Ancient Europe’s history would not have been the same without the intriguing Celts. Irish people have long been thought to be closely linked to the Celts, although this hypothesis may not be accurate.
On Rathlin Island near Antrim, Bertie Currie discovered a sizable, flat stone buried beneath the ground in 2006. He was preparing the area to build a driveway for McCuaig’s Bar at the time.
Currie looked more closely after noticing a sizable gap beneath the stone.
What Carrie found has the potential to dramatically rewrite ancient Irish history. “I shot the torch in and saw the gentleman, well, his skull and bones,” Currie reportedly said to the Washington Post.
Finally, he discovered the remains of three people, and he immediately dialed the police.
Scientists in Ireland and Britain have now investigated the ancient relics, and their findings indicate that these individuals predate the Celts by about 1,000 years and are the forefathers of present Irish people, according to DNA evidence.
In essence, Irish DNA was there in Ireland long before the Celts arrived on the island.
“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,” Irish Central reports.
According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the bones were very similar to those of modern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh people.
“The DNA evidence based on those bones completely upends the traditional view,” stated Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Oxford University.
This implies that the finding might fundamentally alter how Irish ancestry is perceived.