Where Did the Irish Come From?

[Caius Maxentius]

I'm interested in what people here know/think about the debate over the origins of the inhabitants of Ireland and Scotland. I've been doing some research on this debate, and there are some quite surprising strands of thought on this, going back a very long way.

 

I've read that the Greeks and Romans (Tacitus and Strabo, specifically) thought that the Irish and maybe Picts were related to Scythians. But, of course, the Gaelic speakers of Scotland and Ireland have a strong tradition of thinking of themselves as Celts, related to the Welsh and Gauls. Does anyone know how this connection with Scythians got made?

 

One curious thing is that an early Irish text, the Lebor Gabala Eirinn (Book of Invasions, 11th century AD), makes this connection too, naming a Scythian warrior (Goidel Glas) and his Egyptian wife (Scota) as early colonizers of the island, and founders of the Gaelic culture. I

[Centurion-Macro]

I believe the first of the Irish came over before the land bridge was broken, but other than that I think they were just migrating Celts.

[caldrail]

According to The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland (Richard Bradley), Ireland was already an island by the time the English Channel formed. The first settlements formed by men arriving by boat appear to begin around 8000BC. This was an era when Doggerland (basically the bed of the North Sea before rising sea levels inundated it) still existed but was becoming prone to tidal flooding.

[Celtictool]

Does anyone know how this connection with Scythians got made?

I think this primarily comes from looking at the Picts opposed to the Scots (Irish migrants to modern day Scotland)

Does anyone know where we could find a bibliography on the debate of the Peopleing of Ireland (or the whole of the British Isles for that matter)?

[Northern Neil]

www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/origins_of_the_british.html

 

The Origins of the British

A Genetic Detective Story

 

by Stephen Oppenheimer

 

As a child, I sometimes wondered why people told jokes about Englishmen, Irishmen, Welshmen and Scotsmen. Why should our origins and differences matter? Part of growing up was realizing that they do matter and trying to understand why.

 

"This book challenges some of our longest held assumptions about the differences between Anglo-Saxons and Celts

[Western]

I'm interested in what people here know/think about the debate over the origins of the inhabitants of Ireland and Scotland. I've been doing some research on this debate, and there are some quite surprising strands of thought on this, going back a very long way.

 

I've read that the Greeks and Romans (Tacitus and Strabo, specifically) thought that the Irish and maybe Picts were related to Scythians. But, of course, the Gaelic speakers of Scotland and Ireland have a strong tradition of thinking of themselves as Celts, related to the Welsh and Gauls. Does anyone know how this connection with Scythians got made?

 

One curious thing is that an early Irish text, the Lebor Gabala Eirinn (Book of Invasions, 11th century AD), makes this connection too, naming a Scythian warrior (Goidel Glas) and his Egyptian wife (Scota) as early colonizers of the island, and founders of the Gaelic culture. I

[caldrail]

I disagree. I would advise the use of the 1000BC limit to be regarded with some suspicion. It was dreamt up by Victorian antiquarians who had no access to modern research and were prone to making assertions like this in order to sound knowledgeable. Although the population of prehistoric Britain was never numerous, there were established populations here long before the celtic migrations, especially the Halstatt Gauls around 500BC. After all, the various megalithic sites, including Stonehenge and Avebury, went out of use around 1600BC, and for a considerable time represented the labour of an organised society. In fact Britain seems to have been colonised as soon as the withdrawing ice allowed them too, and evidence suggests at least one false start before a recurrent ice build-up.

 

 

Ireland however was less frequented. The earliest confirmed archaeology is dated to around 6500BC, concerning people who must have arrived by sea because Ireland had been cut off by rising sea levels a thousand years earlier. According to Francis Pryor (Britain BC), these early irish lived in lightweightweight shelters, possible migratory camps, subsisting on a varied diet of fish, eel,wild pig,birds, and hazelnuts. Mr Pryor does mention the possibility that ireland was visited temporarily at an earlier date.

[Western]

I disagree. I would advise the use of the 1000BC limit to be regarded with some suspicion. It was dreamt up by Victorian antiquarians who had no access to modern research and were prone to making assertions like this in order to sound knowledgeable. Although the population of prehistoric Britain was never numerous, there were established populations here long before the celtic migrations, especially the Halstatt Gauls around 500BC. After all, the various megalithic sites, including Stonehenge and Avebury, went out of use around 1600BC, and for a considerable time represented the labour of an organised society. In fact Britain seems to have been colonised as soon as the withdrawing ice allowed them too, and evidence suggests at least one false start before a recurrent ice build-up.

 

 

Ireland however was less frequented. The earliest confirmed archaeology is dated to around 6500BC, concerning people who must have arrived by sea because Ireland had been cut off by rising sea levels a thousand years earlier. According to Francis Pryor (Britain BC), these early irish lived in lightweightweight shelters, possible migratory camps, subsisting on a varied diet of fish, eel,wild pig,birds, and hazelnuts. Mr Pryor does mention the possibility that ireland was visited temporarily at an earlier date.

