NEWGRANGE, NEOLITHIC ELITES & INCEST | Special guest: Anthony Murphy of Mythical Ireland

[Music] so [Music] hello welcome to a prehistory guys special i'm michael bott and i'm rupert soskin yeah incest uncovered at the elite prehistoric new grange monument in ireland read those headlines newgrain's tomb body belonged to royal like male born of incest uh dna from ancient irish tomb reveals incest an elite class that ruled early farmers do we see a sort of theme developing here they couldn't hold back could they no but uh i tell you what what a gift to trinity college dublin that's true actually that is true yes and dr lara cassidy uh it's uh it's a fantastic piece of research it's quite a team of people on this isn't it um yeah yeah and we should say you know the the it's one of those cases where these headlines as i said i could have gone on and on and on which if you have an interest in in pre-history and and take note of you know whatever pops up in the mainstream media you will have noticed these headlines and of course they that they're as ever as we're finding behind the headlines there is a whole wealth of of other stuff because archaeologists don't set out to create headlines they set out to find out stuff you know and support a theory or debunk a theory themselves you know that uh often the the purposes are so much more um subtle and uh um well it has [ __ ] than what comes out in the headlines the the ramifications of uh of this discovery i mean okay so you've got the wonderful headline stuff of incest but the ramifications in terms of our knowledge about people is just huge and really exciting it's uh it's actually extremely far-reaching and we're not quite sure where it's going to end at the moment are we yeah yeah have you got the title of the actual paper that all this comes from in front i have i have i have hold on excellent what is the actual title it's the the the paper um headed by lara cassidy um it's a dynastic elite in monumental neolithic society there you have it no mention of newgrange no mention of ireland yeah yes you see that in itself it's very telling how you how you need to read behind the headlines it's um i think where do we start with this michael i mean it's the it's the fact that um dna once again it's modern scientific techniques have have allowed us to glimpse into the deep past and get an amount of information that tells us about people on a level that was never possible before and what's so significant about this and you know the headline of the paper a dynastic elite in monumental neolithic society we are looking at uh a dynasty in terms of people uh related across numerous important burial sites um and that in itself is is enormous especially when we look at its roots i mean where where should we start on that michael should we go to bristol well i think the the the roots of this are the purpose in the first place of the paper itself and what i take away from it is that they were starting with the idea that um building of megalithic sites and these you know passage tombs etc in particular took an awful lot of manpower there's one school of thought that has it well there must have been a huge egalitarian society you know to have cooperated in such a way with each other to produce such such uh um extraordinary buildings and there's another school of thought well that says well experience really teaches you that in order for these sorts of things to happen you've got to have a quite a hierarchy going on and a revered um upper echelon uh commanding stuff that uh that actually happens and that i think was the purpose of this study to see through the dna in the you know the burials in these kinds of tombs if the dna could tell anything about hierarchy and familial relationships between the people that were in those tombs and we have to say that rupert what's starting in britain you mean we have to go back to well i was going to say i mean they've nailed it they've succeeded in doing that yeah that is what the the dna tells us that yeah there was an elite in these tombs that were related it's funny i mean in some ways it shouldn't be a surprise should it that that any major burial site that you can mention so we don't even have to look in terms of the the biggest and most impressive of the passage tombs any of the most significant burials have got very small numbers of uh of people within them which means that it it's it's a given that we know that these were burials for the elite of of society they weren't the burials for the masses so if you've got something i have to say one of the funny things about uh about you know all the research that's been coming out now and the way they've been describing newgrange itself that they're giving the weight of it 200 000 tons of uh you know of of structure and i think it's a very funny way of describing how important something is going by weight but clearly it's the it's the elite of a society now whether it was a uh an elite priesthood or an elite uh ruling dynasty as we can't escape the correlations with um with something like dynastic egypt can we where uh you had when we take the incest into consideration yes um and uh and lavish burials for very small numbers of of individuals but um but you know as you were saying that uh following this from brittany and from the major passage tombs of brittany and coming up into even into mainland uh britain so mays howe in scotland and uh what about bring carefully thee on anglesey if good point if we're going to talk about uh uh solar aligned passage tunes yeah if the same thing is pertaining so the study was of 44 44 individuals yeah individuals uh two of which i believe were from the mesolithic and then again we've got another story attached uh to this in terms of the genetics of hunter-gatherers as opposed to the genetics of the later near uh well early neolithic um farmers if we can use that to distinguish them well it's that in itself is an important distinction to make isn't it that the the the dna has shown that ireland the island of ireland was isolated uh culturally was isolated from the rest of britain and europe for ever it's amazing how the irish sea was it seemed to be this enormous barrier for them they had no desire to cross that water to get to ireland it wasn't until the neolithic changed yeah um so what was the impetus so the comparison is the uh irish island the the dna from the island of ireland hunter-gatherer dna compared to mainland britain hunter-gatherer dna and they're quite separate they've drifted apart over a period