A team of geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen's University Belfast has sequenced the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, and the information buried within is already answering pivotal questions about the origins of Ireland's people and their culture. The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and those of three men from a later period, around 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking. Their landmark² results are published today in international journal Proceedings³ of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

 

Ireland has intriguing⁴ genetics. It lies at the edge of many European genetic¹ gradients with world maxima for the variants⁵ that code for lactose tolerance⁶, the western European Y chromosome⁷ type, and several important genetic diseases including one of excessive iron retention⁸, called haemochromatosis. 

 

However, the origins of this heritage are unknown. The only way to discover our genetic past is to sequence genomes directly from ancient people, by embarking⁹ on a type of genetic time travel.

 

Migration¹⁰ has been a hot topic in archaeology¹¹. Opinion has been divided on whether the great transitions in the British Isles¹², from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on agriculture and later from stone to metal use, were due to local adoption¹³ of new ways or whether these influences were derived¹⁴ from influxes¹⁵ of new people. 

 

These ancient Irish genomes each show unequivocal evidence for massive migration. The early farmer has a majority ancestry¹⁶ originating ultimately in the Middle East, where agriculture was invented. The Bronze Age genomes are different again with about a third of their ancestry coming from ancient sources in the Pontic Steppe.

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