The Irish are not Celts, say experts 05 Sep 2004 The Sunday Times
THE long-held belief that Ireland’s population is descended from the Celts has been disproved by geneticists, who have concluded that they never invaded Ireland.
Apparently the genetics of the Irish didn’t change that much 2500 years ago when the Celts were supposed to have invaded Ireland and wiped out all the natives (no significant Celtic genes were found in samples from modern-day Irish by Brian McEvoy et al. from TCD), but rather genes can be traced back at least 9000 years to people who migrated from Spain and Portugal after the Ice Age thawed out.
http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp?article=3155470
The Irish and Scots may be as closely related to the people of Spain and Portugal as the Celts of central Europe, it emerged today.
Historians have long believed the British Isles were swamped by a massive invasion of Iron Age Celts from central Europe around 500BC.
But geneticists at Dublin’s Trinity College now claim the Irish and Scots have as much, if not more, in common with the people of north-western Spain.
Dr Daniel Bradley, genetics lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, said a new study into Celtic origins revealed close affinities with the people of Galicia
“It’s well known that there are cultural relations between the areas but now this shows there is much more,” Dr Bradley said.
“We think the links are much older than that of the Iron Age because it also shows affinities with the Basque region - which isn’t a Celtic region.”
“The links point towards other Celtic nations, in particular Scotland, but they also point to Spain,” he added.
Historians believed the Celts, originally from the Alpine regions of central Europe invaded the Atlantic islands in a massive migration 2,500 years ago.
But using DNA samples from people living in Celtic nations and other parts of Europe geneticists at the university have drawn new parallels.
Dr Bradley said it was possible migrants moved from the Iberian peninsula to Ireland as far back as 6,000 years ago up until 3,000 years ago.
“I don’t agree with the idea of a massive Iron Age invasion that took over the Atlantic islands. You can regard the ocean - rather than a barrier - as a communication route,” Dr Bradley said.
It is believed archaeologists are also questioning the links between the Celts of eastern France and southern Germany and the people of the British Isles.
The study found people in areas traditionally known as Celtic, such as Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Brittany and Cornwall, had strong links with each other and people in Ireland have more in common with Scots than any other nation.
There are also close links between Scotland and Ireland dating back much further than the Plantations of the 1600s when many Scots moved to northern Ireland in search of fertile farming lands, the research showed.
However scientists could not shed any light on whether fair skin, red hair and fiery tempers truly are Celtic traits.
The study headed by Dr Bradley was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
The Orkney vole genes corresoponds to megalithic structure throughout Western and some of Eastern Europe including North Africa.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/whereilive/highlandsandnorthernisles/backyard/index.shtml
All you former so-called Picts and Black Irish….GET CIVILISED…GO NORTH Radio carbon dating on the Orkney vole – so named because it’s not found in the rest of the UK – is exciting scientists and archaeologists who say the age of samples show that people from the Northern Scottish isles were regularly travelling and trading with their counterparts in Western France and Spain 6000 years ago. Orkney vole remains have been found in places like Skara Brae – and older sites. The only similar type of vole is in Southern France and Spain - along the Western Atlantic seaboard - and scientists now say that there has to have been direct movement of people and animals travelling in boats round these areas.
That would explain why megalithic architecture seemed to have a standardised unit of measurement right across from Northern Scotland, through central and southern Europe and as far as North Africa (Orkney’s Maeshowe chambered cairn predates the Great Pyramid at Cheops by a thousand years and the unit of measurement is said to be a derivation of the one used in Orkney.)
Needless to say, historians (and academics in general) are still dismissive at the idea of civilisation being advanced enough – especially in the Northern Isles, where they still look on the inhabitants as hicks from the sticks - and refuse to acknowledge that the builders of stone circles and tombs in prehistoric Orkney could have been leaders in building techniques.
But less closed minds have marvelled at the megalith builders of Orkney and their advanced knowledge of mathematics and the laws of astrophysics – so advanced that they could use the movements of the stars and planets to make the most amazingly accurate alignments. The huge flagstone slabs in Maeshowe are so symmetrical that their accuracy can be measured in millimetres and in the 1960s Scots engineer Alexander Thom incurred the wrath of the establishment by claiming that ancient sites from Northern Scotland to Brittany all used the same standard unit of measurement for their building work.
Research convinced him of the existence of a religious elite centred in Orkney, and who passed on its sacred knowledge to pilgrims travelling from far and wide.
But nobody could prove they had. Now the wee Orkney vole is doing just that.
BACKYARD TREASURES As the above proves – its amazing what weird and wonderful treasures lie waiting to be dug up in our backyards. But for those who like poking around the peripheries and browsing through such collections – sorry but the coffers have apparently dried up, and the backyards are being ploughed up to use as building sites for the next BBC project.
So that’s all folks………..
Kath Gourlay
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Web sites.
http://www.google.ca/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&hl=en&q=Orkney+Vole&meta=&btnG=Google+Search
The term “Black Irish” is used in reference to people of Irish descent who have unusually dark hair and eyes compared to their usually-fair kinsmen. The origin of this sub-group among the Irish remains a mystery. A fascinating history of Ireland and the ancient Royal Gaelic families, The O’Mullally & Lally Clan (copyright 1941 by Dennis P. O’Mullally and Eileen O’M. Yanan), usually available only in private libraries of Clan descendants and Irish historical societies, gives us a romantic account of the origins of the Black Irish.
Some who study the history of the Gaelic people and learn they migrated to Ireland from Spain may assume they carried with them dark features found in much of today’s Spanish population. Others think that Gaelic Ireland was originally peopled by dark-haired folk, and the genetic influence of Vikings, who held Ireland’s coastal cities for 500 years — and later, the invasion of the Normans — bred in the blond hair and light eyes which are so common in Ireland today.
These theories are inaccurate, according to O’Mullally. The Spanish Gaels set sail for Ireland around 1700 B.C., and ancient Irish records describe them as dark-haired and -eyed with copper colored-skin. Even compared with some Nordic groups, such as the McDougal clan, these Gaels may have been darker-eyed and swarthy.
When Constantine was force-feeding Christianity to the Norsemen and an Irish Christian missionary converted a Danish King, other Danish tribes invaded Ireland. Records document that the Irish referred to the Danes as “the Black Pirates,” possibly because they were darker-haired than other groups of invading Norsemen, or perhaps because the Nordic seafarers were tanned from their voyage across the water.
This is untrue of course. The original sea-faring Galicians of the Bronze age had distinct characteristics from the so-called Firbolgs of the North. They were the last wave of late Bronze age inhabitants to inhabit Munster.
O’Mullally says that when the Gaels sailed to Ireland, the ‘Black Irish’ were already there, but their skin was so White the Irish aboriginal women enchanted the Gaelic men.
The Gaels
O’Mullally claims that Irish history antedates that of all other nations, except that of the Chinese and Egyptians, and he states that he was able to trace the Gaelic race to ancient Scythia (later known as Persia, and now Iran) during his seven years of research into his family pedigree. The Scythians are one of the four major groups of the Aryan Race, from which the Great Russians and all Slavic tribes descend (although mixed with Teutonic White Russians, the Nordic Rus, Celtic, and Graeco-Latin peoples). But, the Gaelic group was, he says, a distinctive group in Scythia with their own language, which had a closer affinity to the Phoenician and other Semitic languages than any other Aryan tongue.
O’Mullally claims annalists of ancient history identify the Gaels as the first inhabitants of Europe, where they wandered for centuries in search of Inisfail (Island of Destiny). The largest group settled in Spain, were they were known as Gaels. Other groups traveled elsewhere. Galicia, both in Central Europe and Spain, is named after them. In France they were known as Gauls (as in President DeGaulle). They also became known as the Celts.
