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Snow expected in the Wyoming Valley this week

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Commuters can expect a smooth ride into work and school today

<p>DNA study is already solving family mysteries for genealogists, and now comes scientific word that it&#8217;s helping genealogists in another and much broader way &#8211; showing mass migrations that took place in ancient times.</p><p>Late in December, geneticists from Trinity College in Dublin, and archaeologists from Queens University, Belfast, both in Ireland, announced that they had found indication that early inhabitants of Ireland, 5,000 years ago, had genetics resembling those of people from southern Europe and the Middle East, with the &#8220;modern&#8221; Irish appearing later.</p><p>The researchers announced their findings in the academic journal &#8220;Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.&#8221;</p><p>They based their conclusion on skeletons found about 1,000 years apart: a farmer woman from about 5,200 years ago and four men from the Bronze Age, about 4,000 years ago. What they found through DNA analysis was radical genetic differences between the woman and the four men, far more pronounced differences than could possibly be explained by normal growth and change in one place over a few thousand years.</p><p>&#8220;These ancient Irish genomes each show unequivocal evidence for mass migration,&#8221; according to the online publication &#8220;Trinity News and Events.&#8221; The early farmer woman shows Middle Eastern origin, while the later remains show genetic origins in the area north of the Black Sea. It is the later DNA, of course, that is closely associated with modern-day Irish.</p><p>What does this discovery mean for genealogists? For one thing, it helps to show how our ancestors came to be what they were, the people who passed genes down to us. Those ancestors didn&#8217;t necessarily originate and stay in one place, but could instead have been the products of migration and resettling over not just centuries but millennia.</p><p>The results do not show when humans initially appeared in Ireland, of course. But they do deepen our knowledge of when and where some of our ancestors lived back when writing and record-keeping were unknown. This is the sort of information that genealogists should at least keep in the back of their minds as they do family history.</p><p>The results also suggest that genealogists should keep up to date on all facets of DNA study, even doing online searches. You never know what you&#8217;ll find. While some of it will barely qualify as &#8220;interesting,&#8221; some other development might provide a true avenue for exploration.</p><p>Don&#8217;t think that the latest discovery means something only to the Irish. It is inevitable that as time goes on more and more ethnicities will be studied by research teams using DNA, and the beneficiaries will be not only historians but genealogists as well.</p><p>If you haven&#8217;t done so already, make a belated New Year&#8217;s resolution to get your own DNA tested. The Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society will resume operations this month and will announce dates for its ongoing program of helping people take DNA tests to indicate both individual linkages and ancestral genetic composition. Check the society&#8217;s Facebook page and watch your Times Leader for information. The genetic testing sessions are held at the society&#8217;s research center, on the grounds of the Hanover Green Cemetery, Middle Road, Hanover Township.</p><p>News Notes: The Luzerne County Historical Society&#8217;s Bishop Memorial Library will be closed for February.</p><p>The Plymouth Historical Society is busy planning observances of the borough&#8217;s 150th anniversary this summer. Go to their Facebook page. There you&#8217;ll also find a link to the group&#8217;s website, which will explain how it can help research ancestors who lived in that community.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/web1_TOM_MOONEY-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Tom Mooney</p><p>Out on a Limb</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader genealogy columnist. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Out on a limb: Genealogists recently discover mass migration plays a huge part in DNA discovery