Ui Neill
PER
Ui Neill
Niall is thought to be the patriarch of the Ui Neill, meaning ''the descendants of Niall,'' a group of dynasties that claimed the high kingship and ruled the northwest and other parts of Ireland. Dr. Bradley tested Irishmen with Ui Neill surnames and found the I.M.H. signature was much more common among them than among Irishmen as a whole. Dr. Catherine McKenna of Harvard University said that the evidence for the Ui Neill as a political construct was strong enough that historians wouldn't readily believe in the historical reality of Niall himself. The evidence for the Ui Neill as a political construct is strong enough that historians wouldn't believe in the historical reality of Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the fifth century A.D. Dr. Katherine Simms said some historians had assumed that the common ancestor of the Ui Neill was "merely a mythical divine ancestor figure, imagined in order to explain the political links that existed between the dynasties themselves in the later period." But Dr. Bradley's findings appear to confirm that the Ui Neill really did come from a common ancestor, and perhaps that the mythical narrative of Niall's birth and ascent to kingship had a genetic basis. The new genetic evidence may convince historians that there was a common ancestor for at least one of the major branches of the Ui Neill, such as the Cenel nEogain, which lived in an area of northwest Ireland.