of time and the whole thing suggests that doggerland was still maintaining you know the the gene mix uh across to the to the continent up until you know such time yeah but that is amazing across the rsc there is no genetic distinction if you look at the dna there is no distinction between uh between people in britain at the time and they're continental contemporaries uh the people in ireland are fundamentally different it's um it's marked it's remarkable so that's another by-product of of the study um but before we get and we haven't really got to the the incest part of it you know what was found in the the bones that are being called ng10 yes which would be new grange new grange 10 yes yes we'll call him ng10 for clarity's sake but before we get to him it's the familial relationships across the burials in various tomb types in ireland that give the weight to the success of the purpose of this study um yes it's it's a remarkable discovery to have made in the first place but but finding quite how far-reaching it is across the sites in ireland as well finding out that there was interrelatedness through many of the key burial sites and megalithic cemeteries on ireland so you've got something from from newgrange and million bay is the furthest east isn't it and there's a there's a site in million bay which is right on the east uh over near port of ferry uh and then going in you've got uh newgrange and then over in sligo and in county clare and uh so there are numbers of burial sites where the dna has shown that there are there's interrelatedness between the individuals buried it's huge it's um you know it's both over time and over distance yes which is the thing that speaks to um in another interesting uh aspect there as well is is how we when i say we i mean us people today culturally we have this view of things in the past that somehow we regard them in in a different way so for example they've talked about these burials over time over half a millennium and you think well big deal culturally we've been doing doing the same thing for well over a thousand years in uh well in in mainland europe particularly in in britain uh uh culturally we haven't shifted a great deal at all in a thousand years uh so to say that you know this is over a vast period of time it's not actually it's in comparative culturally comparatively short period of time half a million um because we've got it's a curious thing isn't it we've got a date of so new grange itself is dated to 3200 bc uh so uh these burials so half a millennium you're talking about uh so what two and a half thousand bc i think is uh is the latest that we're looking at isn't it i think that's right um it does smack of you know we still do the same now with our royal burials we're using the same burial sites for uh for our elite for sure yeah yeah so before we talk about incest at newgrange [Music] [Laughter] aside from that and i suppose the incest aspect at newgrange is the thing that's kind of nails it it's a cherry on on the cake you know it really helps the case hugely but i think the case would be good without the incest of new grange anyway but my huge takeaway from it is my huge implication from it all that is that we can't get away from the at least the at least at the very least the solar aspects of this and the alignment of the passage tombs with the heavens usually related to uh the sun and if we're talking about the burial of elite of an elite inside these tombs we must be looking at an elite that were regarded in some relationship to the sun one hesitates to use the term sun king sun god whatever like that but at the same time it's hard to you can't it's hard not to hard to it's hard not to isn't it and to think of that kind of dynastic uh ruling going on you know which probably originated we're not saying this dna wasn't to do with dna in in brittany so far exactly but um uh the implications of the style and the culture of those kinds of tombs coming from brittany then you've got to imagine this sort of dynastic culture extending through in and persisting in ireland particularly particularly um and that is my sort of big takeaway this the idea of of um an elite related to a deity related to the sun and them being worshipped and a huge amount of effort being you know rather like egypt a huge amount of effort being put into making sure they were taken care of in relationship to the sun the skies the heavens where they belonged yeah it's an interesting one isn't it because uh you know we we've made this point before but it does kind of make you wonder quite how much our uh you know christian sites churches built uh aligned east west just because that's a convention and it makes you wonder if that is yet another of the aspects of christianity that was imported if you like from uh from earlier pagan cultures yeah you know so yes sorry rupa i was i was just going to ask you though what what your uh takeaway i know it's sort of similar uh to to mine but you had a slightly different spin on it yeah but for me it's it's people it's the fact that the technology is increasingly taking us down this road where we are understanding people more we we're getting past past isn't the right word we're going beyond seeing what people have left behind and actually getting to going beyond the pots pots yeah absolutely um and we're getting to understand more about uh their lives rather than what they actually left behind and you know we i know we i hesitate to touch on this because we don't know and it's a good job that we're going to be uh uh talking about the mythology of stuff but yeah one of the things that is is impossible to avoid here is that you're if you look at the the the tales of the mylesians these people who ended up in uh in the island of ireland and what were their roots and if you trace the roots right back then the stories say that they came from egypt don't they they certainly can at least and uh and over in that direction and then when you look at these cultural correlations of a dynastic uh incestuous elite where the importance of maintaining a bloodline just runs more powerfully throughout yeah and then to you know the correlations with the pyramids with alignments with um with the heavens for example you can't avoid even though there is no specific evidence to say that you can connect the two one cannot avoid the correlations they're you know yeah and of course of the milesians are associated with a much later much laser much yes yeah i mean of what we know iron age but then how far back how far back the