Population and
Society
Summary. This places Ireland in its geographical, climatic and social
contexts in the post-glacial period, and indicates where we must look to find
the features which influenced the people of Ireland.
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The
Physical Environment
The Writing of History
By history is normally meant the accurate
recounting of conditions and events in the past as recorded in written sources,
or at times oral sources. In Ireland, writing did not come into common use
until the sixth or seventh century. Even then the matters recorded in writing
often merely reflected an unreliable oral tradition. Therefore, before the age
of writing we have to deduce as much as we can from surviving material sources.
If we find field systems and pollen from a given period we can deduce not only
that agriculture was practised, but also we can determine what crops were sown.
Similarly, if many weapons are found we can deduce that warfare was common.
With regard to matters like social organisation, we can draw conclusions from
the practice in other societies that were until recently at a similar stage of
social development. With regard to the Palaeolithic period we can look to
practice among the Eskimos and among the aborigine people of Australia.
We
can also draw on writing from other parts of the area, from the Near East and the Mediterranean. Not only do these
record information about those places in ancient times, but also ancient
accounts are preserved of their observations of other contemporary peoples.
Scholars therefore can draw on a variety of sources. It remains true however
that what we call political history, the political events and the wars, the
names of rulers and the dates of battles cannot be written without written
sources. Before that date we have social and economic history and archaeology.
Throughout this book the terms Middle East and Near East are used interchangeably, and refer to
the lands of the Fertile
Crescent from
Egypt to Iran. Formerly the name Near East was used,
but from about the time of World War II, the term Middle East was preferred. Older reference books
refer to Near
East.)
Social Influences on Ireland
When
we study the history and society of Ireland we must consider the factors which
influenced them, both those peculiar to Ireland and those from outside. Soil, climate
and communications are obviously important. So too are the various peoples,
their cultures, and their institutions, which influenced the development of Ireland. Some of these could have had a
distant origin, agriculture, the use of horses in warfare, the stirrup, the use
of writing, and so on, but all eventually affected Ireland. At times the influence was indirect.
The horsemen from the steppes never invaded Ireland, but the development of feudalism and
heavy cavalry, which were responses to the mounted warriors from the steppes had a powerful influence over Ireland. The Romans never came to Ireland, but Roman culture was to have a
preponderating influence over Irish society after the introduction of
Christianity. The development of Irish society was influenced by events such as
the development of cities in Mesopotamia, the development of agriculture in the Near East, the interaction between the nomads of
the steppes, and the agriculturists of the settled lands. It was to be
profoundly influenced by the development of religion and religious ideas in the
Near East. The culture of Greece had little direct influence on Ireland. Such influence as it had was due to the incorporation of some of its facets in Roman
civilisation or Christianity. It should be noted that most of these
developments had an almost identical influence on nearby Britain.
The Geographical Region
From
the preceding section flows the determination of the Geographical Region, that
part of the world which influenced the development of Irish society directly or
indirectly. Ireland is part of the land-mass continuum
comprising Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its people are obviously part of the white
branch of the human race whose geographical extension is bounded on the south
by the Sahara Desert and to the east by the deserts and
mountains of central Asia.
With regard to the spread of agriculture, the tropical forests of Central Africa formed the southern boundary and the
dark-skinned peoples of the savannahs or tropical grasslands belonged to the
same culture area as the pastoral peoples of the European steppes. Historically
the black pastoralists of North Africa impacted very little on Eurasia, while the white pastoralists of the steppes and
the Arabian shrublands impacted continually. So in this case also the Sahara must be regarded as the boundary. In
the eastern part of Central
Asia some of
the peoples might be regarded as belonging to the Mongoloid or yellow race, but
linguistically and culturally they belong to Central Asia, and had a profound impact on much of Europe, and the Middle East. Places like China, India, South East Asia, Australia, South Africa, and the Americas are consequently excluded.
Except
perhaps for the spread of monasticism from India the influence of the first two centres
on Ireland was probably negligible.
Climate
The
period we are concerned with is from approximately 10000 BC to the present. The
earliest users of tools may date back to about half a million years ago, but
modern Homo sapiens sapiens does not antedate 100000 BC.
About 50000 BC at the height of the last Ice Age, he apparently spread out of Africa and split into the great divisions of
the human race, commonly called black, white and yellow. With the fall in
sealevel there would have been low coastal plains all along the continents
providing easy routes. About 20,000 BC the temperature of the earth suddenly
started to rise, and by about 15000 BC the last Ice Age was deemed over. The
pattern of the winds changed and the Sahara dried out as forests and grasslands spread over Europe and Asia.
A great growth in the human population
occurred after the ending of the Ice Age. The hunter-gatherers moved north as
the ice retreated and the forests and the herds of animals revived over the
lands that had been covered with ice and permafrost. The average temperature of
the world continued to rise until it reached a maximum about 5,000 BC and
continued to decline ever since that peak. The decline was not smooth or
continuous but rose and fell from time to time. As the average temperature
might be a few degrees higher than at present living conditions would have been
satisfactory at levels hundreds of feet higher than at present. Roman forts on Hadrian’s Wall or in the Welsh mountains were
probably more comfortable than they would be at the present time. This is
especially true if rainfall is taken into consideration.
