A Historian Shared Her Bold Claim About How Early Humans Really Looked

In April 2021 the documentary The Burren: Heart of Stone aired on the Irish television network RTÉ. And in it, experts made several startling claims about the first people to populate this windswept corner of western Ireland. But what they found raises plenty of questions, flipping widely-accepted theories of human evolution upside down.

Up until recently, you see, many believed that humans first arrived on Irish shores around 12,500 years ago. After all, the landmarks of an ancient population can be found across the country, in Neolithic structures such as the dolmens — stone tombs — of County Clare. But now, researchers have found evidence of much earlier habitation— and that’s not the only surprise. 

Were the first inhabitants of Ireland really the farmers who arrived around the time of the Neolithic revolution, covering the Burren in megaliths and stone walls? Or were they the successors to a much older population? And if so, how different were they from the early humans that we have pictured for most of our lives?

Set within the rugged landscape of County Clare, the Burren is a world away from the green and pleasant image that most have of Ireland today. In fact, some have likened its stark and rock-littered appearance to that of the moon. But while it may not have rolling hills or flower-strewn meadows, the region has a charm all of its own.

Back when humans first arrived, you see, the Burren was a completely different place. Rather than the barren landscape that you see today, it was a lush Eden carpeted in ancient trees, the thick forest providing shelter for a multitude of animals. And in this environment, a population of skilled hunter-gatherers made their home.

After a while, these bands of hunter-gatherers gave way to an agricultural society, and basic structures were raised across the Burren. And although their farming methods gradually decimated the landscape as they knew it, their ancient megaliths remained. Now, thousands of years later, the monuments draw busloads of tourists to the countryside of County Clare. 

According to recent estimates, there are about 70 Neolithic structures scattered across the Burren. Some of these, such as the structure at Poulnabrone, are dolmens: a type of small tomb made from two vertical slabs and one horizontal capstone. Others, meanwhile, are larger cairns, sometimes designed to incorporate multiple burial chambers.

Later, the Bronze Age people of Ireland constructed their own tombs and mounds across the Burren. And in 1854 workers in nearby Newmarket-on-Fergus discovered a vast collection of gold dating from the same era, known as the Mooghaun North Hoard. Sadly, much of it was melted down and sold, with only a few objects remaining today.

Because of the Burren’s rich history, it has become something of a magnet for both archaeologists and amateur historians over the years. And while some might be searching for lost gold, others have a more scientific mission in mind. In The Burren: Heart of Stone, filmmaker Katrina Costello spoke to some of those working to uncover the truth about the region.

“The Burren landscape is a place shrouded in mystery, but in every rock and every stony field there is a story waiting to be told,” Costello told the website of newspaper the Irish Independent in 2021. “At first sight it’s a vast, wild empty landscape of bare rock, but local experts bring us through the Burren to reveal its secrets.”

“It is one of the most diverse landscapes on Earth, teeming with rarities from nature; a criss-cross of stone walls and an abundance of ancient monuments,” Costello continued. According to reports, the first half of the documentary focuses on the Burren’s unique geological and ecological features. But while interesting in its own right, that’s not the part which has caused such a stir.

In the second half of the documentary, entitled Symphony of Life, Costello speaks to a number of experts about the early humans who once inhabited the Burren. And what they have discovered changes what we know about the region’s history, shining a fascinating light on evolution within the British Isles and beyond. 

Already, experts had begun to expect that there was more to the story of early humans in Ireland than had previously been assumed. According to the documentary, reindeer bones have been found that prove people were butchering animals as many as 33,000 years ago — more than 20 millennia before their supposed arrival.  

But what were these early humans like? According to reports, these hunter-gatherers would have settled in the Burren’s coastal regions, practicing what is known as shifting agriculture. Essentially, they would set up camp in a certain area, living in wooden structures and decimating the local resources. When everything was used up, they would move on to a different location.

In the meantime, these early inhabitants caught shellfish and hunted wild animals for sustenance. Sometimes, they would head further inland, harvesting berries and nuts to supplement their diet. And for thousands of years, these people dominated the forests of western Ireland. Eventually, though, their way of life would fade as a new group of humans arrived on the scene.

Around 6,000 years ago, the social framework of the Burren was thrown into upheaval by the arrival of agricultural communities who had traveled west from modern-day Turkey. In fact, the earliest evidence of farming in all of Ireland can be traced back to this small region of County Clare. 

According to reports, the later settlers brought livestock and construction techniques to the relatively primitive landscape of the Burren. But the transition between these two societies might not have been an entirely peaceful one. Speaking in 2021 to newspaper The Irish Times, geneticist Lara Cassidy from Trinity College Dublin discussed the shift.  

“There could have been violence” Dr. Cassidy explained. “This would have been quite a dramatic colonization event.” But ultimately, evidence suggests that the hunter-gatherers and farming communities of early Ireland co-existed side-by-side — at least for a time. According to the geneticist, a recent analysis of ancient bone fragments suggests a surprisingly close connection.

By studying the remains of one early farmer, you see, researchers discovered that the individual was closely related to a member of the hunter-gatherer community. In fact, the connection may have been as recent as a great-grandparent. The two different groups, then, must have spent at least some time interbreeding with each other.

Eventually, though, the nomadic way of life disappeared and the agricultural communities of Ireland became dominant. And it was these people who built the Neolithic monuments that we see across the Burren today. Unlike the earlier hunter-gatherers, they chose sedentary farming methods, settling in one place and raising stone structures that would survive for thousands of years.

