This week we speak with Anthony Murphy from Mythical Ireland about the Irish logboats discovered at Brú na Bóinne. One of the boats had already been catalogued, but he found two more using his drone over the last few weeks. Join is in this great discussion with Anthony about the logboats and other cool things he has found using his drone.
Special Guest
Anthony Murphy is a journalist, photographer, author and astronomer who lives in Drogheda, at the gateway to Ireland’s historic Boyne Valley. He has spent more than 20 years researching, photographing and writing about the ancient megalithic monuments of the Boyne Valley and their associated mythology, cosmology and alignments.
Show Transcription
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David: [00:00:04] Hi, I’m David Allen Lambert and welcome to Virtual Historians. I’m here with my colleague and partner in crime, Terri O’Connell, as we bring another exciting adventure in how virtual reality in history have melded together to give you a new eye on history. You know, for a long time, since the late 1990s, I have known our next guest. Anthony Murphy has done so much with discoveries of neolithic archeology on what you may not know about me is I’m a life member of the Massachusetts Archeological Society and I dig archeology. I don’t bad pun, but for you young folks out there interested in archeology, what is being discovered even to this day in Ireland is amazing. So we are going across the pond right now to talk to our new friend, Anthony Murphy. Welcome.
[00:00:53]Anthony: Thank you very much for having me along.
[00:00:54] It’s a great pleasure to be here.
[00:00:56] David: Well, it’s, it’s a great pleasure for us to introduce everybody about amazing Facebook page that you have in the amount of videos. How on earth you have all the hours to put so much great content together. We, Terri and I have trouble just trying to get together to put together the content for this show.
[00:01:14] It’s amazing. It’s really amazing. And I think that a lot of people who kind of follow what I tweet out and Terri tweets out will probably know about this recent discovery you found using a drone. Could you tell us a little bit?
[00:01:26] Anthony: Yeah. I should probably tell you how I found this. I mean, Well, the major discoveries in archeology here in Ireland using drones are full of synchronicity and serendipity.
[00:01:38] And that was the case. Again recently, only a few weeks ago, actually a rare visitor came into the river Boyne in the form of a bottlenose dolphin. They’re not normally seen in rivers, more so off shore. And caused a bit of a stir, lots of people here locally were going down to the river to take pictures and get a look at this dolphin, which was later identified as a dolphin called Kevin Costner.
[00:02:05] Believe it or not the the people who monitor the dolphins of the Shannon estuary, where Kevin is normally resided, which is in the Southwest of the country called him Kevin Costner. They spotted him thirty five years ago, something around that. And apparently at that time, he was very protective of the females.
[00:02:23] And this was a time when the movie, The Bodyguard was that popular. They called him Kevin Costner because he was looking after the ladies. Well, Kevin visited Drogheda and eventually I decided, you know what, Anthony, it’d be great idea to go down to the river with the drone and see if you can get aerial photography or video of the dolphin.
[00:02:43] But by the time I actually got down there, which was a Sunday evening, he had given me the slip he had disappeared and he hasn’t been seen since, by the way. So presumably he’s back out at sea. Maybe he’s heading back down to the Shannon. On that evening, while flying the drone, I happened to arrive at low tide.
[00:03:03] And spotted what you might call a couple of anomalies in the river. And so I took it upon myself to go back the next evening, a little tight. And when I did that’s, when I spotted what I would call log boat, number one in the water, I mean you know, when you have a reasonably good knowledge of archeology as I do.
[00:03:22] I’m an enthusiast. So I’m not a professional or trained archaeologist. I was aware having published a story about it on my blog on Mythical Ireland in 2016, there was a log boat found, not too far up river from where I spotted this one. And it was later dated to the neolithic. It’s as old as the great monuments of Brú na Bóinne and Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth.
Newgrange ©Terri O’Connell 2015 
Knowth ©Terri O’Connell 2015
[00:03:45] And, so I spotted this thing in the river and I said, look, that’s not a tree that, that definitely looks like something manmade, but sort of rectangular profile. And I can fairly quickly see that there were like thin raised edges on it on either side parallel. You know? So when I took the drone down closer to it, I said, Hmm, that’s definitely, that has the look of perhaps a dugout boat or a log boat, we might call it. So when I go home, I sent the images to two archeologists friends, Dr. Steven Davis of University College Dublin, and a good friend of mine generally instead of the National Monument Service. And Steve said, look, that looks like a dugout boat, but do you mind if I send these images onto some other specialists?
