Asturian-American Migration Forum

...y transcribo esto de La Nueva España de hoy:

"Según la información que se ha ido recopilando de la historia, en el Noroeste español hay 2.200 indicios que certifican la existencia de yacimientos de oro que fueron explotados por los romanos. Los principales corredores están ubicados en Galicia, Asturias y León, lo que ratifica la importancia de este sector . Los romanos fueron los primeros en explotar estas instalaciones, que quedaron aparcadas hasta los años 70. Los empresarios no han quedado al margen de esta evolución del sector. Se sorprenden del tiempo que ha tardado el Noroeste español en recuperar esta tradición pese a sus importantes recursos."

2.200 nada menos!!!

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...and so I'm transcribing this out of today's La Nueva España:

Translation (or interpretation, rather):
As per the information on History which is being compiled, there is evidence of 2.200 gold mines in north-western Spain worked by Romans. The major routes are located in Galicia, Asturias and León, which ratifies the importance of that sector. The Romans were the first to work those industries, which have been halted until the 70's. The business world has had something to do with the evolution of this sector. They are surprised that Spain's Northwest has taken so long to recuperate this tradition despite its important resources."
Unquote (whatever all that means, the article is very badly written)

2.200 no less!

Terechu

I don`t know if you are following it, but "La Nueva Espana" is now publishing some sort of collection concerning all aspects of Asturian identity. Last sunday it was time to talk about physical anthropology.
As you know, the latest findings on genetics are helping scientists to track ancient migrations, just by studying the DNA from human populations. You just take a sample of, say, 200 Asturians, and compare it with other samples all over the Iberian Peninsula or the rest of Europe.
Well, I don`t have the article here with me, but I read it only yesterday and remember it quite well.
It has been proven that there is a strong affinity between the peoples of the Cantabrian coast: Asturians, Cantabrians and Basques are mostly the same. There are also some other haplotypes, with a high incidence in Asturian population, which are also common in Southern England, Ireland and Galicia. This is quite logical and proves an early contact between these countries.
This investigation only comes to confirm other data collected, for example, after checking genetic affinity between our ponies and the Exmoor pony, or the similarity between traditional homestead in Asturias, Galicia, Northern Portugal and Ireland.
I guess all this stuff has nothing to wonder at: after all, is it not logical that we have much in common with our northern neighbours, across a narrow sea?

This is very interesting, Mouguais. Does this contradict the opinions of the "experts"? I thought the Basques were thought to be a very separate bloodline from the rest to the northerners?

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Este me interesa muchísimo, Mouguais. Se contradice con la opinión de los "expertos"? Pensaba que se pensan que los Vascos sean un linea de sangre muy distinto del resto de los norteños?

I think these findings quite suit the research that has been unfolded these latter years, Art. Of course genetic heritage is seldom confined into well-defined borders, so the genetic isolation of Basques quite probably is the same all over the Cantabrian mounts.
As far as I know, Basques have a couple of haplotypes of their own, but so they have other peoples in the Peninsula. I think the Iberian Peninsula is a kind of giant "sealed chest" where we haven`t had much genetic shift since last Ice Age. If I have understood the whole thing properly, when the Ice melted, the first great migration in W. Europe started the march from southern peninsulas, Italy and Spain. That is why the most archaical populations in Wales and Western Ireland still keep, even today, many West Mediterranean physical traits.
If you are interested in this topic (I find it fascinating) you can visit www.dienekes.com/blog and especially http://www.dienekes.com/blog/archives/000597.html
Anyway, these investigations are still in a very early stage of development (and I am not any expert, so don`t trust my judgement).

According to research by Luigi-Luca Cavalli Sforza and others, there are five principal components of the European genetic landscape. The first probably represents the spread of agriculture iin neolithic times, and shows a gradation from the Near East to Scandinavia and the British Isles in a northwesterly direction. This represents the highest fraction of the genetic variation that can be extracted from the data.

The second principal may represent adaptation to the increasing cold of northern climes, but may also relate to the distribution of the Uralic family of languages. The third principal component of European genes correlates to archeological data that reflects the spread of nomadic herders from the Euro-Asiatic Steppes about 4500 to 5000 years ago. These people were Indo-European speakers. The fourth principal components probably reflect Greek expansion during the first two millenia BC (BCE).

The fifth principal component reflects the genetic history of the Basques as a residual neolithic people who have remained more or less where they are for a very long time. It spreads outward from modern day areas in which Basque is or has recently been spoken, and locations with Basque place names.

I would avoid reading the original papers unless you like discussions of eigenvalues, etc., but Cavalli-Sforza's book, co-authored with his son Francesco, is quite readable. The English version is The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution. is a fine translation of the Italian original.

When I have time, I'll try to research some more modern work (The book is about 10 years old.).

Bob Martinez

My source to state the Gaelic-Basque link is the following:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1256894.stm

Where you can read, for example, "On the Y-chromosome the Celtic populations turn out to be statistically indistinguishable from the Basques," Professor Goldstein said"

This stuff is fascinating, but I always feel that I am missing most of the information. Genetics is simply far beyond my comprehension

Mouguias,

Feel free to ask anything you want about genetics (and evolution). I've been teaching both areas for well over 30 years at the university level, and my degree is in genetics.

