Posted on 03/21/2016 8:45:16 AM PDT by Theoria
Ten years ago, an Irish pub owner was clearing land for a driveway when his digging exposed an unusually large flat stone. The stone obscured a dark gap underneath. He grabbed a flashlight to peer in.
"I shot the torch in and saw the gentleman, well, his skull and bones," Bertie Currie, the pub owner, said this week.
The remains of three humans, in fact, were found behind McCuaig’s Bar in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. And though police were called, it was not, as it turned out, a crime scene.
Instead, what Currie had stumbled over was an ancient burial that, after a recent DNA analysis, challenges the traditional centuries-old account of Irish origins.
From as far back as the 16th century, historians taught that the Irish are the descendants of the Celts, an Iron Age people who originated in the middle of Europe and invaded Ireland somewhere between 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C.
That story has inspired innumerable references linking the Irish with Celtic culture. The Nobel-winning Irish poet William Butler Yeats titled a book “Celtic Twilight.” Irish songs are deemed “Celtic” music. Some nationalists embraced the Celtic distinction. And in Boston, arguably the most Irish city in the United States, the owners of the NBA franchise dress their players in green and call them the Celtics.
Yet the bones discovered behind McCuaig’s tell a different story of Irish origins, and it does not include the Celts.
“The DNA evidence based on those bones completely upends the traditional view,” said Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Oxford who has written books on the origins of the people of Ireland.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
celts, irish, ping..that time of year...
They came from an area known as Galatia along the Po River which is in the area of Poland. They traveled a lot and set up roots in not just Ireland but also NW Spain and Turkey.
The Letter of St. Paul to the Galatians is the letter to the Celts in Turkey.
According to anthropologists who have studied them, the Celts in Ireland are the closest we have today of the original Celts.
Leave it to the Irish to be buried beneath a pub!
Irish archeological find under a pub. Gotta love it.
Per the article, JRR Tolkien seems to have been well ahead of the curve on this. Smart man.
My people came from Ireland (specifically a region that was heavily raided and invaded by Vikings), but a couple family members have done a few of those DNA tests over the last few years, and the tests consistently show a strong amount of Scandanavian. A couple of the tests narrowed it down specifically to Norwegian (not sure how that works, but I digress).
For those not in the know, generally speaking in the Viking Age the Danes invaded England and the Norwegians invaded Ireland.
It's not a slamdunk (I suppose a devilishly handsome Norwegian fisherman could have washed up in my ancestral village anytime between the Viking age and the early 1800's and added some Norwegian to my line), but considering that my people came from a region that saw strong Norse influence, I cherish the idea that I am part "Viking."
The Vikings founded Dublin.
I’ve known for sometime that the Irish DNA is closet to the Basque people (a distinct culture and DNA unto itself in Northern Spain/Southern France) as is the language structure. This arena is an exciting area that more will continue to unfold. Thanks so much for posting!!
Dead Leprechaun?
A survey of drunk scientists say it’s a strong possibility!
Yet the bones discovered were not of Celtic origin ? So what were they if not Celtic ?
I’m not sure any of that is a real revelation. Traditionally, Ireland went through many different people’s moving in, in legend, Fir bolg, later Tuatha denann, later Milesian Celts.
The earliest inhabitants of western Europe are probably who the Irish are most genetically related to, like people in Basque/Spain. The fringe of Europe having slightly different (older) genetics than central or Eastern Europe shouldn’t be surprising, if you see where people migrate from.
Culture and language do not equal genetics. Genetically, the Celts were a mixed bag. Like many times in history, a ruling group could take over an area and impose their culture, yet the main underlying genetics was not changes.
There are exceptions. For example, the conquest of China resulted in the rulers becoming culturally Chinese. In Britain, the Germanic invaders significantly dented the genetics of the Britons that lived there.
It would appear they were a lot smaller in the old days.
Indeed! Were there no ships? Carts? Horses? Shoe leather? One big mistake made by neophyte students of history is to automatically assume that every time and place existed in isolation from every other time and place.
These samples[three] were traced to primarily Steppe and Near Eastern genetic heritage.
Okay, so they’re not Celts. What are they? I’m not about to click to the Washington Post to find out.
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