connections go yes yeah yeah so moving on moving on to the headline really and the fact that you know it's the cherry on the cake uh i think i said before um but um ng 10 is a result of a coupling between um parent and sibling or a parent and well they're they're thinking it's most likely brother sister but could just as easily have been parent parent offspring which neatly kind of brings us on to the mythology yes because we are told well we should probably talk to the man himself shouldn't we really mr mr irish mythology himself mr irish mythology himself um yeah because uh um our friend anthony murphy he uh what he doesn't know about uh the mythology well you could write it on the back of the stamp yeah i think this is uh lit up his his life a bit as well hasn't it yeah it's um it's extraordinary how uh when you see stories coming almost stories coming true i hesitate to use those words but i'm going to do it anyway you know that that when you've heard these legends and myths uh over over time and then suddenly you find that science says well there you go looks like that was a winner yes yeah anyway we cover all this because the the rest uh of this program uh is a conversation with anthony murphy of mythical island fame runs website mr dronehenge himself that's true yeah of course anthony has the advantage of uh living uh at or near the bruno bonya and he's uh made it his uh a large part of his life to completely embed himself in in the mythology so uh without further ado um yeah let's get chat with anthony shall we yes welcome anthony welcome back i should say to bring history definitely welcome back it's lovely to have you back on again it's uh it seems like a long time since uh we chatted last a a quick practice of what's been going on for you uh well during the lockdown i started this series called live irish myths and i live streamed every day for 103 days and that was really great because on the one hand and there was this lovely community built up around it and on the other hand it was giving me an opportunity to learn actually because i was finding i was reading stuff that i hadn't read before fantastic and potentially material for future books etc and great news that island of the setting sun is being republished it's been out of print for about eight years and congratulations that's good yeah a special 2020 edition will hopefully be available in early to mid august all going well and in the background i've always been writing another book and uh having written 55 000 words of it i realized that in fact it needs to be two books two separate themes that are convergent to pull together in one so that's going to be interesting and challenging um but uh mythical ireland has been very very busy and uh no complaints on this side how long may it be so um yeah i mean so newgrange and incest aside you've got plenty of work on your work on your hands definitely yeah yeah so we're here to talk about that very thing um it was the first thing that uh that michael and i said really when we'd gone through all this stuff and uh when when the papers came out you know that all this going on at newgrange and we it was one of the first things we said was we've just got to get anthony on to talk about this uh any of the mythological connections are just uh it's riveting to see how far back oral history and oral tradition can how far it can stretch into the past yeah yeah uh and in fact i have long said uh i have long suggested that several myths are you know contain information that would in my view put them way back in prehistory in one or two cases actually pre-pre-neolitic but it's an area where the the scholars um i suppose i can't blame them either they've got all their peers looking over their shoulder um they don't want to sort of um venture too far into that territory because it is hazy territory at best but i'm hoping today that we can discuss three separate myths about new grange which might shed on this uh latest finding uh and which i think may you know help us lean towards that hypothesis that in fact some of these myths are really really ancient fantastic there is there's one question that i'd like to ask you uh right up front and that is the the papers are we're all talking about the translation of the name for death as the hill of sin or the hill of incest yeah and i thought i would ask you what is the truth of that is that journalistic uh that's stretching it a bit or what is the actual translation of the irish name well uh i have to defer to the scholars i don't know where that came from i did look for this fertile can mean a mound or a hillock or a grave mound claudia you know could be a corruption of qualia as in a wood uh particularly a hazel wood there's a lot of irish place names with kill in them c-i-l-l or k-i-l-l which is either translated from church or wood i couldn't find this sin thing but i am not uh an irish scholar of any i can tell you so i don't exactly know where it comes from and i i i have to urge a little bit of caution here because if it is sin if it is the mound of sin or the hill of sin it is likely of course that that is one of the many incursions into pagan mythology by the ecclesiastical sprite yeah absolutely yeah you know uh the dunchanicus i mean the very same myth about doubt speaks about the mound it doesn't call it a mound it calls it a tower and it compares it to the tower of nimrod uh so obviously there are uh old testament references in there which suggest that the the the story has been altered uh to better suit the uh the the biblical and christian sensibilities yes right i should just mention that i'm working uh quite uh uh energetically on a blog post about this uh which i'll publish in the next week or so about uh the relationship of uh you know uh christian scribes to the pagan mythology and it might have been changed etc there are lots and lots of examples of that and so i i just step back a little bit from that one and urge caution on us you know yeah excellent well i don't know i think i think we should just toss it to you anthony what are the three myths that you want to tell us about well they're the most uh the one that's actually the only one that's really been discussed publicly is the myth about the legend of doubt uh and just for the benefit of your your viewers that myth can be compressed into a few sentences uh a king whose name is bressel bodhibad meaning or bodhivad meaning lacking in cattle during his reign there's a cattle famine and all the cattle die except for there's only one bull and seven