It was a shift in society that would transform the landscape of Ireland for good. Speaking to The Irish Times, environmental biologist Carl Wright explained, “[Early farmers] overgrazed the Burren during the climatic downturn of 3,000 years ago — this led to an environmental disaster on a colossal scale, because over a very short space of time we have massive soil erosion which pretty much left us with the landscape that we have at the end of the last Ice Age.” He explained how excessive grazing by animals had left the earth vulnerable to being “washed away” with just bare rock underneath left exposed.

And just as the influence of these early settlers can still be seen in the landscape of western Ireland, their genetic legacy continues as well. In the documentary, Dr. Cassidy reveals that the genes of the later settlers, who heralded the arrival of the Bronze Age, survive in the modern Irish population today.

But how exactly do scientists such as Dr. Cassidy use genes to unravel the secrets of the past? And what else can they tell us about the early people who thrived in regions such as the Burren? By using a technique known as sequencing, researchers are able to map out the DNA of an individual — and build a surprisingly complete picture of their ancestry.

In the case of the early humans of the Burren, Dr. Cassidy and her co-workers discovered some unexpected truths. Unlike the farmers who arrived in Ireland around 6,000 years ago, they believe, the hunter-gatherers of the region had dark skin and blue eyes. And according to DNA analysis, they were taller, too.

Apparently, the techniques employed by Dr. Cassidy are similar to those used by forensic investigators to solve crimes. And according to the documentary, they revealed beyond reasonable doubt that the early hunter-gatherer inhabitants of the Burren did not have light skin. In fact, it wasn’t until the arrival of farming societies thousands of years later that things began to change. 

Of course, a community of dark-skinned, blue-eyed people is not what most picture when they imagine life in the British Isles before the Neolithic revolution. But the experts featured in The Burren: Heart of Stone are not the only ones to have reached such a conclusion. In recent years, for example, a team of researchers discovered some similar revelations about the famous Cheddar Man.

Discovered in 1903 in a cave in Somerset in south-west England, Cheddar Man is the name given to a set of fossilized human remains. Believed to have lived some 10,000 years ago, this male individual was also part of an early hunter-gatherer community. And more than 100 years after his excavation, he remains the most ancient full skeleton ever found in Britain. 

In 2018 a group of researchers from London’s Natural History Museum, where the remains of Cheddar Man are kept, were able to extract DNA from part of his skull. And through a process of genetic mapping, they determined that the individual likely once had green eyes, wavy or curly hair — and dark skin. 

Like the discoveries at the Burren, this revelation was somewhat unexpected. After all, most had assumed that Cheddar Man would have been light-skinned and dark-eyed, like many of the inhabitants of Somerset today. And early reconstructions of the Mesolithic human had reflected these common misconceptions.

In 2022, though, a new reconstruction was released, taking into account the results of the latest DNA research. And it came as something of a shock to Adrian Targett, a Somerset teacher who was identified as a direct descendant of Cheddar Man back in 1997. According to reports, he recognized some of his own features in the new face staring back.

So what was it that had previously caused experts to believe that ancient hunter-gatherers were light-skinned in appearance? And why have these recent revelations turned things on their head? According to Archaeology Magazine, formerly received wisdom had suggested that skintones had lightened as early humans migrated out of sun-drenched Africa and into more shady environments.

In warmer climates, you see, darker skin offered protection from the powerful Sun. But in different, cooler environments, a fairer complexion would have provided an advantage, absorbing more vitamin D from natural light. It seemed reasonable to assume, then, that this transformation began when early humans first left Africa around 40,000 years ago.

Now, though, the team investigating the Cheddar man have suggested that this shift happened much later, around the time that the first farming societies migrated west. And this ties in with what Dr. Cassidy and her coworkers found in the Burren, some 400 miles west of where Targett’s ancestor was discovered. 

“He is just one person, but also indicative of the population of Europe at the time,” Natural History Museum researcher Tom Booth said of Cheddar Man back in 2018. “They had dark skin and most of them had pale colored eyes, either blue or green, and dark-brown hair. [He] subverts people’s expectations of what kinds of genetic traits go together.”

“It seems that pale eyes entered Europe long before pale skin or blond hair, which didn’t come along until after the arrival of farming,” Dr. Booth continued. “[Cheddar Man] reminds us that you can’t make assumptions about what people looked like in the past based on what people look like in the present.” And Dan Bradley, a population genetics professor at Trinity College Dublin, agreed. 

“The earliest Irish would have been the same as Cheddar man and would have had darker skin than we have today,” Dr. Bradley told the website Ireland Calling in 2020. These people, he added, would have had their roots in central European countries such as Hungary and Luxembourg, as well as further west in Spain.

Although it may have happened much later than was previously believed, though, experts maintain that the eventual shift in complexion was the result of environmental factors. Dr. Bradley continued, “The current, very light skin we have in Ireland now is the end point of thousands of years of surviving in a climate where there’s very little sun[light].”

“It’s an adaptation to the need to synthesize vitamin D in skin,” Dr. Bradley added. “It’s taken thousands of years for it to become like it is today.” But that’s not to say that the legacy of the darker hunter-gatherers has disappeared completely from the British Isles. In fact, people like Targett are thought to make up around 10 percent of the modern population.

Because of the amount of painstaking research required, The Burren: Heart of Stone reportedly took 13 years to complete. But now, people such as Costello and Dr. Cassidy are reaping the rewards as their work makes headlines around the world. And in March 2022 the documentary aired on American television for the first time, introducing millions of viewers to a new way of looking at human evolution.