Ancient Irish had Middle Eastern Ancestry

RobertKK

Interesting article.

Sequencing the genome of an early woman farmer, who lived near Belfast 5,200 years ago, showed her majority ancestry originated in the Middle East, where agriculture was invented.

Sequencing the genomes of three men whose bodies dated from the Bronze Age about 4,000 years ago showed one-third of their ancestry came from the Pontic steppe on the shores of the Black Sea.

The woman farmer had black hair, brown eyes and resembled southern Europeans, according to the researchers.

In contrast, the three men, who were from Rathlin Island, had the most common Irish Y chromosome type, blue eyes alleles and the most important variant for the genetic disease haemochromatosis, or excessive iron retention.

The latter mutation is so frequent in people of Irish descent that it is sometimes referred to as a Celtic disease.

I carry the variant for haemochromatosis, but it is not a bad one so I don't have problems with iron retention.

My DNA results say for my maternal history: Haplogroup J originated about 45,000 years ago on the Arabian Peninsula not long after modern humans expanded out of Africa and onto the Eurasian continent. About 7,000 years ago the expansion of farming carried daughter lineages of J, including J1, into Europe. Today the haplogroup extends as far west as Britain and as far east as Central Asia.
Example Populations: British, Scandinavians
I have some viking ancestry.

While on my paternal side: Haplogroup I2 is most abundant in eastern Europe and on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, where it is found in 40% of the male population. Like its brother haplogroup, I1, I2 expanded northward at the end of the Ice Age about 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. But unlike I1, which expanded from the Iberian peninsula into northwestern Europe, I2 radiated outward from the Balkans into the eastern half of the continent.
Example Populations: Balkans, Sardinians


So I guess I have all bases covered.

Paramite Pie

^^ Well linguistically there has been similarities noted between Old Irish and ancient Phoenician apparently.

The verb-subject-order in Gaelic and Brythonic languages is not found elsewhere in Indo-European languages interestingly enough, but is found in Hebrew and Arabic. Attempts to group them were not supported by most academics though.

I've moved the relevant posts to a thread about the actual topic

Menas

So we are all Palestinians like?

Menas

Menas wrote: »

So we are all Palestinians like?

I've just moved the decent posts out of a thread saying we're all israelis. I should have known it was a waste of time

Icaras

Menas wrote: »

So we are all Palestinians like?

Paddys day would be some crac over there.

Menas

Deleted User wrote: »

I've just moved the decent posts out of a thread saying we're all israelis. I should have known it was a waste of time

Plenty of time for intellectual debate to start. Dont lose faith in the rest of after hours!
I am a lost cause though. Probably due to my DNA. Or something.

Wibbs

RobertKK wrote: »

While on my paternal side: Haplogroup I2 is most abundant in eastern Europe and on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, where it is found in 40% of the male population. Like its brother haplogroup, I1, I2 expanded northward at the end of the Ice Age about 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. But unlike I1, which expanded from the Iberian peninsula into northwestern Europe, I2 radiated outward from the Balkans into the eastern half of the continent.
Example Populations: Balkans, Sardinians

You probably have quite high Neandertal DNA admixture too, compared to the average native Irish person anyway. We'd be quite low on average compared to southern Europe. Sardinians have about the highest on average. I get my high score from a Spanish line in my mix. Our low count is probably because of those middle eastern farmer folks who had low mix of that archaic stuff. It's quite amazing how far and how relatively quickly that farming and the farmers spread through the population. I mean they ended up here as soon as the ice buggered off. Humans are an amazing bunch altogether.

arybvtcw0eolkf

Menas wrote: »

So we are all Palestinians like?

Well decended from the Tribe of Dan.

Long story short.. The Irish are supposed to be one of the lost tribes of Dan, so we're probably closer to Israeli's actually.

Me, I've red hair & freckles and built like a brick sh*thouse so I doubt there's too much middle eastern DNA in me.

The rest of you are all Israelites

Junkyard Tom

Hitler.

mad muffin

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Hitler.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjjYCN9O66M

Corpus Twisty

Arielle Young Vagrant wrote: »

Well decended from the Tribe of Dan.