[00:04:25] I said, no problem. And Geraldine came back and said, look, that’s definitely a dugout boat. Well done. And so within a short time, it was confirmed that it was a dugout boat. And that was the first of three finds in that stretch of the river. Sure.
[00:04:38] David: That’s amazing. Now from what I’ve read the date of these, they look like the ones that you recently found or from the medieval era, is that what they’re speculating?
[00:04:48]Anthony: Shortly after finding log boat, number two, close by I contacted, well, it was Steven Davis who forwarded my email to a specialist, Dr. Niall Gregory, who was an archeologist who literally his whole life has been dedicated. So the study of these craft. And one of the first things that Niall told me was that log boats in Ireland are notoriously difficult to date.
[00:05:11] And that’s because believe it or not, dugout boats is the official terminology that the archeologists use. Dugout canoes were in use in this country for that 7,000 years. From about five and a half thousand BC until about 1800 AD. And during that length of time, the design of the vessels changed very, very little.
[00:05:35] Because basically once you find an effective design and you hollow out the trunk of a tree to form a boat, that design sticks as it were. So it’s very difficult to look at a boat and say, yes, that’s neolithic. I mean, if we look at the monument, you know, if it’s a henge, we know it’s late neolithic.
[00:05:50] If it’s a cairn, we know it’s probably stone age, maybe bronze age, if it’s a ring fort we know it’s medieval, not so with the dougout boats. But from initial examination, it would appear that these belong to the medieval period because of certain characteristics, but that can’t be proven until such time as carbon dating takes place.
[00:06:12] And that’s still a very wide range of dates. So medieval, it covers from about 400 AD until about 1650 AD. So it’s still a huge amount of time.
[00:06:22] David: You know what it’s amazing to think. Cause I know how much deforestation occurred in Europe that you think of a log, this size that would have had to been, I’ve seen how these are usually made as they burn it and then they chop it and they burn it and they chop it and carve it in at least the ones for the native American log boats here in North America, they will set a fire in it and then they’ll chip away what’s burnt. I wonder where the dendrochronology on the wood being submerged at that caused as part of a problem with the dating.
[00:06:52] Or if it’s just any number of factors of minerals that have gotten into it, because it’s been in the silt for so long.
[00:07:00]Anthony: I’m not sure how much dendrochronology can help. I understand that, you know, it depends on which part of the tree it’s usually, from what I understand from what Dr. Gregory tells me, it’s usually the bottom part of the tree, so towards the root end of the tree. And it depends on how the grain presents, because I had the foremost specialist on the Island of Ireland in relation to dendrochronology is Dr. Mike Bailey of Queens University Belfast.
[00:07:29] And I had him on a live livestream recently, and I had a fascinating discussion with him. And most incredible there is that there’s a record. A complete tree ring record for Ireland that spans at least 5,000 years. And we can identify the age of anything that’s made from Oak just by comparing its tree rings with the known record, which I think is absolutely fascinating, remarkable, but the thing is, as you know, the survivability of Oak and other wood in the ground, Is a short term thing, you know?
[00:08:04] So one of the things that I found was that the massive henge near Newgrange, which we call a drone henge it likely consisted of the outer rings. You know, vast numbers of posts probably made from Oak and nothing remains of those because they’re completely disintegrated over time. And yet in the bed of the river Boyne, there are boats made from the same material, which is survived an equal amount of time.
[00:08:33] I think dendrochronology may help. But I think ultimately the carbon dating is the key to telling us exactly how old they are.
[00:08:42] David: It really is with wood, with water. I mean if you get a boggy area, you tend to find it. I know that there has been recent archeological finds and then, you know, Switzerland that they found stilt houses that probably date from a medieval timeframe and that they’re still sort of still in the silt, only 12 feet below the water level.
[00:09:02] And they’re finding out, you know, artifacts as well. And it’s been there for probably a millennia. So going back to when I first started seeing your videos and whatnot, which are amazing. And of course, Terri and I will have the links to everything and how to get in touch with you. And I’ll tell you if I need to move some books around on my bookshelf. Cause I got to get a couple of your books and get them signed too. The idea of books that you’ve written. How many now, is it?
