About eighty million people today can trace their descent back to the occupants of Ireland. But where did the occupants of the island themselves come from and what do we even mean by “Irish” in the first place?
This is the first major attempt to deal with the core issues of how the Irish came into being. J. P. Mallory emphasizes that the Irish did not have a single origin, but are a product of multiple influences that can only be tracked by employing the disciplines of archaeology, genetics, geology, linguistics, and mythology.
Beginning with the collision that fused the two halves of Ireland together, the book traces Ireland’s long journey through space and time to become an island. The origins of its first farmers and their monumental impact on the island is followed by an exploration of how metallurgists in copper, bronze, and iron brought Ireland into increasingly wider orbits of European culture. Assessments of traditional explanations of Irish origins are combined with the very latest genetic research into the biological origins of the Irish.
Contributors
J. P. Mallory
Author
J. P. Mallory is a world expert on the interconnection of archaeology and linguistics and is the author of In Search of the Indo-Europeans and The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. He has published numerous other works, including the acclaimed The Origins of the Irish. He is emeritus professor of prehistoric archaeology at Queen’s University Belfast and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