cows left he brings all the men of ireland to this place death uh to build him a tower from which he can pass to heaven alike to the tower of nimrod now in order for this task to be completed the men asked for uh basically eternal daylight so uh the the king's sister works a magic spell on the sun and makes it stand still in the sky and i think this is a summer solstice myth uh i refer to the work of professor ronald hicks of ball state university university in in indiana on this uh that she makes the sun stand still in the sky so that there's endless day now of course at summer solstice which is only just past in the past week and a half um there's eternal twilight at night time sorry i need to close that because the birds are singing um [Music] at this time of year there is an endless uh twilight and actually i've been at doubt with richard moore my co-author and islander settings on uh several years we went at midnight on the summer solstice and we found that you know with very little adjustment you can see what you're doing and if you were working you could work through the night uh and that's just of course a hypothetical question but something happens then the king lust seizes the king and he commits incest with his sister at a place called verticalia which apparently means uh the hill of sin um and the spell is broken a sudden darkness comes on the place and the men say well we've been promised endless day for this task and as night has come on and day has gone we're going to abandon the place and forever shall be known as dua which is the irish foreign now you'll see that the old irish is d-u-b-a-d but of course when you add in the lenition a dua which basically means darkness or darkening the act of okay yeah and of course i think that's a a total eclipse myth as well but it's curious the way the the tale relates the breaking of the spell to the incestuous relationship it's as if something has happened there to make the to despoil the magic as it were and the sun of course does what it always does every year we get to this time of year we go oh this is brilliant these days at 11 o'clock at night and it's bright at four o'clock in the morning and then all of a sudden you know a few weeks later we start to head back into winter again you know the thing that springs uh to my mind is that if we're talking about um this discovery supporting the idea of an elite uh hierarchy um that the way you're framing or you know relating this myth that there is contained within it an awareness that the incest is a bad thing or is that a christian spin on on the myth this is the things we we don't know there seems to be a consciousness of the significance of there being an incestuous relationship that seems to be echoing down the ages there which wouldn't necessarily be signaled if it was a normal thing or something that was expected within that elite and was always ordained within that elite it's a very interesting question and unfortunately regrettably admit not answer it for us really another question here too uh michael which is the question pertaining to this is something i've written about i wrote about it in my book called mythical ireland and i wrote about whether the people who were involved in the monument construction did so under duress or coercion yeah or whether in fact they were happy to participate um you know as it was as the result of some sort of communal uh zeal uh towards this grand project and you look at the doubt myth and you say that the king commanded all the men of aaron which is exactly what it says some of the women have made an issue with this um i have personally been accused of being sexist and i i have to point to the myth which only refers to the men it doesn't say what the women were doing they were probably doing it but as long ago was 20 2006 when i wrote island of the setting song i did say that it struck me that brussels was a sort of a megalomaniac king that he would command all the men of ireland to one place to build him from which he could pass to heaven and of course i think in there is a hint at what the monuments were about in the eyes of the builders which is about passage to another world and so the word she which which is an irish word in old irish as i father d uh pronounced like the word she as in feminine um they are portals to other realms that's what they are the very very best translation and there are a lot of irish words that can't be accurately or are um i suppose properly translated into english she is one of those it doesn't like it's often translated translated as an elf mound or a fairy mount but the very best translation of it is an otherworld mount and so the idea was that i'm going to build me a big monument a big mother or a monument you know and it's going to be ostentatious it's going to be bigger than anything that's ever been built on the island of ireland remember that we believe that delta is the first of the three great monuments to be built and i'm going to bring all the men of ireland here to build it for me it does kind of speak to a narrative of yes i am a leader and they are the followers or the slaves or whatever yeah yeah what it doesn't do is it doesn't answer it definitively on the question of incest i would urge serious caution on that and as i said there's so there are so many examples of myths i mean the very question arises why did irish ecclesiastical scribes write down pagan mythology yeah wouldn't their time have been better spent writing the gospels and mass books and missiles etc etc why why did they spend so much time of course the question the answer to that is very complex but in simplest form it is because the the scribes were part of monasteries and monasteries of course were granted their lands and their power by the chiefs and the kings and there was often a very powerful interrelation of church and state or church and in fact some of the kings there was a king of castle who was actually a bishop as well as a king and so you imagine that the scribes are always looking over their shoulder uh on the one hand at the abbot who wants things to be christianized and on the other hand to the sponsor uh the chief or the king who basically wants the myths to strengthen his own lineage and of course there's there's a whole different discussion there i i would definitely urge caution it seems to me as if the idea that incest is a sinful thing is introduced uh into the denshanakis by the the ecclesiastical thing that would be my view but again with the proviso that i'm not a medieval