Irish Origins (DNA)

Welcome to another episode of "History Today" where we bring you news relating to history and archaeology that is changing how we view the past. Recently Irish Central published an article titled "Ancient bones reveal Irish are not Celts after all." The article deals with a discovery in 2016 in the Irish County of Antrim and could completely alter the perception that Irish people are descended from Celts. We discuss the article, what the experts are saying and lastly I give my thoughts as well. I think it is important to remember the dangers of misconstruing Ancient DNA Studies to generalize untold numbers and populations of peoples and if we are not careful, we can contaminate an already complicated past. I also wanted to note that I have always associated the term "Celtic" with language and material culture rather than term dealing with genetics and centuries of scholarship has had a similar stance and so, I feel that we need to be careful when using "Celtic" as a reference to DNA which could exclude other peoples who share in the material culture and language in the Celtic world.