Correcting My Previous Blog Post on Irish mtDNA Haplogroup U5/ And some additional information

Beakers National Museum of Archaeology Dublin. 2019 Trip 

Corrections to my previous blog post about my Aunt's mtDNA Haplogroup U5 or as the author of the The Seven Daughters of Eve would put it Ursula Clan. I had put forward the theory that maybe our Irish maternal line came during the Viking era because this haplogroup is most prevalent in Finland. It may have been there long before the Vikings arrived. It likely came to  Ireland many times through invasions and migrations over the centuries. . 

The Ice Age scattered the haplogroups as humans moved south out of ice covered regions. 

Invasions replaced entire populations, and the decimation of populations through disease would result in a change in the makeup of certain areas bringing in new haplogroups  to the area. Subclades of the introduced haplogroups would form due to mutations. 

U5 was in Ireland very early. It likely came in with the first waves of settlement in Ireland after the Ice Age. 

Here is a list of migrations and invasions into Ireland (likely U5 carriers came in on every wave). 

1. "The Neolithic and Bronze Age transitions were profound cultural shifts catalyzed in parts of Europe by migrations, first of early farmers from the Near East and then Bronze Age herders from the Pontic Steppe." ... "The oldest Gaelic literature describes the origins of the Irish people as a series of ancient invasions." (From PNAS January 12, 2016 113 (2) 368-373; first published December 28, 2015; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1518445113)
2. The first Viking Raids began in Ireland in AD 795. 
3. The Norman invasions began in AD 1169.
4. The Ulster plantation began around AD 1609.

The earliest U5 haplogroups found in Ireland date back to a little over 5,000 years ago. You can see a list of these in Roberta Estes blog post  "Ancient Ireland’s Y and Mitochondrial DNA – Do You Match???".

Our family is particularly interested the subhaplogroup U5a1a2a which may have originated around 2,500 years ago or less. 

Here are the earliest instances or our haplogroup:  

1. U5a1a2a: 4050-3650 years ago (older than some estimates?). A similar mitosubclade U5a1 previously had some women belonging to the Baden culture." (Proceedings of the Academy of DNA Genealogy Boston-Moscow-Tsukuba Volume 13, No. 2 February 2020)
2. Ua1a2a Neolithic Germany, Benzingerode-Heimburg Sex F. Age BC 2287 -2041 Beaker?
3. Ua1a2a Bronze Age (Beaker Culture) Great Britain, Hasting Hill, Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England Sex M. Age BC 1930 -1759
4. Ua1a2a 900 AD Female Norland, Norway
5. Ua1a2a 1000 AD Female Demark

Looking at the evidence so far it looks like Beaker Culture people may have spread our subhaplogroup around Western and Northern Europe before the common era. Beaker people were likely Yamnaya people who migrated from what is now Ukraine. After the common era Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans likely spread this subhaplogroup. 

More about the Beaker people from the publication Nature: "However, migration had a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker complex. We document this phenomenon most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain’s gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries."(The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe). 

Around 2,000 BC we know that the exact subhaplogroup of your maternal direct line was in the locations with pins on this map in what is today Germany and the UK. 

The subhaplogroup Ua1a2a may  may also have already been in Ireland round 2,000 BC brought by Bronze age Beaker people? "Beakers arrived in Ireland around 2500 BC and fell out of use around 1700 BC." Wikipedia  "Bell Beaker culture".

From Beaker folk burials Ireland. National Museum of Archaeology Dublin. 2019 Trip 

Maybe some day it will be possible to identify which wave of migration each subhaplogroup is from? It would be nice to know when our direct maternal line ancestor first arrived on a beautiful shore in Ireland. They just need to keep digging up those Bronze Age skeletons. 

A couple few more photos Bronze Age from National Museum of Archaeology Dublin

Bronze Age Canoe from my ancestral area in Addergoole, Galway