Long story short.. The Irish are supposed to be one of the lost tribes of Dan, so we're probably closer to Israeli's actually.

Me, I've red hair & freckles and built like a brick sh*thouse so I doubt there's too much middle eastern DNA in me.

The rest of you are all Israelites

I've great news Maki - I think they overstated the "lost" bit- Dan lives next door and works for Argos. If you like I can forward his phone number. He has rubbish coverage tho, so maybe text him?

arybvtcw0eolkf

Corpus Twisty wrote: »

I've great news Maki - I think they overstated the "lost" bit- Dan lives next door and works for Argos. If you like I can forward his phone number. He has rubbish coverage tho, so maybe text him?

Its cool, I found him on facebook.

RobertKK

Wibbs wrote: »

You probably have quite high Neandertal DNA admixture too, compared to the average native Irish person anyway. We'd be quite low on average compared to southern Europe. Sardinians have about the highest on average. I get my high score from a Spanish line in my mix. Our low count is probably because of those middle eastern farmer folks who had low mix of that archaic stuff. It's quite amazing how far and how relatively quickly that farming and the farmers spread through the population. I mean they ended up here as soon as the ice buggered off. Humans are an amazing bunch altogether.

I am 3.0% Neanderthal.
DNA is amazing, it makes us all like walking history books waiting to be unlocked.

The Sun King

You all sound 100% American, never mind anything else.

"I'm 1/8th Irish and 3/15ths Cherokee.'

Who gives a ****e?

RobertKK

The Sun King wrote: »

You all sound 100% American, never mind anything else.

"I'm 1/8th Irish and 3/15ths Cherokee.'

Who gives a ****e?

Some people have an interest in ancestry, some people have an interest in complaining...

The Sun King

RobertKK wrote: »

some people have an interest in complaining...

I guess that makes me 100% Irish.

Corpus Twisty

The Sun King wrote: »

You all sound 100% American, never mind anything else.

"I'm 1/8th Irish and 3/15ths Cherokee.'

Who gives a ****e?

People always said our family had middle eastern blood - 10% or some such, but I doubt it, there's five of us and we're all blonde with blue eyes, apart from my brother Ahmed, who is quite dark skinned.

First Up

There are strong similarities between numerals in Persian (Farsi) and Irish:

sefr 0
yek 1
do 2
seh 3
chahaar 4
panj 5
shesh 6
haft 7
hasht 8
noh 9
dah 10

It is said that the Celts originated in Central Asia so maybe we all have cousins we didn't know about.......

Dr Turk Turkelton

Feic I have dark skin and black hair and I don't like spending money. Looks like I'm a Scooby Doo.
Oh oh gotta go, I'm in a bar and its my round so it looks like it's my culture to hide in the toilet for twenty minutes.
See yis all in the stingy people thread.

fryup

that explains it then....

Avatar MIA

Arielle Young Vagrant wrote: »

Long story short.. The Irish are supposed to be one of the lost tribes of Dan, so we're probably closer to Israeli's actually.

Thankfully someone else up on the myth!

Looking at you Whoops!

LordSutch

So I'm curious about a few things...

Up until yesterday we were told by some experts that "the Irish" had come from the Iberian pensula (Spain & Portugal), now we are told that we came from the Middle East! OK then lets say both editions are correct. What percentage of the Celtic gene is Middle Eastern, and what percentage is Iberian? and are we Celtic at all?

Did this influx of middle eastern wanderers come the whole way across Europe & Britain to just settle in Ireland? same with the Iberians, did they come all this way and just stop here? or did they also put down roots elsewhere?

Why leave such warm and pleasant climates to settle in a very cold post ice age island like Ireland? surely they would have checked out the place and realised that it was bloody freezing compared to their natural climates, turned tail and gone back home to 'de-thaw'

Lets face it the Romans landed here & realised that it was a one chilly bridge too far (after Britain) so they stayed on the slightly less moist/less chilly island (Britain) and built their infrastructures there!

It's all very interesting.

