Irish Ancestors and the Mesolithic period

[Daco Celtic]

88% of DNA in Ireland traces to ancestors who arrived in the Mesolithic period?


https://youtu.be/HkaEZmaGeOY

[TheOldNorth]

Celts from the west baby!

[savvas]

Not really man, his works (dated to 2006!) are prehistory in the field of ancient DNA, and has been invalidated:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/135962v1

[Grace O'Malley]

Genetics in this is old and has been shown not to be incorrect. The Rathlin paper hit this stuff on the head and of course the earlier mammoth paper from Haak about Massive Migration from the Steppes and R1b coming into Europe from that source. In fact nearly all Irish dna stems from the Bronze Age. The premise for those earlier tests was all wrong and if you notice he is only talking about ydna and mtdna. The glaring mistake is that they thought R1b was actually in Europe even in the Ice Age. There has been no R1b-M269 found even in the Neolithic. In Ireland for example all the neolithic ydna is I not R1b. R1b-M269 only shows up in the Bronze Age and in fact is much lower down the M269 tree as the earlier branches are in the East. Even the Rathlins that came to Ireland were already L21. They are just speaking of ydna here and not autosomal and their theory on ydna was incorrect.

I like Barry Cunliffe but I hope he has updated his genetic information.

[Daco Celtic]

Genetics in this is old and has been shown not to be incorrect. The Rathlin paper hit this stuff on the head and of course the earlier mammoth paper from Haak about Massive Migration from the Steppes and R1b coming into Europe from that source. In fact nearly all Irish dna stems from the Bronze Age. The premise for those earlier tests was all wrong and if you notice he is only talking about ydna and mtdna. The glaring mistake is that they thought R1b was actually in Europe even in the Ice Age. There has been no R1b-M269 found even in the Neolithic. In Ireland for example all the neolithic ydna is I not R1b. R1b-M269 only shows up in the Bronze Age and in fact is much lower down the M269 tree as the earlier branches are in the East. Even the Rathlins that came to Ireland were already L21. They are just speaking of ydnaI here and not autosomal and their theory on ydna was incorrect.

I like Barry Cunliffe but I hope he has updated his genetic information.

I was going for an old school, 2006 vibe tonight. Just making sure everybody is alert and ready to knock down dated claims.

[Grace O'Malley]

I was going for an old school, 2006 vibe tonight. Just making sure everybody is alert and ready to knock down dated claims.

It is interesting though how much genetics has advanced in the last 10 years and the information that has come out. I think it is brilliant that they can extract dna from ancient genomes. I just love this stuff. :)

[Creoda]

I was going for an old school, 2006 vibe tonight. Just making sure everybody is alert and ready to knock down dated claims.
It seems to me that at this time not many people challenged this theory, which is at the same time remarkable and not surprising.

[Daco Celtic]

It seems to me that at this time not many people challenged this theory, which is at the same time remarkable and not surprising.

Really? I thought Bell Beakers were the cool new thing.I thought it was almost mainstream.

[Creoda]

Really? I though Bell Beakers were the cool new thing.I thought it was almost mainstream.
It was explained as a purely cultural phenomenon that spread through trade from Iberia. Steppe Indo-European migration as the origin of Northern Bell Beaker people was the mainstream theory until after WW2, when it became unfashionable in academia.

[Grace O'Malley]

Really? I thought Bell Beakers were the cool new thing.I thought it was almost mainstream.

Not at that time and in fact Bell Beakers were a bit of a puzzle. Genetics has sorted out the Bell Beakers now.

[Daco Celtic]

Not at that time and in fact Bell Beakers were a bit of a puzzle. Genetics has sorted out the Bell Beakers now.

Do you know if he has revised what he presented in this video?

[Grace O'Malley]

Do you know if he has revised what he presented in this video?

Koch has so I presume he has but they still have that theory of Celtic from the West which to me is daft. They are experts but I think they ignore some logic in their conclusions. It's quite odd to me. It is really difficult waiting for Cassidy's latest paper to come out. People would have seen this paper because you can get it on university portals but you need a password. Someone did put a link in on Anthrogenica but it was taken down by the site moderators before I got a look at it.

Their Celtic from the West is not supported by the vast amount of linguists and with good reason. One of the most interesting questions to me lately is "Are Irish even Celtic genetically?" My thoughts are no from a genetics perspective. That doesn't mean that there wasn't any Celtic migration which I hope Cassidy will cover in her paper.

