Who Liver in Ireland, Before The Celts?

[yojimbo]

From Pushkin’s wiki link

it has a distinctive dry and grainy flavor with a delicate aftertaste that becomes sweeter as it develops.

You have got to be kidding me? Delicate is not a word I’d ever use when talking about the taste of Poitín

[Southern_Yankee]

This begs the obvious question: Which member of The Who’s liver would be best to eat?

[Pushkin]

@yojimbo

From Pushkin’s wiki link You have got to be kidding me? Delicate is not a word I’d ever use when talking about the taste of Poitín

Does it taste of anything? I tried it and just had a bit of a burn as it went down. But then that was home brewed stuff, so I don’t know if the experience varies.

[Bobotheoptimist]

Still going off memory* because I didn’t have time to pull out my books last night (sorry) and I hope this isn’t getting too far off topic -
Some of the identifying characteristics of the various cultures are their burials, pottery, and jewelry (and language, when applicable) not genetics so much.
La Tene and Hallstadt (Halstatt? something like that) are two Celtic styles, Beaker is pre-Celtic style and technology that probably coincides the end of the Neolithic and start of the Bronze age, while megalithic tomb building predated beaker vessel (upside down bell pottery made with rings of clay - wiki pic) culture.

It’s difficult to make sharp divisions when most of your information comes from examining the remnants of the technology of the time. Just because the folks in one area stopped hauling huge rocks to honor their dead and started putting bodies in pots doesn’t mean they were a different race. IIRC, the early Beaker folk are believed to have been traders so as they made their way to Ireland with fancy bronze axes and their near-magical ability to turn mud into bowls, those they met may have abandoned the old ways and adopted the techniques of the rich and powerful foreigners.
Genetic testing has show some diversity coming in about that time, some of which could be nothing more than intermarriage. Yet as warlike as mythology suggests the Celts were, I don’t suppose it’s likely that everyone coming from Alba or Iberia did so with purely peaceful intentions. Their advanced technology and desire for land and raw material undoubtedly resulted in some conquests.

I don’t remember what the pre-beaker culture is called. Those who built the great passage tombs should have an impressive name, but for the life of me I can’t remember any.

• I am not an anthropologist, nor do I play one on TV.

[Bridget_Burke]

@An Gadaí

This reminds me of that BBC (?) programme that was on about genetics and the Celtic fringes of Britain. The presenters went to Wales, Cornwall and I think Scotland and interviewed people about their heritage. Many of them claimed to be distinctly or predominantly Cornish or Celtic etc in Wales but their genetic makeup indicated significant blurring of distinctions, they were all as much Anglo-Saxon as anything else. I’m not sure about Ireland where being geographically cut off there may well be more distinct differences.

The concept of a Celtic “invasion” of the British Isles, coming from Central Europe, then crossing the Channel (& the Irish Sea) has fallen out of favor. Bob Quinn’s The Atlantean Irish: Ireland’s Oriental and Maritime Heritage is a fascinating look at Irish origins. From the publisher:

Irish identity is best understood from a maritime perspective. For eight millennia the island has been a haven for explorers, settlers, colonists, navigators, pirates and traders, absorbing goods and peoples from all points of the compass.

The reduction of the islanders to the exclusive category ‘Celtic’ has persisted for three hundred years, and is here rejected as impossibly narrow. No classical author ever described Ireland’s inhabitants as ‘Celts’, and neither did the Irish so describe themselves until recent times.

The islanders’ sea-girt culture has been crucially shaped by Middle Eastern as well as by European civilizations, by an Islamic heritage as well as a Christian one. The Irish language itself has antique roots extended over thousands of years’ trading up and down the Atlantic seaways.

Quinn is an inspired amateur. But Barry Cunliffe wrote the preface of the latest edition of Quinn’s book. And his Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples 8000 BC-AD 1500 gives an academic, yet still quite readable, look at new concepts of European prehistory. (Glad I got my copy before it went OP!)

[Terminus_Est]

@Southern Yankee

This begs the obvious question: Which member of The Who’s liver would be best to eat?

John Entwistle’s liver would be a bit overripe by now; Keith Moon’s even more so. Pete Townshend has done far too much drugs and alcohol for his liver to be any good by now. Roger Daltrey has always been clean, as far as I know, so his liver would be good eating.

[danceswithcats]

@ElvisL1ves

Doesn’t Who liver require a nice Chianti?

You could ask Cindy Lou, but she’s only two.

[Captain_Amazing]

@yojimbo

From Pushkin’s wiki link You have got to be kidding me? Delicate is not a word I’d ever use when talking about the taste of Poitín

I don’t know. It’s much more delicate than most paint thinners.