Our Celtic heritage a fiction?

silverharp

Finton O'Toole had an article in the Irish Times yesterday where he very funnily compared Celtic history in Ireland to half of Foxrock being considered Italian on the basis of wearing Gucci & Prada. The basic fact is that there is continuity from the people who built Newgrange and that there was never a celtic invasion, more that the art styles were copied here. It seems like every nation has to have its myths?

walrusgumble

thank god no post referring to modern times.ie 1800 - to present

i know this might not be celtic, but did st patrick ( i know thatmight not actually be his name) actually come to ireland, or drive snakes out of ireland? 9i heard there is proof that there never were snakes.

or the tale of the children of lir, i heard that it started as a pagan story, but was adapted by the first christains when passing on stories/tales.ie they turned back to humans when they were baptised.

why does the international world not recognise that newgrange is older than the pyramids in eygpt?

all these questions

brianthebard

Before I start to answer these questions, is this a pisstake?

walrusgumble wrote:

thank god no post referring to modern times.ie 1800 - to present

i know this might not be celtic, but did st patrick ( i know thatmight not actually be his name) actually come to ireland, or drive snakes out of ireland? 9i heard there is proof that there never were snakes.

Yes he wrote books, St. Patrick is a real recorded in history person. No there were never snakes.

or the tale of the children of lir, i heard that it started as a pagan story, but was adapted by the first christains when passing on stories/tales.ie they turned back to humans when they were baptised.

so?

why does the international world not recognise that newgrange is older than the pyramids in eygpt?

wtf?

Op there is a lot of questions over the celticness of Irish culture. There have been studies linking North African peoples and Irish culture. There is a lot of scope within this period for thought-I don't think there's much set in stone by anyone reasonably open minded about the history of pre-christian Ireland. The less said about Fintan O'Toole the better, but there are several studies which correlate the Irish invasion stories of lore with the coming of the celts and the subsequent pushing of the older tribes to the west of Ireland. Apparently genetic trials have shown a higher percentage of what might be considered stone age traits to exist in people from Connaught as opposed to the rest of the country.

silverharp

brianthebard wrote:

Apparently genetic trials have shown a higher percentage of what might be considered stone age traits to exist in people from Connaught as opposed to the rest of the country.

I saw a prog about genetic heritage in England, and people were shocked that at least half of their genetic heritage was Med. North African even asian and oriental. There will have been alot of transfer between the Islands over the last few 1000 years which may explain the East-West variance.

mdebets

brianthebard wrote:

there are several studies which correlate the Irish invasion stories of lore with the coming of the celts and the subsequent pushing of the older tribes to the west of Ireland. Apparently genetic trials have shown a higher percentage of what might be considered stone age traits to exist in people from Connaught as opposed to the rest of the country.

However, there is no archaeological evidence that supports an invasion theory.

brianthebard

mdebets wrote:

However, there is no archaeological evidence that supports an invasion theory.

Oh well, I won't be loosing any sleep over it. As far as I'm concerned, they are myths at the end of the day.

BrianCalgary

I think that when you look at the migration of peoples after the fall of the Roman Empire, the release of slaves etc, that there would be cultural practices that would cross from one to another as well as genetics.

brianthebard

BrianCalgary wrote:

I think that when you look at the migration of peoples after the fall of the Roman Empire, the release of slaves etc, that there would be cultural practices that would cross from one to another as well as genetics.

That doesn't really tie in with the period in which the Celts are supposed to have arrived in Ireland though. I was reading an article on a noticeboard in college today in which two Trinity scientists were supposed to have shown that there was no genetic link with Central Europe, which should be expected since the Celts are supposed to have come from there.

But I'm not even sure that we can assume they did, (not that I have an alternative theory) but isn't this mainly based on the La Tene site and another one I cant think of? Can anyone enlighten me, its been a while...

vesp

Interesting to note the first human beings / settlers ever to arrive in Ireland came from our nearest neighbour, Scotland. ( you can see it on a clear day from the Antrim coast , and vice versa ).