Ultimate Ancestor Search

[Kirbstone]

Last week I took part in a 3-day Archaeolocical Soc. trip to Sligo and environs.

The place is peppered with Megalithic remains which generally are piles of stones in fields. Fact is that the modern researchers have amazing scientific tools at their disposal which help in no small way to unravel the mysteries locked within these stones.

A chap recently bowled his supervisors and examiners over when for his PhD he revealed frankly astounding facts about (among others) this pile of stones, gaining an unprecedented 95% in his thesis.

This cairn has of course been tidied up following recent excavation to reveal the passage & capstone Dolmen grave hidden for millennia beneath. The builders dragged this 10-tonne capstone from 15 miles away and mounted it precisely on its supports to face the rising Sun in the mountain saddle to the East on October 30th and Feb.10th (quarter days), inclined to allow the shadow cast by the central sunward pointed support stone to travel across the back of the grave interior.

There were just 7 people buried here, 2 males, 3 females and 2 children, perhaps an influential family, carbon dated to just over 5,800 years ago. The eldest male was about 60 years old, an amazing age when the average male lifespan was just 31 years.
DNA extracted from the long bones of the remains matched that taken from several of the current local schoolchildren , which attests that there has been continuous occupation of these parts by the descendants of those who erected this tomb nearly 6,000 years ago. About 250 generations.........Impressive!

Tom K.

[Sarongman]

Fascinating and so wonderful, when we, here in Aus. have only a 225 year history. This is not to belittle the 20,000+ year history of the Aboriginal people before the first fleet, but they lived so simply that the historical pickings are slim. Then There's the the Dutch ships washed ashore in the 1600s on the Western Australia coast, and if the "mahogany ship remains reappear on the South Aus. coast after over 70 years, it may turn out to be one of the ships of Admiral Zheng He's 1421 voyage of exploration and trade. Tony Robinson and Co. would have such slim pickings! My DNA on my Mother's side could match up to those in that dolmen, but my paternal is Saxon with a dash of Norman.

[Kirbstone]

Yes, The Chinese sent serious numbers of ships in your direction in 1421 and in 1434, apparently, but porcelain shards last better than wood, so the pickings are thin, as you say. What we have here are only stones & bones that are older than a millennium.

A few notable books & documents survive from early post-Christian years, but they've been kept in out of the elements.

T.