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in 2005.
Geographic issues aside, we chose both Sorbs and Belarusians as
Slavic groups in part because of the theories of Paul Wexler of Tel Aviv
University about the origins of Yiddish (Two-Tiered Relexification in
Yiddish), the language of Ashkenazi Jewry. Contrary to the almost
universal view of Yiddish as a Germanic language, Wexler proposes
that it was originally a combination of Sorbian and a pre-Ukrainian/
pre-Belarusian (or, as Wexler calls it, Kiev-Polessian ) language that
has since been relexifi ed with German. (Relexifi cation is the pro-
cess whereby new vocabulary is substituted for old.) In other words,
according to Wexler, Yiddish has a Slavic grammar and syntax, but
those elements have been obscured because most of the original Slavic
vocabulary has been replaced with German words.
Sometimes a population s taking on the language of another group
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is accompanied by suffi ciently close social contacts that genes move
between them. Thus, we thought the Sorbs and/or the Belarusians
might be a source for Levite Y-chromosome haplogroups not only by
virtue of their location and history but also because of their language.
In addition to these groups, we wanted to include one other popu-
lation that had at least some R-M17 Y chromosomes but that wasn t
considered a possible source for the origins of the Levite Y chromo-
somes. This population would serve as a sort of control group. That
way if there was incidental sharing of types with the large grouping
of R-M17 chromosome types, we d see it in the control group as well
as the test groups. For this purpose we chose Norwegians, who were
known to carry a respectable frequency of R-M17 Y chromosomes.
Norwegians also represented an ideal control in light of a sad his-
torical fact: Norway excluded Jewish immigration for the entire period
during which the Ashkenazi community was forming and expanding
Jews have only been permitted to settle there since 1851. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, the entire Norwegian Jewish
population numbered 642. Today it is still less than 1,500. While
studying genetic signatures of the Vikings, and with the BBC in tow,
I had earlier embarked on a trip to collect Norwegian blood samples.
I found the Norwegians I met polite and gracious though perhaps
predictably not overly demonstrative. In a clumsy attempt at making
conversation, I asked one of those donating blood for the project
whether he could imagine his ancestors staging raids on the British
Isles. Oh yes, he assured me, that was us.
Contemporary Slavs and Israelites are not very similar in terms
of their Y chromosomes. Among the Israelites we typed, less than 5
percent of the Y chromosomes contained R-M17. By contrast, in the
Belarusians and the Sorbs, the R-M17 frequencies were 50 and 66
percent, respectively. Among the Levites, 56 percent of the Y chromo-
somes were R-M17, a figure strikingly similar to that observed in the
Slavic groups. Among Germans and Norwegians, the figures were
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looki ng out for number two
lower (13 and 22 percent, respectively), but still much greater than
what was seen among the Israelites.
Genetic and statistical analyses painted the same picture: only the
Ashkenazi Levites, and not the rest of their fellow Jews, appear to
have received a signifi cant male contribution of Slavic origin. The
Ashkenazi Levites were significantly different from all the populations
considered with one exception: the Sorbs and the Ashkenazi Levites
were statistically indistinguishable. That doesn t necessarily mean the
Levites Y chromosomes came from the Sorbs or that Yiddish is a
Slavic language. It does mean that these chromosomes came into the
Levites through a group that was similar to modern Sorbs in paternal
genetic makeup.
But what happened when we added in more Y-chromosome mark-
ers to study the R-M17 chromosomes in greater detail? Using more
extensive microsatellite variation, we found that among the Levites
the Y chromosomes were mostly close relatives of one another. They
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