English, Irish, Scots share genetic origin: Basque Iberian

[Art]

Mouguias, that was intelligently argued, as usual. I enjoy your messages because I learn something new each time.

I think you're absolutely right to see affinities around the Atlantic Arc and that they even encompass most of West Europe.

I'm sure you know more than I do about the ancient history. Maybe you have an answer for these questions:

• Do we know for certain that the Romans were correct in identifying the Astures as Celts?
• How do we know which wave (or waves) of immigration were responsible for these affinities?
• Is there any justification for identifying these affinities as being primarily the influence of the Celts?

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Mouguias, lo expresaste de manera muy convincente, como siempre. Me encantan tus mensajes porque aprendo algo nuevo cada vez.

Pienso que tienes razón de ver que las afinidades alrededor del arco atlántico y que incluso abarcan la mayor parte de Europa del oeste.

Soy seguro que sabes más que yo sobre la historia antigua. Tienes quizá una respuesta para estas preguntas:

• ¿Sabemos seguramente que los romanos tuvieran razón en identificar el Astures como celtas?
• ¿Cómo sabemos cuál onda de inmigrantes (o ondas) eran responsables de estas afinidades?
• ¿Hay justificación en identificar estas afinidades como siendo principalmente la influencia de las celtas?

[Bob]

Mougias,

As a geneticist who also teaches a bit of linguistics and culture in one on one of my courses, I very much enjoyed your post. The issues are indeed acomplicated, and are something that I hope to be able to explore in more depth this summer.

[Mouguias]

Bob
Don`t know if you remember, but you and I left unfinished an interesting conversation on the nature and origins of myth, long ago. I am glad you enjoyed my post: really we, amateurs, feel at loss before the huge amount of theories and arguments that the arrival of DNA studies have prompted.

Art
Thank you for the compliments
It is the Romans who recorded the very word. If we are using it today, it is only because it is found in Roman sources so, how could they be "wrong"?. However, it is funny that the personal name "Celtius" was common in the western half of the Iberian Peninsula including Asturias, as we know through ancient inscriptions on pottery and gravestones. This makes likely, in my view, that the word was taken from the locals. Incidentally, the Romans never claimed that Britons or Hibernians (Irish) were Celts. Neither were, it seems, all of the Gauls, only those living in "Galia Celtica".
Now, can we give for certain that these "Celts" were the ones who unified the old cultural layer that we West Europeans all share in common? Nope. However:
-The ONLY mythical cycles which have survived from Pre-Christian times in West Europe were noted down in Celtic Languages (The Ulster Cycle, the Finnian Cycle, the Mabinogion)
-These mythical cycles clearly derive from an original tradition, totally apart from Germanic Eddas or Greek-Roman myths.
-It is not difficult to paralell these Celtic myths from the Isles and many traces of pre-Christian beliefs in the continent, both earlier and later. The Irish Lugh is the same as the Gaulish-Celtiberian-Asturian Lugus, for example, and many motifs from the Mabinogion or Irish Epic can be found in French medieval lays and in modern folklore from all over West Europe.
To sum-up:
1 We know that there is a common tradition in West Europe, totally independent from Roman heritage and older than it.
2 We can track the last traces of this tradition mainly through sources written in Celtic languages, as well as hints in Roman sources always referred to "Celtic tribes" such as Gauls and Celtiberians
3 We know for sure that this old cultural layer has a strong personality, and that it is quite different from Germanic or other European cultures.
Now, how could we name this wide, amazing, misterious phenomenon, this brotherhood of West European aboriginals which has survived down to our days?
Celtic culture, of course.

[Art]

Very interesting, Mouguias. Once again, I defer to your greater knowledge with two questions.

Are the myths written down by the Celts only found in areas that the Celts lived in? That would seem strong evidence for these myths being cultural elements of Celtic origin. I wonder, for example, if similar myths are found in the areas the Celts moved out of when they began their migration.

Do you have any idea about why the Romans didn't identify the Britons or Irish as Celts? That's very odd.

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Muy interesante, Mouguias. De nuevo, difiero a tu mayor conocimiento con dos preguntas.

¿Los mitos que son anotados por los celtas están encontrado solamente en las áreas en las cuales los celtas vivieran? Si es así, me parecería evidencia fuerte que esos mitos son elementos culturales de origen céltico. Me pregunto, por ejemplo, si se encuentran mitos similares en las áreas de donde los celtas se fueron cuando comenzaron su migración.

¿Tienes cualquier idea sobre porqué los romanos no identificaron a los británicos o los irlandéses como celtas? Eso me extraña.