In 1700 B.C., the King of the Gaels of Spain sent an expedition to Ireland to investigate founding a colony. The scouts returned with glowing accounts. The King had passed away by then and his wife, Queen Scota, led the emigration to ‘Inisfail’ on 30 ships in 1699 B.C.
The Black Irish
Ancient legends identify two Celtic groups living in Eire (Ireland) at the time of the Gaelic migration, Firbolgs and the Tuatha De Dannanns (Children of the Goddess Dana, the chief goddess of Irish Druidism). The latter were described as being skilled with magic and may have been mythical — “the good little people,” faeries, leprechauns, etc.
The Firbolgs, Tuatha De Dannanns, and Milesians (otherwise known to name Ireland Eire) were supposivedly named after the bags in which they used to carry peat, a carbonized soil used for burning in hearths and used today to filter distilled alcohol into Scotch whisky because of its activated charcoal properties. This is untrue of course because from 5000 B.C to 1000 B.C the People of Galicia were master tomb builders bringing new domesticated animals like goats and pigs along with the Irish Pygmy shrew which the pigs ate. They were, it is said, the aboriginal and neolithic invaders of Ireland, who are described as being taller in stature than the Fioons or Finians, with blonde hair and blue eyes — “contrasting with unusually white skin and dwarfed stature such as mythological dwarves who had unuasully long growing white beards.
Recorded legends claim the Gaelic men found the aboriginal women of Ireland beautiful with their white skin and dark hair and eyes (think Pat Benatar with a derier, slim abdomen, and belly). Consequently, they intermarried. Because the Gaelic clans were dominant, if an aboriginal Firbolg, Tuath De Dannann, or Milesian man married a Gaelic woman, he and the family would often adopt his own Q-Celtic Gaelic name from Galicia.
There are other theories besides Dennis O’Mullally’s, of course. Because the Black Irish display features uncommon among other Celtic groups, researchers have proposed several theories of their origins. In March of The Titans featured at:
http://www4.stormfront.org/whitehistory/
historians theorize that the aboriginal people of Ireland were “ancient Europeans” — that is, pre-Indo-Europeans — who, like the Basques may have done, retained their land and genes longer than their kin elsewhere on the continent of Europe.
The “iceman,” whose 5,300-year-old remains were discovered in the Alps, naturally mummified and frozen, is sometimes described as a member of this subrace. He stood only 5 feet 4 inches tall, and scientists claim he looked like this:
http://www.archaeologiemuseum.it/p2210_uk.html
The Galicians Celtic religion and language may have been introduced by earlier Celtic explorers. Or perhaps they were early Celtic explorers who lost body size to generations of poor nutrition and developed unusually white skin to absorb Ireland’s scarce servings of solar radiation necessary for the production of vitamin D. In either scenario, the jet-black hair and dark eyes must have been common among the majority of their ancestors, eventually becoming dominant in the isolated gene pool.
O’Mullally may not have every fact right, but his story is a romantic and engaging one, and may contain more than just a grain of truth.
For all those who could not connect to Online.IE for Scots and Portugese from Galicia.
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1064152004
There are other sites besides the off-page broken ones such as Online.IE.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Dr+Bradley+said+it+was+possible+migrants+moved+from+the+Iberian+peninsula+to+Ireland+as+far+back+as+6%2C000+years+ago+up+until+3%2C000+years+ago.&btnG=Search&meta=
DNA shows Scots and Irish should look to Spain for their ancestry
JOHN INNES
THE Irish and Scots may be as closely related to the people of Spain and Portugal as the Celts of central Europe.
Historians have long believed the British Isles were invaded by Iron Age Celts from central Europe in about 500 BC. But geneticists at Dublin’s Trinity College now claim the Scots and Irish have as much, if not more, in common with the people of north-western Spain.
Dr Daniel Bradley, genetics lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, said a study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics into Celtic origins revealed close affinities with the people of Galicia.
“It’s well known that there are cultural relations between the areas but now this shows there is much more,” Dr Bradley said.
Historians believed that the Celts, who were originally from the Alpine regions of central Europe, invaded the Atlantic islands in a massive migration 2,500 years ago. But Dr Bradley said that it was possible migrants moved from the Iberian peninsula as far back as 6,000 years ago and up until 3,000 years ago.
The study, using DNA samples from people living in Celtic nations and other parts of Europe, found
there are also close links between Scotland and Ireland dating back much further than the Plantations of the 1600s, when many Scots moved to northern Ireland in search of fertile farming land.
“We are not Celts at all but Galicians ”
http://www.geocities.com/vetinarilord/celt.pdf
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/23762.html
We are not Celts at all but Galicians
BRIAN DONNELLY Chefe do Laboratório de Genética do Trinity College.
CELTIC nations such as Scotland and Ireland have more in common with the Portuguese and Spanish than with the Celts of central Europe, according to a new academic report. Historians have long believed that the British Isles were swamped by a massive invasion of Iron Age Celts from central Europe around 500BC. However, geneticists at Trinity College in Dublin now claim that the Scots and Irish have more in common with the people of north-western Spain. Dr Daniel Bradley, genetics lecturer at Trinity College, said a new study into Celtic origins revealed close affinities with the people of Galicia. He said : “It’s well-known that there are cultural relations between the areas but now this shows there is much more. We think the links are much older than that of the Iron Age because it also shows affinities with the Basque region, which isn’t a Celtic region.” He added : “The links point towards other Celtic nations, in particular Scotland, but they also point to Spain.” Historians believed the Celts, originally Indo-European, invaded the Atlantic islands in a massive migration 2500 years ago. But using DNA samples from people living in Celtic nations and other parts of Europe, geneticists at the university have drawn new parallels. Dr Bradley said it was possible migrants moved from the Iberian peninsula to Ireland as far back as 6000 years ago up until 3000 years ago. “I don’t agree with the idea of a massive Iron Age invasion that took over the Atlantic islands. You can regard the ocean, rather than a barrier, as a communication route,” Dr Bradley said. Archaeologists have also been questioning the links between the Celts of eastern France and southern Germany and the people of the British Isles and the new research appears to prove their theories. The Dublin study found that people in areas traditionally known as Celtic, such as Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Brittany and Cornwall, had strong links with each other and had more in common with people from the Iberian peninsula. It also found people in Ireland have more in common with Scots than any other nation. “What we would propose is that this commonality among the Atlantic facade is much older, 6000 years ago or earlier,” Dr Bradley added. There are also close links between Scotland and Ireland dating back much further than the plantations of the 1600s when many Scots moved to Northern Ireland in search of fertile farming lands, the research showed. However, the researchers could not determine whether fair skin, freckles, red hair and fiery tempers truly are Celtic traits. Stephen Oppenheimer, professor of clinical socio-medical sciences at Oxford, said that the Celts of western Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall were descended from an ancient people living on the Atlantic coast when Britain was still attached to mainland Europe, while the English were more closely related to the Germanic peoples of the interior. He said : “The English are the odd ones out because they are the ones more linked to continental Europe. The Scots, the Irish, the Welsh and the Cornish are all very similar in their genetic pattern to the Basque.” The study headed by Dr Bradley was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Auteur: anonymous ( SEAN PORT )
mercredi 29 septembre 2004
Les commentaires liés à cet article :
http://clansofscotland.org/NewsDetails.php?ID=7
The Irish and Scots may be as closely related to the people of Spain and Portugal as the Celts of central Europe, it emerged today.
Historians have long believed the British Isles were swamped by a massive invasion of Iron Age Celts from central Europe around 500BC.
