Ancient DNA shows early Irish originated from Middle East and Eastern Europe

Ireland underwent a massive prehistoric wave of immigration from the Middle East and eastern Europe, which could explain how modern farming arrived in the region, researchers said in a study released on Monday.

Using a technique called whole-genome analysis, the scientists from Trinity College Dublin and Queen's University Belfast assessed DNA samples taken from the 5,000 year old bones of a female farmer uncovered from a tomb in Ballynahatty, near Belfast, and from the 3,000 to 4,000 year old remains of three men buried on Rathlin Island in County Antrim.

The results, presented in a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists, confirm that the early Irish were ancestors of migrants who arrived in present-day Ireland from Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

The major finding may end a long-running debate among scientists, some of whom thought local populations abruptly switched from being hunter-gatherers to using organized farming techniques simply as part of local adaptation.

Ancestors of stone-age Irish farmers originated from the 'Fertile Crescent' agricultural region of the Middle East (which includes modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and northern Egypt) bringing with them cattle, cereals, ceramics, and genetic predisposition towards black hair and brown eyes, the Guardian reports.

“We estimate that our Neolithic individual (the more than 5,000 years ago early farmer) has about 60 percent Middle Eastern origins. This is a rough estimate but we are certainly comfortable stating that she has majority Middle Eastern ancestry,” said Dan Bradley, lead researcher and a genetics professor at Trinity College, Dublin.

Bronze-age Irish ancestors had 30 percent genetic makeup “from the peoples originating above the Black Sea” — in other words modern day Russia and Ukraine.

The affinity between the three Bronze Age men and modern Irish, Scots and Welsh is quite strong, suggesting there were significant Celtic genetic traits 4,000 years ago, said Lara Cassidy, another author and genetics professor at Trinity College.

Their Y chromosomes often have a mutation common among Celtic-descended people C282Y, a disorder that causes iron to overload in different tissues.

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

(Staff with AFP)