History Forum / General / Archaeology / January 2007

A couple of things are known for certain about the date of death for
this Celt.

1) Waves of Iberians were migrating to the British Isles, many of these
(or their forefathers) having served as mercenaries in the Eastern
Mediterranean.

2) The penalty was death, and probable interrment by druids, for
starting a fire within sight of Tara. The bog in question is very near
Tara. IMO, Clonycavan was a scout who wanted to stir up trouble -- and
succeeded.

From a molecular point of view the A29 B44 haplotype is distributed
widely in Ireland but not high in germany or sweden, suggesting that
it arrived more recently than the pleistocene. A29-Cw16 is definitely of
recent african origin, the only variant haplotype of Cw16 in europe is
found in Iberia. We can conclude that there was a recent input of DNA
from africa, but not so recent since it is spread relatively widely in
Ireland with only a shallow gradient from cornwall to northern ireland.
Best guess is about 5000 to 7000 years ago, so it is prehistoric in nature.

The maximum contribution is probably on the order of 7% to 15% which could
explain some darker phenotypes. There is a problem with this hypothesis,
prior to the bronze age the best evidence suggest that Irish were largely
tied to coastal regions, the neolithic came late to Ireland and there was
some dispersion inland from scotland. But the HLA types in Ireland,
particularly western Ireland are in several cases nodal for Europe,
indicating the highest degree of isolation during the holocene period
(other than sardinia). Given a coastal habitation, fairly mild winters, and
the general abundance of cloud cover would indicate people spent alot of
time outside, particularly in the summer, but also in the winter, this
could have selected some characteristics for people in specific regions of
Ireland. The addition of new peoples about the time of the holocene maximum
may have just quickened some selection patterns.
 We have to remember that over most of the northern hemisphere, the
indigeonous people who live in the arctic have dark hair and brown or black
eyes. Some of the genes of those darker hair peoples also show up in the
norwegion and islandic population. There are as many explanations for black
hair color.

It would be an interesting study though to see skin pigment levels, hair,
and eye color versus A29 Cw16 B44 distribution, I doubt there is anything
there but a computer may pick it up if the sample size is high enough. The
theory is that genes will randomly walk away from the origin, if these
originated from africa each gene would produce isoquants that form
oblong shapes as it randomly walks. If all these walks have central lines
that intersect at a single spot, then one might propose that the african
carrying peoples settled that spot, a potential reasoning for directional
archaeology.