[00:09:31] Anthony: The publish date books? And I’m working on two more at the moment I’m working on two more, but there’ll be more eight is the total so far. Yeah.
[00:09:41] David: Your adventures with drones. I mean, obviously you found the neolithic Cairns earlier, can you tell us about those?
[00:09:50] I mean, and of course there’s the link to your videos that they can find out more information, but I, I think that’s fascinating.
[00:09:56] Anthony: Yeah, well, I suppose I hit the jackpot in 2018. I bought my first drone in 2017 and I hit the jackpot in the summer of 2018, a prolonged summer drives, which is unusual for Ireland. And because we get so much rain here, it’s such a humid and wet climate. That’s why art is so Virgin, why it’s called the Emerald aisle, 40 shades of green and there literally are 40, at least 40 shades because everything’s kept well watered. You know, it was in the summer of 2018, we had a prolonged drought at Brú na Bóinne, and in a field was close to Newgrange, only about 750 meters away I spotted at what I could only describe as what looked like a giant circular imprint in the crops. And that later transpired to be probably the subterranean remnants of a type of monument that archeologists refer to as a henge. Now your listeners or your viewers may be well familiar with Stonehenge in England, which is probably the most famous henge, but, and Stonehenge is an atypical henge because of its complex design.
[00:11:05] The henge that we found which quickly became dubbed drone henge by the media. Measures about 520 feet in diameter.
[00:11:14] David: Wow.
[00:11:14] Anthony: And more than 150 meters in diameter. And the fascinating thing, I was flying with a friend, Ken Williams, who’s another photographer and avid archaeological enthusiast.
[00:11:26] It was that we couldn’t believe that something this huge. Lay undiscovered hidden in the landscape for so long, you know, especially when you consider that Brú na Bóinne is a World Heritage site that generations of archeologists from all around the world have been studying the landscape, but nobody knew it was there.
[00:11:44] And of course, we now know that that’s because it was what we call an impermanent structure. It’s another atypical henge is some of the henges at Brú na Bóinne are made from vast earth and banks. And so it was very easy to see them. You can see them from the ground because they present as, enbanked enclosures, as it were. At drone henge, it would appear how to all look vanished from the surface of the earth, because it was made from timber and dug out trenches or pits in the earth.
[00:12:10] And so when they found that over time, Or do you get left with as a flat field, which is amazing when you think about it.
[00:12:15] David: That’s amazing. And so did they conduct any archeological surveys around it or test pits to see if they found any?
[00:12:23] Anthony: No, there hasn’t been any sort of physical digging or excavation of the site as of yet.
[00:12:32] And I suppose there are a number of reasons, but that’s what I mean, principally. The main reason is that it’s on our working farm. It’s part of Newgrange farm. And as we speak, there’s actually a crop of barley growing on that field. Now the process of plowing is not as disruptive as people would think.
[00:12:50] It really only penetrates about nine inches, maximum 12 inches of soil. So that, that top foot of soil, as it were, has been turned over constantly over the last number of generations since farming, intensive farming, began in the Boyne Valley. But beneath that plow zone, there are probably interesting remnants, which don’t would perhaps.
[00:13:16] First of all reveal what we suspect anyway, which is the date of it. The structure looks like it belongs to what we might call the late neolithic. And that’s a period of time, roughly from about 2,900 BC on till about 2,500 BC give or take fifty years. And it’s a period after the great monuments, the passage tombs, the Cairns of Newgrange Knowth and Dowth, and the other lands, that phase had finished.
[00:13:43] And it seems as if the focus had changed from, you know, exclusive, like I know that Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth look like huge monuments and they are of course, but the the internal parts of the the chambers of the passengers are very tight and confined, not designed for crowds of people, the crowds of people at Newgrange, whatever took place there. And the neolithic would have been outside the monuments and the select few inside. And it seems that. They changed their tack as it were. They changed their, their view of things and started creating these monumental structures that looked to be what we might call an open air structures. The closest parallels would be to sports stadiums or, you know rock stadium, where you might go and do a concert or even something like the Coliseum, you know the idea being that whatever took place in the interior might have been watched by huge crowds of people with some sort of ceremonial or ritual structure, you know,
[00:14:40] David: that’s amazing, you know, and it’s, and it’s sad to think. I know in one of your videos you were showing about a lot of the burial. Karen said that the roofs are gone, but as you know, centuries and millennia farmers, Well, that stone would be good on my wall or this stone would be good as a doorstep.
