Good morning everyone.Last week we were lookingat the hunter-gatherers in Ireland,across the IrishSea from England.Today,we're going to move on tothe period between four and six thousand yearsagomknown as the Neolithic period,which is when atotal farming economy was introduced in Ireland.
Now,there are several hypotheses about the originsof the first Neolithic settlers in Ireland,but most ofthese contain problems.For instance,there areconsiderable archaeological difficulties about thetheory that they came from England.The evidencedoesn't really add up.But there are even greater practical problems about the theory that theycame directly from continental Europe.For one thing,it's not clear just how sufficient numbersof men and women could have been transported to Ireland to establish a viable population.Asyou know,the hunter-gatherer economy which existed beforehand was based on smallscattered groups.The farming economy would almost certainly have required much largercommunities to do all the work needed to plant and tend sufficient crops to sustain themthrough the year.