[Mouguias]

Are the myths written down by the Celts only found in areas that the Celts lived in? That would seem strong evidence for these myths being cultural elements of Celtic origin. I wonder, for example, if similar myths are found in the areas the Celts moved out of when they began their migration.

Do you have any idea about why the Romans didn't identify the Britons or Irish as Celts? That's very odd.

Pfew! Those are really two great questions and I would pay anything for the book which could answer them. I can`t answer none of them properly, I haven`t studied the matter deeply enough, but here are my two cents:
-There is no proof whatsoever that this old cultural layer was spread by historical Celts, that is, the bearers of Hallstatt and La Tene culture, or by Gaulish inmigrants during late Bronze or Iron age times. In fact, I wonder how could that be proven, unless all the records on oral folklore were thoroughly searched in all of the West European regions and Celtic motifs were found only in the areas where historical Celts lived. That would be a titanic task, and I am afraid would prove futile in the end.
-I don`t think we will never be able to find out why on Earth the Romans refused to call the Britons "Celts", so much so considering that they held so much in common with Gauls, including linguistic affinity and the priesthood of druids, which didn`t exist in Celtiberia. Romans had, no doubt, a knowledge of these tribes which went much further than we will ever reach.


Let me give an example: suppose you are researching on the origins of Halloween. You will find out it is a Catholic feast, "All-Hallows`-Eve", promoted into Church feasts by French monks in early Middle Age. Then you will find out that old Irish sources regard this as the most important celebration of the year, and that they call it "Samhain", the day of the dead, while Gauls used to call it "Samonios" in their Coligny calendar. Then you go on researching to discover that hollowed pumpkins and other customs of this feast are just the same in the Isles, France and Asturias. Now, does all the former prove in any way that historical Celts were the first to celebrate and then spread Samhain all over West Europe? No, but, is is logical that you regard Samhain-Halloween-Les Animes a Celtic tradition, as opposed to Latin or Germanic traditions? Yes.
In conclusion: the "Celtic" label is not accurate, but it is a quite logical outcome given the circumstances.

[Art]

Mouguias, when I read your posts on mythology, I keep wishing you had a job that allowed you time to further research these things. I'll bet you wish that, too!

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Mouguias, cuando leo tus mensajes sobre la mitología, siempre deseo que tengas un puesto que te permita el tiempo hacer más investigaciones en esas cosas. ¡Adivino que tu deseas así, también!

[Mouguias]

Mouguias, when I read your posts on mythology, I keep wishing you had a job that allowed you time to further research these things. I'll bet you wish that, too!

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Mouguias, cuando leo tus mensajes sobre la mitología, siempre deseo que tengas un puesto que te permita el tiempo hacer más investigaciones en esas cosas. ¡Adivino que tu deseas así, también!

Alas, yes!

[Bob]

I don't know miuch about Celtic myths, but I do know that they tend to be transmitted horizontally as well as vertically, i.e., from one person to another and from one people to another, as does culture in general.

To cite just one example, the Sumerian Nin Ti story shows up in the Hebrew Bible as the creation story involving Adam's rib as the origin of Eve. Nin Ti in Sumerian has a punning dual meaning - both our lady of life (Eve being the mother of all humanity) or our lady of the rib. So the legendary mother of humankind was associated with a rib in a culture far older than that of the Hebrews. One of the authors of Genesis apparently was aware of this. Clearly the Sumerian culture came in contact with the ancestors of the Hebrews in the even-then swirling cauldron of the middle east (usually called the ancient near east by Sumero-Akkadian scholars), but is essentially means modern Iraq and surrounding lands.

Abraham, after all, is reported to have come from Ur. and the ancient literature, recorded on clay tablets, tells of a people called the Habiru. When cultures meet, whether they engage in warfare or engage in trade, people from both cultures eventually talk to each other. It's not hard to imagine Sumerians swapping stories with Hebrews over some good barley beer around a campfire. It's also not hard to imagine various Celtic groups swapping stories with their neighbors, either.

The Celts were reported as being tall and relatively light in skin and hair. They had sophisticated art and sophisticated weaponry, and went into battle naked. They took heads as trophies. Fierce warriors with a rich culture. Fairly early on they split into at least two linguistic groups (who knows, maybe more than one wave of migration - I'm certainly no expert here). Witness the "p" versus "q" of the various Celtic-derived languages.

