Golden hamster stock of hamsters was exported from Syria to the United States in 1971, but apparently none of today's North American pets is descended from these (at least in the female line), because recent mitochondrial DNA studies have established that all domestic golden hamsters are descended from one female – probably the one captured in 1930 in Syria. Since the species was named, the genus "Cricetus" has been subdivided and this species (together with several others) was separated into the genus "Mesocricetus", leading to the currently accepted scientific name for the golden hamster of "Mesocricetus auratus". Following Professor Aharoni's collection in
Origin of the Kurds Origin of the Kurds The Kurds as an ethnicity within the Northwestern Iranian group enter the historical record at the end of the seventh century. Scholars have suggested different theories for the origin of the name "Kurd". According to the English Orientalist Godfrey Rolles Driver, the term "Kurd" is related to the Sumerian "Karda" which was found from Sumerian clay tablets of the third millennium B.C, while according to other scholars, it predates the Islamic period, as a Middle Persian word for "nomad", and may ultimately be derived from an ancient toponym or tribal name, either that of the "Cyrtii"