Sheeps

Allah Akbar

Avatar MIA

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Thankfully someone else up on the myth!

Looking at you Whoops!

Sorry - I was trying to tidy it up - it was early - I was tired.

*shrug*

Nodin

So we're Romanian Arabs.....

dubhthach

LordSutch wrote: »

So I'm curious about a few things...

Up until yesterday we were told by some experts that "the Irish" had come from the Iberian pensula (Spain & Portugal), now we are told that we came from the Middle East! OK then lets say both editions are correct. What percentage of the Celtic gene is Middle Eastern, and what percentage is Iberian? and are we Celtic at all?

Did this influx of middle eastern wanderers come the whole way across Europe & Britain to just settle in Ireland? same with the Iberians, did they come all this way and just stop here? or did they also put down roots elsewhere?

Why leave such warm and pleasant climates to settle in a very cold post ice age island like Ireland? surely they would have checked out the place and realised that it was bloody freezing compared to their natural climates, turned tail and gone back home to 'de-thaw'

Lets face it the Romans landed here & realised that it was a one chilly bridge too far (after Britain) so they stayed on the slightly less moist/less chilly island (Britain) and built their infrastructures there!

It's all very interesting.

the "Iberian theory" is 10 year old bunkum pushed by the likes of Sykes and Oppenheimer. aDNA (ancient DNA) blows it out of water.

Their theory was based on modern distrubution of male lineage Haplogroup R1b. They noted that it reached high levels in Western Eurasia (eg. Ireland, Britain, France, Iberia). As a result they came to conclusion that R1b represented the male lineage of the "Ice age refuge" in Iberia and that it's high levels in Western Eurasia was due to expansion out of Iberia.

This was back in day when it cost anywhere between 100million and 1billion to sequence one full human genome (2004-2006), now adays you can get your genome sequence for circa $2,000 US and we are retrieving viable aDNA.

What I find interesting about comments so far is they are fixated on only one of the four aDNA samples from Ireland, namely the Neolithic (farmer) woman who is dated at 5,200 year sold. I would have thought most people knew that argiculture expanded out of middle east (fertile crescent), what her genome shows is that the arrival of argiculture in Ireland was not due to Mesolithic (hunter gathers) adopting farming but due to arrival of people from Europe.

In her case her people would have been in Europe for a couple thousand years before arriving in Ireland, thus she clusters with Central European Neolithic remains (and thus resembles modern Mediterraena populations such as Sardinians).

The three Bronze age remains are more interesting, as they show that there is population discontunity from Neolithic to Bronze age. They date from circa 2,000BC - 1500BC (give or take ± with C14 dating)

They show fairly large levels of Steppe ancestry, a major paper was published earlier this year which look at close on 200 ancient genomes from western Eurasia. It proposed that Proto-Indo-European languages spread into Europe during the Bronze age due to movement of Yamnaya herder/nomads from the Pontic Steppe (eg. Ukraine/Russia).

The Bronze age remains are about 30% Steppe in ancestry. We are possibly looking at the remains of first Indo-European speaking population in Ireland. Celtic is a branch of Indo-European that probably differenated during the late Bronze age, and obviously Irish is a member of Celtic family of wider Indo-European.

What's interesting as well is all three men belong to R1b-L21+ on their Y-Chromosome, this haplogroup makes up about 70% of modern male lineages in Ireland today (Busby -- Royal Society)

Hammer (Univeristy of Arizona) at FTDNA confernce back in 2013 proposed following for distrubution of modern branches of R1b in Europe, this was before we started getting lots of ancient DNA full genomes:

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/6904/2eow.png

I should note Hammer's map was based on idea of R1b-M269 spreading out of Anatolia, ancient DNA has shown that it's probable that R1b expanded out of Steppe, UCD/TCD recently involved in paper which published first 26 aDNA genomes from Neolithic Anatolia (no R1b there).

The paper basically states that the Bronze age samples from Rathlin are closer related to modern Irish (and Scottish and Welsh) than the Neolithic sample is. Basically we have discontinuity between Neolithic and modern day when it comes to structure of modern Irish population.

