First Irish populations had dark skin similar to Cheddar Man, DNA research suggests

I'm not sure I would trust UK scientists when it comes to analyzing Irish ancestry traits.

R1 Irish and Italians were viewed as “niggers”. That would indicate they weren’t all that white.

And this is relevant to today, why?

Doesn't everyone know this? You do know all humans originated out of east Africa, right? Lucy and Turkana Boy and all those Austrolopithus hominids came out of Ethiopia.

Humans started with dark skin, because of the environment and our genetics mutated. I can see a lot of similarities among so many groups. It would be really cool if they still had dark skin and blue eyes but, like a plant, their DNA mutated their skin to get nutrients from the sun. Do you know about HOX genes? Basically all of life has the same genetic makeup. It's interesting when you think about it.

What are we really? Are we vessels for DNA to live? Think about the different branches of DNA that trace all the way back to that amphibious reptile thing that stepped out of water onto land. All the off shoots of animals that evolved. Trace it back farther to how prokaryotes evolved into eukaryotes by eating another and forming a nucleus.

It's incredible that DNA can evolve into all these different things. Is DNA the ultimate life force? Are there other parts of the galaxy that evolved different genes? What can these genes do?

With computer code, did humans create a new life form? O101110 coding? What created us? We're we made to create on and on and on? We certainly give birth to children and pass on our DNA.

Sometimes I wonder if we are all a fragmented shattered part of a whole. I mean we are so similar we might as well be clones? What is DNA doing? Why are we alive? Why do we kill ourselves, each other if we're all mostly the same genetically? Why is this a dog eat dog world? Is it because it started with a prokaryotes eating another prokaryotic cell? Were we an experiment shot here by accident? On purpose? Is that why morality seems so random and is all about survival? Do we have to go through this barbaric, food-chain, competitive existence to evolve? Is there a place in the universe where people don't figuratively eat each other, fuck each other over, try to kill each other, their own DNA fellow life forms to survive? Are we a petri dish? Do our testers know how cruel it can be? Are they going to send a meteor to blow it up if people complain? Why the dinosaurs?

In the Solomon Islands many people have blonde hair too. It's a different blonde Gene from European blonde.

So...was Cheddar Man hung?

R2 Source to back up this claim?

r2 No they weren't they were viewed as Catholics.

I think (NO I don’t have any evidence) that the Irish were reviled even more because they were white people who should have known better. Like, black people are just genetically inferior and they can’t help it. But you’re white! You should be better.

And this is NOT the way I feel, but I remember how older relatives despised “white trash“ more than they ever did black or Puerto Ricans. And there were black people they respected more than some whites.

This again?

The pre-Celtic people of Ireland who built the tombs, monuments such as New Grange and all the spirals and other mysterious symbols are long gone. No one knows who they were or where they came from or where they went. There are so many mysteries—who cares what they looked like? What did they know and what did they believe? That’s what’s interesting.

The Celts came later from Central Europe. They’re the ones who had fair skin and red hair, later mixed with lighter Scandinavians and darker Romans. The west coast of Ireland has entirely different genetics, most closely related to the Basque people of Spain/Iberia and France. They have darker hair and more pigmented skin, and often blue or gray eyes.

Much of Ireland is a mix of peoples and cultures. Western Ireland, where most Irish-Americans’ ancestors came from during the 1800s, is very inbred with concentrated genetics. Ancestry DNA correctly pinpoints exactly where my mom’s maternal ancestors came from and when they came to the US because the genetics are so concentrated.

Britain always has looked down on Irish people and many Irish believe that Brits tried to take advantage of the famine as a means of genocide. The queen denied relief aid from the sultan of Turkey and she rejected shipments of food from the Ottoman sultan that would have saved Irish lives. The Brits certainly did look down on all Irish people as an inferior race and many British politicians proudly made statements during the famine asserting that Irish people did not deserve to live. They looked forward to Irish people dying off so that they could have their land without the burden of the people who lived there when they claimed it.

Because Irish people are white and because Ireland is adjacent to the British Isles, people in the US assume that Ireland and Britain are one and the same. In reality, British people—elite and common alike—historically viewed Irish people (and especially those with reddish hair, who are still mocked) in the same way white Americans viewed black people during slavery, or the way Germans viewed Jewish people during WWII. That sounds like an exaggeration but it isn’t an exaggeration.

We only see light and dark hair and skin; that is not how the Brits saw it. Make no mistake that the British thought people from Ireland were as “primitive” as they thought the darkest people in the heart of Africa were.

