So, that's why we love kebabs
New research this week claims Irishmen are descended from Turkish farmers. Kim Bielenberg reports
It is time to roll out a magic carpet, don a fez and sing Istanbul (Not Constantinople) at great volume down in the pub. The latest research from genetic scientists appears to show that Irishmen are mostly descended from Turkish farmers.
The discovery by scientists at the University of Leicester that we hail from a tribe of oriental culchies may finally offer an answer to one of Europe's great culinary mysteries: why are so many Irishmen fond of kebabs?
This midnight feast -- often eaten with large amounts of drink taken -- may well be a rediscovery of our Ottoman roots.
The ancestors of the majority of Irish males -- including, quite probably, such luminaries as Pat Shortt, James Joyce and Brian Cowen -- left their homeland thousands of years ago, turned up here in droves, and somehow managed to acclimatise to our dismal weather.
Our native Irishwomen eyed them adoringly across the misty bog -- and the rest is pre-history.
The scientists came to their conclusions after studying Y chromosomes, the genetic blueprint found in men.
The Turks' knowledge of farming, including raising animals and growing crops, gave them an edge over the more uncouth local male hunter-gatherers as they spread across Europe to Ireland.
Dr Patricia Balaresque, one of the authors of the study, said there was a reproductive advantage for incoming farming males over the more primitive yokels who lived here.
As Dr Balaresque put it (possibly so that I would not be bamboozled by too much complex scientific information about mitochondrial DNA): "Maybe back then, it was just sexier to be a farmer.''
One of the report's co-authors, Professor Mark Jobling, said the farmers would have originated in the "Fertile Crescent'', a region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian gulf.
"This move from the near east to Ireland would not have happened quickly,'' said Prof Jobling.
"It's not like now when you can get on a flight from Istanbul to Dublin in two-and-a-half hours. These migrations would have taken place over thousands of years.''
The geneticists believe the number of men with Turkish descent is greater in Ireland than anywhere else in western Europe.
Since time immemorial, storytellers and historians have been trying to work out where the Irish actually came from. Accounts of our early history are based on wafer-thin evidence and are often interwoven with colourful and self-serving myth.
Some accounts suggest that the Gaels were descended from Fennius Farsa, a Ukrainian king who lost his throne and fled to Egypt. His son Nial married the daughter of a pharaoh, and the descendants became Spanish kings before heading off to Ireland on a mini-break.
It is generally accepted that we Irish are somewhat confused about our identity after 800 years of widely reported oppression by the perfidious Brits and a spot of bother with the Vikings.
For decades, we liked to think that we were descended from a noble race of Middle European Celtic poet warriors from north of the Alps who appeared in the mists of time, possibly with an Enya soundtrack, and were driven to the edge of Europe.
We were led to believe that we shared a common culture, genetic make-up, and passionate creative personality with the Scots, the Welsh and balladeering Bretons.
Musicians have long been holding cheerful pan-Celtic festivals. Unless they were Cornish, the less hot-blooded "Saxon'' English were not asked to the party.
Professor Bryan Sykes of Oxford University, who examined the genetic make-up of the Irish and the British for his book Blood of the Isles, believes that the idea that the Irish and other "Celts'' are in some way different to the English is pure bunkum.
"This notion that the Irish, Scots and Welsh are in some way different to the English is a popular myth,'' said Prof Sykes.
"It was created at the time of King Henry VIII and has been a common view ever since. Many people believe the English are Saxons.''
"There are far more people with Celtic ancestry in England, even in the far east, than can claim to be of Saxon or Danish descent.''
Prof Sykes has put forward the idea that both the Irish and the English are descended from a tribe of Spanish fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay 6,000 years ago.
DNA analysis reveals that we have a similar genetic fingerprint to inhabitants of coastal regions of Spain. The professor describes these seafarers, who settled across Britain and Ireland, as the Oisin. So what does the Oxford professor think of the idea that we are descended from Turkish farmers?
"It is very interesting. It does not rule out the evidence that fishermen moved up from Spain to Ireland. They would have moved over a long period of time, around the Mediterranean to Spain and up the Atlantic to Ireland.''
The news that the Irish may have come from the near east comes as no surprise to Bob Quinn, the maverick film-maker who became known in the 1980s as "the fella who says we're all descended from Arabs''.
A quarter of a century ago, Quinn produced an intriguing documentary series, Atlanteans, claiming that our ancestors may have been a seafaring race who came up from Africa.
The film-maker identified the close similarities between sean-nós singing and a style of chanting found in north Africa. He even found a monument in Morocco that was similar to Newgrange.
In the 1980s, Quinn commanded some respect in north Africa and became an acquaintance of Colonel Gadaffi. At one stage, he was asked to write the Libyan leader's autobiography. Quinn told the Irish Independent this week that when he first set out his ideas about our Arabic sea-faring roots he was dismissed by the academic establishment.
But now his apparently far-fetched theory is looking more plausible.
"The Turkish thesis does not upset the simple common sense of my idea that after the melting of the ice permitted, everybody had to come by sea to Ireland.
"They were both farmers and fishermen following the cod up the Atlantic as far as Iceland, clinging to the coasts but carrying their seeds with them.''
Quinn believes that unconscious racism in Ireland may have caused his ideas to be ignored or dismissed in respectable circles.
Genetic evidence may be mounting that the Irish and English hail from farming stock in the near east but it will be hard to dispel the notion we belong to two tribes, Celt and Saxon, and n'er the twain shall meet.
The writer John Cornwell recently highlighted how there are still places where pro-Celt and anti-Celt prejudice dies hard.
He tells the story of a man taken ill on the train going up from London to Scotland. He gets out at Glasgow and asks a passer-by the quickest way to the hospital.
"See that bar yonder," says the fellow, pointing to a hostelry where the sympathies were more inclined to Rangers than Celtic. "Go in there and sing Danny Boy!"
Irish Independent