[00:14:58] So many of them have been pillaged probably for thousands of years, I would think. Or maybe hundreds of years.
[00:15:05] Anthony: Yes. It, it’s an incredible thing that we have. For instance we have in Ireland, we have at least 300 known passage tombs. So these are all around five to five and a half thousand years old, maybe a little bit older and one or two cases.
[00:15:20] And that’s a, probably a fraction of what was there. We know that a lot of monuments were destroyed. We have historical records, for instance, a giant henge near Dundalk and County Louth, which has been dubbed Ireland Stonehenge. Was there a pretty much intact in 1748 as detailed by an antiquarian at the time Thomas Wright. But by about a century and a half later, it had been completely obliterated and removed from the landscape, such that the historians of the early 19 hundreds couldn’t find it. So that’s a tragedy, but at the same time, I suppose we have to count ourselves lucky that we do have these great treasures.
[00:15:59] I mean, the complex of Brú na Bóinne. We have the megalithic complex at Lough Crew with the megalithic complexes at Carrowmore and Carrowkeel at Sligo and other groups around the country, which don’t present in the same sort of numbers or perhaps lavishness. It saddens me on the one hand that we’ve lost so much, but on the other hand, I suppose we’ve allowed to be thankful for.
[00:16:20] David: It really is. And you know my main profession is I’m a genealogist and my paternal line, even the Lambert doesn’t sound like an Irish name. We came over from Ireland in 1797, Nova Scotia. And, you know, I think back on the limits of genealogy and the limits of DNA being fractional, that Autosomal goes back to your fifth great grandparents percentage wise, and then you can get your y- DNA, which you can go back to haplogroups into 30,000 years ago, across Europe, et cetera. The thing that maybe one of these Cairns bore the remains of one of my ancestors, sort of some collateral relative, it’s just, it’s fascinating. And I think that’s where archeology for me. And it’s why I try to influence the young.
[00:17:04] Is that once you get involved in your own genealogy history, or either on a local level or on an international level or archeology, because then you figure that your family somehow fit into the context of that. So it makes it quite amazing. And having been a family, a person whose last family member lived in Ireland was in 1823 up in Donegal.
[00:17:28] My great-great-grandmother came over as a young girl. Anytime that any archeology is found in Donegal or in Waterford or, in Tipperary, it’s not like I’m looking for an ancestor to pop up, but you have that just innate curiosity. And I mean, you’re walking in the steps of your ancestors.
[00:17:42] So when you walk into a cairn, you must have some really amazing feeling that what once was there?
[00:17:49] Anthony: I do think, yeah, one thing that I’ve remarked about quite often in my written work is how it’s amazing that you can be in the same space that somebody stood 5,000 years ago, even that gets you, you know, it grabs you by the shirt color and drags you in. And you know, you get the quiver of excitement and the hair raises up on the back of your neck.
[00:18:12] David: Yeah.
[00:18:13] Anthony: And of course we have all sorts of romantic ideals about far off ancestors living lives on the green top tins of Ireland long ago. Now for generations, archeologists told us that the Irish people are descended from the Mesolithic people. These will be pre Newgrange, pre their arrival of farming from a time before the domestication or the introduction into Ireland of cattle and sheep and horses. A time going all the way back to around seven or 8,000 BC. And the first people arrived here.
[00:18:50] Now, however I should tell you that I don’t mean to sort to burst your bubble. Genetics now is the area where the largest leaps forward in what we know about the past are occurring especially in the Irish archeological sphere. So in the past 10 years, for instance, 10 years ago, even I wrote in Newgrange monument to mortality, my book about Newgrange, I wrote about this, that we’re all descended from the Mesolithic people and isn’t that brilliant, you know?
[00:19:21] And since then it has been proven that in fact, that’s not true because there was a very major influx of people in the time period between what we call the neolithic and the bronze age, when there was a very large influx of people.
