The pattern of the ABO blood group frequencies in Ireland

Abstract

Turning to historic times it would appear that from A.D. ioo to A.D. 8oo the country was ruled by a Gaelic aristocracy and it may be that this rule was over peoples of many distinct races. Prior to the Norse invasions of about 8oo A.D. there was a unity of civilisation, law and language under a Gaelic High Kingship. Ireland was not conquered by the Romans. The Norse invaders established colonies and fortresses round the coast and these were especially strong at Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick. For two hundred years they tried to subdue the country but their attempts ended when Brian Boru routed their Dublin garrison in i 014. With the centre of their power destroyed the Norsemen's coastal settlements became isolated communities enjoying citizen rights under the High Kingship. After a period of unsettled Gaelic rule, Ireland experienced a tide of Anglo-Norman invasion and settlement from i i66 to about 1300. This flow was mainly into south and east Louth, Meath, the eastern half of Westmeath,

ABO and Rh(D) blood group frequencies in the Ards Peninsula, northeastern Ireland: evidence for the continuing existence of a major politico-religious boundary

“…Somewhat surprisingly, the corresponding frequencies in the strongly Roman Catholic Upper Ards are very similar to those of the west and south of Ireland (Dawson 1964), generally regarded as the most typically Irish regions in the country. If one accepts the hypothesis that the relatively high blood group A frequencies found in southeast Ireland are indicative of substantial Anglo-Norman ancestry (Hackett, Dawson and Dawson 1956), then the ABO data from the Upper Ards would suggest the population to be overwhelmingly Irish in origin with very little residual Anglo-Norman contribution to the current gene pool. However, some degree of caution must be applied to this interpretation as, given the small population size of the Upper Ards and its relative genetic isolation over at least three centuries, substantial random genetic drift may have occurred.…”

Anthropometric variation and the population history of Ireland

“…The population history of Ireland has long been a source of fascination in studies of demography, anthropology, and human biology (the term "Ireland as used in this paper refers to the entire island, currently made up of the two nations of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland). Ireland was originally inhabited by perhaps as many as four "waves" of Celtic settlers prior to 2000 B.P., followed by Viking invasions starting in the eighth century, the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169, and Scottish and English immigration starting in 1609 resulting from the Articles of Plantation of James I (Hackett et al, 1956;Hooton et al, 1955;Sunderland et al, 1973). The most recent and dramatic event in Irish population history was the Great Famine (1846-1851).…”

Geostatistics and spatial analysis in biological anthropology

“…In addition, North et al (1999) also found evidence of an east-west cline using spatial autocorrelation analysis on a subset of these anthropometric data. Evidence of this cline is not limited to anthropometric variation; an east-west difference has also been detected in studies of blood groups (Hackett et al, 1956;Hackett and Dawson, 1958;Dawson, 1964;Tills et al, 1977), phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH) haplotypes (O'Donnell et al, 2002), and Y-chromosome markers (Hill et al, 2000). Several explanations have been offered to explain the east-west cline, including continuation of a Neolithic dispersal across Europe into and across Ireland (Hill et al, 2000;O'Donnell, 2002), successive waves of migrants displacing previous inhabitants and pushing them westward (Hooton et al, 1955;North et al, 1999), and the concentration of migrants from England and Wales in the north and east of Ireland over the past 400 years (Tills et al, 1977;Relethford and Crawford, 1995).…”