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Early history of Ireland

History of Ireland
series
Early history
Early Christian Ireland
Early medieval and Viking era
Norman Ireland
Early Modern Ireland 1536–1691
Ireland 1691–1801
Union with Great Britain
History of the Republic
History of Northern Ireland
Economic history
Early history of Ireland:Newgrange, a famous Irish passage tomb built c3,200 BC
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Newgrange, a famous Irish passage tomb built c3,200 BC

Contents

The Mesolithic (8000 BC - 4500 BC)

What little is known of pre-Christian Ireland comes from a few references in Roman writings, Irish poetry and myth, and archaeology. During the Pleistocene ice age, Ireland was extensively glaciated. Ice sheets more than 300 metres thick scoured the landscape, pulverizing rock and bone, and eradicating all evidence of early human settlements. Something similar happened in Britain, where human remains predating the last glaciation have been uncovered only in the extreme south of the country, which largely escaped the advancing ice sheets. During the Last Glacial Maximum (circa 16,000 BC), Ireland was an arctic wasteland, or tundra. The Midland General Glaciation covered about two thirds of the country with a drifting sheet of ice. It is highly unlikely that there were any humans in the country at this time, though the possibility cannot be discounted entirely.

The earliest evidence of human occupation after the retreat of the ice has been dated to between 8000 and 7000 BC. Settlements of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers have been found at about half a dozen sites scattered throughout the country: Mount Sandel in County Londonderry (Coleraine); Woodpark in County Sligo; the Shannon estuary; Lough Boora in County Offaly; the Curran in County Antrim; and a number of locations in Munster. It is thought that these settlers first colonised the northeast of the country from Scotland. Although sea levels were still lower than they are today, Ireland was probably already an island by the time the first settlers arrived by boat. There is nothing surprising in this, though, for most of the Mesolithic sites in Ireland are coastal settlements. Clearly, the earliest inhabitants of this country were seafarers who depended for much of their livelihood upon the sea. In some ways this economy was forced upon them, for many centuries were to pass before the treeless permafrost was transformed into a densely forested fertile land.

The hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic era lived on a diet of seafood, birds, wild boar, deer and hazelnuts. They hunted with spears, arrows and harpoons tipped with small flint blades called microliths, while supplementing their diet with gathered nuts, fruit and berries. They lived in seasonal shelters, which they constructed by stretching animal skins over simple wooden frames. They had outdoor hearths for cooking their food, and they are known to have built canoes from dug-out tree trunks.

During the Mesolithic the population of Ireland was probably never more than a few thousand.

The Neolithic (4500 BC - 2500 BC)

The Neolithic saw the introduction of farming and pottery, and the use of more advanced stone implements. It was once thought that these innovations were introduced by a new wave of settlers, but there is no compelling evidence for a large-scale invasion at this point in Irish history. It is much more likely that the Neolithic revolution was a long and slow process resulting from trade and overseas contacts with agricultural communities in Britain and on the continent.

Agriculture began around 4500 BC. Sheep, goats, cattle and cereals were imported from Britain and the continent, and the population rose significantly. At the Céide Fields in County Mayo, an extensive Neolithic field system - arguably the oldest in the world - has been preserved beneath a blanket of peat. Consisting of small fields separated from one another by dry-stone walls, the Céide Fields were farmed for several centuries between 3500 and 3000 BC. Wheat and barley were the principal crops cultivated.

Pottery made its appearance around the same time as agriculture. Ware similar to that found in northern Britain has been excavated in Ulster (Lyle's Hill pottery) and in Limerick. Typical of this ware are wide-mouthed, round-bottomed bowls.

But the most striking characteristic of the Neolithic in Ireland was the sudden appearance and dramatic proliferation of megalithic monuments. The largest of these tombs were clearly places of religious and ceremonial importance to the Neolithic population. In most of the tombs that have been excavated human remains - usually, but not always, cremated - have been found. Grave goods - pottery, arrowheads, beads, pendants, axes, etc - have also been uncovered. These megalithic tombs, more than 1,200 of which are now known, can be divided for the most part into four broad groups:

Early history of Ireland:A court tomb at Carrowmore
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A court tomb at Carrowmore

The theory that these four groups of monuments were associated with four separate waves of invading colonists still has its adherents today, but the archaeological evidence does not really support this point of view. It is much more satisfying to regard the megaliths as native expressions of an international practice. The growth in population that made them possible need not have been the result of colonisation: it may simply have been the natural consequence of the introduction of agriculture.

