Ancient Irish Genomes Reveal There was a Massive Human Migration into Ireland

Scientists have sequenced the first ancient Irish human genomes, revealing a bit more about Celtic people. The new research may just reveal a bit more about the origins of Ireland's people and their culture.

Ireland has long intrigued geneticists. It lies at the edge of many European genetic gradients with world maxima for the variants that code for lactose tolerance, the western European Y chromosome type, and several important genetic diseases, including one of excessive iron retention, called haemochromatosis. However, the origins of this heritage are unknown.

In this latest study, the researchers sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast about 5,200 years ago, and the genomes of three men from a later period about 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking.

"There was a great wave of genome change that swept into Europe from above the Black Sea into the Bronze Age Europe and we now know it washed all the way to the shores of its most westerly island, and this degree of genetic change invites the possibility of other associated changes, perhaps even the introduction of language ancestral to western Celtic tongues" said Dan Bradley, one of the researchers, in a news release.

While the early farmer had black hair, brown eyes, and more closely resembled southern Europeans, the genetic variants circulating in the three Bronze Age men had blue eyes alleles and the most important variant for the genetic disease haemochromatosis.

"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, one of the researchers.

The findings reveal a bit more about the Irish, and show that a massive migration took place into Ireland. The early farmer has a majority ancestry originating ultimately in the Middle East, where agriculture was invented. However, the Bronze Age genomes had about a third of their ancestry coming from ancient sources in the Pontic Steppe.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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