[Daco Celtic]

Koch has so I presume he has but they still have that theory of Celtic from the West which to me is daft. They are experts but I think they ignore some logic in their conclusions. It's quite odd to me. It is really difficult waiting for Cassidy's latest paper to come out. People would have seen this paper because you can get it on university portals but you need a password. Someone did put a link in on Anthrogenica but it was taken down by the site moderators before I got a look at it.

Their Celtic from the West is not supported by the vast amount of linguists and with good reason. One of the most interesting questions to me lately is "Are Irish even Celtic genetically?" My thoughts are no from a genetics perspective. That doesn't mean that there wasn't any Celtic migration which I hope Cassidy will cover in her paper.

Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts on this. You mention that they aren't Celtic from a genetics perspective. I assume you are referring to insular Celts? I'm not a huge fan of the word "Celtic" because people too often confuse language, culture, and genetics. I'm not totally convinced we know what constitutes Celtic genetics. Would you call Irish more Germanic rather than Celtic?

[Petalpusher]

That would be weird with that much R1b, like 80%. But in the end it still piles up various mesolithic type of ancestry, just not a lot in pure form or precisely from the era.

[Grace O'Malley]

Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts on this. You mention that they aren't Celtic from a genetics perspective. I assume you are referring to insular Celts? I'm not a huge fan of the word "Celtic" because people too often confuse language, culture, and genetics. I'm not totally convinced we know what constitutes Celtic genetics. Would you call Irish more Germanic rather than Celtic?

I personally don't agree with labelling something like genetics as Celtic or Germanic. I agree with what you have said. Celtic and Germanic are both language group and the people that spoke these languages don't necessarily have to be the same genetic wise i.e. not all present Germanic populations plot together today. A lot of genetics that we see now appears to have been set down in the Bronze Age and before these language groups evolved. I wouldn't call the Irish Germanic but their genetics is more similar to populations today that are Germanic. They are closest to their British neighbours, the Dutch and Scandinavians. Irish appear to have got most of their genetics from the Bronze Age but there might have been a few smaller migrations after but the Bronze Age Beakers have contributed the most.

I'd personally like to hear what Creoda thinks on this topic.

[Grace O'Malley]

That would be weird with that much R1b, like 80%. But in the end it still piles up various mesolithic type of ancestry, just not a lot in pure form or precisely from the era.

Petalpusher I always value your insight so could you expand on this?

[Creoda]

I personally don't agree with labelling something like genetics as Celtic or Germanic. I agree with what you have said. Celtic and Germanic are both language group and the people that spoke these languages don't necessarily have to be the same genetic wise i.e. not all present Germanic populations plot together today. A lot of genetics that we see now appears to have been set down in the Bronze Age and before these language groups evolved. I wouldn't call the Irish Germanic but their genetics is more similar to populations today that are Germanic. They are closest to their British neighbours, the Dutch and Scandinavians. Irish appear to have got most of their genetics from the Bronze Age but there might have been a few smaller migrations after but the Bronze Age Beakers have contributed the most.

I'd personally like to hear what Creoda thinks on this topic.
I agree with everything you've said. I think Irish are majority Irish Bell Beaker, and probably more Celtic than Germanic, but not by as much as people would think. On the other hand I think the English (at least SE English) are majority Celtic + Germanic, minority British Bell Beaker.

[Daco Celtic]

I personally don't agree with labelling something like genetics as Celtic or Germanic. I agree with what you have said. Celtic and Germanic are both language group and the people that spoke these languages don't necessarily have to be the same genetic wise i.e. not all present Germanic populations plot together today. A lot of genetics that we see now appears to have been set down in the Bronze Age and before these language groups evolved. I wouldn't call the Irish Germanic but their genetics is more similar to populations today that are Germanic. They are closest to their British neighbours, the Dutch and Scandinavians. Irish appear to have got most of their genetics from the Bronze Age but there might have been a few smaller migrations after but the Bronze Age Beakers have contributed the most.

I'd personally like to hear what Creoda thinks on this topic.

Yes, I agree. There is a strong connection between theses populations. I also think there is a lot of genetic overlap between what we call "Celts" and Germanic tribes.

