Y-chromosomal Aaron is the name given to the hypothesized

most recent common ancestor In biology and genetic genealogy, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA), also known as the last common ancestor (LCA) or concestor, of a set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all the organisms of the set are descended. The ...

of the

patrilineal Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritan ...

Jewish

priestly caste The priestly caste is a social group responsible for officiating over sacrifices and leading prayers or other religious functions, particularly in nomadic and tribal societies. In some cases, as with the Brahmins of Vedic India and the Kohanim a ...

known as ''

Kohanim Kohen ( he, , ''kōhēn'', , "priest", pl. , ''kōhănīm'', , "priests") is the Hebrew word for "priest", used in reference to the Aaronic priesthood, also called Aaronites or Aaronides. Levitical priests or ''kohanim'' are traditionally be ...

'' (singular "Kohen", also spelled "Cohen"). According to the traditional understanding of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Aaron, the brother of Moses. While some early genetic studies were seen as possibly supporting the traditional biblical narrative, this view was subsequently challenged with some researchers arguing that the genetic evidence "refutes the idea of a single founder for Jewish Cohanim who lived in Biblical times." However, recent studies have provided further support for the model of descent from a common ancestor who lived in the First Temple period by demonstrating that Kohanim from different Jewish communities form a "tight cluster" which is "specific to the Jewish Cohens". The original scientific research was based on the hypothesis that a majority of present-day Jewish Kohanim share a pattern of values for six

Y-STR A Y-STR is a short tandem repeat (STR) on the Y-chromosome. Y-STRs are often used in forensics, paternity, and genealogical DNA testing. Y-STRs are taken specifically from the male Y chromosome. These Y-STRs provide a weaker analysis than autosom ...

markers, which researchers named the extended ''Cohen Modal Haplotype'' (CMH). Subsequent research using twelve Y-STR markers indicated that about half of contemporary Jewish Kohanim shared Y-chromosomal J1 M267, (specifically haplogroup J-P58, also called J1c3), while other Kohanim share a different ancestry, such as haplogroup J2a (J-M410). The latest studies using single nucleotide polymorphic markers have further narrowed the results down to a single sub-branch known as J1-B877 (also known as J1-Z18271).

Background

For human beings, the normal number of

chromosome A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...

s is 46, of which 23 are inherited from each parent. Two chromosomes, the X and Y, determine sex. Women have two X chromosomes, one inherited from each of their parents. Men have an X chromosome inherited from their mother, and a Y chromosome inherited from their father. Males who share a common

ancestor also share a common Y chromosome, diverging only with respect to accumulated

mutation In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA replication, DNA or viral repl ...

s. Since

Y-chromosome The Y chromosome is one of two sex chromosomes (allosomes) in therian mammals, including humans, and many other animals. The other is the X chromosome. Y is normally the sex-determining chromosome in many species, since it is the presence or abs ...

s are passed from father to son, all Kohanim men should theoretically have nearly identical Y chromosomes; this can be assessed with a

genealogical DNA test A genealogical DNA test is a DNA-based test used in genetic genealogy that looks at specific locations of a person's genome in order to find or verify ancestral genealogical relationships, or (with lower reliability) to estimate the ethnic mixt ...

. As the

mutation rate In genetics, the mutation rate is the frequency of new mutations in a single gene or organism over time. Mutation rates are not constant and are not limited to a single type of mutation; there are many different types of mutations. Mutation rates ...

on the Y chromosome is relatively constant, scientists can estimate the elapsed time since two men had a

common ancestor Common descent is a concept in evolutionary biology applicable when one species is the ancestor of two or more species later in time. All living beings are in fact descendants of a unique ancestor commonly referred to as the last universal comm ...

. Although

Jewish identity Jewish identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as a Jew and as relating to being Jewish. Under a broader definition, Jewish identity does not depend on whether a person is regarded as a Jew by others, or by an exter ...

has traditionally (according to rabbinic-Jewish law I.E. since around the 1st century CE) been passed by

matrilineal descent Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline – their mother's lineage – and which can involve the inheritance o ...

, membership in the Jewish

caste has been determined by patrilineal descent (see

Presumption of priestly descent The presumption of priestly descent (or presumed kohen or status-quo kohen) in Judaism is the attribution to a kohen of equivalent position as if there was proven descent from the priestly family of Aaron. This is evidenced not by genealogical rec ...

). Modern Kohanim are traditionally regarded in Judaism as male descendants of biblical Aaron, a direct patrilineal descendant of

Abraham Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Je ...

