The origins of the Irish

by J. P. Mallory

Book, 2013

Status

Available

Call number

DA910 .M25

Collection

Publication

Publisher Unknown

Description

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.… (more)

Media reviews

Prof Jim Mallory has written a book on the origin of the Irish, but he tells us that the subject “is not a single question and the reader should not expect a single answer”. This book has been in gestation since Mallory began graduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles in
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1967. Along the way he developed a battery of skills that make him, perhaps uniquely, qualified to write a book that evaluates the contributions of archaeology, genetics, linguistics, geology and history in developing a plausible story of the origins of the people of Ireland at the beginning of the historic period, say in the fifth century AD.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member speljamr
This book is the attempted summary of the author's many years of research into the origins of the Irish people. It is an interesting, but rather dry subject matter; the author at least attempts to put in a touch of humor from time to time.

The book starts all the way back at the beginning with the
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geological movements of the land of Ireland to understand where it comes from and how the geography was formed, the author arguing that this is as much a part of what makes an Irishman as the culture and heritage. He then proceeds through all the major ages of man to look at what archaeological evidence exists for the potential migrations into Ireland. He also looks at the genealogy evidence, the myths and legends, and the rise of the Irish language. All of this evidence leads to the inevitable conclusion that we can't confirm with any certainty where the Irish came from, but we can take an educated guess.

If you have any interest in the background of what it means to be Irish then this book is well worth a read. Who knows, maybe I have a touch of Niall of the Nine Hostages' genes running through me (well, at least I'd like to imagine so).
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