[Petalpusher]

I was reacting to the first post's bottomline that 80% of Irish's dna comes from the mesolithic, but we have come a long way since then in genetics. Just from an Ydna perspective it would have been weird (even if ydna dynamics are sometimes very weird and random), but yeah Irish are mostly a late neo + BA mix, with likely less recent input compared to the rest of UK. Their true local mesolithic is probably just a few percents acquired in the early neolithic, so you add that + what the farmers already had, + what the IE had, it makes up a good chunk of mesolithic in the end, but it's not from that era for the most part.

I also don't buy much in the Celtc/Germanic stuff, Bell Beaker folks were Bell Beaker folks.. it's possible some locations resulted with different bias in looks, but scientifically there s no real way to distinguish them at the beginning, only what you make of them in culture, languages, afterwards.

[Grace O'Malley]

I was reacting to the first post's bottomline that 80% of Irish's dna comes from the mesolithic, but we have come a long way since then in genetics. Just from an Ydna perspective it would have been weird (even if ydna mechanics are sometimes very weird and random), but yeah Irish are mostly a late neo + BA mix, with likely less recent input compared to the rest of UK. Their true local mesolithic is probably just a few percents acquired in the early neolithic, so you add that + what the farmers already had, + what the IE had, it makes up a good chunk of mesolithic in the end, but it's not from that era for the most part.

Most of the genetics appear to have been brought in with the Bell Beakers. Irish appear to be more GAC than Irish neolithic for example. I'm sure Cassidy's paper will go into this stuff and have some ancient genomes to clarify the picture a bit more.

[TheOldNorth]

Genetics in this is old and has been shown not to be incorrect. The Rathlin paper hit this stuff on the head and of course the earlier mammoth paper from Haak about Massive Migration from the Steppes and R1b coming into Europe from that source. In fact nearly all Irish dna stems from the Bronze Age. The premise for those earlier tests was all wrong and if you notice he is only talking about ydna and mtdna. The glaring mistake is that they thought R1b was actually in Europe even in the Ice Age. There has been no R1b-M269 found even in the Neolithic. In Ireland for example all the neolithic ydna is I not R1b. R1b-M269 only shows up in the Bronze Age and in fact is much lower down the M269 tree as the earlier branches are in the East. Even the Rathlins that came to Ireland were already L21. They are just speaking of ydna here and not autosomal and their theory on ydna was incorrect.

I like Barry Cunliffe but I hope he has updated his genetic information.

I still think that celts from the west is the truth, it's likely the case that iron age europe included a myriad of psuedo/pre-celtic language dialects, but the dialect that became irish, celtiberian, gaulish, and welsh was from the atlantic coast about 4000 years ago

[Token]

Irish are mostly descended from Caspian steppe pastoralists.

[Imperator Biff]

I lost all respect for Barry when he wrote the intro for that drooling retard Bob Quinn’s Atlantean theory.

[Creoda]

I lost all respect for Barry when he wrote the intro for that drooling retard Bob Quinn’s Atlantean theory.
It's not exactly an endorsement, to be fair.

One of the great joys of studying prehistory is that the subject is ever-changing. Every day, whether as the result of carefully directed research excavations or simply as chance finds made during construction work or farming, new evidence is pouring out of the ground. Some of it is spectacular and headline-grabbing but much is unsurprising and, let us be honest, superficially rather dull. Some years ago there was a revealing cartoon that showed an excavation with a pontificating archaeologist and a television team who were packing up in bored disgust. The archaeologist was saying, ‘No, no treasure but a host of fascinating detail about the socio-economic structure of the Iron Age’ – ourselves as others see us! But it is in these details and in the painstaking search for patterns in the data – and then for more data to help consolidate and expand the patterns – that the very basis of archaeological reconstruction lies. Upon these studies prehistory is written.

Those of us who are ‘dirt-archaeologists’ spend a disproportionate amount of our lives struggling to contain the detail and may perhaps be forgiven for sometimes allowing our vision to be restricted by the edge of the trench or the strict chronological limits of the period we profess to specialize in. There is still, I believe, far too much chronological or regional blinkering in the approach of the discipline. Eighty years ago the great French historian Lucien Febvre, one of the founders of the Annales School of History, wrote in characteristic style, ‘historians be geographers, be jurists too and sociologists and psychologists’. He went on to encourage us to abattre les cloissons (smash down the compartments). As a student, my own rather pathetic response to the clarion call was to smuggle into the pages of the august Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society a description of some Roman potsherds – then an unthinkable intrusion.

