Irish DNA originated in Middle East and eastern Europe


Excavated near Belfast in 1855, the bones of this farmer had lain in a Neolithic tomb chamber for 5,000 years. Her DNA has now been sequenced. Photograph: Daniel Bradley, Trinity College Dublin

Scientists from Dublin and Belfast have looked deep into Ireland’s early history to discover a still-familiar pattern of migration: of stone age settlers with origins in the Fertile Crescent, and bronze age economic migrants who began a journey somewhere in eastern Europe.

The evidence has lain for more than 5,000 years in the bones of a woman farmer unearthed from a tomb in Ballynahatty, near Belfast, and in the remains of three men who lived between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago and were buried on Rathlin Island in County Antrim.

Scientists at Trinity College Dublin used a technique called whole-genome analysis to “read” not the unique characteristics of each individual, but a wider history of ancestral migration and settlement in the DNA from all four bodies.

A reconstruction of the Ballynahatty Neolithic skull by Elizabeth Black. Her genes tell us she had black hair and brown eyes. Photograph: Barrie Hartwell

They confirm a picture that has been emerging for decades from archaeological studies. Migrant communities did not compete with the original Irish. They became the Irish.

The ancestors of the Stone Age farmers began their journey in the Bible lands, where agriculture first began, and arrived in Ireland perhaps via the southern Mediterranean. They brought with them cattle, cereals, ceramics and a tendency to black hair and brown eyes.






“These findings,” the authors say, “suggest the establishment of central attributes of the Irish genome 4,000 years ago.”

Working from the principle that any human DNA tells a story not just of individual identity but of ten thousand years of ancestry, researchers have begun to piece together the entire story of Homo sapiens. The story is incomplete, and under constant revision, but the outline of the settlement of Europe and Asia told by DNA confirms and illuminates the archaeological evidence.

Modern humans arrived in the British Isles relatively late after the end of the Ice Age. Evidence of early settlement in Ireland is sketchy and indirect: in 2013, researchers looked at the DNA of the Irish banded wood snail and identified it as closely related to the species found in the French Pyrenees. The best explanation so far is that these snails may have arrived 8,000 years ago as the leftovers from the packed lunch, so to speak, of a much earlier community of European traders or migrants. Nobody can say who these people may have been, or why they arrived with a taste for escargots.


“It is clear that this project has demonstrated what a powerful tool ancient DNA analysis can provide in answering questions which have long perplexed academics regarding the origins of the Irish,” said Eileen Murphy, who lectures in osteoarchaeology at Queen’s in Belfast.


“Irish DNA originated in Middle East and eastern Europe” için 2 yorum

  1. Fascinating information. I got interested in genetics after reading a book by Adam Rutherford called ” a brief history of everyone who ever lived”. It made it easy for someone who is not a scientist but is interested in science.

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