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the granddaughter of Noah

  • 30-01-2016 6:33pm
    #1
    Linnaeus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 218 ✭✭


    The Medieval Irish universal history, Lebor Gabala Erenn, continues to intrigue me, even though I well realize that a large part of it is based on fantasy and religious propaganda. According to these "annals", Cessair, a grand-daughter of the biblical Noah, led a group of people out from the Fertile Crescent in order to avoid the impending Deluge. Only one of their ships reached land: according to tradition, it arrived precisely in Bantry Bay, Ireland. Cessair and her 52 companions (49 women, only 3 men) were thus the first human beings to settle in Eire, if this tale is to be believed.

    Sheer fantasy, I thought, when I first read it. The earliest ancestors of the Irish people came from the Middle East? Then I found a surprising article in Internet, which made me reconsider:

    www.irishtimes.com/.../ancient-irish-had-middle-eastern-

    What should we think about this? I had always believed that the Gaels, like all other Celts, find their ethnic roots in Central Europe, the zone of the Danube.


Comments

  • #2
    Linnaeus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 218 ✭✭Linnaeus


    Sorry, the link I just sent was incomplete; try this one, which hopefully will work:

    www.irishtimes.com/news/health/ancient-irish-had-middle-eastern-ancestry-study-reveals-1.2478780


  • #3
    dubhthach
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,284 ✭✭✭dubhthach


    all Europeans are descended from Neolithic farmers in part, I don't really see how that's a surprise.


  • #4
    Linnaeus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 218 ✭✭Linnaeus


    The origins of the primordial Indo-European trunk probably reach back beyond the Neolithic, and have always been connected with the steppe lands, never with the Fertile Crescent, as far as I know.What is more, the Neolithic farmers of Old Europe (see, for example, the theory of Marija Gimbutas et. al.) belonged mostly to pre-Indoeuropean ethnic stock. The first Indo-European tribes and nations were hunters, herders and gatherers, not cultivators. Agriculture was unknown to them, as the reconstructed Proto-Indoeuropean vocabulary demonstrates: there are no words in this ancestral language for planting, harvesting etc. The ancient Iranians at the time of Zoroaster likewise had no terms for agriculture (see articles on Avestan Language). The Neolithic farmers you mentioned were responsible only for a certain pre-Indoeuropean genetic strain which still exists among some modern Europeans.


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