Irish DNA Tests genealogy ancestors research

Sceala Clann T.D. Location: Derry roots

I guess we have to assume that DNA can prove who we are, like a finger print. Presumably we can all accept that DNA can prove immediate family.
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DNA Test Proves Eritrean Girl is Irish
A six-year-old African girl is to be given an Irish passport following DNA tests that prove she is the daughter of an Irish soldier who died before she was born.
Up until the Irish DNA test, The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) had refused to accept that Martina Padwick was the daughter of Martin Padwick, a Irish soldier who died in 2002 shortly after returning from a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in Asmara, the Eritrean capital.
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How relevant to Irish ancestral genealogy research is DNA
Any of you guys had a DNA test for ancestry - genealogy reasons.
I have seen sales slots selling DNA tests to prove Irish ancestry.
What do you know about the real facts of DNA and Irish ancestry. Can we prove any distinct racial background with DNA?
I was presuming that we could prove Irish identity by DNA. Until I read several people here and their question the basis of DNA conclusions in regard to Irish ancestors or Irish identity.
My central concern and question is - have enough known Irish people been DNA tested for science to have concluded a credible Irish DNA identity sample?

What do you make of these Irish ancestry DNA tests?
Quoting this from here for good example of serious doubts as to fact.
Bazz said that DNA for racial studies was to date baloney anyway -- no more than assumptions and guesswork. I did understand and agree with his points about DNA and not taking any claims as factual. This quote does make all the sense. DNA racial profiling is not based on scientific fact. Not enough people have been tested to know the facts yet.
Basically people as usual getting carried away with making facts from other best guess work.
Not enough of the human race has been DNA tested, so all to date is based upon guess work. People assume that the oldest humans were from Africa, but no one so far has actually proven it.
Consider this fact - The bodies and skeleton of people who lived just a century ago, can be completely (as in 100%) dissolved in the land by the work of nature, as happened to some victims of the Titanic, buried in acidic water logged land in Canada.
Then - if this is fact, and it is.
How can the oldest human possibly be established as fact ?
The oldest Human being can not be factually first aged -and that fact is the only fact to base any further study upon - always bearing in mind the known human condition of following blind alleys from hear say.
DNA will never be able to identify the age of humanity. How can it -if nature can destroy all evidence.
Only the wisest fools take any other humans opinions as fact.
DNA study for genealogy and race is most often guess work presented as science, often based on previous guess work sold as fact by a chancer.

The Seven Daughters of Eve is not scientific fact - that idea is a self confessed simplicity - presented as pseudo fact by a author to sell his book. A book author who is (by coincidence?) also the founder of a genealogical DNA testing business. A Conflict of interest perhaps!

It would be extremely naive to take such a individuals opinions and romantic guesswork as scientific fact - but that is exactly what most DNA research has done.
Remember how so many people thought The Da Vinci Code was factual

How many people have been DNA Tested?.
I don't personally know anyone who has been tested except by the Cops. How many people have been DNA tested for racial studies? not that many! No where near enough people have been studied for scientific evidence, and so there is no possibility that any claims or conclusion are definitive, on any race or any nation. Plus I was thinking, have the Irish not been emigrating for centuries! so any connections found in England or France or anywhere else, could just be the descendants of Irish emigrants.
I do agree with this, there is no proof -- how can there be. it is just the usual people getting carried away, encouraged by those who are wanting to read more of the parts they wanted to read -- hearing more of the parts they want to hear. None of us or them know the full story of DNA. Years to come people with real evidence will laugh at the claims of today and the naivety of those who quote it parrot fashion.
The earth was flat
Columbus was supposed to have discovered America.
History proves that only the human hunger for ignorance and naivety is self evident, and beyond question or doubt.

Pity that the self proclaimed DNA experts have such a poor grasp of Irish history. Plenty of them do not even have a basic understanding of Irish history and demographics of Ireland and Atlantic Europe.
Most seem to be pre-conditioned, assuming that things flow one way.

They all overlook the massive Irish migration to all parts of Britain, that occurred over more than a Millenia. The Irish effectively colonized the northern half of Britain, and much of Wales. Irish DNA is present in every village and town or city. Irish bloodline and their DNA is often dominant if not exclusive in millions of so called English and British. Not just the at least a million Irish that entered Britain in the space of a generation post famine, when more Irish went to Britain than America, far more.
The two main European Atlantic Islands are in reality, in DNA, more significantly Irish Isles than the much later creation called British.
The millions of descendants of prior Irish over the centuries
The tens of thousands of Wild Geese Irish who went to Spain and France. Their blood line descendants will now number in the millions.

Articles discussing the Irish DNA
Unfortunately these articles do not provide a reference for their claims.
Does this prove that most Irish ancestors were Basques and sailed to Ireland directly from Spain.
I read this theory on here some years ago, I was fascinated by the new concept idea at the time.
The core theory being that Ireland is due North from the Basque area. I could not understand how or why this theory was over looked by most history books. Most people still assume that the Irish arrived from parts of Britain first.
I have since heard noted historians on National Geographic Ireland make this Basque sailors theory. In ancient times it was easier and safer to sail than travel distance by land. So the ancient Irish were much more likely to have come directly from Spain, sailed to Ireland.
I guess the old walked over from Britain idea is a classic example of how we just can't help assume so much from the influence of our own modern lives.
I note the Columbus discovered America analogy, which was indeed held as fact by so many for so many generations. We now know the astonishing ignorance. Same sort of naive call was going on for the ancient Irish.