scholar and nor am i a scholar of early irish understood yes but it is interesting how you know the well okay we can see from from the the actual dna that's that's been taken from newgrange and everything that that's telling us that these myths so how far back would you estimate that the myths are actually beginning to absorb the um the pagan history if you want to call it that with the christian twist so so for example it would not have been called the hill of sin until the christians got uh or the ecclesiastical side of it um things got a hold of it so uh can you can you find a sort of a middle ground of time can you put a a rough date of uh of when that was adopted from uh from the oral tradition into uh the uh the twisted history if you want to put it that way do you see what i mean we can be specific enough about that because the dunchanicus is contained well there are actually six or seven different manuscripts with the tencenticus but we're actually talking about that period of time when uh we're all of these things were written down probably i think the earliest version of the tencenticus is 12th century right and i think in fact you can probably say within a few centuries maybe before that um remember that you know the monasteries the larger monasteries especially uh came with the uh the benedictine order and the cistercians in the 12th century uh and so previous to that um an awful lot of the the the monasteries that were excellent at that time pre let's say pre uh the norman uh invasion um but they would have been smaller affairs it's very hard to say because i mean for instance the whole thing about marriage you know priests were married in the first uh millennium you know and the ruling out that the whole issue of celibacy uh didn't really become widespread until actually the 15th or 16th century and having been first practiced i think in in around the 12th century um now it is likely that incest was taboo anyway in in in most you know christian settings but also perhaps um in in in the non-christian settings it's a very very good question which i can't answer obviously yeah i'm trying i would say that you have to remember that these things are written down and as they're being written down they're being altered to suit that uh biblical worldview so i mean probably probably at the time they were written down that's when they were changed but you said that there's um not just the one myth that relates to the discovery but the two more three in total my goodness this has been apparently kind of overlooked or forgotten okay there are there are two more very important it's a funny thing there's a lot of myths that relate to new grains newgrange seems to have occupied this sort of primacy this uh fascination uh in the stories one of them pertains to the birth tale of the great warrior of holland um of tomb of the tombo kunya which is a very famous irish epic tale uh the cattle raid of cooley and despite despite the protestations or the insistence of the scholars uh that this is a medieval myth that perhaps has origins in the iron age there are also aspects of it uh that relates to the uh primitive indo-european creation mythology uh the battle of the bulls and the scattering yeah i've i've heard maeve related to the the cattle raid um myth may have made maybe can over in sliger maeve of wrath [Music] you could say that it was her what started it only on the provocation of her husband aileel who who basically they started to list up all the things that they owned and she was going on about her her lovely white bullfin bennett and that there was no finer bull anywhere to be found and ali goes i hate to tell you this look but there's a finer bull over and cooley the dog and thus begins a whole war because it makes it known that she's going to have this bull by hook or by crook we are getting slightly distracted who was the boy hero said before he became kukolam uh he was called setanta setanto was conceived at newgrange according to the myths this is fascinating and it's something i wrote about an island of the settings on um his his mother was declaner who is the sister of the king of ulster his name is conor mcnessa or konkovar and uh there are a flock of swans at alamaka in irma which is where they were ruled from uh you know the capital of the ancient kingdom of ulster and they chased them off and they followed them to brunebonia now there are various versions of the tale in the one that i was following and it's so funny the way that the tales diverge on details and then they're similar on details but um yeah she she comes to a place where they um settle down for the night and it's basically nude range and it's basically snowing so it's it's winter and lou who's the god the great sort of he's another sort of solar uh deity uh he arrives in a dream and basically tells her that she's going to have a child but it was robert hicks who reminded me about a version of this story ronald hicks of course as i mentioned is a professor of anthropology at ball state university in muncie indiana and it was him that reminded me that in fact there's a commonly known version of the story in which uh conchovar and declan are father and daughter and they take refuge in what is likely to be new grains i've got a quote here from what ron sent me thereafter destiny became pregnant now as i said there is a version of the story in which lou comes to her and says you're going to have a baby and you're going to call it cetanta and of course this is what you might call a virgin birth you know this is this is uh uh stuff that's right out of the bible except for it's probably pre-bia pre-biblical thereafter dexton became pregnant the uli or the ulster men were troubled since they did not know the father and they surmised that konkovar had fathered the child while drunk for dectena used to sleep next to him conchobar then betrothed his daughter to sulcum son of roy dechena was greatly embarrassed about going to sultan's bed that she lay down in the bed and crushed the child within her and this is part of the conception story and of course the the in in in the other version there are several or several you know i think the child has to be implanted as it were three times um because she miscarries or she loses in some way and ends up drinking and she's at a a feast and she's drinking from a cup and there's a little worm in the cup and she drinks the worm and the worm goes into her belly and suddenly she's pregnant and then lou comes and says to her by the way that guy that came to you