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Oxford University Press

Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz

Overview of attention for article published in Genome Biology & Evolution, March 2016
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • One of the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#8 of 2,868)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (99th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
27 news outlets
blogs
9 blogs
twitter
165 tweeters
peer_reviews
1 peer review site
facebook
8 Facebook pages
wikipedia
8 Wikipedia pages
googleplus
2 Google+ users
reddit
3 Redditors
video
2 video uploaders

Citations

dimensions_citation
38 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
63 Mendeley
citeulike
1 CiteULike
Title
Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz
Published in
Genome Biology & Evolution, March 2016
DOI 10.1093/gbe/evw046
Pubmed ID
Authors

Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler, Mehdi Pirooznia, Eran Elhaik

Abstract

The Yiddish language is over one thousand years old and incorporates German, Slavic, and Hebrew elements. The prevalent view claims Yiddish has a German origin, whereas the opposing view posits a Slavic origin with strong Iranian and weak Turkic substrata. One of the major difficulties in deciding between these hypotheses is the unknown geographical origin of Yiddish speaking Ashkenazic Jews (AJs). An analysis of 393 Ashkenazic, Iranian, and mountain Jews and over 600 non-Jewish genomes demonstrated that Greeks, Romans, Iranians, and Turks exhibit the highest genetic similarity with AJs. The Geographic Population Structure (GPS) analysis localized most AJs along major primeval trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages with names that may be derived from "Ashkenaz." Iranian and mountain Jews were localized along trade routes on the Turkey's eastern border. Loss of maternal haplogroups was evident in non-Yiddish speaking AJs. Our results suggest that AJs originated from a Slavo-Iranian confederation, which the Jews call "Ashkenazic" (i.e., "Scythian"), though these Jews probably spoke Persian and/or Ossete. This is compatible with linguistic evidence suggesting that Yiddish is a Slavic language created by Irano-Turko-Slavic Jewish merchants along the Silk Roads as a cryptic trade language, spoken only by its originators to gain an advantage in trade. Later, in the 9th century, Yiddish underwent relexification by adopting a new vocabulary that consists of a minority of German and Hebrew and a majority of newly coined Germanoid and Hebroid elements that replaced most of the original Eastern Slavic and Sorbian vocabularies, while keeping the original grammars intact.

Twitter Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 165 tweeters who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 63 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Switzerland 2 3%
United States 1 2%
Belgium 1 2%
Denmark 1 2%
Unknown 58 92%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 17 27%
Student > Ph. D. Student 6 10%
Student > Master 4 6%
Student > Bachelor 4 6%
Student > Doctoral Student 4 6%
Other 15 24%
Unknown 13 21%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 15 24%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 11 17%
Social Sciences 6 10%
Medicine and Dentistry 3 5%
Arts and Humanities 3 5%
Other 12 19%
Unknown 13 21%

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 398. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 June 2023.
All research outputs
#68,124
of 23,937,668 outputs
Outputs from Genome Biology & Evolution
#8
of 2,868 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,246
of 301,879 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Genome Biology & Evolution
#1
of 80 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,937,668 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,868 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.4. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 301,879 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 80 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.