But geneticists at Dublin’s Trinity College now claim the Irish and Scots have as much, if not more, in common with the people of north-western Spain.
Dr Daniel Bradley, genetics lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, said a new study into Celtic origins revealed close affinities with the people of Galicia
“It’s well known that there are cultural relations between the areas but now this shows there is much more,” Dr Bradley said.
“We think the links are much older than that of the Iron Age because it also shows affinities with the Basque region - which isn’t a Celtic region.”
“The links point towards other Celtic nations, in particular Scotland, but they also point to Spain,” he added.
Historians believed the Celts, originally from the Alpine regions of central Europe invaded the Atlantic islands in a massive migration 2,500 years ago.
But using DNA samples from people living in Celtic nations and other parts of Europe geneticists at the university have drawn new parallels.
Dr Bradley said it was possible migrants moved from the Iberian peninsula to Ireland as far back as 6,000 years ago up until 3,000 years ago.
“I don’t agree with the idea of a massive Iron Age invasion that took over the Atlantic islands. You can regard the ocean - rather than a barrier - as a communication route,” Dr Bradley said.
It is believed archaeologists are also questioning the links between the Celts of eastern France and southern Germany and the people of the British Isles.
The study found people in areas traditionally known as Celtic, such as Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Brittany and Cornwall, had strong links with each other and people in Ireland have more in common with Scots than any other nation.
There are also close links between Scotland and Ireland dating back much further than the Plantations of the 1600s when many Scots moved to northern Ireland in search of fertile farming lands, the research showed.
However scientists could not shed any light on whether fair skin, red hair and fiery tempers truly are Celtic traits.
The study headed by Dr Bradley was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Source: http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp?article=3155470
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/(swpu3v55dj4rmqfhexoour2q)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,8,15;journal,63,211;linkingpublicationresults,1:102024,1
How did pygmy shrews colonize Ireland? Clues from a phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences
Silvia Mascheretti A1, Margarita B. Rogatcheva A1, Gslam Gündüz A2, Karl Fredga A3, Jeremy B. Searle A1
A1 Deaprtment of Biology (area 2), University of York, PO Box 373, York YO10 5YW, UK
A2 Department of Biology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of Balikesir, Balikesir, Turkey
A3 Department of Conservation Biology and Genetics, University of Uppsala, Norbyva¨gen 18D, SE-752 36 Uppsala, Sweden
Abstract:
There is a long-standing debate as to how Ireland attained its present fauna; we help to inform this debate with a molecular study of one species. A 1110 base pair fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene was sequenced in 74 specimens of the pygmy shrew, Sorex minutus, collected from throughout its western Palaearctic range. Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences revealed several well-supported lineages. Most of the 65 haplotypes belonged to a northern lineage, which ranged from Britain in the west to Lake Baikal in the east. The other lineages were largely limited to Iberia, Italy and the Balkans. One exception, however, was a lineage found in both Ireland and Andorra. This affinity, and the large difference between the mitochondrial sequences of Irish and British individuals, suggest that pygmy shrews did not colonize Ireland via a land connection from Britain, as has been previously supposed, but instead were introduced by boat from southwest continental Europe. All the Irish pygmy shrews analysed were identical or very similar in cytochrome b sequence, suggesting an extreme founding event.
Keywords:
Colonization, Ireland, Mtdna, Cytochrome B, Pygmy Shrew, Sorex Minutus
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12908980&dopt=Abstract
How did pygmy shrews colonize Ireland? Clues from a phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences.
Mascheretti S, Rogatcheva MB, Gunduz I, Fredga K, Searle JB.
Deaprtment of Biology (area 2), University of York, PO Box 373, York YO10 5YW, UK.
There is a long-standing debate as to how Ireland attained its present fauna; we help to inform this debate with a molecular study of one species. A 1110 base pair fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene was sequenced in 74 specimens of the pygmy shrew, Sorex minutus, collected from throughout its western Palaearctic range. Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences revealed several well-supported lineages. Most of the 65 haplotypes belonged to a northern lineage, which ranged from Britain in the west to Lake Baikal in the east. The other lineages were largely limited to Iberia, Italy and the Balkans. One exception, however, was a lineage found in both Ireland and Andorra. This affinity, and the large difference between the mitochondrial sequences of Irish and British individuals, suggest that pygmy shrews did not colonize Ireland via a land connection from Britain, as has been previously supposed, but instead were introduced by boat from southwest continental Europe. All the Irish pygmy shrews analysed were identical or very similar in cytochrome b sequence, suggesting an extreme founding event.
PMID: 12908980 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Read M Chapman’s and Simon James books on how the Celts are an 18th century creation. The red haired peoples are nordic-germanic. The monks use to have a prayer “save us oh lord from the red haired heathens -Vikings!
http://today.reuters.com/...
By Siobhan Kennedy
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Scientists in Ireland may have found the country’s most fertile male, with more than 3 million men worldwide among his offspring.
The scientists, from Trinity College Dublin, have discovered that as many as one in twelve Irish men could be descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, a 5th-century warlord who was head of the most powerful dynasty in ancient Ireland.
His genetic legacy is almost as impressive as Genghis Khan, the Mongol emperor who conquered most of Asia in the 13th century and has nearly 16 million descendants, said Dan Bradley, who supervised the research.
“It’s another link between profligacy and power,” Bradley told Reuters. “We’re the first generation on the planet where if you’re successful you don’t (always) have more children.”
The research was carried out by PhD student Laoise Moore, at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity. Moore, testing the Y chromosome which is passed on from fathers to sons, examined DNA samples from 800 males across Ireland.
The results — which have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics — showed the highest concentration of related males in northwest Ireland, where one in five males had the same Y chromosome.
Bradley said the results reminded the team of a similar study in central Asia, where scientists found 8 percent of men with the same Y chromosome. Subsequent studies found they shared the same chromosome as the dynasty linked to Genghis Khan.
GENGHIS KHAN EFFECT
“It made us wonder if there could be some sort of Genghis Khan effect in Ireland and the best candidate for it was Niall,” Bradley said.
His team then consulted with genealogical experts who provided them with a contemporary list of people with surnames that are genealogically linked to the last known relative of the “Ui Neill” dynasty, which literally means descendants of Niall.
The results showed the new group had the same chromosome as those in the original sample, proving a link between them and the Niall descendents. Continued …
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Irish king left a wide genetic trail
Scientists say 3 million men are descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages
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By Siobhan Kennedy
Updated: 11:16 a.m. ET Jan. 17, 2006
DUBLIN, Ireland - Scientists in Ireland may have found the country’s most fertile male, with more than 3 million men worldwide among his offspring.
The scientists, from Trinity College Dublin, have discovered that as many as one in 12 Irish men could be descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, a 5th-century warlord who was head of the most powerful dynasty in ancient Ireland.
His genetic legacy is almost as impressive as Genghis Khan, the Mongol emperor who conquered most of Asia in the 13th century and has nearly 16 million descendants, said Dan Bradley, who supervised the research.
Story continues below ↓ advertisement
“It’s another link between profligacy and power,” Bradley told Reuters. “We’re the first generation on the planet where if you’re successful you don’t (always) have more children.”
The research was carried out by Ph.D. student Laoise Moore, at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity. Moore, testing the Y chromosome that is passed on from fathers to sons, examined DNA samples from 800 males across Ireland.
The results — which have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics — showed the highest concentration of related males in northwest Ireland, where one in five males had the same Y chromosome.
The ‘Genghis Khan effect’
Bradley said the results reminded the team of a similar study in central Asia, where scientists found 8 percent of men with the same Y chromosome. Subsequent studies found they shared the same chromosome as the dynasty linked to Genghis Khan.
