In 2006, Bertie Currie was clearing land to make a driveway for McCuaig's Bar on Rathlin Island off Antrim when he noticed a large, flat stone buried beneath the surface.
Currie realized that there was a large gap underneath the stone and investigated further.
"I shot the torch in and saw the gentleman, well, his skull and bones," Currie told the Washington Post.
He eventually found the remains of three humans and immediately called the police.
© Google MapsMcCuaig's Bar on Rathlin Island, where the bones were found
It turned out to be a hugely significant ancient burial site as well that, with DNA analysis, could completely alter the perception that Irish people are descended from Celts.
A number of prominent professors at esteemed universities in Ireland and Britain analyzed the bones and said that the discovery could rewrite Irish history and ancestry.
DNA researchers found that the three skeletons found under Currie's pub are the ancestors of modern Irish people and predate the Celts' arrival on Irish shores by around 1,000 years.
Essentially, Irish DNA existed in Ireland before the Celts ever set foot on the island.
Instead, Irish ancestors may have come to Ireland from the Bible lands in the Middle East. They might have arrived in Ireland from the South Mediterranean and would have brought cattle, cereal, and ceramics with them.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science said that the bones strikingly resembled those of contemporary Irish, Scottish and Welsh people.
A retired archaeology professor at the highly-renowned University of Oxford said that the discovery could completely change the perception of Irish ancestry.
"The DNA evidence based on those bones completely upends the traditional view," said Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Oxford.
Radiocarbon dating at Currie's McCuaig's Bar found that the ancient bones date back to at least 2,000 BC, which is hundreds of years older than the oldest known Celtic artifacts anywhere in the world.
Dan Bradley, a genetics professor at Trinity College, said in 2016 that the discovery could challenge the popular belief that Irish people are related to Celts.
"The genomes of the contemporary people in Ireland are older — much older — than we previously thought," he said.
Reader Comments
They were all black Africans ??
BBC say so ??
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, ya know ?
See: "When Scotland was Jewish" The popular image of Scotland is dominated by widely recognized elements of Celtic culture. But could it be that a significant non-Celtic influence on Scotland's history has been largely ignored or unknown for centuries?
This pertains to a later period. But it's extraordinary that people from the middle east have been making their way to Gaelic lands for centuries upon centuries when travel was extremely arduous and dangerous.
Explains the prevalence of red hair and green eyes. And not to be offensive, but perhaps their low IQ as well.
I think the effective IQ is more effect then cause ...
That said I think it is unlikely this infux from ages past has any real negative effect on the very intelligent and awesome Irishmen.
I'm awaiting my award.
The ability to understand and solve highly abstract tasks, like complex differential equations and field calculation via the Maxwell equations, is useful only in this technocratic context.
While our medieval and pre-medieval ancestors were supposedly illiterate, reports state many could memorize long text or poems after hearing it just once. Or could read hidden signs in nature or animal behavior to predict the weather or hunting success.
OTOH, so-called contemporary geniuses are often reported to be basically unlivable, neither could they do their groceries, nor even tie up their shoelaces.
The current definition of IQ is highly arbitrary and context-dependant.
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There are settlement sites going back to the stone age in the middle east, the Levant. The appearance of middle east DNA sequences follow along a natural progression of migratory routes from the middle east up through central and western Europe. These latest of these sequences are dated to remarkably coincide with the Old Testament account of the conquest and capture of the House of Israel, the northern kingdom, who were mostly carried away into captivity about 750 BC. Please look up the Declaration of Arbroath. It is housed in a British museum and is "officially teached"/taught in university and is not BS.
There are current forms of rabbinic Judaism that are directly derived from the Pharisees, and they also still practice the Talmud, and where it differs from Torah, will follow the Talmud, which Jesus would oppose.
The people who created this economic system and foisted it on the world, largely have anitpathy for white European peoples, and (hilariously) do not consider themselves to be white. They believe they have always been unjustly persecuted by Europeans, and some of them would like to eliminate white races and replace them with multicultural cross breeds. The attempts by Europeans to thwart this plan are referred to as antisemitism. I think 'they' are in the final stages of the consolidation of their economic system, which looks currently like juggling dynamite. Right when the whole thing collapses, they will bring out the new system to 'save' the world.