DNA blueprint of the Irish revealed

Professor Brendan Loftus, head of the UCD research team which this week revealed it has mapped the complete genetic code of an Irish person for the first time.

The entire DNA blueprint for a human being was first published in 2003 in the US, but there are six billion people on earth paddling about in many localised gene pools and the island of Ireland is a locality with its own unique genetic scenery. The UCD team has, quite literally, put us on the world map.
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Ireland’s geography has had a huge part to play in shaping the nature of our society and our closest family ties. According to Loftus: “The geographic isolation of Ireland over generations would affect the size of the gene pool by limiting the type and number of potential mating partners.”

Major genetic surveys of Ireland and Britain have established that the gene pool of both islands is amongst the least diluted in Europe. The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of the ancestors of the Irish and British people were the pioneering settlers who arrived at the end of the last ice age between 17,000 and 8,000 years ago. The inescapable upshot of this is that the Irish are not Celts, any more than the English are Anglo-Saxons.

In fact, both the Irish and the British are Basques, with the Irish significantly more Basque than our neighbours across the pond, who’ve absorbed more migrations from Europe over the centuries.
Scientists estimate that Ireland’s gene pool has changed remarkably little since the first hunter-gatherers from Iberia followed the retreating ice cap, beachcombing northwards and settling this newly exposed and empty land. The dilution rate for Ireland is estimated at a tiny 12%, against 20% for Wales and Cornwall, 30% for Scotland and 33% for England.

The genetics suggest that, with sea levels low, the Basques simply walked to Ireland, becoming cut off generations later when rising seas created the island we know. Ancient Irish legends say that there were six invasions or migrations from the south many generations before the Celts arrived around 300BC.

The Irish and Basques share by far the highest incidence of the R1b gene in Europe, which has a frequency of over 90% in Basque country and almost 100% along parts of Ireland’s western seaboard.
If further proof were needed, there’s the physical fact that the Basques are distinguished by a very high incidence of fair (and some reddish) hair, pale skin, blue eyes, and, apparently, sticky-out ears. Sound like anyone you know?

Ireland First