“It made us wonder if there could be some sort of Genghis Khan effect in Ireland, and the best candidate for it was Niall,” Bradley said.
His team then consulted with genealogical experts who provided them with a contemporary list of people with surnames that are genealogically linked to the last known relative of the “Ui Neill” dynasty, which literally means descendants of Niall.
The results showed the new group had the same chromosome as those in the original sample, proving a link between them and the Niall descendents.
“The frequency (of the Y chromosome) was significantly higher in that genealogical group than any other group we tested,” said Bradley, whose surname is also linked to the medieval warlord. Other modern surnames tracing their ancestry to Niall include Gallagher, Boyle, O’Donnell and O’Doherty.
Checking the molecular clock
For added proof, the scientists used special techniques to age the Y chromosome, according to how many mutations had occurred in the genetic material over time. The number of mutations was found to be in accordance with chromosomes that would date back to the last known living relative of Niall.
Niall reportedly had 12 sons, many of whom became powerful Irish kings themselves. But because he lived in the 5th century, there have been doubts that the king — who is said to have brought the country’s patron saint, Patrick, to Ireland — even existed.
“Before I would have said that characters like Niall were almost mythological, like King Arthur, but this actually puts flesh on the bones,” Bradley said.
When international databases were checked, the chromosome also turned up in roughly 2 percent of all male New Yorkers.
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10892117/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12908980&dopt=Abstract
Click here to read
How did pygmy shrews colonize Ireland? Clues from a phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences.
Mascheretti S, Rogatcheva MB, Gunduz I, Fredga K, Searle JB.
Deaprtment of Biology (area 2), University of York, PO Box 373, York YO10 5YW, UK.
There is a long-standing debate as to how Ireland attained its present fauna; we help to inform this debate with a molecular study of one species. A 1110 base pair fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene was sequenced in 74 specimens of the pygmy shrew, Sorex minutus, collected from throughout its western Palaearctic range. Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences revealed several well-supported lineages. Most of the 65 haplotypes belonged to a northern lineage, which ranged from Britain in the west to Lake Baikal in the east. The other lineages were largely limited to Iberia, Italy and the Balkans. One exception, however, was a lineage found in both Ireland and Andorra. This affinity, and the large difference between the mitochondrial sequences of Irish and British individuals, suggest that pygmy shrews did not colonize Ireland via a land connection from Britain, as has been previously supposed, but instead were introduced by boat from southwest continental Europe. All the Irish pygmy shrews analysed were identical or very similar in cytochrome b sequence, suggesting an extreme founding event.
PMID: 12908980 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=20%25+of+Scots+have+Iraqi+blood&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Egyptians+on+Orkney+Island&btnG=Search&meta=
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/1021508.stm
http://genealogyblog.com/scotland/twenty-of-all-scots-have-iraqi-blood-3444
This story is interesting. I’ve got a good percentage of Scots ancestry. That means that there’s a chance that I’m distantly related to those poor folks in Iraq. Interesting?.
ABOUT 20 per cent of all Scots have Iraqi blood, according to a new book and television series examining the pre-history of what is now Scotland.
The remaining four in five Scots are descended from bands of hunter-gatherers who came from England and northern Europe after the Ice Age - dispelling the myth of the Scots as a mongrel race made up of Romans, Angles, Vikings, Normans and other arrivals.
These revelations come from a documentary series Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History, to be screened later this year on STV and Grampian.
The programmes - accompanied by a book - also claim the mythical land of Atlantis existed in what we now know as the North Sea, and that many Scots spoke Old Welsh before Gaelic.
Read the full story about the Scotland-Iraq connection in the January 15, 2004 edition of the Scotsman.com.
Filed: under: Scotland.
When Dr. Bradley of Trinity College Dublin suggested that the Irish were not Celts but their DNA is related to the traditional “Celtic peoles” of Alba, Cymru, Kernow and Breizh. It seems that this study also proved that the peoples of the above lands were in their homelands for a much longer period than had been thought by historians and that no significant invasion of peoples from mainland Europe occured to bring the Celtic languages, religion and culture to Ireland and Britain.
Therefore, it is correct to suggest that the Celtic languages in these regions of Europe are, in fact, much older than previously thought.
Dr. Bradley’s theory is based on the examination of DNA from a wide area of Europe and accepts that DNA extracted from remains found on mainland Europe with a significant Celtic link are purely Celtic in origin.
This is theory is unsound for it accepts without question the “Celtic” origin of the DNA extracted from central European burials rather than the possibility that such persons were, in fact, only culturally Celtic - a culture that possibly moved from the seaboard of Europe eastward rather than the accepted view of a westward movement from central Europe.
It is accepted that the original languages spoken by the peoples of Ireland and Britain are of the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language group. Indeed, Dr. Bradley proved that there was no significant invasion of “Celts” from the mainland. Therefore, should we not look to Ireland, Britain and coastal Europe as the cradle of Celtic Europe - a culture that moved eastwards through Gaul to reach its height in central Europe. Along the way mixing with other genetic lines to gives us a Celtic cultural society with mixed genetic origins? Not the other way around.
http://genealogyblog.com/scotland/twenty-of-all-scots-have-iraqi-blood-3444
20% of Scots have Iraqi blood.
Language study backs theory farmers spread Celtic. You can spread celtic by chopping down trees with primitive tools or you can spread Celtic like the Galicians did by boat.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_295892,00040001.htm
A new method of analysing language supports the idea that farmers carried Celtic into the British Isles, Ireland and France in a single wave 6,000 years ago, researchers said on Monday.
This runs counter to some linguistic theories that Celtic, one of the Indo-European languages, arrived in two separate events.
Geneticist Peter Forster of the University of Cambridge in Britain used techniques usually reserved for DNA analysis for his study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“It is a major debate among geneticists whether Europeans are descended mainly from Indo-European speakers who came in possibly with farming, or whether most of our genes have been here much longer — with the early hunter-gatherers who arrived 30,000 to 40,000 years ago,” Forster said.
Experts have dated the migration of peoples and even the origin of humans using a technique called mutational analysis. The idea is there is a “genetic clock” — that random mutations or changes in DNA average out to a steady rate.
This technique has, for instance, dated human origins to a theoretical single African female who would have lived 180,000 years ago.
Forster applied this technique to language — specifically to the Celtic languages, spoken widely before the Roman empire imposed Latin 2,000 years ago. Celtic languages survive in parts of Ireland, Britain, France and Wales.
“We look at it like we do at DNA — as a string of information,” Forster said. “Like, Americans say ‘fall’ instead of ‘autumn’. I am not interested in why it came about. It is like a mutation in DNA.”
Forster and colleague Alfred Toth of the Junge Akademie in Berlin looked at several rare and “dead” languages, including Gaulish, once spoken in France.
It is clear how the Romans imposed their Latin language on Europe. But how did the Celts do it millennia earlier?
“To impose a language on the majority, one would have to have some kind of elite knowledge,” Forster said. One leading theory is that this elite knowledge was agriculture, while an opposing theory suggests it was the ability to tame and ride horses.
Other evidence suggests farming arrived in Britain around 4000 BC so Forster believes his findings support the farming theory.
ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/wales/neolithic.shtml
Neolithic and Bronze Ages
The Neolithic and Bronze ages 2000 - 800 BC
The Beaker people buried their dead with grave goods
Continuous settlement of Wales by human beings began with the end of the last Ice Age in about 10,000 BC. The melting of the ice cap caused sea levels to rise. Britain became an island and by c.8000 BC Wales had attained roughly the shape it has today. As the temperature rose, the country became covered by a thick canopy of trees, the environment of the sparse Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age communities which inhabited Wales in the millennia following the retreat of the ice.