As usual the media are clueless on this sorta thing, better to read the full paper here:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/22/1518445113.full.pdf?with-ds=yes

suicide_circus

I really wanna do one of those dna profiling kit things

Avatar MIA

suicide_circus wrote: »

I really wanna do one of those dna profiling kit things

They've gone from astronomical costs to the price of a moderately priced advanced TV.

Give it another few years and they'll be given as Christmas presents.

dubhthach

Avatar MIA wrote: »

They've gone from astronomical costs to the price of a moderately priced advanced TV.

Give it another few years and they'll be given as Christmas presents.

Depends on the test, for example you can get a "basic" Y-Chromosome test for about $139 with FTDNA. Obviously once you have sample in their database you can always "upgrade" (at moment they running a sale so lots of upgrades going on)

Great introduction provided by Debbie Kennett from talk she gave at RDS this year

dubhthach

Razib Khan has done a blogpost about this, of course the title should be taken with a pinch of salt


The Gaels Were from Scythia
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/the-gaels-were-from-scythia/

Wibbs

dubhthach wrote: »

Basically we have discontinuity between Neolithic and modern day when it comes to structure of modern Irish population.

and the Basques, those considered an archaic population now just look like slightly different isolated for a while Spaniards. They also have a discontinuity between Neolithic and modern. The aDNA Basque are different to the modern folks. All sorts of myths can fall apart when the genetics gets a look in.

We were never Celts anyway. Hell the ancient writers couldn't even agree where the Celts lived in the first place.

RobertKK

suicide_circus wrote: »

I really wanna do one of those dna profiling kit things

23andme.com will do your ancestry which will find you lots of cousins going way back. I do get contacted from people in the US and Canada whom I'm related to, the last person who contacted me was interesting as they gave surnames in their ancestry who have the same surnames as my mother's neighbours location, so that was interesting.
They also do health which can be good or bad depending on what shows up or doesn't show up, and your traits and how you react to certain drugs.
You can then use that info on other sites that use the raw data. It costs €169.

Medusa22

Ooh this is interesting! One of my genes for Cystic Fibrosis is quite rare in general, and especially in Ireland, but is one of the ones found most commonly in Ashkenazi Jews. I love this sort of stuff, I find it fascinating.

dubhthach

Wibbs wrote: »

and the Basques, those considered an archaic population now just look like slightly different isolated for a while Spaniards. They also have a discontinuity between Neolithic and modern. The aDNA Basque are different to the modern folks. All sorts of myths can fall apart when the genetics gets a look in.

We were never Celts anyway. Hell the ancient writers couldn't even agree where the Celts lived in the first place.

Well we still have to wait for some aDNA from France, that recent La Tene burial mound would make for an interesting sequence.

What we should remember that the term "Celt" is probably of Classical occurence, it probably was never used by any people, just as "Germanic speakers" never called themselves Germans (or Germanians??). Germania actually probably just meant "those lot on other side of Rhine" (even if they spoke a Celtic language).

So yes we might have had minimum La Tene influence in Ireland (well technically Northern half of Ireland had influence via Northern Britain after 300BC), however it's probable Proto-Celtic was a Bronze age language (just as Hittite and Mycaenan Greek had differenated out during Bronze age). In which case them "La Tene" lot were just a bunch of fancy European cousins with "High Stíl" and fancy car's (word Car comes from Proto-Celtic )

What's evident is that we see connectivity on aDNA front between populations which today speak various Indo-European languages, the question than is what dynamics led to development of Celtic branch (and Italic and Germanic) within Western Indo-European.

It's probably a case that you had dialectical continuum across western Europe, interconnections/trade between dialect areas led to convergence.

Likewise geographic isolation led to divergence (there's debate that Germanic arose with "Nordic Bronze age" in Scandinavia/Jutland) -- Proto-Italic was probably spilt from Proto-Celtic due to geography of Italy.

We know that in late Bronze age that we had contact networks up and down Atlantic coast (Atlantic Bronze age) as well as "Urnfield" material culture which spread from Eastern Spain through to central Europe.

