Historical deviations
The latest study of the Irish Travellers is damn interesting.
Mostly the study was genetic but it’s been used to speculate, as historians are want to do.
They don’t let the absence of data get in the way of a good story, just like physicists. I like that.
It seems that before the English Normans invaded Ireland, most of the Irish were pastoral nomads, wandering with their flocks and practising hunter and gathering tactics for desserts.
The English forced them to settle so they could be taxed – a mobile target is harder to control. However a small fraction refused and became the travellers.
Genetic studies show a diversion of the traveller population from the general population around the 12th century.
Until recently it was thought that the travellers were refugees forced to wander by the potato famine in the 1800s.
offshore westerly 