Ancient Irish had Middle Eastern Ancestry

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")

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?

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 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)

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

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"

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.

DanielODonnell wrote: »

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.

I doubt many people in South Dublin are descended from Uí Briúin Chualann or the Uí Chellaig Chualann

http://compsoc.nuigalway.ie/~dubhthach/laighin01.jpg

I see relatively new paper released regarding new Neolithic samples from Northwest Anatolia (modern day Turkey)

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(15)01516-X

Unfortunately behind a paywall

Highlights
•Kum6 shows a strong population continuity with present-day Sardinia
•Kum6 expresses connections to the central Eurasian gene pool
•Kum6 shares notable affinity with the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old southern European
•Genetic affinities to both East and West suggest continuous contact with Anatolia

Summary
Anatolia and the Near East have long been recognized as the epicenter of the Neolithic expansion through archaeological evidence. Recent archaeogenetic studies on Neolithic European human remains have shown that the Neolithic expansion in Europe was driven westward and northward by migration from a supposed Near Eastern origin [ 1–5 ]. However, this expansion and the establishment of numerous culture complexes in the Aegean and Balkans did not occur until 8,500 before present (BP), over 2,000 years after the initial settlements in the Neolithic core area [ 6–9 ]. We present ancient genome-wide sequence data from 6,700-year-old human remains excavated from a Neolithic context in Kumtepe, located in northwestern Anatolia near the well-known (and younger) site Troy [ 10 ]. Kumtepe is one of the settlements that emerged around 7,000 BP, after the initial expansion wave brought Neolithic practices to Europe. We show that this individual displays genetic similarities to the early European Neolithic gene pool and modern-day Sardinians, as well as a genetic affinity to modern-day populations from the Near East and the Caucasus. Furthermore, modern-day Anatolians carry signatures of several admixture events from different populations that have diluted this early Neolithic farmer component, explaining why modern-day Sardinian populations, instead of modern-day Anatolian populations, are genetically more similar to the people that drove the Neolithic expansion into Europe. Anatolia’s central geographic location appears to have served as a connecting point, allowing a complex contact network with other areas of the Near East and Europe throughout, and after, the Neolithic.

Wibbs wrote: »

We were never Celts anyway.

Who are "We" and who appointed you as spokesperson for the Irish nation, unless you have tested positive for the DF21 DNA type that was found on Rathlin Island then you do not speak for the descendants of these ancient Irish people who came to Ireland sometime between 4500 and 5000 years ago. Most of the Worlds ancient cultures began around 5000 years ago and the Celts are no different, yourself and your liberal buddies on this forum challenged me sometime ago to give my definition of a Celt so you could "de-construct it with ease" your deconstruction however turned out to be nothing but stupid Father Ted type remarks about beakers and alcohol and other such nonsense. Here is my previous post on my definition of a Celt, note that this was posted months before the results of the Rathlin study and yet the vast majority of what I said is reflected exactly in their report such as DF21 being the oldest Irish DNA etc, that is the difference between a person who knows what they are talking about and someone who simply pretends to.

The origin of the Celts is with the Bell Beaker culture which arrived in Ireland around 2500 BC; this time frame is well within the given age for the L21 DNA mutation which is estimated to be around 5000 years old, below is directions to a link to a European distribution map for L21 (it is the 13th map in the list), remember what we are looking at is the current distribution of the present day L21 people with this mutation, note the high concentration in the Celtic countries of the Isles, especially Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and this is also reflected in the high levels in Brittany reflecting the early Celtic colonisation of that area

To see this link you need to go to eupedia.com/europe/maps_Y-DNA_haplogroups.shtml


The Beaker archeological finds from Ireland indicate a strong continuity with the native Bronze age traditions in Ireland and Britain, there is NO EVIDENCE of other large scale immigrations during this early period and many scholars now propose that the gradual evolution of the Celtic languages took place simultaneously over a large area by way of common heritage and close social, political and religious links, this is absolutely supported by the archeological evidence in the large number of Beakers found in Ireland.

These Irish Beaker finds have both the early origin Northern British and Northern Rhine Valley beakers, the All over Cord Beakers and the Middle Rhine Valley and Wessex Beakers however they contain three groups of Beakers that are entirely insular to Ireland in nature and indeed many of the later Beaker innovations found in Britain never made it to Ireland which show an insular nature to early Irish society.

This is absolute proof of the development of a separate Celtic society in Ireland dating from 4500 years ago which has blood links to the earlier L21 Celts of Europe and Britain whose Celtic cultures developed independently hence the P Celtic language of Britain and the Q Celtic language of Ireland.

The L21 DNA split into many different groups in both Britain and Ireland, the oldest in Ireland seems to be DF21 mutation which is over 4000 years old and is predominately early Irish with later Scottish and Welsh migrations around 1500 to 2000 years ago, with also a small spattering across England which is to be expected from such an old Isles based type.

The genetic distances between the Irish who carry this DF21 mutation are staggering with distances of over 50% at 111 markers are frequently recorded indicating common Irish ancestors from 4000 years ago, Family Tree DNA state that a genetic distance of 10 at 111 markers indicate a common ancestor from around 850 years ago so this means that people with 5 times that distance have a common ancestor from over 4200 years ago.

So what is a Celt , quiet simply they are a person with the L21 DNA mutation who shares a common ancestor from around 5000 years ago and these various branches of this mutation spawned all the Celtic societies that existed for thousands of years, some are now extinct however the insular nature of the Isles ensured that the Irish, Scottish and the Isle of Man and the Welsh including Cornwall and Brittany survived almost intact .