It's quite possible that "pre"-Proto-Celtic (or whatever you want to call the ancestral language that gave rise to Proto-Celtic) was spoken across both.

We know for example that the oldest written Celtic language (Lepontic) is attested to Gollascea culture of Northern Italy (circa 6th century BC) which developed out of Urnfield (in parallel to Hallstat!)

Interesting Lepontic is a "P-Celtic" language, whereas Goidelic (eg. Irish, Scottish Gaidhlig and Manx Gaelg) retained the ancestral sound (/kw/ eg. "Q")

darkpagandeath

When do you stop looking ?

suicide_circus

RobertKK wrote: »

23andme.com will do your ancestry which will find you lots of cousins going way back. I do get contacted from people in the US and Canada whom I'm related to, the last person who contacted me was interesting as they gave surnames in their ancestry who have the same surnames as my mother's neighbours location, so that was interesting.
They also do health which can be good or bad depending on what shows up or doesn't show up, and your traits and how you react to certain drugs.
You can then use that info on other sites that use the raw data. It costs €169.

Are you saying people in the US are contacting you as a possible relation becuase you did the best 23andme test?

RobertKK

suicide_circus wrote: »

Are you saying people in the US are contacting you as a possible relation becuase you did the best 23andme test?

Yes, but you can turn off that feature if you want and be anonymous, but I a chose not to, who knows maybe free accommodation for the future, Hi cousin... :pac: ....cousin :mad:
Over 1 million people have used their test, founded by the wife of one of the people who was one of the co-founders of Google.
It gives a break down of close relations., 2nd/3rd cousins, 4th cousins and distant relations, I have 890 genetic relations on their database.
The latest person to contact me had their ancestors leave Ireland around the time of the famine.

Paramite Pie

LordSutch wrote: »

Did this influx of middle eastern wanderers come the whole way across Europe & Britain to just settle in Ireland? same with the Iberians, did they come all this way and just stop here? or did they also put down roots elsewhere?

I think once they reached here there was no where else left to go! The ancientDNA is most prevalent among those with Connacht (pre-Norman) surnames but is very high across most of Ireland and Britain.

South Britain (and especially the rest of Europe) had far greater waves of new populations than Ireland, Wales & North England/Scotland. The Romans and later the Saxons had pushed these people out of the South-East.

The regions of Britain heavily involved in the plantations of Ireland often came from areas that had 'Celtic' or ancient DNA and less Saxon DNA.

The Iberians were probably more widespread than just Iberia and could simply be classified as North-Western Europeans who just got pushed aside by later populations - the Irish are not necessarily Iberian, we just have the same ancestors to happened to survive in pockets here and there.

Wibbs

Paramite Pie wrote: »

The Romans and later the Saxons had pushed these people out of the South-East.

Actually as it turns out it's a very small percentage of English people who have Saxon DNA and IIRC it's all on the male side, the female lines have all died out.

dubhthach

Wibbs wrote: »

Actually as it turns out it's a very small percentage of English people who have Saxon DNA and IIRC it's all on the male side, the female lines have all died out.

It's lot more complicated than that, perhaps a better more modern comparison is with Latin America.

You go to likes of Brazil and you will find a contuinum of people from 90-95% European in Ancestry to Amerindian or African origin. With lot of people in between with ancestry from all three.

The english fall into same bracket, it's probable that the bulk of the modern English genome reflects pre-Roman ancestry (Iron age etc.) which would have been very similiar to say modern Irish samples. However they got a bunch of "Germanic" influx coming in first from Anglo-Saxon's and than Danes/Norse.

Result is about 30% of your average east-englishman genome is made up of genetic input from post-Roman period.

There was recent paper published which used 10 aDNA genomes from Eastern England, consisting of 3 Iron age (1st century BC) remains with 7 Anglo-Saxon remains. Modern British populations are intermediate between the two, with modern English sample been shifted towards the "Anglo-Saxon" sample.