[00:19:35] So the people of that Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth were shorter, darker skinned, darker haired people. And we know that they were replaced by a taller, fairer skinned people. And the people who brought farming to Ireland in the neolithic, originally came from what we might call Asia minor. What we call it today Turkey, Anatolia. Farming civilization moved across Europe to the West and really Ireland was probably the last place where farming was introduced. But then there was a later arrival of people from, you know, the bronze age. They have their origins in the Iberian Peninsula moved out into Europe and then across West.
[00:20:21] And they introduced a whole lot of different practices in terms of when they introduced matching RG and the different types of monuments. They buried their dead in a different way and were actually largely descended from that arrival . And it has shown, especially in Britain where there’s more extensive sort of DNA data available.
[00:20:39] And I think that’s changing in Ireland because all the time now there are more DNA work being done on ancient remains, but. The the neolithic population. So for some sort of fairly substantial collapse. And in fact, most of the modern Irish population traces its origins, its genetic origins to the bronze age.
[00:20:58] So those of us who stand at Newgrange and think about perhaps this was built by a long distant ancestor. Well that, that reality appears to be a little bit more remote. Now, according to the science.
[00:21:09] David: Bursting my bubble and educating me all in the same, is perfectly fine with me. So that’s okay. But it’s just amazing though.
[00:21:18] I mean, when you are still standing in something that has stood the test of time for so long, it’s like, instead of standing, I consider these, you know, these cairns the burial tombs that are found in ancient Egypt, that people are always, Oh, a new tomb was found in. Egypt and that’s like, well, that’s great. But these cairns, have they been devoid most of the remains for many many years when most of them dug up and pillaged.
[00:21:44] Anthony: Not necessarily the so in some cases. So for instance, at Brú na Bóinne, the excavations of Newgrange, which began in 1963 and continued into the 1980s revealed quite a lot of fragmented and mostly cremated remains in the chamber, and these would all be fragmented to the extent that, you know, there were no major portions of the human body. So we know now, I think it’s accepted by archeologists that there was some sort of process involved. I briefly mentioned that in my Mythical Ireland book, the process of breaking down the dead, dismembering and cremating, and basically perhaps sort of grinding down into small parts, part of their death ritual as it were. The problem that we have. So for instance, at Lough Crew where Eugene Conwell did excavations in the 1860s in some cairns he just stripped out everything and that wasn’t carefully recorded. Or R.A. S. McAlister’s excavations of Carrowkeel in 1911.
[00:22:47] He actually kept the bones. They were lost for a long time and found again in the past decade. And they were examined genetically and through carbon dating. And so in some cases we have very definitive results as it were. And another cases we don’t. The most fascinating revelation, I think of the past five years has probably been the one of the few on cremated pieces of bone at Newgrange was what’s called a petrous bone, a petrous temporal bone, which is a part of the skull. I believe it’s sort of behind the year, just really dense bone. In other words, its survivability is really good. They carried out DNA testing on that piece of, of skull bone. Found that it belongs to a young male, whose parents were first degree relatives. In other words, his parents were either brother and sister . Or father and daughter, very close relationship. And of course you could extrapolate all sorts of theoretical ideas from that dynastic builders of Newgrange. A little bit like the Egyptians and many other cultures where this sort of thing was the norm. And I’ll tell you what. That has revolutionized our understanding of Newgrange on the ancient monuments, to the extent that my publisher recently said, you know, your Newgrange book is going to be out of print soon for the second time, it was reprinted.
[00:24:17] And he said, do you want to do a reprint? Do you want to, revise? And I said, we’re going to have to revise it quite substantially because the information we’ve gleaned, that was published in 2012. Yeah. And so much has changed in that period of time. That in fact that book would need to be completely reworked.
[00:24:35] David: It’s really exciting though, when you can find that something is, I mean, I always think of archeology is like wet cement. Nothing is ever concrete because there’s so much room for discovery. That’s the analogy I think works.
[00:24:48] Anthony: Yes. Archeology is a forensic science and stratigraphy and layers and the retrieval of datable organic material, which can be animal or plant material.
[00:25:04] I mean, there are specialists in Irish archeology who deal entirely with seeds and pollen and insects . I mean, it really is incredible on the other hand. Archeology, isn’t always able to build a substantial picture about what a society was like from physical remains. I mean, and you know, the conundrum is the same.