The Annales School, and in particular the writing of its most famous proponent, Ferdinand Braudel, has had a profound effect on the work of archaeologists and prehistorians. Braudel has taught us to think in terms of different rhythms of time. Perhaps of most use to those who work in deep time is his concept of la longue durée (geographical time) – it is ‘a history in which all change is slow, a history of constant repetition, of ever recurring cycles’. Such a way of looking at things is particularly helpful in the study of the intricately textured Atlantic façade of Europe – a landscape whose communities have forever been dominated by the constant rhythms of the ocean. It was the ocean that, for over 10,000 years, has bound these maritime communities together, encouraging them to turn their backs on the land. It has provided Foreword
One of the great joys of studying prehistory is that the subject is ever-changing. Every day, whether as the result of carefully directed research excavations or simply as chance finds made during construction work or farming, new evidence is pouring out of the ground. Some of it is spectacular and headline-grabbing but much is unsurprising and, let us be honest, superficially rather dull. Some years ago there was a revealing cartoon that showed an excavation with a pontificating archaeologist and a television team who were packing up in bored disgust. The archaeologist was saying, ‘No, no treasure but a host of fascinating detail about the socio-economic structure of the Iron Age’ – ourselves as others see us! But it is in these details and in the painstaking search for patterns in the data – and then for more data to help consolidate and expand the patterns – that the very basis of archaeological reconstruction lies. Upon these studies prehistory is written.

Those of us who are ‘dirt-archaeologists’ spend a disproportionate amount of our lives struggling to contain the detail and may perhaps be forgiven for sometimes allowing our vision to be restricted by the edge of the trench or the strict chronological limits of the period we profess to specialize in. There is still, I believe, far too much chronological or regional blinkering in the approach of the discipline. Eighty years ago the great French historian Lucien Febvre, one of the founders of the Annales School of History, wrote in characteristic style, ‘historians be geographers, be jurists too and sociologists and psychologists’. He went on to encourage us to abattre les cloissons (smash down the compartments). As a student, my own rather pathetic response to the clarion call was to smuggle into the pages of the august Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society a description of some Roman potsherds – then an unthinkable intrusion.

The Annales School, and in particular the writing of its most famous proponent, Ferdinand Braudel, has had a profound effect on the work of archaeologists and prehistorians. Braudel has taught us to think in terms of different rhythms of time. Perhaps of most use to those who work in deep time is his concept of la longue durée (geographical time) – it is ‘a history in which all change is slow, a history of constant repetition, of ever recurring cycles’. Such a way of looking at things is particularly helpful in the study of the intricately textured Atlantic façade of Europe – a landscape whose communities have forever been dominated by the constant rhythms of the ocean. It was the ocean that, for over 10,000 years, has bound these maritime communities together, encouraging them to turn their backs on the land. It has provided a corridor of communications along which commodities, people, ideas and beliefs have flowed with changing intensity over time.

The physical detritus of these contacts, and their echoes in written anecdotes and song and in the genetic make-up of the population, are the raw materials from which archaeologists, historians, linguists, ethnomusicologists and biomolecular scientists attempt to build models of the past. Each specialist will have a viewpoint – their own cognitive model of the past conditioned by the traditions of their discipline. These undoubtedly have a value but it is only when the compartments separating us have been swept away will new, and perhaps unfamiliar, pictures begin to emerge.

Bob Quinn, intuitively, has grasped the excitement of it all and has begun to explore many of the more crucial issues. In the story he tells there is much with which we can agree and things that we might feel less happy about – so, in bold reconstructions like this, it will always be. That said, his gentle, provocative style nudges us to confront our prejudices. If, at the end, we go away inspired by the author’s love of his subject, seeing the familiar in different perspective, making new connections and eager to know more, he will more than have achieved his purpose.



Barry Cunliffe. Professor of European Archaeology, Oxford

Pont Roux

[Imperator Biff]

It's not exactly an endorsement, to be fair.

While it may not be an endorsement, he has flirted with a lot of these fringe theories in the past, Atlantean, Celtic from the West etc which have no real empirical evidence behind them. He has since hopped on the steppe bandwagon in recent years, however as an academic he should know better than to even as much as entertain the ideas of the likes of marxists like Quinn, who’s theory essentially amounted to “we oirush wuz Moroccan wog kangz” tier larping.