Incestuous kings may have built Ireland’s Newgrange passage tomb | Hacker News Reader

Incestuous kings may have built Ireland’s Newgrange passage tomb

arstechnica.com

48 pointsbenbreen13 comments

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.

> 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.

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 ?

Newgrange is super cool to visit. I remember when we went to Ireland on a castle stay vacation (also recommended) and on a lark decided to hit it up having never heard of it. Completely blown away. We ended up in a group with just me, my wife, and the guide and got a really wonderful in depth and personal experience. In my book much more interesting than Stonehenge.

I was also struck with how similar it appeared to large tombs in South Korea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Tombs_of_the_Joseon_Dyna...

Knowth, which is part of the same Brú na Bóinne complex, is more impressive in my opinion. The reconstruction of the front of newgrange is... questionable. Knowth also has a third of all the examples of megalithic artwork in western europe.

I visited Newgrange on a whim several years ago while staying in Dublin. I liked it so much I stayed a few days and explored the surrounding areas. Newgrange is the largest but there are numerous smaller tombs in the area, including Knowth and Dowth.

If you are able definitely take more than a day and experience the area on a deeper level. It's one of the most peaceful places I have ever been.

If you are interested in Newgrange, and ancient Irish history in general, the Mythical Ireland Facebook page is doing nightly video podcasts that may be of interest: https://www.facebook.com/mythicalireland/videos/116891482346...

It is run by Anthony Murphy who lives near Newgrange and is a real font of information on such matters.

There's a celtic myth in Ireland that their ancestors came from Spain. This was so widely believed that at the time of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland, Irish refugees were granted the right to settle in Spain because of their shared ancestry.

Turns out there's some truth to the story. The native Irish are genetically related to the Basques and people from the Galicia region in Spain.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/genetic-studies-show-our-clo...

The story itself is mostly derived from the Book of Invasions (Lebor Gabála Érenn) and arrival of the Milesians who were Gaelic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebor_Gab%C3%A1la_%C3%89renn

Is the incestuous detail significant/material to the story or just eyecatching clickbait hooks?

The article covers DNA sequencing that proves that part of the myth. The cultural implications are also discussed.

It's pretty much the main point of the story.

> Maoldúin and her colleagues, led by Trinity geneticist Lara Cassidy, sequenced DNA from the disarticulated bones of a man interred in the chamber at the end of the Newgrange tomb’s passage. About a quarter of the man’s genome consisted of very long stretches of homozygous DNA: DNA where both copies of the genes were the same, instead of the mix-and-match pairs most people inherit from their parents. That strongly suggests that his parents were first-degree relatives—probably brother and sister.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com