Blood of the Irish
Encyclopedia
Blood of the Irish is a two-part documentary
miniseries
broadcast on RTÉ One
and presented by the professional gardener Diarmuid Gavin
. It commenced airing on 5 January 2009 and completed broadcasting seven days later. In the documentary, Gavin sought 'the truth' about Irish genealogy
. Genetic research into a selection of Irish DNA
and its origins was undertaken for the programme at Trinity College, Dublin
and EthnoAncestry. They revealed some previously unheard ideas. An attempt was also made to extract ancient DNA from some of the oldest human remains that have to date been located within the boundaries of Ireland
.
, the legendary
high king who allegedly kidnapped the young Saint Patrick
and led him to Ireland. This was found to be particularly the case in County Donegal
where it was discovered that five inter-county footballer
s out of the entire panel of thirty carried the relevant gene
. Daniel O'Donnell, an internationally-renowned Irish singer and entertainer, submitted himself to for testing and it was discovered that he too was one of these descendants.
Gavin also explored a cave in Northern Spain as he attempted to locate a solid link between Ireland and migrants from the Basque region. He expressed his surprise to discover similarities in the appearances of both Irish people and those inhabiting the fishing port of Bermeo
. He later extracted saliva samples containing DNA from people living in the West of Ireland and sent them for analysis. Bear DNA from old bones in an Irish cave was also found to be closely related to DNA from Spanish bears leading to the conclusion that the human immigrants must have carried the bears to Ireland in their skin-covered currach
-type craft as domesticated animals. No other possibility was offered for this unusual finding.
The Basques-to-Ireland theory was based on an early paper, "Hill et al." (see map at Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA)
), published in 2000, which examined 5 markers
per sample. By 2009 further research in greater detail had suggested a much more complicated and layered origin for Irish male lineages, with private tests typically examining over 60 markers, which the programme makers ignored.
The programme is uncritical in its direct linking of biology, Race and national identity
. A study by racial hygienists
E.A Hooton
, C. W. Dupertuis and Helen Dawson from the 1930s is cited in such a way as to completely ignore their attitude to human taxonomy
, which would nowadays be seen as "racist
". The second programme, which aired on 12 January 2009 continued his mission.
. This argued that the Y-chromosome similarity between most Irish and Basque men related to local population histories, and not to a common Mesolithic
hunter-gatherer origin. The true origin is found to have arrived with Neolithic farmers
after the Ice Age
, and a common mutation from the original happens to have survived most in Irish and Basque males compared to the rest of western Europe. The Basque-Irish genetic similarity therefore arose much later than the programme suggested, and was the result of genetic drift
within each population, not from a prehistoric migration from Iberia
to Ireland.
dismissed Blood of the Irish and its presenter as a "laboured effort".
In 2010, 'Blood of the Irish' won Best Documentary Series at the 7th Annual Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTA).
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
miniseries
Miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
broadcast on RTÉ One
RTÉ One
RTÉ One is the flagship television channel of Raidió Teilifís Éireann , and it is the most popular and most watched television channel in Ireland. It was launched as Telefís Éireann on 31 December 1961, it was renamed RTÉ Television in 1966, and it was renamed as RTÉ One upon the launch of RTÉ...
and presented by the professional gardener Diarmuid Gavin
Diarmuid Gavin
Diarmuid Gavin is an Irish garden designer and television personality. He is married to Justine Keane, daughter of The Hon. Ronan Keane, the former Chief Justice of Ireland, and Terry Keane, and they have a daughter named Eppie born December 2004.-Early life:When he was six, his younger brother...
. It commenced airing on 5 January 2009 and completed broadcasting seven days later. In the documentary, Gavin sought 'the truth' about Irish genealogy
Genealogy
Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
. Genetic research into a selection of Irish DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
and its origins was undertaken for the programme at Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...
and EthnoAncestry. They revealed some previously unheard ideas. An attempt was also made to extract ancient DNA from some of the oldest human remains that have to date been located within the boundaries of Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
.
Research and Gavin's discoveries
Some new discoveries were announced as a result of the investigation. The programme examined the previously claimed notion that one fifth of the modern male population living in the north-west counties are direct descendants of Niall of the Nine HostagesNiall of the Nine Hostages
Niall Noígíallach , or in English, Niall of the Nine Hostages, son of Eochaid Mugmedón, was an Irish king, the eponymous ancestor of the Uí Néill kindred who dominated Ireland from the 6th century to the 10th century...
, the legendary
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
high king who allegedly kidnapped the young Saint Patrick
Saint Patrick
Saint Patrick was a Romano-Briton and Christian missionary, who is the most generally recognized patron saint of Ireland or the Apostle of Ireland, although Brigid of Kildare and Colmcille are also formally patron saints....
and led him to Ireland. This was found to be particularly the case in County Donegal
County Donegal
County Donegal is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Border Region and is also located in the province of Ulster. It is named after the town of Donegal. Donegal County Council is the local authority for the county...
where it was discovered that five inter-county footballer
Donegal GAA
The Donegal County Board of the Gaelic Athletic Association or Donegal GAA is one of the 32 county boards of the GAA in Ireland, and is responsible for Gaelic games in County Donegal. The county board is also responsible for the Donegal inter-county teams.Gaelic football is strongest in the...
s out of the entire panel of thirty carried the relevant gene
Gene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
. Daniel O'Donnell, an internationally-renowned Irish singer and entertainer, submitted himself to for testing and it was discovered that he too was one of these descendants.
