Genome Sequencing Links Irish Ancestry To The Middle East

The sequencing of the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, conducted by geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen’s University Belfast, suggests massive migration to Ireland thousands of years ago, Irish Times reported. The results were published earlier this week in international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and found that her majority ancestry came from the Middle East, where agriculture was invented. On the other hand, sequencing the genomes of three men from the Bronze Age about 4,000 years ago revealed that one-third of their ancestry originated from the Pontic steppe on the shores of the Black Sea.

According to the researchers, the woman had black hair, brown eyes and resembled southern Europeans, while the three men, who were from Rathlin Island, had the most common Irish Y chromosome type, blue eyes alleles and the most important variant for the genetic disease haemochromatosis, or excessive iron retention.

Irish Times says that the latter mutation is so frequent in people of Irish descent that it is often referred to as a Celtic disease.

This discovery therefore marks the first identification of an important disease variant in prehistory, according to the researchers.

“There was a great wave of genome change that swept into Europe, from above the Black Sea into Bronze Age Europe, and we now know it washed all the way to the shores of its most westerly island,” said professor of population genetics in Trinity College Dublin, Dan Bradley, who led the study.

“And this degree of genetic change invites the possibility of other associated changes, perhaps even the introduction of language ancestral to western Celtic tongues.”