, according to the lineage recorded in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Josephus Flavius Josephus (; grc-gre, Ἰώσηπος, ; 37 – 100) was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian and military leader, best known for '' The Jewish War'', who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly ...

and rabbinic sources that this tradition existed .E. was practiced and believedby the end of the Second Temple (1st century CE, nearly a millennium and a half after the tradition places Aaron), there is no further evidence to support its historicity. According to modern biblical scholarship, a historical-critical reading of the biblical text suggests that the origin of the priesthood is much more complex, and that for much if not all of the First Temple period, kohen was not (necessarily) synonymous with "Aaronide". Rather, this traditional identity seems to have been adopted sometime around the second temple period. With the development of methods to follow specific DNA sequences of the human genome, interest in the Cohanim (and Levites) has gained new momentum as an instrument for proof of the common origins of the current Jewish ethnic-groups in the population of the Land of Israel two thousand years ago, as narrated in the biblical story. Skorecki, who carried out the initial study, told the journalist Jon Entine, "I was interested in the question: To what extent was our shared oral tradition matched by other evidence?"

Initial study

The Kohen hypothesis was first

tested ''Tested'' is a live album by punk rock band Bad Religion. It was recorded in the USA, Canada, Germany, Estonia, Denmark, Italy and Austria, in 1996, and released in 1997. It is Bad Religion's second live album. Instead of using crowd microphon ...

through DNA analysis in 1997 by Prof.

Karl Skorecki Karl may refer to: People * Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name * Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne * Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer * Karl of Austria, last Austri ...

and collaborators from

Haifa Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...

, Israel. In their study, "Y chromosomes of Jewish priests," published in the journal ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

,'' they found that the Kohanim appeared to share a different probability distribution compared to the rest of the Jewish population for the two Y-chromosome markers they tested (

YAP Yap ( yap, Waqaab) traditionally refers to an island group located in the Caroline Islands of the western Pacific Ocean, a part of Yap State. The name "Yap" in recent years has come to also refer to the state within the Federated States of Micr ...

and DYS19). They also found that the probabilities appeared to be shared by both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Kohens, pointing to a common Kohen population origin before the

Jewish diaspora The Jewish diaspora ( he, תְּפוּצָה, təfūṣā) or exile (Hebrew: ; Yiddish: ) is the dispersion of Israelites or Jews out of their ancient ancestral homeland (the Land of Israel) and their subsequent settlement in other parts of th ...

at the

destruction of the Second Temple The siege of Jerusalem of 70 CE was the decisive event of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), in which the Roman army led by future emperor Titus besieged Jerusalem, the center of Jewish rebel resistance in the Roman province of Ju ...

. However, this study also indicated that only 48% of Ashkenazi Kohens and 58% of Sephardic Kohens have the J1 Cohen Modal Haplotype. In a subsequent study the next year (Thomas MG ''et al.'', 1998), the team increased the number of

markers tested to six, as well as testing more SNP markers. Again, they found that a clear difference was observable between the Kohanim population and the general Jewish population, with many of the Kohen STR results clustered around a single pattern they named the Kohen Modal Haplotype: : Here, becoming increasingly specific, xDE is the proportion who were not in Haplogroups D or E (from the original paper); xDE,PR is the proportion who were not in haplogroups D, E, P, Q or R; Hg J is the proportion who were in Haplogroup J (from the slightly larger panel studied by Behar et al. (2003) ); CMH.1 means "within one marker of the CMH-6"; and CMH is the proportion with a 6/6 match. The final two columns show the conditional proportions for CMH.1 and CMH, given membership of Haplogroup J. The data show that the Kohanim were more than twice as likely to belong to Haplogroup J than the average non-Cohen Jew. Of those who did belong to Haplogroup J, the Kohanim were more than twice as likely to have an STR pattern close to the CMH-6, suggesting a much more recent common ancestry for most of them compared to an average non-Kohen Jew of Haplogroup J.

Dating

Thomas, ''et al.'' dated the origin of the shared DNA to approximately 3,000 years ago (with variance arising from different generation lengths). The techniques used to find Y-chromosomal Aaron were first popularized in relation to the search for the patrilineal ancestor of all contemporary living humans,

Y-chromosomal Adam In human genetics, the Y-chromosomal most recent common ancestor (Y-MRCA, informally known as Y-chromosomal Adam) is the patrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) from whom all currently living humans are descended. He is the most recent mal ...