At the height of the Neolithic the population of the island was probably in excess of 100,000, and perhaps as high as 200,000. But there appears to have been an economic collapse around 2500 BC, and the population declined for a while. By this time, metallurgy was already established in the country.

The Bronze Age (2500 BC - 700 BC)

Metalworking began in Ireland around 2500 BC, when bronze, an alloy of tin and copper, made its first appearance. Bronze was used for the manufacture of both weapons and tools. Swords, axes, daggers, hatchets, halberds, awls, drinking utensils and horn-shaped trumpets are just some of the items that have been unearthed at Bronze Age sites. Irish craftsmen became particularly noted for the horn-shaped trumpet, which was made by the cire perdue, or lost wax, process. These are found in many places throughout Europe; there is a representation of one lying by the side of the famous “Dying Gaul” by the Greek sculptor Epigonus.

Copper used in the manufacture of bronze was mined in Ireland, chiefly in the southwest of the country, while the tin was imported from Cornwall in Britain. The earliest known copper mine in these islands was located at Ross Island, at the Lakes of Killarney in County Kerry; mining and metalworking took place here between 2400 and 1800 BC. Another of Europe’s best-preserved copper mines has been discovered at Mount Gabriel in County Cork, which was worked for several centuries in the middle of the second millennium. Mines in Cork and Kerry are believed to have produced as much as 370 tonnes of copper during the Bronze Age. As only about 0.2% of this can be accounted for in excavated bronze artifacts, it is surmised that Ireland was a major exporter of copper during this period.

Ireland is also rich in native gold, and the Bronze Age saw the first extensive working of this precious metal by Irish craftsmen. More Bronze Age gold hoards have been discovered in Ireland than anywhere else in Europe. Irish gold ornaments have been found as far afield as Germany and Scandinavia. In the early stages of the Bronze Age these ornaments consisted of rather simple crescents and disks of thin gold sheet. Later the familiar Irish torque made its appearance; this was a collar consisting of a bar or ribbon of metal, twisted into a screw and then bent into a loop. Gold earrings, sun disks and lunulas (crescent “moon disks” worn around the neck) were also made in Ireland during the Bronze Age.

One of the most distinctive types of European pottery, Beaker or Bell-Beaker ware, made its appearance in this country during the Bronze Age. This was quite different from the coarse, bucket-shaped pottery of the Neolithic. Beaker ware was once thought to be associated with a particular culture - the Beaker Folk - whose arrival here supposedly coincided with the introduction of metallurgy. But this view is no longer tenable: there were no Beaker Folk, and metallurgy was well established in Ireland long before the appearance of Beaker ware. Irish Beaker ware was of local manufacture and its appearance is evidence of foreign influence rather than foreign invasion.

Smaller wedge tombs continued to be built throughout the Bronze Age, but the grandiose passage graves of the Neolithic were abandoned for good. Towards the end of the Bronze Age the single-grave cist made its appearance. This consisted of a small rectangular stone chest, covered with a stone slab and buried a short distance below the surface. Numerous stone circles were also erected at this time, chiefly in Ulster and Munster.

During the Bronze Age, the climate of Ireland deteriorated and extensive deforestation took place. The population of Ireland at the end of the Bronze Age was probably in excess of 100,000, and may have been as high as 200,000. It’s possible that it was not much greater than it had been at the height of the Neolithic.

