major subgroups of Jewish populations

Figure 3 distinguishes the Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, North African, and Sephardi populations. We next analyzed these groups separately, using MDS and Structure for each group, and MDS for each group in combination with geographically associated non-Jewish populations (Figs. 4, ,55).

Fig. 4
Multidimensional scaling analysis of population structure for Jewish subgroups.a Ashkenazi Jewish and nearby non-Jewish populations (31 populations, 632 individuals). b Mizrahi Jewish and nearby non-Jewish populations (ten populations, 179 individuals). c North African Jewish and nearby non-Jewish populations (eight populations, 140 individuals). d Sephardi Jewish and nearby non-Jewish populations (nine populations, 131 individuals). e Ashkenazi Jews (13 populations, 159 individuals). f Mizrahi Jews (six populations, 104 individuals). g North African Jews (five populations, 91 individuals). h Sephardi Jews (three populations, 53 individuals). Non-Jewish comparison populations were chosen from regions near locations historically inhabited by the Jewish populations.

Discussion

Among non-Jewish populations, we find several populations relatively close to sets of Jewish groups. For example, in MDS analysis (Fig. 1c), the Cypriots appear near Sephardi Jews; this affinity was also evident in Structure plots (Fig. 2a). Ashkenazi Jews were placed near southern European populations such as Italians, North African Jews were closest to Egyptians, and Mizrahi Jewish populations were within a cluster of non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations, in proximity to such groups as Armenians and Iranians. These observations generally accord with previous studies, which have identified some of these same similarities [9, 10, 15, 19, 20]. No single non-Jewish group consistently overlapped any Jewish population across all analyses.