[00:25:26] I mean, there are many things discarded in modern landfill dumps in Ireland that in future generations, if you were far removed and you didn’t know what they were for. I mean, they’re going to present quite a puzzle to the archeologists of the future. You know, I mean, I’m trying to get a handle on, you know, what the people were like, what the religious practices were like is a very difficult task.
[00:25:51] They manage quite well. I think most of my own opinion is that you have to look to the mythology as well, to help you sort of unravel a sort of a wider picture of it, you know?
[00:26:01] David: Now, as the summer progresses in Ireland, do you have any drone adventures that you’re looking to perhaps partake in and go anywhere?
[00:26:10] Anthony: Well as a result, I’ve gained something of a bit of notoriety, as you can probably imagine. I have been invited to participate in a couple of archeological digs that are taking place in the summer where aerial reconnaissance might be of benefit. Look, we’re at the point in time now where archeologists are realizing that drones have a huge role to play in what they do.
[00:26:38] Because a generation ago, You had to hire aircraft. There were two or three distinguished specialists in the field of archeological, aerial reconnaissance, the late Leo Swan, for instance, very well known name. And Leo would get up on a plane and you know would hang out the window with the camera, basically picture everything.
[00:27:01] The wonderful thing about drones is, it’s an inexpensive technology. Well barring the initial investment in the physical drone. I mean, to hire a plane costs money, every time you’ll hire it.
[00:27:13] David: Right.
[00:27:14] Anthony: To buy you the drone, you can fly it anytime you like providing your fly it within the regulations. And I think it’s because you know, a helicopter maybe is better way to get picture’s. Probably even more expensive to be honest than an airplane with an airplane. And you’re whizzing past at speed. You’re generally flying it around a thousand to 1500 or 2000 feet, drones in Ireland. The maximum altitude you can fly is 400 feet. You’re closer to the ground.
[00:27:40] And because drones are GPS equipped. If you don’t touch the controls, they just hover there. And so you get these really steady images of what’s on the ground and because of the discoveries of the past five years are now realizing these are an essential item in our toolkit. Which is brilliant. But because there are so prevalent in nonspecialists with nonspecialists, in other words, hobby, drone, flyers who are ubiquitous.
[00:28:11] There have been a significant number of discoveries made in the past few years by what you might call citizen archeologists or nonspecialists like myself. So yeah, I mean, there’s so much potential and now it’s done a lot of rain. We had a spring drought here. So drought is becoming an issue, which is a strange thing for Ireland.
[00:28:31] So maybe there’s a climate change discussion going on there in the background. We had a drought in the spring of last year. We had a drought in the spring of this year, and of course we had the summer drought in 2018. Now, if we were to. Sort of experience and other period of prolonged drought there,certainly would be an opportunity there for the hobby flyer to go and look at the local crop fields and see what might be hidden there that hasn’t been seen yet, you know?
[00:28:58] David: Well, I really appreciate you for taking the time this morning and afternoon for you to talk with us because I mean, one is in the news, I mean, and I’m grateful that you had the time for us, for this.
[00:29:13] If people want to get ahold of you. What’s the best way. I mean, your website, Facebook to just to learn more, to find out about your books.
[00:29:22] Oh yeah. Well, the principle places where you can learn more, I mean, the website is quite comprehensive. That’s mythicalireland.com, especially the blogs.
[00:29:32] The blog is the part of the website that gets updated most often. There’s a huge number of articles on the blog about drone henge and about the log boats. If you need to contact me, probably the best way to contact me is by email, which is mythicalireland@gmail.com. And then please by all means delve into the social media sites, especially the Facebook page.
[00:29:54] That’s facebook.com/mythicalIreland. And the YouTube channel, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of videos on the YouTube channel.
[00:30:04] Okay. I just want to tell you that all of my hours of watching stupid television have changed you now watching your videos, because one, you’ve got an amazing speaking voice.
[00:30:14] It’s very easy to listen to. And I just like, I just want to go to the next chapter. So Mythical Ireland is going to be on my book order form this week and I’ll probably have to get more of your books because you’re really touching upon something. I’ve had a passion on, of course, Irish history, but ancient Irish history.