The Celts

In Ireland the Iron Age was the age of people now generally referred to as Celts. These people are distinguished from their predecessors by their use of iron, and through a range of other cultural traits shared with Celtic populations elsewhere in Central and Western Europe. The extent to which these similarities appeared through invasion, or alternatively through other forms of cultural diffusion, is a matter of some dispute. It has traditionally been thought it was Celtic invaders that brought Celtic language into Ireland, but recent genetic and archeological studies suggest that the adoption of Celtic culture and language was a far more gradual transformation, brought on by cultural exchange with Celtic groups in mainland Europe.

The field suffers from the fact that it is of interest to multiple academic disciplines, and that attempts at cross-disciplinary syntheses tend to be controversial. Related to this, historical syntheses created many decades ago, based primarily on mythology and on linguistic studies, are still frequently quoted as being authoritative, even where modern views of the same material would accept a broader interpretation, and where archaeological and genetic evidence suggest different conclusions. Complicating the matter is a complex relationship between understandings of Irish pre-history and understandings of the Irish national identity.

The Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland can be divided into two groups: P-Celtic and Q-Celtic. When written records first appear in the fifth century, Gaelic or Goidelic (a Q-Celtic language) is found in Ireland, while Brythonic (a P-Celtic language) is found in Britain. At one time, it was natural to assume that Ireland had been invaded by Q-Celts and Britain by P-Celts. Even today it is not uncommon to hear that there was one Celtic invasion in Irish history. In 350 BC, according to this view of history, a group of people called the Milesians introduced the Irish language tongue to Ireland and subjugated the pre-Celtic inhabitants by virtue of their superior weapons. But this view is primarily mythological.

The truth is more complex. For a start, recent DNA studies have suggested that the people who introduced the Celtic languages to these islands may well have been Celtic-speakers, but they were not members of a Celtic race. Ethnically they were indistinguishable from the pre-Indo-European inhabitants who preceded them. What’s more, their arrival had so little impact on the genetic inheritance of the native peoples that they cannot have numbered much more than a few thousand.

The Y-chromosomes of the modern Irish, characterized by the M343 mutation that defines the R1b Haplogroup (dominant, in variant degrees, from Iberia to Scandinavia), are closely related to those of Iberian population (Portugal and Spain), particularly those of the Basques, which has led some anthropologists to surmise that the Basques are a remnant of the pre-Indo-European population of western Europe, and that the pre-Celtic language (or languages) of Ireland may have been related to Euskara, the Basque tongue. (See Celt for a discussion of the so-called “Celtic problem.”)

O'Rahilly's historical model

Main article: O'Rahilly's historical model

The Celtic scholar T. F. O'Rahilly proposed a model of Irish prehistory, based on his study of the influences on the Irish language and a critical analysis of Irish mythology and pseudohistory. His ideas, though extremely influential, are no longer universally accepted. However, he distinguished four separate waves of Celtic invaders:

The Gaelic conquest of Ulster

In Ireland contemporary written records only go back to 431 AD. The Gaelic king of Tara known as Niall Noígiallach, or Niall of the Nine Hostages, is the earliest historical figure whose historicity is beyond dispute and of whom we know more than a few meagre details. According to extant records his father Eochu Mugmedón was a king of Tara and ruler of the kingdom of Meath (although the territory of the Midland Gael only came to be known as Meath several centuries later).

Niall succeeded his father around 400 AD and is said to have ruled for twenty-seven years. His reign marks the rise of Tara as the dominant power in the country. The origin of this power was the conquest of Ulster, the culmination of centuries of conflict between the Gael of Tara and the Ulaid of Emain Macha. This conflict is reflected in the mythical cycle known as the Ulster Cycle, which includes the Irish national epic, Táin Bó Cúailnge.

The Gaelic conquest of Ulster was undertaken chiefly by three of Niall's sons, Conall Gulban, Eógan and Énda, who were rewarded with three subkingdoms in the west of the newly conquered province. As a direct result of the conquest, Ulster was reorganized into three overkingdoms:

After his death Niall was succeeded as king of Tara by his son Lóegaire mac Néill, during whose reign Roman Christianity was officially introduced into the country. Niall of the Nine Hostages has the distinction of being the ancestor of all but two of the long line of kings of Ireland who ruled from the fifth century down to the time of Brian Bórú in the early eleventh century.

Further reading

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