This journalist is suggesting
The genetics suggest that, with sea levels low, the Basques simply walked to Ireland, becoming cut off generations later when rising seas created the island we know.

'You won't find a gene that makes the Irish fond of drink, any more than you'll find a gene that makes the Irish especially prone to buying property at grossly over-inflated prices."

That is the sage scientific advice of Professor Brendan Loftus, head of the UCD research team which this week revealed it has mapped the complete genetic code of an Irish person for the first time.

The entire DNA blueprint for a human being was first published in 2003 in the US, but there are six billion people on earth paddling about in many localised gene pools and the island of Ireland is a locality with its own unique genetic scenery. The UCD team has, quite literally, put us on the world map.

But back to the relation between DNA and the demon drink. It has been a matter of record for millennia that a high proportion of Chinese, Japanese and other East Asian peoples can't handle their drink. Just a couple of units can cause falling-down drunkenness and a skin-blotching condition popularly known as 'Asian Flush' or 'Asian Glow' which, in extreme cases, can bring the entire body out in an unsightly rash.

Modern science has shown that this ancient alcohol intolerance is caused by a misfiring gene that can't encode a key enzyme. On a more sinister note, it has also been found that anyone missing the enzyme who drinks even two pints a day ramps up certain cancer risks tenfold.

Although genome research is racing ahead, it is still in its infancy. The existing DNA databank cannot explain Ireland's destructive love affair with drink nor the hidden currents of the Fianna Fail gene pool, but it can help tell us where we've come from and hopefully provide us with safer directions as to where we're going.

Now that it has been sequenced, the Irish genome can be studied by medical science in an attempt to define what makes Irish people susceptible to some disorders and not to others. The possibilities for prevention and cure are enormous, but at this early stage no one is quite sure what advances will emerge from this bulging cache of new information. Our lesson from the mobile phone revolution, where texting grew from a mere afterthought to sweep the world, is that we should expect the unexpected.

With DNA research right now, as with life in general, it appears that hindsight comes closest to providing us with 20/20 vision. As Prof Loftus puts it: "Your genome contains your history, your geography, your society, your family."

Ireland's geography has had a huge part to play in shaping the nature of our society and our closest family ties. According to Loftus: "The geographic isolation of Ireland over generations would affect the size of the gene pool by limiting the type and number of potential mating partners."

Major genetic surveys of Ireland and Britain have established that the gene pool of both islands is amongst the least diluted in Europe. The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of the ancestors of the Irish and British people were the pioneering settlers who arrived at the end of the last ice age between 17,000 and 8,000 years ago. The inescapable upshot of this is that the Irish are not Celts, any more than the English are Anglo-Saxons.

In fact, both the Irish and the British are Basques, with the Irish significantly more Basque than our neighbours across the pond, who've absorbed more migrations from Europe over the centuries.

Scientists estimate that Ireland's gene pool has changed remarkably little since the first hunter-gatherers from Iberia followed the retreating ice cap, beachcombing northwards and settling this newly exposed and empty land. The dilution rate for Ireland is estimated at a tiny 12%, against 20% for Wales and Cornwall, 30% for Scotland and 33% for England.

The genetics suggest that, with sea levels low, the Basques simply walked to Ireland, becoming cut off generations later when rising seas created the island we know. Ancient Irish legends say that there were six invasions or migrations from the south many generations before the Celts arrived around 300BC.

The evidence suggests that the Celtic language, fashions and technologies which are supposed to define our Irish heritage, were acquired as cultural accessories in the way that today's Irish schoolkids flounce about under the impression that they're gangsta rappers straight out of Compton or Beverly Hills brat-packers.

The Irish and Basques share by far the highest incidence of the R1b gene in Europe, which has a frequency of over 90% in Basque country and almost 100% along parts of Ireland's western seaboard.

If further proof were needed, there's the physical fact that the Basques are distinguished by a very high incidence of fair (and some reddish) hair, pale skin, blue eyes, and, apparently, sticky-out ears. Sound like anyone you know?

But for every badge of Irishness we can now firmly blame on our genes, others have been stuck on us by disapproving foreigners. The oddest, which crops up repeatedly in accounts of early travellers, is that "plebian Irish females" have "the thickest ankles in the world". The English writer Francis Grose claimed in the 1700s that "Irish women wear the thick end of their legs downwards".

Even Dean Swift, who wrote A Modest Proposal attacking England's treatment of the Irish, believed that the native Catholics were genetically lazy, drunken and thick, describing them as "our savages".

With friends like that . . .

- Damian Corless

Irish Independent

Irish DNA genealogy ancestors research
The question remains.
Before we get carried away.
Have enough known Irish people been DNA tested for science to have a concluded a Irish identity DNA sample
Is the evidence actually there to form such any claims for Irish DNA?
Sampling can suggest a probability, but as we know suggestion is not science or evidence.
Are the Irish DNA tests nothing more than assumption based upon a sample? Accepted as fact by wishful or simple thinking.

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Irish DNA Tests genealogy ancestors research