[00:30:33] And I really wish you will. And I’m sure Terri probably has some questions that I’ve been occupying the mic for too long. So Terri, go ahead.
[00:30:41] Terri: You know what I’ve learned? I just kind of tabulate everything I have to say for my one spot. We’ll start with, I’ve been a fan of your Mythical Ireland page probably since before the drone henge.
[00:30:53] So. Been watching for a long time. And I thought that was amazing until I saw the boats and I was like, it just kind of tops it. So I just can’t wait to see what that next big thing is.
[00:31:07] The second thing, so we talked a little bit about David’s family lines, so mine left post famine and I’ve been back and I’ve walked their steps.
[00:31:15] I’ve been to the townland. I’ve been to where we pretty much are sure they left out of. And it is very like you said, kind of grabs you by the shirt. I sat at that dock and just kind of thought about all the people that kind of left through there and probably never returned home. The next thing we talked about where the Irish people really came from, and you talked about the Iberian peninsula, and I have to tell you that my original DNA results showed that.
[00:31:49] I thought that was really cool. You know, ancestry keeps updating and I believe it’s gone now, but it was there for years and years and years like this little piece from the Iberian peninsula. So I think doing these DNA tests really does kind of break down, even if it’s just that five generations that David talked about. It’s, it’s an important five generations. They really get a glimpse of who your people were, where they were from. For me, I come from very blended, in America, we like to say melting pot family. I’m pretty much a lot of different heritages. But the Irish is the ones that have always spoken to me. I mean, I’ve been to Ireland, I think three times. And if you ask my husband where I want to go next, the answer is always Ireland. Like pants get enough. So to me, it’s home, I would like to stay.
[00:32:42]Anthony: Ireland seems to have that effect on people, especially those who have you know that genetic heritage and it’s been a fascinating journey for me because I’ve learned so much in the past 20 or so years that when I was younger, I might have believed that the Irish were like a race apart, but we now know that’s not the case.
[00:33:01] And I think it’s more a case of what living on this Island does to you actually, it’s the effect that it has on you, that, that I think makes you Irish more so than that. Genetic, I think people can trace the genetics down rabbit holes, and the truth is here that Ireland being an Island. We, you know, we didn’t miraculously spring open up in Asian of our own sometime in the distant past.
[00:33:27] All of our origins are from beyond the shores. And of course that’s exemplified in the mythology, which speaks about the waves of invasions. I’ve often said that, you know what, I consider myself a fairish. I, I probably suspect that if I was to get a DNA test on it, I might, I might be surprised. Maybe I’ll find Viking DNA in my lineage.
[00:33:49] Maybe I’ll find Norman DNA millennia. Wouldn’t be a toll surprising given the prevalence of Norman surnames and modern Ireland. Maybe I might even find English links who knows. But it’s just something to do with the power that this place has on you. There’s a, there, there is a unique feeling of connection with earth in Ireland that I think is there in the mythology, it’s there in the archeology, there are archaeological sites are so numerous that it seems that, you know, people set out these sacred areas of land and put enclosures on them and monuments and stones and Cairns and all sorts of structures. And it seems that in doing so, we were declaring, you know, we really, really feel something very special about this place on the earth. And it’s a tragedy that, you know, not too long ago, So many people had to leave this place.
[00:34:48] And as you say, some of them were never able to return because those were different times before, long before a flight was introduced before you could just book a ticket and go home again, as it were. And that is, that is part of the story and it is, it is tragic and it is sad that so many ex-pats.
[00:35:07] And as you say, the house, this sort of visceral feeling of connection and that they can probably never sort of properly describe it and put it into words. And so I consider myself very, very lucky, very blessed and very fortunate. Privileged actually to be in the position of not only living here, but I’ve been able to communicate some of that into that wider.
[00:35:33] Community of either people of Irish heritage or people who just have a natural affinity with the place. And I understand this, I completely understand this. And as I say, it’s a great honor and a great joy and a great privilege to share that with people around the world.
[00:35:49]David: I think I’ve found with those that are Irish heritage here in America.
[00:35:54] It’s we feel lost. We’re here. We’ve been here for generations, but that’s not where we were from millennia or, you know, hundreds of years and whatnot. And I think that there is a draw to go back home. I think it’s kind of to go to where your ancestors came from. And to walk on those fields and to visit the places that your ancestors were like, Terri has. Unfortunately, for my Lamberts, we don’t even know the village because of the record loss and you know, the 1700s. I know he came from there. Do I know exactly the village?