Until the 1960s, it was believed that Mesolithic society, based on hunting and gathering, lasted in Wales until about 2000 BC, when it gave way to Neolithic or New Stone Age society, based on farming. However, the Carbon 14 dating method has shown that the country had farming communities as early as 4000 BC. The most striking monuments of the Neolithic era are the stone chambered tombs (cromlechi), such as Barclodiad y Gawres in Anglesey. They are proof that Neolithic Wales had a fairly populous society with a considerable degree of organisation. The distribution of the tombs suggests close contacts along the western sea routes with Ireland, Brittany and Spain.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_295892,00040001.htm
http://www.unr.edu/sb204/geology/europe.html
The Greeks mapped the heavens and predicted the earth was round.
Michael Merrigan is simply being a troll!
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 18:17:43 -0500
Reply-To: Scholars and students of Old Irish
Sender: Scholars and students of Old Irish
From: Sean O’Connor
Subject: Re: OI Substratum
In-Reply-To:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”iso-8859-1″
This news story seems to get misquoted with fair regularity. The tell tale genetic characteristics (markers, not genes) in question show up in the male chromosome and are only passed down via the male parent and only to male offspring. Restricting the analysis to those in Connacht with “Gaelic” names resulted in a very high incidence of the markers. The relationship with Basque males is interesting particularly when viewed in light of the findings at Céide. Pollen analyses and recovered bones of semi-domesticated farm animals strongly correlate with those of an area of northwest Spain and the adjacent area in southwest France contemporary with the period of active farming at Céide. Scríobh TOM SMITH >Recent research by Irish archaeologists shows that Ireland may have been >peopled by Neolithic people coming up from Spain after the retreat of the >ice from Ireland. DNA studies show that presently genes identical to >Neolithic people occur in 98% of the male population of Connacht. No, the marker occurs in 98% of Connaught males with Gaelic surnames traditionally associated with the provinces. Add in non-Gaelic surnames like Burke & MacLoughlin, & non-Connaught surnames like O’Donnell, & the % of Connaughtmen with the marker falls dramatically. >This is >the highest percentage in Europe. The next highest occurs in the Basque >country in Spain where 89% of the male population carry the genes. Following >the gene pattern, if the Basque language is non Indo-European then the OI >substratum is probably related to Basque. 89% of Basques, not 89% of Spain. — Gearóid Mac Cuinneagáin Tá m’aerbhád lán d’eascanna
Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OLD-IRISH-L page
LISTSERV.HEANET.IE CataList email list search
https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0103&L=old-irish-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=1852
Place names such as Cantobrian mountains in Galicia corresponds to such surnames as O’Brien. Even the surname Ceide corresponds to the Céide field system.
http://www.google.ca/search?q=ceide&hl=en&lr=&start=20&sa=N
In fact Brian McEvoy is the biggest troll and kook around!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_Ireland
Early history of Ireland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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History of Ireland
series
Early history
Early Christian Ireland
Early medieval and Viking era
Norman Ireland
Early Modern Ireland 1536–1691
Ireland 1691–1801
Union with Great Britain
History of the Republic
History of Northern Ireland
Economic history
Newgrange, a famous Irish passage tomb built c3,200 BC
Enlarge
Newgrange, a famous Irish passage tomb built c3,200 BC
Contents
* 1 The Mesolithic (8000 BC - 4500 BC)
* 2 The Neolithic (4500 BC - 2500 BC)
* 3 The Bronze Age (2500 BC - 700 BC)
* 4 The Celts
o 4.1 O’Rahilly’s historical model
* 5 The Gaelic conquest of Ulster
* 6 Further reading
* 7 External links
[edit]
The Mesolithic (8000 BC - 4500 BC)
What little is known of pre-Christian Ireland comes from a few references in Roman writings, Irish poetry and myth, and archaeology. During the Pleistocene ice age, Ireland was extensively glaciated. Ice sheets more than 300 metres thick scoured the landscape, pulverizing rock and bone, and eradicating all evidence of early human settlements. Something similar happened in Britain, where human remains predating the last glaciation have been uncovered only in the extreme south of the country, which largely escaped the advancing ice sheets. During the Last Glacial Maximum (circa 16,000 BC), Ireland was an arctic wasteland, or tundra. The Midland General Glaciation covered about two thirds of the country with a drifting sheet of ice. It is highly unlikely that there were any humans in the country at this time, though the possibility cannot be discounted entirely.
The earliest evidence of human occupation after the retreat of the ice has been dated to between 8000 and 7000 BC. Settlements of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers have been found at about half a dozen sites scattered throughout the country: Mount Sandel in County Derry; Woodpark in County Sligo; the Shannon estuary; Lough Boora in County Offaly; the Curran in County Antrim; and a number of locations in Munster. It is thought that these settlers first colonised the northeast of the country from Scotland. Although sea levels were still lower than they are today, Ireland was probably already an island by the time the first settlers arrived by boat. There is nothing surprising in this, though, for most of the Mesolithic sites in Ireland are coastal settlements. Clearly, the earliest inhabitants of this country were seafarers who depended for much of their livelihood upon the sea. In some ways this economy was forced upon them, for many centuries were to pass before the treeless permafrost was transformed into a densely forested fertile land.
The hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic era lived on a diet of seafood, birds, wild boar, deer and hazelnuts. They hunted with spears, arrows and harpoons tipped with small flint blades called microliths, while supplementing their diet with gathered nuts, fruit and berries. They lived in seasonal shelters, which they constructed by stretching animal skins over simple wooden frames. They had outdoor hearths for cooking their food, and they are known to have built canoes from dug-out tree trunks.
During the Mesolithic the population of Ireland was probably never more than a few thousand.
[edit]
The Neolithic (4500 BC - 2500 BC)
The Neolithic saw the introduction of farming and pottery, and the use of more advanced stone implements. It was once thought that these innovations were introduced by a new wave of settlers, but there is no compelling evidence for a large-scale invasion at this point in Irish history. It is much more likely that the Neolithic revolution was a long and slow process resulting from trade and overseas contacts with agricultural communities in Britain and on the continent.
Agriculture began around 4500 BC. Sheep, goats, cattle and cereals were imported from Britain and the continent, and the population rose significantly. At the Céide Fields in County Mayo, an extensive Neolithic field system - arguably the oldest in the world - has been preserved beneath a blanket of peat. Consisting of small fields separated from one another by dry-stone walls, the Céide Fields were farmed for several centuries between 3500 and 3000 BC. Wheat and barley were the principal crops cultivated.
Pottery made its appearance around the same time as agriculture. Ware similar to that found in northern Britain has been excavated in Ulster (Lyle’s Hill pottery) and in Limerick. Typical of this ware are wide-mouthed, round-bottomed bowls.
But the most striking characteristic of the Neolithic in Ireland was the sudden appearance and dramatic proliferation of megalithic monuments. The largest of these tombs were clearly places of religious and ceremonial importance to the Neolithic population. In most of the tombs that have been excavated human remains - usually, but not always, cremated - have been found. Grave goods - pottery, arrowheads, beads, pendants, axes, etc - have also been uncovered. These megalithic tombs, more than 1,200 of which are now known, can be divided for the most part into four broad groups:
* Court tombs - These are characterised by the presence of an entrance courtyard. They are found almost exclusively in the north of the country and are thought to include the oldest specimens.