in the dream at new bridge that was me and you're going to have a baby and you're going to call him safanta and he's going to be very very renowned he's going to live a short but prolific famous life and of course he does the rest of the say his free history you make me want to go and read it all myself now yeah absolutely yeah the hook here is the fact that while you know you would imagine this is the sort of action that should happen at our maca which is you know nathan fort which is outside aramaic city you you should you would imagine that that's where the action should take place but instead there's this contrivance to make it happen at newgrange it involves swans and swans i've heard lots about astronomy and all the rest but swans could can be considered sort of cycle pumps as well other world guides it's like the swans take them away from our maca to bring them to new grange but it's new range in winter with snow falling and lou arrives and it it sort of very very much makes it an otherworldly setting for the whole thing but the fact that it pertains to possible incest and is really very interesting in my view yeah yeah i think that's what's excited the minds of of many people you know that have read the the headlines um has that covered the all myths that pertain or is there one more there's a third yeah there's a third there's a third and and this is probably the most the the most important tale pertaining to new grange is the one called talk mark eating which means the wooing of etane um and this is a curious story in itself because until the 20th century only a fragmented form of it existed in laura mahira the book of the don cow which is the earliest irish manuscript that we have containing mythological tracts dating to the late 11th or early 12th century right and it was only in the 20th century that another manuscript was discovered with a more complete version and so we were able to stitch the whole story together uh from the different sources it's curious because at the center of the action or at the center of the story is the most beautiful woman in ireland and her name is or eden in modern irish and um it's it's directly connected with new grange in the first part of the story there are three parts and the curious thing here is that in each of the three parts etam returns and is central to the action but the second part takes place a thousand years after the first part or the second and the third part of a thousand years later it's suggesting perhaps that there's a theme here of reincarnation you know uh as etane uh comes back but that's not what's important here in the first story uh this is this is the famous story about how angus og uh uh gains ownership of sheed and broga which is the old name the old irish name of newgrange um and uh he he is his father is dog that was a solar deity and his mother is bowen bowan or boeing uh she's the deity who gives her name to the boyne river and um elkmar is a boaan's husband and uh he's the owner of new grain sheet and broga comes along and he wishes to bed elkmar's wife bowen and he sends outmar away on an errand and he casts magic spells on him and all the rest uh that basically will see the dilation of time or the contraction of time depending on your point of view elkmar will think that he's only away for one day but in fact he'll be away for nine months which is long enough for the couple as in don dan bowen to conceive angus and for him to be born now when he's born he is secreted away and uh he is fostered by major midi or major of brelay which is a monument uh in longford in sort of the irish midlands okay so elkmar comes back and doesn't know any different he doesn't know that his wife has been unfaithful to him now uh i'm going to try and cut a long story short because it's the third part that really is the most significant uh angus is slagged off by some of the uh the boys his fellow foster foster brothers at uh relay because he doesn't know who his parents are and he says to major is this true and major says look i'll tell you who your folks are and he brings them to see the doctor doug that tells him to go to new grange and take a new grange from elk mer and he does so successfully and ousts elkhmar and angus becomes the owner of newgrange in fact even down to the 20th century local people in the boyne valley referred to newgrange uh as uh brew machan oak which means the brew of the yongsan because according to the myth young was the son who was conceived at the beginning of the day and born between that and the evening of the same day which is again to do with the dilation of time by the way when pogda entered the house of elk which is how newgrange was described he made the sun stand still in the sky which is a direct reference in mythological and symbolizes symbolic language of the winter solstice chamber anyway in the second version a thousand years later uh yucky arum is the king the high king and uh he is he he he he weds 18 and she's back in another form and again she's the most beautiful woman in ireland and his brother falls in love with her his brother aileel falls in love with her and is desperately so desperately in love with her that he pines away and he's sick and he's dying uh and uh he eventually confesses to eating the the cause of his illness he says look i'm mad in love with you and i want to get into bed with you and she says look we're not going to do that in the king's court and so she used to meet him somewhere else and what happens is that a phantom man like this sort of spectral character comes to her and begs her and later reveals to her after sleeping with her three times that in fact i'm not i'll i'm major from the original story i would you know you were my woman originally and you're going to be my woman again in the third version of the story uh yoki aram is still the king and this time what happens is major comes to term where he rules and basically lets it be known that he wants uh eating but all he's looking for initially is for a hug and a kiss from her and the king actually agrees to this uh but uh in agreeing to this he he uh he adds certain um uh onerous uh uh um conditions conditions as a purpose and major has to do all sorts of tasks and in order to get this but on the appointed day when the appointed day arrives major is coming to tara to get his hug and kiss from eating of course yucky has the whole place surrounded with all his warriors and and it is like breaking into fort knox however magically major appears in the center of the king's court