[Eli]

Think it is generally speaking flawed to say that these people descend from those, IMO we all descend from everybody. For instance, if we assume 30 years for each generation on the first generation I have two parents, they had four, my grand parents had eight and so forth doubling the number of ancestors with each generation. If we are looking far enough into the past to pretend to say that we've reached 'Celtic' time we are talking of at least 2,000 BC probably farther back. In 4,000 years at 30 years per generation we have 133 generations, if the number of ancestors doubles with each generation I had to have had a whole lot more ancestors than there were people on earth back then (or even today), so there had to have been a lot of related people mating amongst themselves for all of us. Although my pc can't calculate 133 generations at 100 generations doubling with each generation we would need 10,141,204,801,825,835,211,973,625,643,008 unrelated ancestors.

So it's clear to see that if we go back far enough our ancestors are pretty much everybody in any given continent. What these genetic studies come up with is the dominant male lines in any given population, but it would be incorrect to say that we descend from the dominant male lines only because due to the way in which male lines eliminate themselves eventually it appears that we all descend from a single individual. If you look at Europe we have three male lines R1b on the western part, I around the middle, and R1a in the eastern part. Clearly when these individuals existed there were many more around but all those other lines have disappeared by elimination.

[Xose]

The fact is that none of us are going to be right all the time.

HA! Speak for yourself!

[Mouguias]

Bob, I think I see your point. You are implying that tales, myths and ideas can spread across a region like a drop of oil on a puddle. Did I get it right? Of course I agree. Me, I don`t know much about the Bible or Mid-Eastern mythology, but I heard that even as far as Greece you can track a couple of Mesopothamian motifs, like the Greek Noah, Deucalion, and the Universal Deluge.
In the case of Celts, you can`t help but thinking that the spreading of their ideas and religion took place long before the Romans arrived. After all, it doesn`t make sense that a submitted people, hardly surviving under the Roman yoke in the furthest corners of the continent, could maintain such a strong influence as to change the minds and beliefs of other peoples, like the Asturi, already conquered by the Romans.
It was during the Bronze Age, more or less the same time when the old Greek myths and the tales from the Old Testament were being conceived, when all of West Europe was united in a strong net of trade. Archeologists say that in those times the same jewels and weapons were found from Ireland to Portugal. Perhaps those were the days when Celtic affinities arose.
I think you will all enjoy the following picture, just click the link below:
http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/histesp/obras/17872.htm
It is a fibula, the fastener with which Asturi males kept their cloaks on. It was unburied in Leon, which was as you know part of the territory of the Asturi. It represents a rider on a horse, and a human head can be clearly noticed, hanging from the neck of the animal. Roman authors, such as Posidonius, reported that Celtiberian warriors, just like the ancient Gauls and the Irish, were head peddlers.
http://celticweb.galeon.com/aficiones958323.html

[Celtica]

I know that I'm chiming in late in this thread, but I find the whole topic quite interesting. Incidentally, I just finished reading a book on this very subject (Saxons, Vikings & Celts), written by one of the world's foremost experts on genetic ancestry, Professor Bryan Sykes. Now unlike Mr. Oppenheimer's study, Syke's study is far more thorough - having been the result of a decade's worth of research from DNA samples of over 10,000 volunteers.

Now his conclusions are relatively the same as Oppenheimer's, in that he feels the majority of British ancestry can be traced back to ancient Iberian settlers that predate the arrival of the Celts, Saxons and other groups. This is especially true for the Irish, who are understood to posses the highest frequencies of these markers (peeking over 90% in parts).

Now this is something that can be supported by other facts as well. For instance, many physical anthropologists had long maintained that there was an Ibero-Mediterranean presence throughout the Isles in ancient times. They supported their theory by pointing out the number of Irish & British that possessed physical features that were of the same "sub-racial" brand, as they phrased it. However, they also felt that the input was inappreciable and that the Iberian input had long since become marginalized, due to movements of other peoples into the Isles (i.e. the Celts, Saxons, Vikings, etc.). However, I should point that some of the more sophisticated anthropologists of those days did note that the supposed 'Nordic' features that dominated the lands were of a type unlike most of their continental European counterparts. C.S. Coon came to label the sub-group that dominated the Isles as the "Keltic" type.

We now understand that the very nature of the science of physical anthropology was inherently flawed due to the obvious bias that could be and was employed by a number of these scientists and the very fact that cataloging people by their physical features alone is no real indication of genuine ancestry. Genetics has since rendered physical anthropology relatively useless as being an indicator of ancestry, but that's not to say that the particular brand of anthropology is of no value. We can still learn many things by revisiting some of these works and applying the data to what we have since learned, in relation to ancestry.