Here's Razib Khan's take on it:
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/between-the-millennia-and-generations/

The level of "AS" (eg. post Roman period ancestry) drops as you go west. If you remember the "People of British Isles" study which looked at modern genomes, it had Britain made up of multiple clusters.

Some in media claimed "There's no connection between Celtic-speakers!!!!"

What they missed was all clusters were closely related to each other, what actually spilt a cluster from others was the level of admixture, so for example the Devon cluster was seperate from Cornwall cluster because modern Cornish have less "Anglo-Saxon era" admixture in their genome than their neighbours in Cornwall.

Likewise the Devon cluster is more "Iron age" (lets avoid the term "celtic") than the wider English "red" cluster.

What's interesting is the three Iron age samples (which tend to cluster near modern Irish/West Scottish samples) were all R1b-L21 (like the three Bronze age Rathlin island samples), more so one of them belong to R1b-DF21 (sub-branch of wider L21). Two of Rathlin island samples were DF21 (Rathlin2 had low quality read so they discounted the DF21+ result and lassed it as R1b-DF13)

Lone Stone

that explains why one side of my family always has a tan

dubhthach

Trinity I see have little video up on youtube, doesn't say much but still

RiderOnTheStorm

I remember reading in one of the old Irish myths that the Tuath de Dannan (sp?) came from Egypt .... via Spain .... maybe there was something in the old tale after all!

dubhthach

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

I remember reading in one of the old Irish myths that the Tuath de Dannan (sp?) came from Egypt .... via Spain .... maybe there was something in the old tale after all!

Pseudo-History that dates to 7th-8th century (Tuatha Dé Danann were probably pre-christian gods, made "mortal" to remove their divinity)

In general Irish history underwent extensive redaction/rewriting in the 7th-8th century by what modern historians call the "syncretic historians", their goal consisted of one:
1. Making a common history -- reusing names of people and places where necessary
2. Tie this history into Biblical narrative
3. Tie this history into Classical history narrative
4. Reflect the political situation on ground, with divison of Ireland between two powercamps dominated by Dál Cuinn (Uí Néill and Connachta) and the Eoghanachta

It's basically the 8th century equivalent of the "Da Vinci code"

Seanachai

The timing of this and wording of the press release seems to be linked to the migration crisis, 'sweeping' along the Black Sea to wash up on our shores. It seems very plausible that part of our makeup comes from a group that could have passed through the Middle East with some settling and some moving North, it doesn't mean that we're descended from Middle Eastern people though. In six months time another study will probably contradict the findings anyway.

Billy86

Avatar MIA wrote: »

They've gone from astronomical costs to the price of a moderately priced advanced TV.

Give it another few years and they'll be given as Christmas presents.

Not sure if it would be any use, but I google'd it and apparently you can get one for $150 off ancestry.ca. Assuming that's Canadian dollars, you're talking about 100 Euro.

harry Bailey esq

Icaras wrote: »

Paddys day would be some crac over there.

Without alcohol?Wouldn't be the same. Halloween night however would be a bit of an eye-opener.

ceadaoin.

Avatar MIA wrote: »

They've gone from astronomical costs to the price of a moderately priced advanced TV.

Give it another few years and they'll be given as Christmas presents.

I got one (23andme) as a Christmas present! Sent it off yesterday. I'm interested to see what it says. I'm based in the U.S. though so I think the health info they can give is more restricted.

kettlehead

Seanachai wrote: »

The timing of this and wording of the press release seems to be linked to the migration crisis, 'sweeping' along the Black Sea to wash up on our shores. It seems very plausible that part of our makeup comes from a group that could have passed through the Middle East with some settling and some moving North, it doesn't mean that we're descended from Middle Eastern people though. In six months time another study will probably contradict the findings anyway.

The timing, and the media reporting of this, is impeccable alright. I've already seen people on my timeline posting about "bringing our cousins home" and that Syrians have a right to Ireland as "they brought farming here."

DanielODonnell

The ancestors of the average modern Belfast Catholic came from other areas of Ulster or even down south as they have west Ulster/southern and Scottish surnames, noone even knows for sure who the tribes were in east Ulster 1500-2000 years ago.