A team of researchers from Trinity College Dublin and Queen's University Belfast has successfully sequenced the genome of the first ancient Irish humans, revealing information about the origins of the Celtic people and their culture. The genome that was sequenced stemmed from an early farmer woman who lived near Belfast approximately 5,200 years ago, as well as three men from the Bronze age approximately 4,000 years ago.
The findings show evidence of large migration due to the differences between the ancestry of the early farmers, who originated in the Middle East, and the Bronze Age genomes that possess about one third of their ancestry from ancient sources in the Pontic Steppe.
"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," Dan Bradley, who led the study, said in a press release. "And this degree of genetic change invites the possibility of other associated changes, perhaps even the introduction of language ancestral to western Celtic tongues."
"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 participated in the research.
Early farmers possessed black hair, brown eyes and a stronger resemblance to southern Europeans, whereas the genetic variations in the three Bronze Age Men had blue alleles and an important variant for the genetic disease haemochromatosis due to their possession of the common Irish Y chromosome type. In fact, the variant for haemochromatosis is so common in people of Irish descent that it is referred to as the Celtic disease and marks the discovery of a very important disease variant in Irish history.
"Genetic affinity is strongest between the Bronze Age genomes and modern Irish, Scottish and Welsh, suggesting establishment of central attributes of the insular Celtic genome some 4,000 years ago," said Lara Cassidy, who participated in the research.
The findings were published in the Nov. 18 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
