Israeli scientist says that Ashkenazi Jews’ roots lie in the Caucasus — a region at the border of Europe and Asia that lies between the Black and Caspian seas — not in the Middle East

Johns Hopkins University post-doctoral researcher Eran Elhaik, an Israeli molecular geneticist, says that Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of the Khazars, a Turkic people who lived in one of the largest medieval states in Eurasia and then migrated to Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries.