Ancient Celtic Irish Musical Instruments Found to be Still used in South India

An archaeologist studying musical horns from iron-age Ireland has found musical traditions, thought to be long dead, are alive and well in south India.

The realisation that modern Indian horns are almost identical to many iron-age European artefacts reveals a rich cultural link between the two regions 2,000 years ago, said PhD student Billy Ó Foghlú, from The Australian National University (ANU).

"Archaeology is usually silent. I was astonished to find what I thought to be dead soundscapes alive and living in Kerala today," said the ANU College of Asia-Pacific student.

"The musical traditions of south India, with horns such as the kompu, are a great insight into musical cultures in Europe's prehistory.

"And, because Indian instruments are usually recycled and not laid down as offerings, the artefacts in Europe are also an important insight into the soundscapes of India's past."

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Celts Were NOT (!) the Ancient Irish?

A team of geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen's University Belfast has sequenced the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, and the information buried within is already answering pivotal questions about the origins of Ireland's people and their culture.

The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and those of three men from a later period, around 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking. Their landmark results are published today in international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

Ireland has intriguing genetics. It lies at the edge of many European genetic gradients with world maxima for the variants that code for lactose tolerance, the western European Y chromosome type, and several important genetic diseases including one of excessive iron retention, called haemochromatosis.

However, the origins of this heritage are unknown. The only way to discover our genetic past is to sequence genomes directly from ancient people, by embarking on a type of genetic time travel.

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Irish Potato Blight Pathogen Originated in South America

Using some ancient DNA detective work, a new study led by University of California Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Mike D. Martin and University of Copenhagen professor Tom Gilbert has linked the culprit behind the 19th-century Irish potato famine, which was transported to Europe in the 1840s, to a fungus-like organism that originated in South America.

Just how the pathogen, called Phytophthora infestans, made the transatlantic leap to destroy potato crops on a global scale is a "Guns, Germs, and Steel"-like tale of New World exploration and devastation published in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution.

The authors used genome sequences from 71 modern and historical samples of the microbial pathogen, a unique collection culled from worldwide private archives, to construct the ancestral tree of the pathogen. The origin of the species dates back to 1558 AD, the age when the first Europeans explored South America.

The research team further observed that the species was first introduced to 19th-century Europe shortly after it evolved and diversified. They found a close connection between a present-day sister species, P. andina (found only in the highlands of Ecuador and Peru) and the ancient P. infestans that triggered the first global outbreak in 1845 and the catastrophic Irish potato famine.

The authors speculate that after being found in South America, the pathogen either spread from South America directly to the U.S., or was simultaneously introduced from Mexico into South America and the U.S. prior to its infestation of Europe. "We think early European activities in the New World led to the origin of this devastating pathogen. Countless improbable events led to the introduction of this species to Europe in 1845, but our work narrows down the evolutionary possibilities to exactly two," said Martin.

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Galway, Ireland Helping to Bring Robopocalypse for Sailors

Fully autonomous and unmanned sailing boats will be racing across Galway Harbour from 9-13 September, when Galway City hosts the seventh World Robotic Sailing Championship (WRSC).

The boats, up to 2.5 metres in length, will compete over a series of short-distance races, navigation and autonomy challenges, such as accuracy, endurance, co-operation, obstacle avoidance, target tracking, and speed in different conditions.

Teams from Galway, Wales, the US, Finland, France, Portugal and Russia will participate in the event, which Ireland is hosting for the first time.

The WRSC also highlights the potential of robotic sailing, in terms of long-range and long-term autonomous wind-propelled, solar or wave-powered carbon-neutral devices, and how the devices can help monitor environmental, ecological, meteorological, hydrographic and oceanographic data, as well as be used in security, traffic monitoring, and assistance and rescue.

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Little Scotlanders Alarm Nothern Irish Orangists

Horrified that Scotland might break up the United Kingdom by voting for independence this autumn, thousands of Northern Ireland loyalists are preparing to fight back using their favored 17th century battle regalia: drums, flutes, banners and orange sashes.

Loyalists, named for their allegiance to the British throne, will march in Edinburgh five days before Scotland's Sept. 18 independence vote in a powerful expression of their concern at the threat to the union that currently underpins the troubled province's identity, struggling economy and divided politics.

By breaking up the United Kingdom, Scotland would force England and Northern Ireland to reassess their constitutional relationship, whose divisive details helped to fuel 30 years of bloodshed between Protestant loyalists and Catholic republicans who wanted to unite with the Irish Republic to the south.

"Scottish nationalism poses a threat to the union which is more powerful than Irish Republicanism," said Mike Nesbitt, head of the Ulster Unionist Party, the region's second largest pro-British party. "Whatever the result is, there will be some form of recalibration of the union," he added.

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Those Crazy Celts: The Cups Song in Gaelic

Constrast with:

and what is playing on the radio:

Definite fondness for the Celtic one.

Ireland Invaved by French Snails...8,000 Years Ago

Some snails in Ireland and the Pyrenees are genetically almost identical, perhaps because they were carried across the Atlantic during an 8000-year-old human migration. The snail genetics tie in with studies of human genetics and the colonization of Ireland, according to the research published June 19 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Angus Davison and colleagues from the University of Nottingham, UK.

Despite being thousands of miles apart, one variety of banded wood snails from Ireland and southern France share similar shell patterns and mitochondrial genes that are rarely seen in other areas of Europe. Davison explains, "There is a very clear pattern, which is difficult to explain except by involving humans. If the snails naturally colonized Ireland, you would expect to find some of the same genetic type in other areas of Europe, especially Britain. We just don't find them."

He adds, "There are records of Mesolithic or Stone Age humans eating snails in the Pyrenees, and perhaps even farming them. The highways of the past were rivers and the ocean – as the river that flanks the Pyrenees was an ancient trade route to the Atlantic, what we're actually seeing might be the long lasting legacy of snails that hitched a ride, accidentally or perhaps as food, as humans travelled from the South of France to Ireland 8,000 years ago."