I’m writing this for the benefit of those who may not understand the import of the comment above from someone who said not to trust what British researchers say about Irish people or Irish history. The Irish fought hard to salvage and reclaim some of their language and culture after British rule, and today they are reconciling their relationship with Britain, including historic racism and what many believe was an attempt to eliminate Irish people via genocide. The American view of Ireland and Irish people is *entirely* different than the historic British view, and we never learn that here. If you go to Ireland, no matter where you are, American people will feel Irish people’s affinity for the US because so many Irish people successfully emigrated and integrated here and because our country does not regard Irish people as n*****s the way some Brits still do. British researchers suggesting that early Irish people may have been ‘dark’ really does feel like a play into their tradition of setting themselves apart from Irish people in any way possible. Most of the world doesn’t see red hair the way Brits used to—think of how racist Americans see kinky hair—and so it would serve racist British interests to suggest that Ireland’s history was ‘dark’ in a way today’s racists can absorb into their paradigms of what is to be looked down upon.

R9 No, Irish people were looked down upon for many reasons:

—Many looked different, with ruddy complexions.

—Their language was utterly foreign and indecipherable.

—They were pagan, and then they were converted to and adhered to Catholicism, neither of which British people appreciated.

—They retained magical beliefs in faeries and had a different way of interacting with the natural world, which was seen as primitive.

—Ireland is geographically barren in many places. Food was very limited especially on the west coast and many people ate seaweed and grass and the lack of abundance made Brits see them as stupid, backward people. The introduction of the potato was so significant in Ireland because it was the first food they could grow that offered enough calories to allow for growth, and the population (I think) quadrupled after the introduction of the potato within a couple of generations. So when the potato blight happened and people were starving to death, both liberal and conservative British officials mocked them, saying God was killing a scourge (the people) and that they can eat the potatoes even if they are rotten and, if not, then they can eat seaweed.

—There isn’t a lot of lumber in much of Ireland and so people lived in little huts made of stone—again, primitive looking to British people.

—The Irish stayed in place for millennia, whereas the Brits were seafaring, and the British colonized the world and were worldly and had veritably endless resources, and so their poorer, starving neighbors were a joke to them. The same way West Virginia’s neighbors look down on it, the same way Australia looks down on New Zealand. Everyone (or at least UK-influenced cultures) always have to have a close neighbor to declare inferior, and England declared Ireland and to lesser degrees Scotland and Wales backward, and those reputations persist.

r11 Why is it always the Irish-Americans that are insane?

R13 It’s not. If that were true, then everyone in Florida would be Irish American.

what about Elizabeth 1 and red hair?

R12 you're omitting the part where the UK invaded and subjugated Ireland and the farmers were all working the land for absentee British landholders. The famine was so bad in Ireland partially because the farmers were made to grow only one type of crop (and one type of potato). Ireland produced enough food for itself during the famine, it always has, but Ireland was starving because large amounts of food were still being exported to Britain from Ireland because they didn't "own" their land or crops. Millions of Irish died and Britain did nothing. It may not have been an intentional genocide but significant British leaders thought that there were too many Irish anyway and it wouldn't be bad if their population was reduced.

Thanks, R16, I did omit some aspects of the history because people here regularly become irate when anyone posts more than a short paragraph.

[quote]The Irish stayed in place for millennia, whereas the Brits were seafaring, and the British colonized the world and were worldly and had veritably endless resources, and so their poorer, starving neighbors were a joke to them.

False. There's archaeological evidence of trade with Roman Britain and various places in what constitutes modern Europe and north Africa, and there is evidence of seafaring vessels. With the exception of Scotland, they did not seek to establish any kind of empire because more enlightened societies tend not to want to engage in slaughter and theft on a mass scale.

[quote]Their language was utterly foreign and indecipherable.

I'm sure the Anglo-Saxons/Normans had never come across foreign languages before, being so worldly.

[quote]Ireland is geographically barren in many places. Food was very limited especially on the west coast and many people ate seaweed and grass and the lack of abundance made Brits see them as stupid, backward people.

Seaweed was harvested for food out of desperation when the potato crop failed. It was not a diet staple, and neither was grass.

[quote]people lived in little huts made of stone

Poverty-striken people did, yes.

Just to clarify some of the posts above; the taxonomical identity ‘English’ did not exist until the Middle Ages, and even then it was often qualified in reference to other origins I.e. Anglo-Saxon. Indeed it was not until the 15th Century that one sees consistent reference in records to the ‘English’ as a people distinct from other Britons.

So, to say that the ‘English’ oppressed pre-Medieval tribes is patently absurd. It is true that Germanic invaders who would beget the future ‘English’ were the ones who set about a colonial genocide & hegemony (at least culturally), but these oppressors were not the ‘English’. The English population of now are mongrels, admixed of Celtic, Latin & Teutonic bloods with liberal drops of Viking & Slav.

True also to accuse Victoria & cronies of starving Ireland, but again - if we are to adhere so closely to ethnographic argument - she was originally a Belgian (possible Basque?) whose family audaciously seized the British throne.