In addition to this, we also find that linguists have uncovered interesting details on the Celtic language. Many now maintain that Celtiberian is of the Q-Celtic brand of the language, which incidentally Goidelic (Irish Celtic) and its modern forms evolved from. And while there are certainly a share of linguists that suggest otherwise, most can agree that Celtiberian is more closely related to the Q-Celtic variety than any other continental Celtic language. Therefore the idea of a direct Celtiberian influence over the Irish form of the language, seems probable at this time.

Now what does all this translate into, as far as the Iberians are concerned? Well, I think these findings show that many European populations have remained relatively homogeneous, in spite of the older prevailing theories which dominated academia for quite sometime. For example, the notion that Iberia had been dramatically effected ethnically by Moorish conquest now seems untrue, due to genetic evidence that proves otherwise; though there was no doubt a slight impact. Things like this could be explained by those who have a better understanding of Iberian history, but the genetic evidence is largely incontestable. Now it seems that it is quite possible for language and culture to be transmitted to a population without need of significant genetic input. And so we find Iberia - especially northern Iberia - in the largely homogeneous state it has remained in genetically for many thousands of years.

Over 60% of modern Iberians are of shared genetic ancestry and this margin raises greatly the further north one looks. Inevitably, the Celtic regions of Iberia then take on a similar genetic form to their Celtic counterparts in the Isles and their Basque neighbors; being dominated by large frequencies of the Oisín clan's genetic composition (the Atlantic model). Now does this make the Celtic populations in Iberia or the Isles any less Celtic? Well, that largely depends on how one chooses to define what Celtic is. The best case that can be made for a Celtic identity resides in language and culture. Since there can be no doubt of the Celtic language and culture having prevailed in Iberia and Isles (and still prevailing in parts), the Celtic identity can still remain secure with these peoples.

Revisiting the physical anthropological aspect to this one still finds that, generally speaking, the Iberians posses features that differ from the Irish/British. This is something the science of genetics cannot deal with on its own merits. Now as someone who has studied some on physical anthropology, I will present you with my theory, which attempts to explains the anomaly. To narrow things down, I will primarily focus on the two groups most closely related genetically, the Northern Iberians & the Irish. Northern Iberians generally fall into the physical classification known as the (Western) Atlanto-Mediterranean type; though many Basques also notably fall into their own Dinaric type as well. The Irish, on the other hand, largely belong to the Keltic-Nordic type; though they are not devoid of their share of Atlanto-Mediterranean types, as has been pointed out by a number of physical anthropologists. Now how can this be explained? If we were to go by physical appearances alone, we would find that only a minority of the Irish would fall under the same classification as the Northern Iberians. Well the answer to this is quite simple really. It's the result of thousands of years worth of mutual physical adaptation to their respective environments. C.S. Coon himself believed that the Nordics were themselves simply depigmented Mediterraneans and genetically speaking, amongst these European groups, this theory can be substantiated.

The depigmentation process, regardless of the semantics, entails far more than just skin and eye depigmentation. Various other features can evolve due to the environment, as well as the sexual selection process. Therefore, the various physical differences between these genetically similar populations can be relatively well explained.

Well, that's my input on this matter. I hope it was at least of some value.

[Art]

¡Welcome to the forum, Celtica!

You might be right about the difference in climate. Many years ago, I worked one summer in Comillas, Cantabria, teaching English to Spanish kids. Most of the teachers were Irish college students. Some of the Irish girls got sunburned quite badly. They said that they weren't used to such strong sun.

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¡Bienvenido al foro, Celtica!

Tal vez tengas razón acerca de la diferencia en el clima. Hace muchos años, trabajé un verano en Comillas, Cantabria, enseñando inglés a niños españoles. La mayoría de los profesores fueran universitarios irlandeses. Algunos de las irlandesas se quemaron muy mal. Dijeron que no estaban acostumbrados a un sol tan fuerte.

[Celtica]

Hi Art! Thanks for the welcome.

Teaching in Cantabria must have been a very fulfilling experience. The story about the Irish girls is certainly not surprising. My mother has been to Ireland & Britain and told us of the "gloomy" conditions, but was still nonetheless captivated by the beauty of the landscape.

I always feel bad for my fair friends down here in the South. Summers can be very punishing here. Unfortunately, I am not spared of similar problems myself. I suffer from a slight case of rosacea and my mother has a fair share of freckles. Luckily for my Sister, she takes more after my Father - who can somewhat handle harsher conditions. My daughter is really cursed though in that area. She is extremely fair-skinned. She was also born with red hair, which has since toned to a pleasant strawberry-blond color.

[Bob]

Hwere's an intresting article of natural selection and human skin pigmentaion.

http://backintyme.com/essays/?p=4