Ancient Irish Tombs Tell a Story of Community Not Kingship

 For years, Ireland's stone age tombs were believed to be the final resting place of ancient royalty, however, new DNA evidence is challenging that narrative. Researchers analyzed the remains of 55 individuals buried in these 5,000-year-old tombs, finding no strong genetic link between them. This suggests that the tombs weren't for royalty but for diverse community members.

                            Newgrange Passage Tomb

Led by archaeologist Neil Carlin, the study reveals a cultural shift in Neolithic Ireland after four centuries of farming. Smaller, earlier tombs revealed close-knit family groups, but around 3,300 B.C.E., larger passage tombs like Newgrange began to emerge, likely used for seasonal gathering, rituals, and burials.

Sources:

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/stone-age-tombs-for-irish-royalty-arent-what-they-seem-new-dna-analysis-reveals

https://archaeology.org/news/2025/04/22/genetics-of-irish-megalithic-burials-studied/

Using History to Study Genetics

 

History and historical records can be used to learn about genetics. This lesson on genetics is brought to us by the Habsburgs, a royal dynasty that lasted from roughly 1450 to 1750. And what is this lesson you might ask. Why, incest and inbreeding coefficients, of course! To keep the “blood pure”, there was a lot of inbreeding amongst family members. The effects of this inbreeding are well documented, such as the “Habsburg Jaw”, where some of the descendants down the line (most notable King Charles II, King of Spain), had an enlarged lower jaw, which made it difficult to speak and eat. It also made King Charles II drool quite often. Another interesting piece of information is that looking at the family tree, King Charles II and Marie Antionette had such high inbreed coefficients, that their coefficients would have been lower if their lineage just had their parents as siblings! To put this into better terms, the Nature article states, “Marie Antione of Habsburg, daughter of Emperor Leopold I and his niece Margaret of Spain (sister of Charles II of Spain), had an inbreeding coefficient of 0.3053, which is higher than the inbreeding coefficient of the progeny of an incestuous union (parent-offspring or brother-sister)”. I enjoyed learning about this topic, and found it very interesting just how inbreed some of these people were. Though there are probably more important things to analyze history for this is, in my opinion, one of the more entertaining things to learn about.

Royal Bones Found in Parking Lot

Two years ago an old skeleton was found under a parking lot in Leicester England. The archaeologists who found the skeleton claimed they found the bones of Richard III, a 15th century monarch. This claim was based on the fact that the skeleton was male, the right age, had battle injuries, and scoliosis. The scientists couldn't be entirely sure it was him so of course DNA evidence was needed.

Image from http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00380/RichardIII_380709a.jpg

Today, December 2nd, it was announced that the DNA analysis of the skeleton was completed. It was reported in Nature Communications. The DNA analysis proved that they bones did belong to the former king. The scientists were able to trace the genetic evidence through more than 20 generations of the dead King's family tree to his living descendants. This means that the oldest DNA identification case of known individual was completed.  Turi King, the lead geneticist who lead the analysis stated that they were even 99.999% sure that the remains belong to Richard III.
What the team did was scrape together a DNA profile from a very old skeleton. Since the DNA was so old and damaged, scientists had to look through millions of ribbons of splintered DNA strings. Also to make sure the analysis wasn't contaminated, scientists did the sequencing in multiple clean rooms at multiple locations. Then the profile was compared to Richard III's living relatives. That was still difficult though because an ancestor from 20 generations back would only contribute .000001 of an individual's DNA. What does go almost unchanged through generations is mitochondrial DNA and the DNA on the Y chromosome. Mitochondrial DNA only comes from the mother allowing scientists to look at an all female line through the family tree. It was discovered that the descendants had the exact same mitochondrial DNA except for 1 single mutation. Richard did not have a pure male-line descendants making the tracking of the Y chromosome difficult. The team had more than enough information though.
I thought this was extremely interesting and relevant to class because we were looking at case studies similar to this with mummies and learning about how difficult it is to extract DNA from the dead and how there is a great risk of contamination. It is amazing what can be done with information on someone's DNA.

Article: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/genetics/scientists-confirm-remains-king-richard-iii-17487010