Neolithic and Bronze age migration to Ireland and establishment of the insular Atlantic genome

The Neolithic and Bronze Age transitions were profound cultural shifts catalyzed in parts of Europe by migrations, first of early farmers from the Near East and then Bronze Age herders from the Pontic Steppe. However, a decades-long, unresolved controversy is whether population change or cultural adoption occurred at the Atlantic edge, within the British Isles. We address this issue by using the first whole genome data from prehistoric Irish individuals. A Neolithic woman (3343–3020 cal BC) from a megalithic burial (10.3× coverage) possessed a genome of predominantly Near Eastern origin. She had some hunter–gatherer ancestry but belonged to a population of large effective size, suggesting a substantial influx of early farmers to the island. Three Bronze Age individuals from Rathlin Island (2026–1534 cal BC), including one high coverage (10.5×) genome, showed substantial Steppe genetic heritage indicating that the European population upheavals of the third millennium manifested all of the way from southern Siberia to the western ocean. This turnover invites the possibility of accompanying introduction of Indo-European, perhaps early Celtic, language. Irish Bronze Age haplotypic similarity is strongest within modern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh populations, and several important genetic variants that today show maximal or very high frequencies in Ireland appear at this horizon. These include those coding for lactase persistence, blue eye color, Y chromosome R1b haplotypes, and the hemochromatosis C282Y allele; to our knowledge, the first detection of a known Mendelian disease variant in prehistory. These findings together suggest the establishment of central attributes of the Irish genome 4,000 y ago.

Remembering forwards: or how to live together in the future with divided memories

Memory is thought to be about the past. The past is a problem in conflict transformation. This lecture suggests memory can also be about the future. It introduces the notion of remembering forwards, which is contrasted with remembering backwards. The distinction between these two forms of remembering defines the burden of memory in post-conflict societies generally and specifically in Ireland. In societies emerging out of conflict, where divided memories in part constituted the conflict, social memory privileges remembering backward. Collective and personal memories elide within social memory to perpetuate divided group identities and contested personal narratives. Above all, social memory works to arbitrate the future, by predisposing an extreme memory culture that locks people into the past. Forgetting the past is impossible and undesirable. What is needed in societies emerging out of conflict is to be released from the hold that oppressive and haunting memories have over people. This lecture will suggest that this is found in the idea of remembering forwards. This is not the same as forgetting. It is remembering to cease to remember oppressive and haunting memories. It does not involve non-remembrance but active remembering: remembering to cease to remember the past. While the past lives in us always, remembering forwards assists us in not living in the past. Remembering forwards thus allows us to live in tolerance in the future despite the reality that divided memories endure and live on. The lecture further argues that these enduring divided memories need to be reimagined by the application of truth, tolerance, togetherness and trajectory. The lecture suggests that it is through remembering forwards with truth, tolerance, togetherness and trajectory that people in post-conflict societies can inherit the future despite their divided pasts and live in tolerance in the midst of contested memories.