amidst all the men or and of course no one knows how he got in there and he grabs eating and they fly up through the smoke hole in the in in the roof and uh they disappear and the the men confused and the king go outside and they see two swans flying off together and this is most this is most remarkable but yucky aaron is determined to have revenge and his revenge is that he is going to destroy every she every sheed mound in ireland until he finds this you could use insert strong word here yeah yes wretch who has stolen his wife and so he destroys several of them and then he comes to breelay which is the one you should go to in the first place because it's major is kind of home place and uh he confronts major there and you know uh steals etane back off major i'll read this bit this is from um um mckillips oxford dictionary of celtic mythology i won't read enough of it to to warrant any copyright infringement um yucky and his men resolve to have eating back even if it means destroying every shoe in ireland as major is thought to have flown through the she of feminine in the south yuki goes there without success and so destroys many others at last going on to mid year's residence at breelay in the center of ireland mitchell responds by producing 50 women all in the shape of etane to the to so that no one can tell who is the true queen yuki asserts of course he says i know my queen how does he know her he knows her by the way she pours a drink okay so he proceeds with all of the women pouring a drink until he finds the one who says no that's our that's her i know by the way she pours her drink he chooses who he thinks is his wife by this test and resumes married life with her but it is not eating major having bound yucky to no further recriminations tells him that the true e team was pregnant when they left tara in other words when they flew in and thus the woman who he has brought back to tara to carry on married life with is in fact his own daughter another eating and that she actually she shouldn't be confused with yet another daughter eating oak so there's there's more than uh there's more than two eatings actually horrified at his deception yohi arab lays waste to brielle rescues the true eating his wife and returns with her to taro the child of yoki's incestuous union is put out to die but she is found and raised by a herdsman and his wife once mature she has the stateliness of her royal forebears and is celebrated for her fine embroidery so here again in the stories we have a mention of incest no yes it's not immediately directly related to new range because it's the third part of the story and of course that relates mostly to tara and debris the fact of the matter is that what a top mark etan represents the three sections of it represent the the effort of this otherworldly meteor who's undoubtedly uh a dam and deity to be with this uh beautiful lady this otherworldly lady eating eternally and so in all three stories it is it is fundamentally about him and far and in third one there is deception of the king to the extent that the king ends up uh betting uh his own daughter so there are three actually yeah you know three stories pertaining to incest and new grinch um the thing that you know um always uh amazes me and hearing you speak so eloquently to the myth you know and you're where you live you're sitting right on top of it but i think uh hopefully the thing that people haven't been aware before that are watching this show and hearing this interview is how uh we have myth that has been written down and pertains directly so to events so far back in time where everywhere else all we've got to go on is pottery and if you'll forgive what i'm about to say so putting flesh on bones you know it's certainly helping spur our imaginations together with uh the evidence that we get from the most incredible scientific um investigations that can be done through isotopic stuff through dna and all the rest and how the evidence that has long been in the ground uh or that has been excavated you know that's been extant and in the archaeological realm for so long can be re-examined and uh uh and the story again i'm gonna use that fleshed out kiss kissing word again you know it's it's totally fleshed out you know so there is a you know there's an overlap in between the written word and what people are extrapolating it's just from raw data it becomes so much more magical and profound when you take it out of the realms of you know we're talking about races and cultures and now we're talking about people um yeah yeah yeah it just makes such a difference i think uh i the distinction that kind of struck me uh when i was reading this paper that we're referring to is that it's a story well it's got two halves to it it's got the thing where we get closer to people and what people were up to at a particular moment in time and yet at the same time it's got this broad reach of uh history not history you know but the broad reach of several hundred years in which to contextualize that uh that behavior and bringing together cultures that may have extended right from uh brittany from the north uh west of france up you know the uh and from the atlantic seaboard to ireland and across even to you know bring kethley v and mays howe uh and other places that exhibit the tradition of the passage tomb because that's the other thing that seems to uh link up you know new grange we call it a passage tomb but that tradition seems to be linked to and the mythology of the sun keeps coming up and the arresting of time and all that it seems so much to be tied up with some kind of worship in which the top echelons of whatever hierarchy it was were involved yeah i think what's interesting too is well of course the uh the truth is never black or white usually lies somewhere in the grays in between in this case um what's interesting about the two of the damn who are related to the mounds through they're the ones who are said to build the monuments of course the christian scribes did various tried various methods by which to reconcile the dead in mythology with their own beliefs to to make it more acceptable in some cases they demonized them they said they were fallen angels they said that there were humans who had human lineages etc etc and again the truth is likely to be gray here rather than black or white one wonders whether there were humans involved in the commanding of the building of these structures who were seen to have been god kings yes were seen to have been deities and afterwards of course it was