If anything, the Romans did more to hurt and stamp out the native tribes of Briton in the longterm by enslaving them, stealing land, taking away their names & language and worst of all co-opting and smothering their faith practises then installing their own system of religious governance in place. Christianity, Latin language and a flawed style of capitalistuc democracy has not left the British Isles since.

“True also to accuse Victoria & cronies of starving Ireland, but again - if we are to adhere so closely to ethnographic argument - she was originally a Belgian (possible Basque?) whose family audaciously seized the British throne.“

That’s a little ridiculous. Victoria was the queen of England and she was as English as any native-born American is American. Her grandfather was born in London. She was definitely culturally English to the extent there was a cultural England for royals at the time. Her family’s distant ethnic origins don’t make her less culturally English.

Besides that, Victoria simply shared the sentiments of British aristocrats of her era—it’s right to blame her for the deaths of countless Irish famine victims, but she shares the blame with all public officials who laughed and declared it was God’s doing when the Irish were starving to death.

Politician Charles Trevelyan: “The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people” of Ireland. This was the popular sentiment of British aristocrats and landowners at least, and likely shared by most Britons.

R19 sounds like what happened when the Spanish came to Mexico and dethroned Montezuma.

Yes, R20, you’re correct. Nationalistic whataboutisms aren’t germane to the topic at hand, and I apologise for my nitpicking trivia. I did agree that the famine was needless abusive inexcusable exertion of power on the behalf of the English Crown.

However it’s equally tiresome and quite beside the point to clang on about 19th Century English racial politics in a discussion about pre-Christian ancient Celts, isn’t it? As we’ve all established in this thread, the tribal races of the island before Christianity share only a fleck of blood and a thread of DNA with the current population of Britain, no matter they may reside or how they identity ethnically. We must also bear in mind the point of view of the ancient tribes we’re discussing as regards identity; it’s unlikely they attached the same import as we do to matters of origin or national belonging, more to the tribe to which they belonged (or the one that overruled then as a matter of survival). What’s so interesting about OP’s topic is not only that it explodes open our idealised preconceived notions of original Brython & Celt natives, but also about the migrations of Ice Age people and tribal movement & organisation in an age before seafaring.

So, let’s both agree to stick to the topic at hand.

^^oh, and I forgot to add that I am aware using ‘Celt’ is a lazy catch-all, with full understanding that the word is essentially obsolete now in our time of deeper understanding about the different native peoples of the British Isles. It’s just quicker than saying, ‘Indo-Europeans from the Neolithic period onwards’.

“However it’s equally tiresome and quite beside the point to clang on about 19th Century English racial politics in a discussion about pre-Christian ancient Celts, isn’t it?“

No, it really isn’t. We can’t dismiss contemporary context when information like this comes out, and particularly not in today’s us-against-them global climate. For some people who are inclined toward racism, heaping “the Irish‘s heritage is DARK SKINNED PEOPLE!!” onto all their other “otherisms” might be integrated into their fucked-up rationalizations of why “they are different than us.” Brexit has reinflamed tensions between Ireland and the UK. People right now feel more justified than they have in decades in their racist, nationalist and otherwise bigoted views. Many Brits hate Muslim people now because of immigration, and depending on what is discussed about a finding like this one, some people in the UK will be inclined to conflate the different hatreds.

It’s never “beside the point” to consider historical context. It’s useful. It illuminates how people react today with the benefit of hindsight.

r24 I take it your ignoring the fact this is an article posted on a .ie website about an Irish professor at Trinity College Dublin responding to a question on RTE the Irish state broadcaster about a wholly Irish research project? UK scientists have had 0 input on whatever the fuck the Irish research team are doing other than supporting their independent findings by proving Cheddar man was also dark skinned.

I confess I don’t know anything about Cheddar man. But according to a new study, Velveeta men are still among us, and they have orange skin and disgustingly dirty-yellow hair!

R24, you are clearly an intelligent person and so it grieves me that you haven’t better things to do with your time than stir the pot of racially-fired political agitation. Arguably we both have better things to do than post on DL, of course, but that’s another thread.

In any event please see R25 then select any of these texts at your leisure for wider reading on this topic. I also signpost you in the link below to a wonderful scholarly American podcast which discusses the history of ancient Britian in a clear but thorough manner (albeit from a Welsh locus). Think of this as an invitation to broaden your viewpoint as well as a nice excuse to read some excellent literature, one you would do well to graciously accept.

Matthew Arnold, The Study the Celtic Literature, The University of Adelaide, April 2015. Peter Berresford Ellis, A Brief History of the Celts, Robinson: London, 2003. Barry Cunliffe, Britain Begins, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2012. Jean Manco, Blood of the Celts: The New Ancestral Story, Thames & Hudson: London, 2015. Stephen Oppenheimer, The Origins of the British, Robinson: London, 2007.   Jane Webster, ‘A Dirty Window on the Iron Age? Recent Developments in the Archaeology of Pre‐Roman Celtic Religion’ in Understanding Celtic Religion Revisiting the Pagan Past, University of Wales Press, 2015.

