Atlantean/Ireland's North African and Maritime Heritage

by Bob Quinn

The Atlantean Irish is an illustrated intervention in Irish cultural history and prehistory. Forcefully debated, and wholly persuasive, it opens up a past beyond Europe, from Occident to Orient. What began as a personal quest-narrative becomes a category-dissolving, intellectual adventure of universal significance.

Genres: History, Ireland

192 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1987

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Reviews

[Old-Barbarossa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but flawed.
While I am pretty convinced by the main thrust of the argument he states some facts that are just plain wrong...and not just because of new research. (Eg: p51 he mentions Julian The Apostate as being the emperor that "proscribed the teaching of pagan Greek writers"...er, no...he proscribed the whole xtain thing and tried to push things back to paganism. So exactly the opposite. p181 he says Nuada has a golden arm...it was silver in any source I'm aware of.)
He also quotes Robert Graves occasionally, which normally would make me smell fish...
Some of his etymological points are a bit shaky I think, a homophone does not always mean the same root...just the same sound.
Reasonable bibliography, but no references and poor maps.
And yet...

An interesting read that Barry Cunliffe says of in his introduction:
"...there is much with which we can agree and things that we might feel less happy about..."

[John Turlockton · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's a little while since I read it now, but the author regularly criticises experts as being out of touch with the local reality, but yet he regularly accepts expert opinion on things like dating historical artifacts. He's also happy to use outdated expert opinions as the basis for some of his claims, while dismissing later research as emanating from clueless elites. It's also well known that the Irish traded with North Africa, it's not such a revelation. He also dedicates a chapter of the book to the pre-Gaelic language in Ireland, which is entirely baseless speculation. In his claim that the Irish aren't Celts, he's right to point out that genetic surveys have shown much more continuity than change amongst the Irish population despite waves of conquest, however, he ignores that culture (and the idea of human 'race') has no basis in genetics. All human societies are genetically mixed. The cultural basis of Ireland's Celticness how includes shared languages, native religion and art as their closest neighbours.

[Christian Dalton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quite readable nonsense. I don't for a second consider myself to be knowledgeable on Irish origins, so I was interested when I saw that the well-known archaeologist, Barry Cunliffe, had written the foreword (thereby providing an air of legitimacy to the book). However, the "research" itself is full of misinformation, speculation, and coincidences that have been distorted to fit the author's viewpoints.

Quinn also seems to have, at best, a suspicion of the academic and scholarly world and, at worst, an outright disdain for anyone who practices archaeology (and any other related discipline) at a professional career level. There is absolutely a place in archaeology for those who may not have studied the subject at a university level, with Citizen Science, community archaeology projects, and local observers and site custodians celebrated across the UK. As such, I don't understand why he seems to believe that these groups of people are eschewed by academia, going so far as stating that "rarely are the footsoldiers, the people who actually live on the land, consulted" (p.27). Scholarly research and peer review allow archaeology, as a whole, to be an objective study, not a subjective one that this book wallows and seems to delight in.

Here's a bullet point of things that I have the remaining energy to point out:
- In chapter two, Quinn discusses the similarities (lateen sail) between Arab dhows and the Irish púcán. Quinn seems to be suggesting a causative link between the two, completely without evidence I may add, although he does share a totally irrelevant observation about fishing. The idea that two cultures cannot independently develop similar ideas and that a shared relationship must have occurred despite the distance and technological ability of those cultures does a disservice to all those in the past (more on that to come).
- Quinn suggests that the pro-academic, intellectual gatekeeping sentiment has resulted in the blocking of access to prehistoric sites in Morocco. This completely ignores any possible local concerns and reeks of his own bias (echoes of deep state much?). He also refuses to acknowledge the possibility that two sites (Newgrange and M'Zora, pp.104-5) which share superficially similar features, cannot have been independently developed and must have had a shared "long line of precursors".
- The chapter on etymology and linguistics is absurd. In a nutshell, one strand of "evidence" comes from a veterinary surgeon friend, well-versed in the creation and solving of crosswords. I like animals but that doesn't entitle me to operate on them...Furthermore, his main argument here is that there are similar words spoken in Malta and Conamara, without any attempt to trace a common source, possible linguistic influences or any such actual research.
- It seems that Quinn is rather proud of his term "Atlantean" and seeks to use it as often as possible. The similarity to the fictional fabled city of Atlantis however, further illustrates the absurdity of Quinn's arguments.

One of the countless issues with these sorts of books is the demonising anti-intellectualism that we seem to be seeing on the rise more and more. Because somebody went to university and followed a career, this does not automatically mean that their view is "better" than that of somebody who did not. It instead makes their view throughly more robust, well-researched, queried and tested as a part of the larger scientific community in order to reach a safer conclusion. Anyone can have an opinion and pay to have it published, but the disdain and disregard to actual research showed by Quinn is beyond comprehension. I would point you in the direction of recent DNA analysis that further shows the viewpoints contained in "The Atlantean Irish" to be the pile of guano that they are.

[Pádraig Mac Oscair · Rating 3 out of 5]

You lot are far too hung up on "evidence" sometimes history just goes on vibes and Irish people are actually Arabs because it just clicks - bonus points for convincingly outlining how there were no such people as Celts.

[Peter O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book - well written in an easy-going flowing style. Some of our guests have read (devoured) it in one session - I like to dip in and out.
Shows clearly what all Irish historians and archaeologists know (but keep stum about) Irish are no more 'Celts' than we are Japanese.
Our culture, our language, our art, and music comes from the Southern Medi terranean areas and possibly more East even. The nonsense of Celts invading Ireland from the East and leaving no trace behind is finally shown to be the patent nonsense that it is.

Hurragh for us Atlantic bastards.

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this years ago. Must read the latest edition