But
besides the fluctuations in temperature there were fluctuations in the wind
pattern. At times like the present the cool moist winds from the Atlantic prevailed; at other times hotter and
colder winds from the North (Boreas
in Latin and Greek) or from central Asia were dominant. These changes naturally caused
changes in the vegetation, especially in the growth of bogs. Since Romans times
the changes have been less, but may have been quite significant with regard especially
to sea conditions in the Viking period.
The
distribution of rainfall and temperature meant that the whole region was
covered in basically four different kinds of vegetation. North of 56 degrees
north, the southern tip of Sweden, lay the coniferous forest belt. South
of this was the region of the deciduous forests. This was triangular in shape
with its base extending along most of the Atlantic coast of Europe narrowing to a point in the Ural Mountains about 53 degrees north. The further
east one went from the Atlantic coast the lower the rainfall became, so that
grass became the dominant crop. These grasslands were called steppes in
Russian. In southern Europe
and along the coasts of North Africa, and into the Middle East, shrubs and scrubland predominated. Where the rainfall fell below a
certain level, deserts prevailed. These are only broad generalisations, and the
transition from one zone to another was rarely sharp.
Ireland lay entirely in the region of the
deciduous forests, and the natural cover was thick forests of alder, oak, and
elm. Vegetation too could be affected locally by the type of soil and
underlying rock, chalklands being more lightly covered than clay soils. Poor
drainage meant that a considerable amount of the land was covered by bogs and
marshes. In Ireland, an effect of the glaciation was the
eskers, or lines or banks of well drained gravels that provided routes east and
west across the country. As the Neolithic period developed cultivation altered
the cover, but as soon as cultivation ceased, the spot reverted to its natural
covering.
Warfare and travel were largely confined to
the summer half of the year. As the writer of the 2 Book of Samuel noted, ‘In the spring of the year, the when kings go forth to
battle...’ (2 Sam 11.1). And Chaucer noted too, ‘Whan
that Aprille with his shoures sote, the droghte of Marche had perced to the rote....Than longen
folk to goon on pilgrimages’ (Canterbury Tales.) Time and time again we observe
the constraints of geography and climate on the events of Irish history. As
late as 1690 there was only one major route which an army could use between
Carrickfergus and Dublin and this was blocked by the Jacobite
army. But William was guided by a local man sideways on to the road from Armagh to Dublin. The Jacobite army withdrew to the Boyne and William’s army was ravaged by
disease as it camped in an unhealthy area around Dundalk. Malaria and dysentery destroyed more
foreign troops than swords or muskets. Again, up to the year 1000 AD the
Northern O’Neills were consistently among the most powerful chiefs in Ulster and indeed in Ireland. But as the horse became more
important in warfare, and the economy of Ulster did not develop to the same extent as
the rest of Ireland, the keeping of a sufficient number of
horses for cavalry imposed significant limitations on their power. There simply
was not enough grass to maintain a large cavalry force. But by the same token,
an English army under the Tudor governors could not advance into Ulster or maintain itself there except in the
summer and autumn when there was plenty of grass. The remedy was to plant Ulster with farmers who would drain the soil
and produce crops. These problems were not unique to Ireland but applied over the entire region
from Mongolia to the Atlantic.
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The Social
Environment
The People
The
present human race began to spread out of Africa between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago during the
last great Ice Age. Slight differences in the original gene pool produced considerable
variations resulting in the great diversity of mankind. The inhabitants of any
given place are the descendants of those who colonised the area during the Ice
Age. Former theories which held that successive waves of incoming invaders
wiped out and replaced the existing populations are now discarded. Peoples like
the Indo-Europeans gave their languages and ruling classes to huge areas but
did not replace the existing population. Indo-Europeans, Turks, Semites, etc.
are linguistic groups not distinct peoples. Rather
surprisingly too it was discovered that the spread of agriculture in Neolithic
times did not significantly affect the population of Europe, which remains essentially what it was
in the Palaeolithic period. It is always essential to keep the ideas of
population or gene pool, the linguistic groups like Indo-European or Semitic,
and artistic styles like Grecian or La Tene separate in one’s mind. Nationalist
theories in Ireland, England, and elsewhere perished on the fact
that there was not the slightest archaeological evidence of such invasions.
The Economic Systems
Man
had existed during the last Ice Age as a hunter-gatherer for at least a hundred
thousand years or four thousand generations. He had learned to use fire and
clothing. He had language and developed art. His tools were of wood, horn, or
flint. But after the last Ice Age, during the last 10,000 years or four hundred
generations there came a series of developments, rapid indeed compared with the
virtually static period which preceded it, but at first the changes were
scarcely perceptible to those who lived through them. We, looking back, might
notice significant changes over an interval of a thousand years or forty
generations. As generation succeeded generation small experiments were tried,
and if they proved successful they were adopted or adapted by others and spread
through most of the inhabited world. Instead of gathering fruits and seeds men
learned to gather some seed and plant it in favourable spots and to harvest it.
