Irish roots reveal surprises
Each year as March 17 approaches, this column features some glimpse of all things Irish — St. Patrick’s story (OK, so he was English, but I digress), Irish-American traditions, Celtic history, three-leafed shamrocks (no, not four) and shepherd’s pie — all necessarily repeated in 20-plus years of writing it.
What else is there to say, I asked my blank screen.
DNA, it answered back.
Boring, I thought. Yet with today’s headlines about race-purists and home DNA kits finding surprise siblings (true story), why not?
As old as are the Celts to the best of our knowledge, the Irish DNA atlas is apparently no more uniform than any other race or ethnicity. We are all some mix, as humans and their prehistoric predecessors moved around and interrelated.
Even more so today.
Combining existing research and DNA evidence with data from more than 10,000 Irish and European study subjects, research published in the December 2017 journal Nature concluded:
- Irish peoples can be subdivided into 10 distinct geographic clusters: Seven with higher concentrations of Gaelic ancestry (which includes a touch of German) and Scottish; and three with shared British ancestry. The “Gaelic” Irish clusters were the most relatively homogenous, although they included Scandinavian and other mixes.
- The study correlated higher incidence of certain diseases with the more homogenous DNA groups (disease rates were part of the inquiry).
- Ulster in Northern Ireland draws a genetic line, with high levels of French and Norwegian ancestry. Certain historic events shot a Norse-Viking gene flow into that region. Similarly, studies of the northwest of France showed concentrations of Celtic ancestry.
Now to make things even more interesting, consider what the owner of a village pub discovered in 2006 when he was clearing land for a driveway. Buried beneath a flat stone outside McCuaig’s bar in Northern Ireland were the old bones of three ancient people.
Who predate the Celts, and upset the Irish understanding of its own history.
The world long believed the truest predecessors of the Irish were ancient Celts who arrived on the emerald isle around 1,000 to 500 B.C.E. But these bones were genetically different, dating about 2,000 years earlier — roughly five millennia ago.
Scholars explained this strongly suggests the earliest genetic roots of the Irish aren’t Celtic. The discovery was so shocking that some respected Irish and British scholars reportedly said it makes the old model of earliest Celtic roots in Ireland “completely shot.”
Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but the point of man as a tossed salad was made. The discovery also added to doubts about other evidence of Ireland’s Celtic origins: language.
The Irish language is part of a group linguists have labeled Celtic, but a growing number of scholars have argued that this label is misleading. They say the first Celtic languages were spoken not by Celts in the middle of Europe, but by ancient peoples in Portugal, Spain and elsewhere.
Today, Spain and Portugal represent two of six commonly found ancestral roots in Ireland, according to the Irish Post, along with Norway and of course, England, Scotland and Wales.
There was also the Roman influence, but let’s stop here.
Kind of like an Irish stew — a bit o’ this, a little more of that …
If all this seems to meander, maybe that’s the point. Studying our histories and heritage is fun and fascinating, and knowledge is always worth the pursuit. But drawing conclusions has to come with some element of flexibility.
The nature of science and knowledge, and the joy of discovery, mean new information doesn’t just build upon old. It can also turn it on its end.
Especially when it comes to what we learn about the wonderfully mixed-up mess that is man.
As the Irish saying goes, the past is unpredictable.
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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network with Irish (whatever that means), Persian, Cherokee and who knows what other DNA. Email Sholeh@cdapress.com.