Sunday, May 6, 2012

Irish Genetic Ancestors


Irish Genetic Ancestors

 


  Irish Times article by by Dick Ahlstrom

Today, DNA can deliver proof of your genetic ancestry and genetic markers can help provide details about your ancient history. Following in the footsteps of Moffat and Wilson in "The Scots a Genetic Journey," “Ireland’s DNA” has been launched, a genetic ancestry service. 

Dr Gianpiero Cavalleri, one of three founders of the company says "we can understand about Irish history from the resulting dataset."

Ireland before the arrival of the Normans was dynastic, with powerful local warlords controlling territories. Their high positions in society also provided the opportunity to deliver many offspring, explains Dr Gianpiero Cavalleri, a geneticist at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. It means that many of the genes passed forward into later generations had their origins in a powerful dynastic leader.

The important families are well known here, for example, the Uí Néills in Ulster begun by fifth-century warlord Niall of the Nine Hostages. Family names associated with him include O’Neill, O’Conner, O’Donnell, McLoughlin, O’Rourke and others. These surnames are associated with one particular type of Y chromosome, the male-only part of the genome.

The Eoganachta were another important dynasty in fifth-century Munster led by Conall Corc, descended from founder Eoghan-Mor. This family, with surnames such as O’Donoghue, Hayes, O’Keeffe and O’Sullivan, have a different Y chromosome type.

The Eoganachta were displaced in the 10th century by the Dalcassians, originally descended many centuries earlier from Cormac Cas, Cavalleri says. Family names here include O’Brien, Kennedy, McGrath and O’Casey, to name a few.

Then there were the kings of Laighin (Leinster) led by Dermot McMurrough who invited the Normans into Ireland. Names here include Kearney, Kinsella and McMurrough.

  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2012/0503/1224315503586.html










                                       To post a comment, click on the title and scroll to the bottom

BBC - The Great British Story


The Great British Story
  
 
Coming Soon to BBC Two, The Great British Story looks at history through the eyes of ordinary people.
  
  

Michael Wood is your guide to discovering the layers of the past and each film provides a wealth of hints, pointers and inspiration to get you started on your own historical journey in The Great British Story.
Take a journey through the centuries as we celebrate the ordinary Saxons, Celts and Vikings, the lesser-known Normans, the Tudor commoners and the Victorian working class.
   
  




    

  
                                              To post a comment, click on the title and scroll to the bottom

Saturday, April 28, 2012

DNA Analysis of Neolithic Europeans


DNA Analysis of Neolithic Europeans

Science Magazine
April 27, 2012





Archeologists and anthropologists have analyzed ancient DNA in an attempt to correlate DNA samples with geographic locations in Neolithic times. Friday's issue of Science Magazine has four autosomal results of Neolithic Europeans:

 - 3 hunter-gatherers excavated, whose distinct genetic signature is most similar to that of extant northern Europeans.

 - 1 farmer excavated in Scandinavia (Sweden) is genetically most similar to extant southern Europeans







The 3 hunter gatherer autosomal samples were excavated from burial grounds on the island of Gotland, Sweden. Associated remains have been dated to 5300-4400 years ago, or 2400 to 3300 B.C.

The one farmer has been associated with the Pitted Ware Culture were most similar to the DNA sequences of people from Finland. These remains were carbon dated dated to 4,921 ± 50 years ago, or about 3,000 BC.

Apparently, no Y-DNA haplotype group was published. But this does sound a lot like I1 and R1b. Or, R1a and R1b. If I were to guess, it would be that the three hunter-gatherers should be I1, and the one farmer to be R1b. But, Dienekes cautions that the three hunter-gatherer contemporaries "were outside the range of modern variation."

Denekes writes:

"We now have two ancient autosomal DNA sampling locations, and both turned up unexpected results. The Iceman, a Copper Age inhabitant of the Alps resembled modern Sardinians. A Megalithic Swedish farmer resembled Southern Europeans, while his hunter-gatherer contemporaries were outside the range of modern variation. These results should give us caution about the identity of past populations elsewhere.

As I have argued elsewhere, the past seems to have been much more dynamic than many had suspected..."

  (end quote)

In simplist terms, scientists have expected farmers to follow hunter-gatherers, and not the other way around. To view the article and read Deniekes Blog, follow the links below.


Science Magazine  (behind a pay-to-view firewall):

   http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6080/466.abstract



"Origins and Genetic Legacy of Neolithic Farmers and Hunter-Gatherers in Europe"

Pontus Skoglund, Helena Malmström, Maanasa Raghavan, Jan Storå, Per Hall, Eske Willerslev, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Anders Götherström1, Mattias Jakobsson


Abstract

The farming way of life originated in the Near East some 11,000 years ago and had reached most of the European continent 5000 years later. However, the impact of the agricultural revolution on demography and patterns of genomic variation in Europe remains unknown. We obtained 249 million base pairs of genomic DNA from ~5000-year-old remains of three hunter-gatherers and one farmer excavated in Scandinavia and find that the farmer is genetically most similar to extant southern Europeans, contrasting sharply to the hunter-gatherers, whose distinct genetic signature is most similar to that of extant northern Europeans. Our results suggest that migration from southern Europe catalyzed the spread of agriculture and that admixture in the wake of this expansion eventually shaped the genomic landscape of modern-day Europe.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
See also Dienekes Blog:


"A first look at the DNA of Neolithic inhabitants from Sweden"

   http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/04/first-look-at-dna-of-neolithic.html

"Ancient DNA from Neolithic Sweden (Skoglund et al. 2012)"

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/04/ancient-dna-from-neolithic-sweden.html



                                                        To comment, click on the title and scroll to the bottom.