The first people who lived in Ireland were black people with blue eyes
According to the Irish Times, researchers are uncovering fresh knowledge about Ireland’s early occupants, and some evidence shows that the original settlers were Black people with blue eyes.
Dr. Lara Cassidy, a geneticist, informed the journal in April 2021 that forensic evidence revealed shocking details about Black prehistoric Irish hunters and gatherers. They inhabited the island for approximately 4,000 years until being displaced by settled farmers. Last year, scientists established a massive genetic database of Irish genomes to help find additional information about Ireland’s first natives, which was extensively examined in a documentary called The Burren: Heart of Stone.
“We know now from ancient genomes that farming was accompanied by a whole group of people moving into the continent from the region now known as modern Turkey,” Cassidy said.
The Burren, a karst terrain of bedrock comprising a massive cracked pavement of glacial-era limestone located in the southwest of Ireland, was noted for gathering shellfish by the Black immigrants. They subsequently relocated to the interior to hunt wild boars and gather hazelnuts. Scientists believe that farmers who arrived in the region during the Neolithic period brought “cattle, sheep, and goats, pottery, and new dwelling constructions,” driving out the previous residents. They may have had lighter skin than the hunter-gathers, according to Dr. Cassidy.
“There could have been violence. This would have been quite a dramatic colonization event,” she also said.
According to the Irish Post, geneticists at the University College London and the Natural History Museum discovered a Mesolithic skeleton dating from 1903 with “dark to black skin,” blue eyes, and curly hair.
The skeleton, which was eventually called Cheddar Man, could show that Europeans evolved years later on the island, according to Dr. Dan Bradley, a researcher behind the historic find.
“The first Irish would have looked like Cheddar Man and had darker skin than we have today,” said Bradley, a genetics population professor at Trinity College Dublin.
“We think [ancient Irish populations] would be similar [to Cheddar Man],” he continued. “The current, very light skin we have in Ireland now is at the endpoint of thousands of years of surviving in a climate where there’s very little sun. It’s an adaptation to the need to synthesize vitamin D in the skin. It has taken thousands of years for it to become like it is today.”
Researchers discovered DNA similarities between Cheddar Man’s skeletal remains and people from Spain, Luxembourg, and Hungary, indicating that his clan may have migrated to Britain towards the conclusion of the last Ice Age. Scientists also discovered evidence that nearly “30-40,000 people lived on the island of Ireland during the era when darker skin was common,” according to the Irish Post.