[00:36:26] Not yet, but yeah, DNA, I got one wide DNA match and that’s helped, but I do love Ireland and I really also love what you’re doing and is bringing a level of Irish history and discovery to the new generation and those that are interested in social media and virtual reality, it’s not just a dry book reading that we had 30, 40 years ago that you read journals and whatnot.
[00:36:53] People are entertained by the discoveries. They’re tweeting things out. They’re engaging. So in final, is there any advice you have for the young budding archeological enthusiast? Wants to go out and get a drone and become another Anthony Murphy here in the States or anywhere on the globe?
[00:37:16] Anthony: Well, the advice would be very simple.
[00:37:19] It would be, yeah, just to go for it because as I and others have demonstrated, it’s possible to, as it were a hit that jackpot, you know if you’re interested and you’re passionate, And we’re lucky in Ireland in that at the beginning of this year the laws around drones, which weren’t very restrictive, weren’t hugely restricted.
[00:37:42] I mean, you can’t fly in restricted airspace, you have to fly safely, of course. But we’re now under European law. And, you know, it’s, we’ve gone very common sense with our regulations. So the smaller your drone is the lighter it is. Basically the more you can do and we have privacy laws and data protection laws around, you know, the, the, the, the video and photography of people close up and all of that.
[00:38:14] But drones don’t usually have that kind of issue because you’re flying up in the air, at a distance, with a wide angle lens. Perfect. For spotting those things in the landscape that, you know, You can’t, you literally can’t see from the ground. Drone henge and there’s a photograph of us on the back of the back cover of my book about drone henge.
[00:38:35] I mean, drone henge is a huge structure. And just to give you an idea, those, those parallel pairs of lines are there, the tractor tramlines running up between the two.
[00:38:44] David: Yup. Yup, yup. Yup.
[00:38:45] Anthony: Farmer told me immediately after the discovery that he walked in the field and he couldn’t see any sign of it whatsoever.
[00:38:53] I should, I should also just very briefly. I wanted to show you.
[00:38:56] David: Sure.
[00:38:58] Anthony: That’s that that is the drone. That, that is the I just, just to give you an idea, the technology that’s involved, that’s the Phantom 3 Advanced which three or four years ago was, was quite a, a good drone, but they’re getting smaller and lighter.
[00:39:15] And yet they’re getting better because the one that discovers the log boats is the DGI Mini 2 and it’s a lot smaller when you fold it up. Like literally it fits in the Palm of your hand, you know?
[00:39:30] Terri: Wow.
[00:39:31] David: That is amazing. That’s a DGI
[00:39:34]Anthony: Mini 2. And, and in Europe, I’m not sure what the law is like in the States in Europe, this is a sub 250 gram drone.
[00:39:41]It weighs, I think it’s 241 grams. So you, you can do more with this than you can do with the heavier drones. And, and they’re inexpensive. Relatively speaking.
[00:39:54] David: Yeah.
[00:39:54] Anthony: So yeah, that the advice would be to fly. And fly often and enjoy it. If you’re in doubt about whether you should be flying in an area or not make sure. Well, first and foremost, you have to actually do training and you have to have a drone registration operation number from the Irish Aviation Authority. Before you can fly a drone. But, it’s basic, it’s basic training and it’s common sense stuff, go and do it and enjoy it and go fly. And who knows what you might find, you know.
[00:40:25] David: Well, I know that you’re going to find lots more things, and I know I join Terri in thanking you for your time today, but will you come back because we want you on again. It’s been great. Excellent. Excellent. Well, as we sign off once again, I just want to say a thank you to Anthony Murphy and Mythical Ireland and all he is doing both between his blog and his discoveries and it makes me want to go buy a drone this afternoon.
[00:40:56] And please do look at his website. In fact, if you need a good summer reading book, I’m sure any of his eight books will satisfy your needs for further curiosity, you, we can check out his videos. They’re great. So thank you again and signing off from Virtual Historians. I’m David Allen Lambert of course, with my partner in crime, Terri O’Connell. Look forward to seeing you on our next time until then we’re virtually yours.
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