 

Caldrail did I not pretty much say that.

 

You may have misunderstood what I said but I believe that the population of Britain and Ireland is largely decended from Paleolithic hunter gathers who arrived here towards the end of the last Ice Age, with some later mixing with Neolithic farmers or people who utilised their practices. After this the first large scale influx of people was the so-called Celts in the first millenium BC. The level of population movement associated with the Celts and their influnce on the British Isles is a topic of continual debate, as are the Celts themselves, but iron seems to have appeared in the British Isles at the same time as they did.

[caldrail]

It is genrally accepted that iron usage was a gallic import to Britain, introducing a more warlike pattern of settlement that spurred on the development of hill forts both as secure shelters for communities, but also very noticeably as status symbols for those with property to defend. The larger your fort, the more important you must be, and there are instances of private farmers building their own stockades to demonstrate their wealth.

 

The question of population increase is more difficult because we can detect an increasing native population before the arrival of the Halstatt gauls. Indeed, as I mentioned the existence of organised religion across England and it's apparent attraction to those living on mainland Europe (remains of foreigners have been found dated to those times) suggests trade and communication across the Channel.

 

The question then is why it took so long for settlers to colonise Ireland. Unless new evidence comes to light, the first visitors arrived there after the region was cut off by rising sea levels, and given the relative crudeness of the seacraft available at the time (rafts, log canoes, and skin coracles) it was likely that was no insignificant venture.

 

part of the reason has to be the terrain. As Britain was colonised following the extraordinarily dramatic melting of the ice cap (Average temperature rose seven degrees in fifteen years, and no V8's or industry in existence - How about that?), the land was quickly overgrown by virgin forest, which some modern antiquarians fondly refer to as the period of the 'Wild Wood', in which it's been said a squirrel could cross from east to west without needing to drop to the ground. A fanciful description but certainly a temperate rainforest quickly established itself.

 

Woodland clearance is no small task for those with stone or antler tools. Experiements have proven it can be done, as we would obviously expect, but it requires considerable exertion and the tools themselves weren't necessarily reliable. Agrarian settlement then took time, which might help explain the slow expansion toward Ireland, yet we also see burial sites throughout southern England of considerable age. Wayland's Smithy on the Lambourn Downs for instance is around 5000BC in origin.

 

So the question has to be asked whether the forest terrain of the 'Wild Wood' period was a real obstacle to travel, delaying the arrival of colonisers to Irish shores until after the Irish Sea had been created. Or, was the post-glaciated terrain too difficult to traverse before extensive woodland? Tall mountains of ice like stranded icebergs would have dotted the land, along with muddy torrents of meltwater and inland lakes, with little vegetation to survive on. How long did this difficult enviroment persist in the new warmer climate?

[Melvadius]

Point of information: The earliest evidence for human occupation of Ireland comes from Mount Sandel and is dated in the Mesolithic period to around 7,000BC.

[caldrail]

By sheer coincidence i watched a repeat of a Time Team special last night that is very relevant to this discussion. Mankind has made something like eight attempts to colonise the British Isles of which only the last has proven succesful, the others failing largely because of climatic changes to do with the recurrent ice ages, and I understand there have been five glaciations.

 

The oldest recorded artifact (not Ireland related unfortunately) dates back 700,000 years. A rare find, since the earliest human remains discovered are half that age. The variable sea levels have had an interesting effect on humanities attempt to be British (or Irish).

 

Firstly, human tribes wre understandably none too sophisticated and for survival went where-ever there was food to be had. Sea coasts, river banks, and the apparently fertile plains and valleys of what is now the North Sea provided the easiest if somewhat hazardous living. Even when an animal was brioguht down in the hunt, it was butchered on the spot and the meat taken away to safety, for fear of predators and scavengers seeking an even easier meal. Bears, hyaenas, lions, sabre tooth cats (Rare, but a few still survived), plus incidental risks from irate elephants, mammoths, and rhinos.

 

However, with the melting of the glaciers and consequent rising of sea levels, humans were forced by circumstance to colonise forests and higher ground. We see fire being used to clear woodland. Social chamnges to govern the more claustrophic conditions of daily life without wide plains to wander away into when you got fed up of someone. Rather than a hunter/gatherer exostence, humans are now looking toward finding alternative food sources and thus agriculture gets off to a shakey start as they learn to co-operate on an entirely new level.

 

It would seem then that Ireland was less frequented because no-one had any real reason to go there, either because food was plentiful where the herds went, or perhaps because terrain made travel onerous. The migration of humans in these early times was forced on them and deomonstrated a gradual process rather than expeditious change in behaviour.