A court tomb at Carrowmore
Enlarge
A court tomb at Carrowmore
* Passage tombs - These constitute the smallest group in terms of numbers, but they are the most impressive in terms of size and importance. They are distributed mainly throughout the north and east of the country, the biggest and most impressive of them being found in the four great Neolithic “cemeteries” of the Boyne, Loughcrew (both in County Meath), Carrowkeel and Carrowmore (both in County Sligo). The most famous of them is Newgrange, a World Heritage Site and one of the oldest astronomically aligned monuments in the world. It was built around 3200 BC. At the Winter Solstice the first rays of the rising sun still shine through a light-box above the entrance to the tomb and illuminate the burial chamber at the centre of the monument. Another of the Boyne megaliths, Knowth, contains the world’s earliest map of the moon carved into stone.
* Portal tombs - These tombs include the well known “dolmens.” Most of them are to be found in two main concentrations, one in the southeast of the country and one in the north.
* Wedge tombs - The largest and most widespread of the four groups, the wedge tombs are particularly common in the west and southwest. County Clare is exceptionally rich in them. They are the latest of the four types and belong to the end of the Neolithic. They are so called from their wedge-shaped burial chambers.
The theory that these four groups of monuments were associated with four separate waves of invading colonists still has its adherents today, but the archaeological evidence does not really support this point of view. It is much more satisfying to regard the megaliths as native expressions of an international practice. The growth in population that made them possible need not have been the result of colonisation: it may simply have been the natural consequence of the introduction of agriculture.
At the height of the Neolithic the population of the island was probably in excess of 100,000, and perhaps as high as 200,000. But there appears to have been an economic collapse around 2500 BC, and the population declined for a while. By this time, metallurgy was already established in the country.
[edit]
The Bronze Age (2500 BC - 700 BC)
Metalworking began in Ireland around 2500 BC, when bronze, an alloy of tin and copper, made its first appearance. Bronze was used for the manufacture of both weapons and tools. Swords, axes, daggers, hatchets, halberds, awls, drinking utensils and horn-shaped trumpets are just some of the items that have been unearthed at Bronze Age sites. Irish craftsmen became particularly noted for the horn-shaped trumpet, which was made by the cire perdue, or lost wax, process. These are found in many places throughout Europe; there is a representation of one lying by the side of the famous “Dying Gaul” by the Greek sculptor Epigonus.
Copper used in the manufacture of bronze was mined in Ireland, chiefly in the southwest of the country, while the tin was imported from Cornwall in Britain. The earliest known copper mine in these islands was located on Ross Island in County Kerry; mining and metalworking took place here between 2400 and 1800 BC. Another of Europe’s best-preserved copper mines has been discovered at Mount Gabriel in County Cork, which was worked for several centuries in the middle of the second millennium. Mines in Cork and Kerry are believed to have produced as much as 370 tonnes of copper during the Bronze Age. As only about 0.2% of this can be accounted for in excavated bronze artifacts, it is surmised that Ireland was a major exporter of copper during this period.
Ireland is also rich in native gold, and the Bronze Age saw the first extensive working of this precious metal by Irish craftsmen. More Bronze Age gold hoards have been discovered in Ireland than anywhere else in Europe. Irish gold ornaments have been found as far afield as Germany and Scandinavia. In the early stages of the Bronze Age these ornaments consisted of rather simple crescents and disks of thin gold sheet. Later the familiar Irish torque made its appearance; this was a collar consisting of a bar or ribbon of metal, twisted into a screw and then bent into a loop. Gold earrings, sun disks and lunulas (crescent “moon disks” worn around the neck) were also made in Ireland during the Bronze Age.
One of the most distinctive types of European pottery, Beaker or Bell-Beaker ware, made its appearance in this country during the Bronze Age. This was quite different from the coarse, bucket-shaped pottery of the Neolithic. Beaker ware was once thought to be associated with a particular culture - the Beaker Folk - whose arrival here supposedly coincided with the introduction of metallurgy. But this view is no longer tenable: there were no Beaker Folk, and metallurgy was well established in Ireland long before the appearance of Beaker ware. Irish Beaker ware was of local manufacture and its appearance is evidence of foreign influence rather than foreign invasion.
Smaller wedge tombs continued to be built throughout the Bronze Age, but the grandiose passage graves of the Neolithic were abandoned for good. Towards the end of the Bronze Age the single-grave cist made its appearance. This consisted of a small rectangular stone chest, covered with a stone slab and buried a short distance below the surface. Numerous stone circles were also erected at this time, chiefly in Ulster and Munster.
During the Bronze Age, the climate of Ireland deteriorated and extensive deforestation took place. The population of Ireland at the end of the Bronze Age was probably in excess of 100,000, and may have been as high as 200,000. It’s possible that it was not much greater than it had been at the height of the Neolithic.
[edit]
The Celts
In Ireland the Iron Age was the age of people now generally referred to as Celts. These people are distinguished from their predecessors by their use of iron, and through a range of other cultural traits shared with Celtic populations elsewhere in Central and Western Europe. The extent to which these similarities appeared through invasion, or alternatively through other forms of cultural diffusion, is a matter of some dispute. It has traditionally been thought it was Celtic invaders that brought Celtic language into Ireland, but recent genetic and archeological studies suggest that the adoption of Celtic culture and language was a far more gradual transformation, brought on by cultural exchange with Celtic groups in mainland Europe.
The field suffers from the fact that it is of interest to multiple academic disciplines, and that attempts at cross-disciplinary syntheses tend to be controversial. Related to this, historical syntheses created many decades ago, based primarily on mythology and on linguistic studies, are still frequently quoted as being authoritative, even where modern views of the same material would accept a broader interpretation, and where archaeological and genetic evidence suggest different conclusions. Complicating the matter is a complex relationship between understandings of Irish pre-history and understandings of the Irish national identity.
The Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland can be divided into two groups: P-Celtic and Q-Celtic. When written records first appear in the fifth century of the common era, Gaelic or Goidelic (a Q-Celtic language) is found in Ireland, while Brythonic (a P-Celtic language) is found in Britain. At one time, it was natural to assume that Ireland had been invaded by Q-Celts and Britain by P-Celts. Even today it is not uncommon to hear that there was one Celtic invasion in Irish history. In 350 BC, according to this view of history, a group of people called the Milesians introduced the Irish language tongue to Ireland and subjugated the pre-Celtic inhabitants by virtue of their superior weapons. But this view is primarily mythological.
The truth is more complex. For a start, recent DNA studies have suggested that the people who introduced the Celtic languages to these islands may well have been Celtic-speakers, but they were not members of a Celtic race. Ethnically they were indistinguishable from the pre-Indo-European inhabitants who preceded them. What’s more, their arrival had so little impact on the genetic inheritance of the native peoples that they cannot have numbered much more than a few thousand.
The Y-chromosomes of the modern Irish, caracterized by the M343 mutation that defines the R1b Haplogroup (dominat, in variant degrees, from Iberia to Scandinavia), are closely related to those of Iberian population (Portugal and Spain), particularly those of the Basques, which has led some anthropologists to surmise that the Basques are a remnant of the pre-Indo-European population of western Europe, and that the pre-Celtic language (or languages) of Ireland may have been related to Euskara, the Basque tongue. (See Celt for a discussion of the so-called “Celtic problem.”)Ĥî
[edit]
O’Rahilly’s historical model
The Celtic scholar T. F. O’Rahilly proposed a model of Irish prehistory, based on his study of the influences on the Irish language and a critical analysis of Irish mythology and pseudohistory. His ideas, though extremely influential, are no longer universally accepted. However, he distinguished four separate waves of Celtic invaders:
* The Cruithne or Priteni (c. 700 - 500 BC)
* The Builg or Érainn (c. 500 BC)
* The Lagin, the Domnainn and the Gálioin (c. 300 BC)
* The Goidels or Gael (c. 100 BC)
(see O’Rahilly’s Historical Model)
[edit]
The Gaelic conquest of Ulster
In Ireland contemporary written records only go back to 431 AD. The Gaelic king of Tara known as Niall Noígiallach, or Niall of the Nine Hostages, is the earliest historical figure whose historicity is beyond dispute and of whom we know more than a few meagre details. According to extant records his father Eochu Mugmedón was a king of Tara and ruler of the kingdom of Meath (although the territory of the Midland Gael only came to be known as Meath several centuries later).
