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Since they've found a lot of ancient DNA there are many more questions that they should be able to answer. One is how closely related were these neolithic peop

Since they've found a lot of ancient DNA there are many more questions that they should be able to answer. One is how closely related were these neolithic people to modern Irish people and/or ancient DNA from later Irish populations. There are intriguing parallels between the story told by the DNA and Irish mythology about the origins of the Irish people, but I'm not exactly sure what the best way to match them up is. Knowing to what extent the passage tomb builders contributed their DNA to later populations might shed more light on that question. A second question is since these neolithic Irish kings shared two relatively uncommon cultural traits with the Egyptian Pharaoh's: first degree incest and a strong interest in monumental architecture, and since both groups were near contemporaries (on a multi-millenial timescale anyway) , it would be very interesting to know if the two were genetically related in any way.

iguy 6y ago
> One is how closely related were these neolithic people to modern Irish people The article explains that these are related to the first farmers, who arrived (slowly) from roughly what's now Turkey, and mixed with local pre-farming people (who had been there a few millenia). In northern Europe these people were all but completely replaced by the Indo-European arrivals, who (with various smaller-distance and smaller-number movements, like the Vikings) were the people living there until the 20th C.
- tgflynn 6y ago
  If that's the case then they might correspond to the Tuatha De Danann of Irish mythology who were supposed to have been the first people to inhabit Ireland (I think the Irish have traditionally believed that these were indeed the mound builders). What's confusing is that the article also says they probably arrived from Spain and/or France, which is where the Celtic (and hence Indo-European) Gaels are said to have arrived from much later. Perhaps both groups followed the same route to Ireland at different times ?

iguy 6y ago

> One is how closely related were these neolithic people to modern Irish people The article explains that these are related to the first farmers, who arrived (slowly) from roughly what's now Turkey, and mixed with local pre-farming people (who had been there a few millenia). In northern Europe these people were all but completely replaced by the Indo-European arrivals, who (with various smaller-distance and smaller-number movements, like the Vikings) were the people living there until the 20th C.

tgflynn 6y ago
If that's the case then they might correspond to the Tuatha De Danann of Irish mythology who were supposed to have been the first people to inhabit Ireland (I think the Irish have traditionally believed that these were indeed the mound builders). What's confusing is that the article also says they probably arrived from Spain and/or France, which is where the Celtic (and hence Indo-European) Gaels are said to have arrived from much later. Perhaps both groups followed the same route to Ireland at different times ?