. Subsequent calculations under the coalescent model for J1 haplotypes bearing the Cohanim motif gave time estimates that place the origin of this genealogy around 6,200 years ago (95% CI: 4.5–8.6 Kybp), earlier than previously thought, and well before the origin of Judaism (David Kingdom, ∼2.9 ybp). The latest studies on the other hand have proposed coalescence estimates ranging between ~3,200 and ~2,570 years before present, which are in broad agreement with a progenitor who lived during the First Temple period.

Responses

The finding led to excitement in religious circles, with some seeing it as providing some proof of the historical veracity of the

priestly covenant The priestly covenant ( he, ברית הכהונה ''brith ha-kehuna'') is the biblical covenant that God gave to Aaron and his descendants, the Aaronic priesthood, as found in the Hebrew Bible and Oral Torah. The covenant is portrayed as everla ...

or other religious convictions. Following the discovery of the very high prevalence of 6/6 CMH matches amongst Kohanim, other researchers and analysts were quick to look for it. Some groups have taken the presence of this haplotype as indicating possible Jewish ancestry, although the chromosome is not exclusive to Jews. It is widely found among other

Semitic people Semites, Semitic peoples or Semitic cultures is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group. Early research suggested that the 6/6 matches found among male

Lemba Lemba may refer to: * ''Lemba'' (grasshopper), a genus of insect in the subfamily Caryandinae * Lemba people, an African ethnic group in Southern Africa ;Places * Lemba, Kinshasa, a commune in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo * Lembá ...

of Southern Africa confirmed their oral history of descent from Jews and connection to Jewish culture. Later research has been unable to confirm this (due to the fact that CMH was widely found among other Semitic peoples of the Middle East) although it has shown that some male Lemba have Middle Eastern ancestry. Critics such as Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin suggested that the paper's evidence was being overstated in terms of showing Jewish descent among these distant populations. A historical-critical reading of the biblical text suggests that the origin of the priesthood is much more complex, and that for much if not all of the First Temple period, kohen was not (necessarily) synonymous with "Aaronide". Rather, this traditional identity seems to have been adopted sometime around the second temple period. * * * * *

Limitations

One source of early confusion was the low resolution of the available tests. The Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH), while frequent amongst Kohanim, also appeared in the general populations of haplogroups J1 and J2 with no particular link to the Kohen ancestry. These haplogroups occur widely throughout the Middle East and beyond. Thus, while many Kohanim have haplotypes close to the CMH, a greater number of such haplotypes worldwide belong to people with no apparent connection to the Jewish priesthood. Individuals with at least 5/6 matches for the original 6-marker Cohen Modal Haplotype are found across the Middle East, with significant frequencies among various Arab populations, mainly those with the J1 Haplogroup. These have not been "traditionally considered admixed with mainstream Jewish populations" – the frequency of the J1 Haplogroup is the following:

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...

(34.2%),

Oman Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of ...

(22.8%),

Negev The Negev or Negeb (; he, הַנֶּגֶב, hanNegév; ar, ٱلنَّقَب, an-Naqab) is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its sout ...

(21.9%), and

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

(19.2%); and amongst Muslim

Kurds ug:كۇردلار Kurds ( ku, کورد ,Kurd, italic=yes, rtl=yes) or Kurdish people are an Iranian ethnic group native to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Ira ...

(22.1%),

Bedouins The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Ar ...

(21.9%), and

Armenians Armenians ( hy, հայեր, '' hayer'' ) are an ethnic group native to the Armenian highlands of Western Asia. Armenians constitute the main population of Armenia and the ''de facto'' independent Artsakh. There is a wide-ranging diasp ...

(12.7%). On the other hand, Jewish populations were found to have a "markedly higher" proportion of full 6/6 matches, according to the same (2005) meta-analysis. This was compared to these non-Jewish populations, where "individuals matching at only 5/6 markers are most commonly observed." The authors Elkins, et al. warned in their report that "using the current CMH definition to infer relation of individuals or groups to the Cohen or ancient Hebrew populations would produce many

false-positive A false positive is an error in binary classification in which a test result incorrectly indicates the presence of a condition (such as a disease when the disease is not present), while a false negative is the opposite error, where the test result ...

results," and note that "it is possible that the originally defined CMH represents a slight permutation of a more general Middle Eastern type that was established early on in the population prior to the divergence of haplogroup J. Under such conditions, parallel

convergence Convergence may refer to: Arts and media Literature *''Convergence'' (book series), edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen *Convergence (comics), "Convergence" (comics), two separate story lines published by DC Comics: **A four-part crossover storyline that ...

in divergent clades to the same STR haplotype would be possible." Cadenas ''et al.'' analysed Y-DNA patterns from around the Gulf of Oman in more detail in 2007. The detailed data confirm that the main cluster of haplogroup J1 haplotypes from the Yemeni appears to be some genetic distance from the CMH-12 pattern typical of eastern European Ashkenazi Kohanim, but not of Sephardic Kohanim.

