Ancient Irish DNA links to Basques & Russians & Middle East

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Geneticists at Trinity College have sequenced the genomes of ancient Irish farmers, discovering that haemochromatosis (known as the 'Celtic curse') was inherited by people from the Pontic Steppe 4,000 years ago.

Genetically, Ireland's first farmers were most closely related to people living at broadly the same time in Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal). Over generations, the farmers traversed the Mediterranean from Anatolia to Iberia, weaving their way up the French coast before making their way to Ireland by sea

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The surprising origins of the Irish - from Russia to the Middle East
Archaeologists and geneticists now say they now know where the modern Irish people originally came from.

With a lot of cutting-edge science, researchers in December 2015 published a study telling the world where that Irish heritage first originated.

By studying the 5,000-year-old remains of a female farmer buried near Belfast, and the remains of three men buried 3,000 and 4,000 years ago on Rathlin Island in County Antrim, archaeologists and geneticists now say they now know where the modern Irish people originally came from.

The remains of the Stone Age female farmer show that she resembled modern people from Spain and Sardinia, suggesting she had roots there. But her ancestors ultimately originated from the Fertile Crescent, the once-lush region of the Middle East where humans first practiced agriculture. Those migrants brought cattle, cereals, and ceramics, along with black hair and brown eyes.

The remains of the Bronze Age male farmers show a different group of migrants entering Ireland one to two thousand years later. Those farmers came from the Pontic steppe of southern Russia. They brought metalworking culture, the genetic disposition for blue eyes, and the gene for a blood disorder so often found in Ireland that itâ€™s known as the Celtic disease: haemochromatosis.

Using a technique called whole-genome analysis, scientists at Trinity College Dublin studied the DNA from all four bodies to establish a history of ancestral migration and settlement.

â€œThere was a great wave of genome change that swept into [Bronze Age] Europe from above the Black Sea â€¦ we now know it washed all the way to the shores of its most westerly island,â€ geneticist and lead researcher Dan Bradley

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Ancient Irish DNA links to Basques & Russians & Middle East