Gavin also explored a cave in Northern Spain as he attempted to locate a solid link between Ireland and migrants from the Basque region. He expressed his surprise to discover similarities in the appearances of both Irish people and those inhabiting the fishing port of Bermeo
Bermeo
Bermeo is a town and municipality in the sub-region of Busturialdea and the wider province of Biscay, part of the autonomous region of the Basque Country, in Northern Spain. Bermeo has 17,026 inhabitants and is the most important fishing port of the Basque Country. The town was founded in 1236 and...
. He later extracted saliva samples containing DNA from people living in the West of Ireland and sent them for analysis. Bear DNA from old bones in an Irish cave was also found to be closely related to DNA from Spanish bears leading to the conclusion that the human immigrants must have carried the bears to Ireland in their skin-covered currach
Currach
A Currach is a type of Irish boat with a wooden frame, over which animal skins or hides were once stretched, though now canvas is more usual. It is sometimes anglicised as "Curragh". The construction and design of the currach is unique to the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland, with variations in...
-type craft as domesticated animals. No other possibility was offered for this unusual finding.
The Basques-to-Ireland theory was based on an early paper, "Hill et al." (see map at Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA)
Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA)
The point of origin of R1b is thought to lie in Eurasia, most likely in Western Asia. T. Karafet et al. estimated the age of R1, the parent of R1b, as 18,500 years before present....
), published in 2000, which examined 5 markers
Genetic marker
A genetic marker is a gene or DNA sequence with a known location on a chromosome that can be used to identify cells, individuals or species. It can be described as a variation that can be observed...
per sample. By 2009 further research in greater detail had suggested a much more complicated and layered origin for Irish male lineages, with private tests typically examining over 60 markers, which the programme makers ignored.
1930s Physical Anthropology
Gavin: It's the west coast you come to if you want evidence of the first of the Irish. That's the theory anyway, though racial studies like those in the 1930s have fallen out of fashion.
The programme is uncritical in its direct linking of biology, Race and national identity
Nation
A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up...
. A study by racial hygienists
Racial hygiene
Racial hygiene was a set of early twentieth century state sanctioned policies by which certain groups of individuals were allowed to procreate and others not, with the expressed purpose of promoting certain characteristics deemed to be particularly desirable...
E.A Hooton
Earnest Hooton
Earnest Albert Hooton was a U.S. physical anthropologist known for his work on racial classification and his popular writings such as the book Up From The Ape...
, C. W. Dupertuis and Helen Dawson from the 1930s is cited in such a way as to completely ignore their attitude to human taxonomy
Human taxonomy
Human taxonomy is the classification of the species Homo sapiens , or modern human. Homo is the human genus, which also includes Neanderthals and many other extinct species of hominid; H. sapiens is the only surviving species of the genus Homo. Extinct Homo species are known as archaic humans...
, which would nowadays be seen as "racist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
". The second programme, which aired on 12 January 2009 continued his mission.
Balaresque et al., 2010
While the programme was being finished the landmark paper Balaresque et al. was finally published in early 2010 by the Public Library of SciencePublic Library of Science
The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit open-access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journals and other scientific literature under an open content license...
. This argued that the Y-chromosome similarity between most Irish and Basque men related to local population histories, and not to a common Mesolithic
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic is an archaeological concept used to refer to certain groups of archaeological cultures defined as falling between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic....
hunter-gatherer origin. The true origin is found to have arrived with Neolithic farmers
Neolithic Europe
Neolithic Europe refers to a prehistoric period in which Neolithic technology was present in Europe. This corresponds roughly to a time between 7000 BC and c. 1700 BC...
after the Ice Age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
, and a common mutation from the original happens to have survived most in Irish and Basque males compared to the rest of western Europe. The Basque-Irish genetic similarity therefore arose much later than the programme suggested, and was the result of genetic drift
Genetic drift
Genetic drift or allelic drift is the change in the frequency of a gene variant in a population due to random sampling.The alleles in the offspring are a sample of those in the parents, and chance has a role in determining whether a given individual survives and reproduces...
within each population, not from a prehistoric migration from Iberia
Iberia
The name Iberia refers to three historical regions of the old world:* Iberian Peninsula, in Southwest Europe, location of modern-day Portugal and Spain** Prehistoric Iberia...
to Ireland.
Reaction
John Boland of the Irish IndependentIrish Independent
The Irish Independent is Ireland's largest-selling daily newspaper that is published in both compact and broadsheet formats. It is the flagship publication of Independent News & Media.-History:...
dismissed Blood of the Irish and its presenter as a "laboured effort".
In 2010, 'Blood of the Irish' won Best Documentary Series at the 7th Annual Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTA).
Further reading
- Genetic evidence for different male and female roles during cultural transitions in the British Isles Programme contributor Dr. James F. Wilson of the Galton LaboratoryGalton LaboratoryThe Galton Laboratory, was a laboratory for research into human genetics based at University College London in London, United Kingdom. It was originally established in 1904, and became part of UCL's biology department in 1996....
introduces the "Atlantic Model Haplotype", 2001. - Relethford, J.E 'Historical anthropometry and studies of lrish population history' in Human Biologists in the Archives Ann Herring, Alan C. Swedlund eds ISBN 9780521801041
External links
- Official site / Buy Blood of the Irish on DVD
- Production Company
- Series Page on RTE
- Building of the sets
- EthnoAncestry - providers of genetic tests for this production
- RaceSci website, a resource for scholars and students interested in the history of "race" in science, medicine, and technology.
- Genetic Genealogy.Although useful in investigating ancestry, the application of genetics to traditional genealogy could be abused. EMBO
- Law on Data Protection - Ireland