ho are the Irish ... really? IN SEARCH OF ANCIENT IRELAND journeys 6,000 years to separate fact from fiction. The program will provoke surprise among some viewers as they discover little-known facts, including: the Irish people may not even be Celtic; St. Patrick was a minor missionary who had very little impact on the nation's conversion to Christianity; scholarly monks in the seventh century re-invented Ireland's heroic, mythical past -- the stories we know today -- in order to convert its pagan peoples; Ireland actually benefited from the Viking invasion.

IN SEARCH OF ANCIENT IRELAND spans the centuries, from the Stone Age world of mound-building farmers whose gods ruled the forces of nature to the 12th-century Norman invasion, when Ireland first came under English rule.