very easy for them to become immortalized even though there was a very significant change as you know with the the beaker horizon into things and and that was an entirely different dna set from which the modern irish population is mostly derived as the beaker no neolithic and yes yes would appear that aspects of the neolithic culture survive in some of our myths now there are irish scholars who will say no absolutely not the very fact that this this myth refers to the tower of nimrod as proof that it was only written down and and you know it was concocted in the middle ages or whatever i disagree with that i think that that is just as i say uh an incursion or an effort on behalf of the scribe to make it more palatable um speak what's interesting too about the paper is that they found a relationship between ng 10 and some of these from the sligo complex indeed yeah yeah and they had already i think ascertained in a previous study that boom the people who were interred in this lego complex were part it was a the idea was that these were familial graves yeah yeah and it brings to mind a whole question about who was buried in the monuments which is of course been since o'kelly for instance since professor o'kelly uh dug the first side at newgrange in 1962 this has been a question who was buried in there now curiously there weren't very many remains found in eugrange although i believe uh anecdotally was said that some material was removed in the two centuries after the monument was opened up again in 1699 a.d but i just wonder whether in fact there wasn't a huge volume in the first place because it was set out for this particular uh ruling elite or whatever you want to call them it's ruling and whether that's into that in the mythology because in the midst it's doug da elkmar and angus are the owners of newgrange and it depends on which trade you read elkmar is the owner and is kicked out by angus or dagda is the owner and is kicked out by his son angus and and so it's limited the the ownership and the construction of the monument is is is um uh is said to have been carried out by dagda yeah so one wonders another thing that's curious too is that throughout the past couple of centuries anecdotally among the peasantry in ireland it was always said that the irish were descended from the malaysians but until about seven or eight years ago that the archaeologists would have said no we're descended from the mesolithic culture that in fact we we have the the genes of this culture that this insular culture that seem to have according to the paper the new paper about newgrange this culture lived relatively isolated and that there didn't seem to have been many visitations from uh from people at that time from from mainland britain or from europe absolutely yeah yeah but in fact dna studies have shown us only in the past decade that the the folklore the folk belief was true all along if if you uh if you were to propose as i have done that de danon mythology refers to the neolithic and malaysian mythology refers to the beaker slash bronze age then you see uh the mythology being true all along which is that in fact we have this uh descent from uh the the beaker culture so genetics all of a sudden in a decade not even a decade has completely revolutionized and as i said gone some significant way to answering the questions in relation to the incest one problem which remains and i don't think is is answerable in the modern age which is this whole question pertaining to was it taboo what was the opinion of the masses about you know the incestuous union of the the people who are obviously going to be interred in the monuments and who are perhaps commanding them to build them we may not we we may never know that bit um but certainly all of a sudden we're looking at everything we've written about newgrange in the past 20 years and we're saying well it's going to have to be revised to some degree you know [Laughter] this last uh few minutes i think we might have exploded a few brains and uh at the very least at least uh given much food for thought there's so much contained in what we've just covered um i'm sure we will have to revisit it again revisit it again if not by popular demand um then our own fascination will drive us here again and and of course the the the research is ongoing with the dna analysis as well they're widening the uh the the samples so i i think you know we will have plenty more to be talking about as as the results come in well of course so this is very important because a previous study had three bronze age samples and one neolithic now we have 42 neolithic and two so with that expanded data set we can do so much more it really it's it's it's an exciting time to be involved in this you know we're finding out we're starting to lean towards answers to the big big questions you know yeah and on on that note i think it's time to draw our conversation to an end unfortunately unfortunately but hey there will be a next time i look forward to it anthony thank you thank you for being with us and um for all the detail that you you bring to this area which uh can seem confusing i hope uh this is um a little talk little conversation has done much to unravel um some of the thoughts that may sprung up on your mind as a result of that short headline that happened absolutely in the media a few a few weeks ago and with that we'll say uh thanks for watching for watching and we'll say cheerio so it's bye bye from me and it's bye from me and bye from me it's not before cheerio folks cheerio bye-bye thank you for watching this pre-history guys show there's loads more to watch and you can get some of it on this playlist here if you'd like to receive updates about when we publish new content hit the subscribe button and you can unlock even more content by becoming a patreon supporter hit this button here to find out more about that see you soon

Channel: The Prehistory Guys

Views: 7,414

Rating: 4.8997216 out of 5

Keywords: standing with stones, michael bott, rupert soskin, standing stones, ancient history discoveries, neolithic era, neolithic man, megalithic builders, megalithic culture, megalithic europe, megalithic monuments, prehistoric archaeology, anthony murphy mythical ireland, anthony murphy, neolithic ireland, lara cassidy trinity college dublin, brú na bóinne, newgrange incest, newgrange dna, elites in the neolithic, neolithic dna, incest in the neolithic, mythical ireland

Id: bfULqbyKQaE

Length: 66min 41sec (4001 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020