Multiple ancestries

Even within the Jewish Kohen population, it became clear that there were multiple Kohen lineages, including distinctive lineages both in Haplogroup J1 and in haplogroup J2.
Confusingly, because only four of the markers that Malaspina et al. tested were markers in common with the CMH study, three of which matched, they originally concluded that ''all'' of the CMH matches should be identified with what is now called Haplogroup J2. This is now known not to be the case. Other groups of Jewish lineages (i.e. Jews who are non-kohanim) and even non-Jews were found in Haplogroup J2 that matched the original 6-marker CMH, but which were unrelated and not associated with Kohanim. Current estimates, based on the accumulation of SNP mutations, place the defining mutations that distinguish haplogroups J1 and J2 as having occurred about 20 to 30,000 years ago.

Subsequent studies

Subsequent research (by the original researchers and others) has challenged the original conclusion in a number of ways and has in fact shown that the genealogical record "refutes the idea of a single founder for Jewish Cohanim who lived in Biblical times." A 2009 academic study by Michael F. Hammer, Doron M. Behar, et al. examined more STR markers in order to sharpen the "resolution" of these Kohanim genetic markers, thus separating both Ashkenazi and other Jewish Kohanim from other populations, and identifying a more sharply defined SNP haplogroup, J1e* (now J1c3, also called J-P58*) for the J1 lineage. The research found "that 46.1% of Kohanim carry Y chromosomes belonging to a single paternal lineage (J-P58*) that likely originated in the Near East well before the dispersal of Jewish groups in the Diaspora. Support for a Near Eastern origin of this lineage comes from its high frequency in our sample of Bedouins, Yemenis (67%), and Jordanians (55%) and its precipitous drop in frequency as one moves away from Saudi Arabia and the Near East (Fig. 4). Moreover, there is a striking contrast between the relatively high frequency of J-58* in Jewish populations (»20%) and Kohanim (»46%) and its vanishingly low frequency in our sample of non-Jewish populations that hosted Jewish diaspora communities outside of the Near East." The authors state, in their "Abstract" to the article: :"These results support the hypothesis of a common origin of the CMH in the Near East well before the dispersion of the Jewish people into separate communities, and indicate that the majority of contemporary Jewish priests descend from a limited number of paternal lineages." However, the study did not support a single Y-chromosomal Aaron from the biblical period, rather it showed a "limited number of paternal lineages" from around that period. Subsequent analysis found that even the "extended Cohen Modal Haplotype" probably split off from an older Cohen haplotype far more recently, less than 1,500 years ago.

Kohanim in other haplogroups

Behar's 2003 data point to the following Haplogroup distribution for Ashkenazi Kohanim (AC) and Sephardic Kohanim (SC) as a whole: : The detailed breakdown by 6-marker haplotype (the paper's Table B, available only online) suggests that at least some of these groups (e.g. E3b, R1b) contain more than one distinct Kohen lineage. It is possible that other lineages may also exist, but were not captured in the sample. Hammer et al. (2009) identified Cohanim from diverse backgrounds, having in all 21 differing Y-chromosome haplogroups: E-M78, E-M123, G-M285, G-P15, G-M377, H-M69, I-M253, J-P58, J-M172*, J-M410*, J-M67, J-M68, J-M318, J-M12, L-M20, Q-M378, R-M17, R-P25*, R-M269, R-M124 AND T-M70.

Y-chromosomal Levi

Similar investigation was made of men who identify as

Levite Levites (or Levi) (, he, ''Lǝvīyyīm'') are Jewish males who claim patrilineal descent from the Tribe of Levi. The Tribe of Levi descended from Levi, the third son of Jacob and Leah. The surname ''Halevi'', which consists of the Hebrew de ...

s. The priestly

are believed to have descended from Aaron (among those who believe he was a historical figure). He was a descendant of

Levi Levi (; ) was, according to the Book of Genesis, the third of the six sons of Jacob and Leah (Jacob's third son), and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Levi (the Levites, including the Kohanim) and the great-grandfather of Aaron, Moses and ...

, son of

Jacob Jacob (; ; ar, يَعْقُوب, Yaʿqūb; gr, Ἰακώβ, Iakṓb), later given the name Israel, is regarded as a patriarch of the Israelites and is an important figure in Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. J ...