Niall succeeded his father around 400 AD and is said to have ruled for twenty-seven years. His reign marks the rise of Tara as the dominant power in the country. The origin of this power was the conquest of Ulster, the culmination of centuries of conflict between the Gael of Tara and the Ulaid of Emain Macha. This conflict is reflected in the mythical cycle known as the Ulster Cycle, which includes the Irish national epic, Táin Bó Cúailnge.
The Gaelic conquest of Ulster was undertaken chiefly by three of Niall’s sons, Conall Gulban, Eógan and Énda, who were rewarded with three subkingdoms in the west of the newly conquered province. As a direct result of the conquest, Ulster was reorganized into three overkingdoms:
* Ulidia, in the east, covered most of the modern counties Antrim and Down. It was ruled by the Dál nAraidi, a native Cruthnian dynasty that had sided with the Niall in the war. The Ulaid or Dál Fiatach, who had been the dominant power in Ulster for centuries, were overthrown; their royal seat at Emain Macha was destroyed, and they were driven eastward into County Down. The Gaelic conquest also had a significant impact on Scottish history. One of the Ernean tribes of Ulster that had been reduced to vassalage by Niall were the Dál Riata, whose traditional territory was in the northeast of the country. Following their overthrow, some of the Dál Riada crossed the sea and colonised Argyll. In the course of time this colony became the dominant power in northern Britain. The Kingdom of Scotland was created in the ninth century by the union of Dál Riada and the native kingdom of the Picts.
* Airgialla (sometimes Anglicized as Oriel, in the centre of Ulster, covered much of counties Derry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Armagh, Monaghan and Louth. This kingdom was actually a confederacy of nine sub-kingdoms, each of which was ruled by a native dynasty that had been reduced to vassalage by Niall’s conquest. In order to ensure their loyalty to him, these were obliged to send prominent members of their families to Tara as hostages. Hence the name Airgialla, which means ‘hostage-givers’. This is also presumably the origin of Niall’s epithet Noígiallach, or ‘of the Nine Hostages.’
* Ailech, or Aileach, in the west, was co-extensive with the present county of Donegal. At first it consisted of three sub-kingdoms, Tír Eógain, Tír Chonaill and Tír Énda, but Tír Énda was conquered by Conall’s descendants and incorporated into Tír Chonaill (although descendants of Énda continued to hold territories both here and in the Midlands). The two remaining kingdoms later increased in size and prominence, and their names have been preserved in the Gaelic names of two of the modern counties of Ulster: Donegal and Tyrone. Ailech was ruled for about eight centuries by the descendants of Conall and Eógan, collectively known as the Northern Uí Néill, and also provided numerous High Kings of Ireland. The capture (around 425) of Ailech, the royal seat which became the capital of the Northern Uí Néill and from which the kingdom takes its modern name, marked the end of the Gaelic conquest of Ulster.
After his death Niall was succeeded as king of Tara by his son Lóegaire mac Néill, during whose reign Roman Christianity was officially introduced into the country. Niall of the Nine Hostages has the distinction of being the ancestor of all but two of the long line of kings of Ireland who ruled from the fifth century down to the time of Brian Bórú in the early eleventh century.
[edit]
Further reading
* T. F. O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1946, reprinted 1984)
* Francis John Byrne, Irish Kings and High Kings (Dublin, 1973) ISBN 0-7134-5882-8
* B. Raftery, Philip’s Atlas of the Celts (George Philip Limited, 2001)
* Simon James, The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention?, (British Museum Press, 1999)
* Peter Harbison, Pre-Christian Ireland: From the First Settlers to the Early Celts (Thames & Hudson, 1988) ISBN 0-500-27809-1
* Laurence Flanagan, Ancient Ireland: Life before the Celts (Gill & Macmillan, 1998) ISBN 0-7171-2433-9
[edit]
External links
* Old Irish kingdoms and clans
* Ireland’s history in maps
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_Ireland”
Category: Ancient Ireland
Analysis of the substance by archaeologist Stephen Buckley from the University of York in England showed the gel was made of vegetable plant oil mixed with resin from pine trees found in Spain and southwest France.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0117_060117_irish_bogmen_2.html
South West France and Spain have always been associated with Celtic speaking people from Galicia. Just to Clarify this, …http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0117_060117_irish_bogmen_2.html.
Murdered “Bog Men” Found With Hair Gel, Manicured Nails
Atlantis “Evidence” Found in Spain and Ireland.
Once a domain of the sea god Poseidon, Atlantis may have been named after Atlas the Titan, said to have been Poseidon’s son. According to Plato, the city’s kings conquered parts of both Europe and Africa before being defeated by Athens.
The gods, angered by Atlantis’s greed and corruption, unleashed a barrage of floods and earthquakes on the fabled kingdom, sinking it into the sea in a single day. (Athens was destroyed by natural disaster at the same time.)
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RELATED
* New Underwater Finds Raise Questions About Flood Myths
The bulk of Plato’s account is clearly fictional. The war between Athens and Atlantis takes place more than 11,000 years ago, at a time when the civilization he describes could not possibly have existed—nor could his victorious Athens.
But Plato’s use of vivid details has led scholars to speculate that his fabled island was based on a real place. Some believe Atlantis is Spartel Island, a mud shoal in the Strait of Gibraltar that sank into the sea 11,500 years ago.
But Kühne says Spartel Island is too small—Plato wrote that Atlantis was bigger than Libya and Asia put together—and could not have possessed the high culture described by Plato.
Instead, Kühne points to satellite photos of a salt marsh region called Marisma de Hinojos, near the city of Cádiz in Spain, as the possible location of Atlantis. The photos, Kühne says, show two rectangular structures in the mud and part of concentric rings that may once have surrounded them.
“These rectangular structures could be the remains of the temples described by Plato,” Kühne said in a telephone interview from his home in Braunschweig, Germany.
While transmitting the Atlantis story, the Greeks may have confused the Egyptian word for “coastline” with one meaning “island,” Kühne speculates. The “plain” described by Plato could be a plain that extends today from the Spanish southern coast to the city of Seville, he said.
“I cannot say with certainty that Atlantis was located [in southern Spain],” Kühne said. “But these photos suggest that we should take a closer look at this location.”
The Fairy Land
Erlingsson, meanwhile, says Atlantis is a literary construction by Plato. “Its existence has not been proven,” he said in a telephone interview from Ireland, where he was doing research. “We know it was a utopia.”
But Erlingsson is convinced that Plato based the geographical description of his fabled kingdom on a real place and argues that even the empire might be historic. He claims he has calculated with “99.98 percent probability” that the island Atlantis was modeled on Ireland.
“It is the only island in the world that matches the criteria of the island described by Plato,” Erlingsson said.
The island that sank was not Ireland, he suggested, but nearby Dogger Bank, which was struck by a flood wave in 6,100 B.C.
The geographer says Ireland’s megalithic monuments, dating back to 3,000 B.C., can be associated with the palaces and temples described by Plato. The megalithic culture of Western Europe and Northern Africa was more advanced than other Stone Age cultures, and Ireland is one of its core regions, he noted.