This led increasingly to more-or-less permanent settlements in place of the
wanderings of the hunter-gatherers who followed the herds of animals. Animals
too were gradually domesticated, so that instead of following wild flocks, the
herdsmen kept them under control. A herding life was also to some extent
nomadic for the flocks had to be kept together to a certain degree for
protection against theft or the ravages of predators, and moved around as the
grass was eaten up. If some crops were cultivated the movement would be
circular around the crops. But in the drier areas of the steppes the migration
area might be larger. The change to farming and pastoralism antedated the use
of metals. The carving of stone for example was done in Egypt without using metal.
In
addition, the use of metal gradually replaced flints, but the introduction of
metal weapons and tools did not mean that stone tools were abandoned. Most
people probably could not afford a metal tool. Pottery made from baked clay
became increasingly used among the sedentary peoples especially for making
vessels, but these were too heavy and too brittle for the nomadic peoples to
use. Almost anything at any time could be made of wood or leather. Where there
are no finds of objects made of stone, pottery, or metal we can suspect that
everyday objects were made of wood or leather. These only survive if preserved
under water.
Agriculture produced an increase in
population, and the production of surpluses which we call wealth, and the
differentiation of social structures into rich and poor, powerful and weak, the
minority who controlled and the majority subject to them. The growth of ruling
elites of interrelated families was probably the reason why so few language
systems covered the entire geographical areas. Firstly, a successful group of
families conquered a wide area, and every one then adopted the language of the
conquerors or of successive conquerors. The same is true of religion.
Primitive
buildings could be made from branches covered with grass of the skins of animals.
But in those parts of the Middle East where wood was scarce, even before the
invention of pottery which is a baked clay bricks made of sun-dried clay,
earth, or mud was used. These mud bricks were effective as long as they were
kept dry so sloping roofs with wide eaves were essential. But by baking the
clay, waterproof tiles could be used. Roofs then could be flat and this allowed
rainwater to be collected and stored. The flat roofs were made simply by laying
lengths of wood flat from one wall to the opposite one, covering them with
branches, grass and earth, and finally with a layer of tiles.
Outside
the dry belts of the Mediterranean lands and the Middle East wood was used universally for
buildings, and usually in conjunction with earth for fortifications. In China and Japan wood was used for almost every
building until recent times, and even the great Wall received a facing of stone
only a few centuries back. In North West Europe the use of stone and brick was
introduced by the Romans and largely disappeared as the Romans withdrew. The
return of the use of stone and brick can be an indicator of the ending of the
Dark Ages. The use of stone for buildings was probably introduced into Ireland from Wales about the beginning of the ninth
century. Building in stone had been reintroduced to Northumbria by St Benedict Biscop about 650, and
probably earlier to Kent by St Augustine about 600.
At the beginning of Neolithic times civilisation or life in towns, developed chiefly in
three centres each possessing great rivers and fertile soils. These were in the
North China Plain from which Chinese civilisation developed, the upper basins
of the Indus and Ganges in North-west India in which the Indian or Hindu culture
developed, and the so-called Fertile Crescent, the basins of the Euphrates and Tigris in South-west Asia and of the Nile in North-east Africa. This latter region eventually came to
consist of a belt of village and town civilisations in the Fertile Crescent, with extensions outwards from that in
various directions, especially along the Mediterranean Sea. Outside of that belt to north, east
and south, were various peoples with pastoral or
semi-pastoral economies.
Languages
Much study has been done over the
past hundred years into the origin and distribution of languages. Almost all of
them can be placed in the major groups, like the Semitic, Turkish, or
Indo-European groups spread over vast areas. It is a curious fact that no
common origin for these groups of languages can be discerned. The Indo-European
language group covers most of Europe
and stretches across Iran
into North-west India.
Whatever the date of its origin, it spread widely after the invention of
writing in the Middle East so scholars can make reasonable estimates regarding
the times it reached various districts, and the times various members of the
group, like Celtic or Latin, split off from the original language. Along the
southern side of the Mediterranean
the Semito-Hamitic group of languages spread and were prominent if not dominant
by the time language began to be recorded. Oddly, the oldest written language,
Sumerian, was like ancient Etruscan and modern Basque, unrelated to other
languages. Across the steppes into central Asia
the Turkish and Mongolian language groups are dominant. Sometimes a member of
the subgroup, like Russian or Arabic, themselves spread far and wide, replacing
the previous languages. The spread of a language does not indicate the spread
of a population. It is usually sufficient that a small military upper class to impose
their language. Or it can be the language of traders like ancient Aramaic or
modern Swahili.
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