R27 You are wonderfully civil and I appreciate that more than you can know.

I appreciate you both more than you will ever know.

R8 that is a lie you continue to claim on this site despite the MANY THREADS on here where people have provided links about how Italians were not viewed as white for decades. Yet you ignore them and continue to lie.

R12, Ireland was covered with forests when QEI gave permission to Walter Raleigh to cut down the oaks in Cork. There are remnants as found in ancient Viking ship burials in Denmark that were made of Irish oaks.

So much of what you write is ignorant and without merit. The potato was never a staple of the Irish diet and was grown as a cash crop. Coogan's book, the Famine Plot, was extensively researched and makes this point.

Patrick's so-called conversion was a farce. There existed a separate and unique Christian tradition in Ireland that the Roman Catholic Church wished to eradicate and so gave the Normans permission to invade and convert.

A reading of a translation of the Lebor Gabála Érenn (Literal translation:"The Book of the Taking of Ireland") is clearly about a continual occupation of that land by related groups of people. So-called myth has been proven true on numerous occasions and with much of the history being orally recounted in that country prior to the Normans, it seems likely it was anything but. They came, they left, they came back.

Finally, DNA research of the people from the Gaeltacht is demonstrating that the bloodlines of those who built Newgrange still exist there and were mixed with numerous peoples from the Milesians of Spain (later Celtic peoples) to the Fir Bolg who originally came from the East and then returned to Greece and the Turkish coast when their settlements in Ireland were decimated by plagues.

Adding to the puzzle is pictorial evidence on the walls of tombs in Egypt that detail the Sea People wearing what appear to be the headdress of a people that kept cattle - horned helmets - and who took to the sea when conditions rendered their homelands barren. The early Irish were cattle herding people - something a 'barren' land could not support - and that the Romans traded extensively with them and coveted their land.

Even a quick Youtube exploration of Niall of the Nine Hostages debunks much of what you assert. It's a complicated picture and putting up a nonsensical, numbered post does not reflect this.

Are they making a big deal out of this to make some stupid spurious dishonest point that "blacks were the original inhabitants of Britain" or something? I mean people already no longer take academics seriously, why would they actively discredit themselves like that?

They aren't black today and certainly don't have bbc.

Present Irish hole or GTFO.

Everyone knows whites are mutations. Eventually, humans will mutate beyond having skin altogether and we'll all just be luminous, floating plasma. That's how evolution works. Then, even in that next stage of human evolution we will find something else to hate each other for besides skin color.

I've never hated anyone for their skin colour, only their behaviour.

I've always said the Irish have dark skin. You still see it today with some Irish. It's this dark cheesy skin they seem to have.

Also, the Irish played a huge park in lynching black people in the south in America. They always took their Irish rage out on innocent black people in the Jim crow south.

When I found this out, I've always viewed the Irish in America differently then I did before. Standing there smiling in those photos, after they've lynched and murdered some poor innocent black man.

The people in those photos are Irish. Pure Irish trash. I've never liked them after knowing this.

Another reason I hate st Patrick's day. The Irish are trash.

[quote] The early Irish were cattle herding people - something a 'barren' land could not support - and that the Romans traded extensively with them and coveted their land.

Exactly.

See the epic prose poems ‘The Cattle Raid of Cooley’ (gaelic: Táin Bó Cúailnge) praised as the Irish Iliad; and ‘The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel’ (g: Togail Bruidne Dá Derga) in the The Book of The Dun Cow (part of the mythological corpus known as the Ulster Cycle). Therein you will read that cultural value & wealth was measured in cattle.

The American Irish have always been bigoted, drunk, angry, racist trash.

Just look at o'Reilly, hannity, and kelly etc. Why are they so mean, angry and racist? Why?

What happened?

[quote]And this is relevant to today, why?

What a fucking idiot you are. Seriously.

Ireland has committed to planting 440 million trees over the next 20 years. After having seen a mostly treeless landscape last spring, I can hardly imagine a forested Ireland.

Isn't this somewhat known from previous histories/descriptions? From what I recall (and I'm happy to be corrected on this), the ancient inhabitants of the British Isles were known to be darker-skinned and have black hair, and it wasn't until the invasion of the Saxons that the lighter-haired phenotype took over. I was reading a historical novel (yes I know) from Arthurian times when a Celtic character was engaged to be married to a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman, and he "shuddered at the Saxon features."

I think with the Irish the lighter skin/hair may have been a product of Viking invasion, rather than Saxon, but I'm not sure.

The Irish were not white.