A round-up of today's other stories in brief
From old bog butter to the Liam McCarthy cup?
TWO RECENT finds of bog butter raise further interesting questions about our ancestors’ association with and expertise in the dairy product.
Not only does Ireland have some of the oldest bog butter in the world, but the peatland actually digests it – just like a human stomach – according to former director of Teagasc, Prof Liam Downey.
Downey, honorary professor at both UCD and NUI Maynooth, has undertaken a number of studies on the subject, along with colleagues at the National Museum.
Curiously, it was his interest in the enzyme Lipase, which he led him to the consumption theory.
“The enzyme Lipase digests the butter and fat in your stomach, “he told The Irish Times. “That same enzyme is in the bog, so the bog digests the butter like your stomach. What’s more, if you took a sample of bog butter, gave it to a chemist and didn’t say what it was, he or she would tell you that it is a soap – as this is what the peat does to it, effectively.” The two recent finds in Shancloon in north Galway, and at Ballard, near Tullamore, Co Offaly, reflect a pattern where most of the finds are close to or west of the Shannon, he notes.
Most of the butter analysed dates to the Iron Age, and seems to have been placed in the wetlands as a votive offering.
“During the Iron Age, the time of Christ, Ireland experienced a serious drop in population, due to climate change or whatever, and people became very concerned about placating the gods,” he explains.
“All sorts of votive offerings were thrown into the wetlands, from swords to butter,” he says. The practice may also be linked to the burial of ritually-killed humans – our famous bog bodies – and other artifacts as part of kingship and sovereignty rites.
The churns in which they were found bear an uncanny resemblance to the All-Ireland hurling cup, Downey adds. The cup may have been modelled on them – “and I hope it returns south,” he notes, knowing, as a good Corkman, what side his bread is buttered on.
Lorna Siggins
A sting in the tail of major scientific discoveries
MEDIA REPORTS often highlight major discoveries published in prestigious journals – but sometimes there can be a sting in the tail that later questions those findings.
Two high-profile studies have been facing serious queries in recent days – one about a proposed link between a virus and chronic fatigue system (CSF) and the other about a species of bacteria that can reportedly build arsenic into its DNA.
The CSF story kicked off in 2009 with a paper in Science that linked a retrovirus called XMRV with the condition. This week Science published two reports online which back up the view that the findings of the 2009 paper were due to contamination.
Science also issued its own “editorial expression of concern” this week about the study, and a news article on the journal’s website reported that the paper’s authors had been asked to volunteer to retract the paper – effectively strike it from the record – but the researchers appear to be standing by their findings.
Meanwhile, another furore kicked off late last week, again on the Science website, about a paper the journal published last December. That study claimed to have discovered a bacterial species that can grow using arsenic instead of phosphorous.
Since its publication, scientists have voiced concern over the paper and last week Science published online a clutch of eight technical critiques of the bacterial study. But again the researchers are standing their ground: “We maintain that our interpretation of substitution, based on multiple congruent lines of evidence, is viable,” they write in answer to the criticism.
– Claire O’Connell