. The Levites comprised a lower rank of the Temple priests. They are considered descendants of Levi through other lineages. Levites should also therefore in theory share common Y-chromosomal DNA. However, similar studies into Levite origins found the Levite genome to be significantly less homogeneous. While commonalities were found within the Ashkenazi-Levite genome (R1a-Y2619), no haplotype frequently common to Levites in general .E. Ashkenazi & Sephardiwas found. Additionally, the haplotype that was commonly found in Ashkenazi Levites is of a relatively recent origin from a single common ancestor estimated to have lived around 1.5–2.5 thousand years ago. Also, when further compared to the most frequent founding lineage found among Ashkenazi Cohen males, it was found that they do not share a common male ancestor within the time frame of the Biblical narrative. Finally, it is unclear whether the origin is Eastern Europe or the greater Middle East region (including Iran); however, the most recent findings indicate the latter. The 2003 Behar et al. investigation of Levites found high frequencies of multiple distinct markers, suggestive of multiple origins for the majority of non-Aaronid Levite families. One marker, however, present in more than 50% of

Eastern European Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...

( Ashkenazi) Jewish Levites, points to a common male ancestor or very few male ancestors within the last 2000 years for many Levites of the Ashkenazi community. This common ancestor belonged to the

haplogroup R1a1 Haplogroup R1a, or haplogroup R-M420, is a human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup which is distributed in a large region in Eurasia, extending from Scandinavia and Central Europe to southern Siberia and South Asia. While R1a originated c. 22,000 to 2 ...

, which is typical of Eastern Europeans or West Asians, rather than the haplogroup J of the Cohen modal haplotype. The authors proposed that the Levite ancestor(s) most likely lived at the time of the Ashkenazi settlement in Eastern Europe, and would thus be considered founders of this line. further speculating that the ancestor(s) were unlikely to have descended from Levites of the Near East. However, a Rootsi, Behar, et al. study published online in ''Nature Communications'' in December 2013 disputed the previous conclusion. Based on its research into 16 whole R1 sequences, the team determined that a set of 19 unique nucleotide substitutions defines the Ashkenazi R1a lineage. One of these, the, is not found among Eastern Europeans, but the marker was present "in all sampled R1a Ashkenazi Levites, as well as in 33.8% of other R1a Ashkenazi Jewish males, and 5.9% of 303 R1a Near Eastern males, where it shows considerably higher diversity." Rootsi, Behar, et al., concluded that this marker most likely originates in the pre-Diasporic Hebrews in the Middle East. However, they agreed that the data indicates an origin from a single common ancestor.Siiri Rootsi, Doron M. Behar, et al., "Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Levites"
''Nature Communications'' 4, Article number: 2928 (2013) doi:10.1038/ncomms3928, published online 13 December 2013; accessed 4 October 2016

Samaritan Kohanim

The Samaritan community in the Middle East survives as a distinct religious and cultural sect. It constitutes the oldest and smallest ethnic minorities in the Middle East, numbering slightly more than 800 members. According to Samaritan accounts, Samaritan Kohanim are descended from

, the Tsedaka clan is descended from

Manasseh Manasseh () is both a given name and a surname. Its variants include Manasses and Manasse. Notable people with the name include: Surname * Ezekiel Saleh Manasseh (died 1944), Singaporean rice and opium merchant and hotelier * Jacob Manasseh (die ...

, while the Dinfi clan and the Marhiv clan are descended from Ephraim. Samaritans claim that the southern tribes of the House of Judah left the original worship as set forth by Joshua, and the schism took place in the twelfth century BCE at the time of Eli. The Samaritans have maintained their religion and history to this day, and claim to be the remnant of the

House of Israel The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...

, specifically of the tribes of Ephraim and

with priests of the line of Aaron/

. Since the Samaritans have maintained extensive and detailed genealogical records for the past 13–15 generations (approximately 400 years) and further back, researchers have constructed accurate pedigrees and specific maternal and paternal lineages. A 2004 Y-Chromosome study concluded that the lay Samaritans belong to haplogroups J1 and J2, while the Samaritan Kohanim belong to haplogroup E-M35. "The Samaritan M267 lineages differed from the classical Cohen modal haplotype at DYS391, carrying 11 rather than 10 repeats", as well as, have a completely different haplogroup, which should have been "J1". Samaritan Kohanim descend from a different patrilineal family line, having haplogroup E1b1b1a (M78) (formerly E3b1a).

References

External links

Cohen project Y-DNA results
* http://www.isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpE08.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Y-Chromosomal Aaron Jewish genetics Human evolution Human Y-DNA modal haplotypes Genetic genealogy Levites Aaron