“The hill in which the Atlanteans’ maternal ancestor, Cleito, was born resembles Tara, the legendary seat of the high king of Ireland, while Newgrange resembles the palace of their paternal ancestor, Poseidon,” he said.
Erlingsson says he started his studies believing that Atlantis never existed. But he is now convinced that Plato knew of Ireland.
“He obviously blended fantasy and fact. But the question is not whether he made something up. It’s if he made everything up—or if he based it on some real data,” Erlingsson said.
“With very high probability the answer is that he based it on actual geographic information,” the geographer said. “Ireland comes out as the only logical location for the central island of the Atlantean empire in Plato’s tale.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/07/060721-england_2.html
John:
I am writing after visiting:
Irish!=Celts
http://www.johnbreslin.com/blog/2004/09/05/irish-celts/
Please consider linking to the following research guide:
The Infography about the history of Celtic Britain and Ireland
http://www.infography.com/content/254332798185.html
Books and articles recommended by a professor who specializes in research about the history of Celtic Britain and Ireland.
For your convenience, there is a button near the bottom of the above web page that will display the HTML code for creating a link, although you may edit this code if you wish.
Professors, librarians, and other subject specialists have written research guides about thousands of subjects for Fields of Knowledge, and you may want to search The Infography for other subject headings that will be useful to your audience.
Thanks,
Howard
Howard Chesshire
Fields of Knowledge
http://www.fieldsofknowledge.com/
Im an American tracing my roots ive been studying a lot of info on this im finding the blends of many cultures or what we call the MeltingPot ive got Irish, Spanish,Scottish,English,Eygptian.Swiiss German,Romainan,probably even Scythian ,Ancestors. at ths point no one Race is pure for almost any culture with all its invasions over the Melenium we become that Melting Pot and evolve .I see even down to the language much simularities between us the Baath Party of Iraqs Political Party even has its name from our ancestors {Baath} Jobaath and Fathocta are Fenian ,decsended from what claims are to be that of Japhet .Noahs 2nd son. Language and tonetics also from Phoneicia have simular soundings Khan for example and Con both meaning King two different but the same aassociation.,as they say were just a bunch of Mongrels or we are all from the Same Race Humans.or Adams Race its all the same. Thanks for allowing me to Submit my personal insight
Stories and theories about Irish links to the Spanish, the Iberians and the Basques come in various forms and are over a century old. However, none of them seem to be well-substantiated. Furthermore, the Romans seem to have wiped most of the ancient Celtiberian population of Spain and Portugal out replacing them with slaves and colonists from other parts of the Roman Empire.
More recent research that i”ve read indicates some strong genetic links between the populations of Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, Norway and Finland on one side and Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Russia on the other.
This sounds more plausible since Ireland and Scotland are after all, northern European countries and relatively remote from the Mediterranean.
There also appears to be a “Lappic” element in both the German and Irish populations. Finns and Lapps were probably some of the earliest inhabitants of northern Europe following the Ice Age. The Indo-European Celts and Teutons arrived later probably from some place closer to modern Czechoslovakia or the Ukraine.
It is quite possible that the Celts of the Iron Age were a minority in both Ireland and Scotland in much the same way that the Anglo-Saxons were in Britain and the Slavs were in Illyria after the fall of the Roman Empire - and like the Anglo-Saxons and the Illyrians, they left behind more of their language than their genes.
Just because Brian Costello read some recent research that indicates some strong genetic links between the populations of Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, Norway and Finland on one side and Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Russia on the other does not necessarily mean that the language of Q-Celtic originated in those areas. They were Germanic peoples and spoke a form of a Germanic language. The People of Early Ireland and Scotland from the Neolithic to bronze age spoke a form of Q-Celtic language from southwest Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Celts
So maybe the Inroduction of agriculture into the British Isles may have been helped by the peope of the middle East. And when I say Middle East, it does not mean Anatolia Turkey. For sure from the Neolithic to the Bronze age inhahibitants speaking Indo-European, definitely some arrived from Galicia from trading ports in the North of the Mediterranean. http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7817
So whats you point?
Another thing is the people of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland have slightly different haplotypes or genes involved in them, and as far as genetics are concerned, the majority of people on main land Britain can be traced back to when they first settled there 8000-9000 years ago when Britain was attached to mainlad Europe. So they will have some genetic differences as to when they can first digest cows milk, goat milk and sheep milk rom lactose intolearnce at birth. The people of Galicia Spain Introduced goat and sheep while the supposedly Iron Age Celts of Galicia Spain later introduced Cattle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonycavan_Man
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland
There seems to be some confusion here. Please allow me to clarify. The research I’ve read indicates some close relationships between the population of Ireland with those of Scotland, Norway, Iceland and Finland but NOT Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Russia which form a different “genetic cluster.”
Linguistic facts must be kept separate from anthropological facts. The language that a people speaks does not always reflect their ethnic, racial or genetic origins. The American linguist Edward Sapir discussed this in his book “Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech” as far back as 1921. Modern genetic groupings often cut across languages and even linguistic families.
There was indeed Celtic penetration into both Ireland and Scotland at various times beginning around 500 B.C. and lasting until the 10th century A.D. when the Scotti (Scots) triumphed over the Picts. However, the Celts seem to have been minorities in both countries. Nobody knows exactly how their languages became established in Ireland or Scotland but it may have been through a process known in linguistics as “elite dominance.” This is often the case with minority invaders or settler groups. This is how Spanish became established in Latin America, Anglo-Saxon in post-Roman Britain and Slavic in post-Roman Illyria (Modern Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Kossovo, Macedonia).
The Old Irish language itself was essentially Celtic but as another American linguist, William Labov points out, it also had high ingliding vowels -uo, ie, ue, uy, ui also found in Finnish, Lappish, the Baltic languages and some varieties of Slavic which seem to be, he says, an aerial feature. This in turn, suggests some kind of pre-Celtic subtratic influence on Irish.
It is true that the Celtic speakers of Ireland and Scotland were Q (or C) -Celtic speakers. I don’t have any argument with that. P-Celtic was spoken by the Britons and Gauls. Modern P-Celtic languages are Welsh and Breton. This same division also existed in the Italic languages: Latin, Falascan and Sabine were Q-Italic while Oscan and Umbrian were P-Italic. Italic and Celtic probably both descended from an earlier “Italo-Celtic” branch of Indo-European.
Although the province of Galicia in Spain appears to have been named after an ancient Celtic tribe that lived there, the Galaecii, its people appear to have origins that are more Iberian and Roman colonist than Celtic. The Galician language today is a Romance language roughly midway between Castilian (or Spanish) and Portuguese but it is not Celtic. Any Celtic vernaculars that were once spoken there probably vanished by the late Roman or early Medieval period.
There is no evidence that the Spanish of Galicia ever had any historical contacts with the people of Ireland even though they had a wool trade with England by the 14th century and apparently a wine trade with the British Celts going back to Roman times.
Of course, most of these findings regarding Irish origins are preliminary and mot conclusive, more research on this subject still needs to be done, but I think there is enough new evidence to cast a reasonable doubt on much of what was believed about it a century or two ago.
I’ll also add that the use of the word “Celtic” is so bandied about now that people like Simon James (The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention? and The World of the Celts ) have trouble reconciling the term. If I’m not mistaken, he believes that celt should refer to a specific people speaking a specific language, which is celtic.
B. Costello mentioned the penetration of Celts into Ireland, which if the genetic information asserted by sykes, oppenheimer, and the like is correct, then the term “celt” depends on what you mean. I forget who of the people I mentioned disregarded more or less the continental celts, save to say that they contributed to the British genetic landscape alone, but in any case, the definition of celt is still being disputed.
Costello is right to say that new evidence is necessary in basically every aspect of this issue.