Bob Martinez

Bob
I am hopeless, I am afraid. Let me give you an example. When I read something like
"A study similar to past work by Chikhi who had found a large percentage of Neolithic ancestry in Europeans. This study uses four parental groups instead of Chikhi's Paleolithic/Neolithic. A remaining weakness is that Basques are not representative of Paleolithic Europeans, since Haplogroup I which had a Balkan/South Euro focus in UP times represents non-Basque UP European ancestry."
or
"We inferred past admixture processes in the European population from genetic diversity at eight loci, including autosomal, mitochondrial and Y-linked polymorphisms. Admixture coefficients were estimated from multilocus data, assuming that most current populations can be regarded as the result of a hybridization process among four or less potential parental populations. "
Then I just think "yeah, whatever"

You're not alone, Mouguais. It kind of makes sense, but it's so heavy on the tech talk and big words that it's worthless except to specialists. Well, it must make the writer feel self-important.

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No estas sólo, Mouguais. Tiene un pocito de sentido, pero es "pesa tanto" por expressiones technicales y palabras grandes que no tiene valor excepto a los especialistas. Bueno, debe hacer el escritor sentirse importante.

Mouguías, los "haplogroups" y todo lo demás está muy bien explicado en la siguiente página, aunque en inglés. La población del Arco Atlántico pertenece mayoritariamente al "Haplogroup" R1b, que se extendió por Europa occidental a partir de la Península Ibérica (y no al revés, como muchos creen). Si quieres que te traduzca algo, ya sabes, mándame un mensaje.

http://www.dnaheritage.com/masterclass2.asp

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Mouguias, the haplogroups and everything else is very well explained in the web site shown below, although it's in English. The population of the Atlantic Rim belongs mostly to Haplogroup R1b, which spread throughout western Europe from the Iberian Peninsula (and not vice-verce, like many believe). If you want me to translate anything, send me a message.

Saludos
Terechu

Mouguias,

I am not at all astonished that you find the writing jargon-laden and dense. Most scientific writing, unfortunately in my opinion, shows little sense of style or clarity, and is especially difficult for nonspecialists for reasons involving the syle of writing as well as the content. Here what I hope of a slightly clearly version of what you posted as examples:

Another study was similar to Chikhi's, who had found a high percentage of Neolithic ancestry in Europeans. This study uses four parental groups instead of a single Chikki's Paleolithic/Neolithic group [It would be helpful if it stated here what the four groups were.] . A remaining weakness is that Basques are an example of Paleolithic Europeans [in this sense], since Haplogroup I [think of this as a particualr set of alleles or forms of genes], which was centered in the Balkans and Southern Europe during Upper Paleolithic times, is a non-Basque set of genetic markers from Upper Paleolithic Europe.

[Basques seem to have live where they now live for a very long time, and their genetic make-up represents a very old set of genes that drop in frequency as you move away from the Basque regions. They have not been very strongly influenced by other sets of genes from different regions.]

[A haplotype is simply a collection of genes on a chromosome that are fairly close together, so they are not too rapidly reshuffled from one generation to the next. Each gene can exists in several versions or alleles, so a particular combination of alleles of those genes coonstitutes a haplotype. They are likely to be different in population of different origins.]

or

We reached conclusions about the history of population movements, splitting and fusion in the European population from the genetic diversity of eight genes, including autosomal [genes that are not on the sex chromosomes, i.e., the X or the Y], mitochondrial genes [which are transmitted only by women]and Y-linked genes [transmitted only by men] differences. We reached quantitative conclusions about the genetic origin of populations on the basis of data involving many different genes [This approcah is more accurate than using only one or a small number of genes.]. We assume that most current populations can be regarded as the result of hybridization among four or less potential parental populations.

The basic concept, at least for two populations, is like mixing water and red wine. If the modern fluid to be analyzed has 35% the color intensity of the wed wine, it is likely to have resulted from the mixing of 35% red wine and 65% water.

If you like, I can send you a human genetics textbook when I return to campus at the end of July. Unfortunately I have only English language versions, but they aren't much harder to read than a Spanish version would be, since you already read English. The only difficulty is in the specialized vocabulary, which is not too different for the two languages. Just send me an email with your mailing address.

You can find a helpful glossary of genetic terms at http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/H ... /glossary/

Saludinos desde Rockport, Massachusetts

Bob

Ay, como me esta "prestando" iros conociendo a todos poco a poco, sobre todo Terechu, Carlos, y Mouguias. Me habeis estado haciendo reir un monton, al ir echando un vistazo a los mensajes atrasados (lo de la delegacion de Pilona fue impagable total). Y estoy bastante de acuerdo con lo que decis, por ejemplo, en mi caso, me ha pasado como a Mouguias, que he llegado a conocer (quiero decir, interesarme, y hacer un esfuerzo en buscar) la musica asturiana pasando primero por la irlandesa, y el concepto mas trillado de lo celta. Y sobre todo, porque cuando vives en Asturias (por lo menos en mi caso), creo que la "cultura" asturiana se llega a dar por supuesta, y entonces no la valoras, la tienes alrededor todo el rato, y no le das mas vueltas. Y entonces por su puesto que no habria llegado a preduntarme, como hacia Art, si las gaitas ya existian en la epoca de los romanos. El caso es que ahora, siendo emigrante, y viviendo en constante estado de nostalgia de fondo, es cuando, caray, si que me parece una pregunta interesante eso de cuando los antepasados inventarian la gaita. Y por eso, cosas que nunca antes me habian preocupado, ahora me parece vital investigarlas, porque ahora si que se que es parte de mi identidad, que aqui corro el riesgo de que se desdibuje demasiado. No soy inglesa, ni lo sere nunca, ni lo quiero ser, pero despues de muchos anos, cuando tus referencias culturales han cambiado tanto, acabas preguntandote de donde eres. Por eso cada vez que voy a Asturias, vengo cargada de videos, y CDs y libros sobre la historia etnografica de nuestro pueblo. Y asi, he llegado (casi a los 40) a poder apreciar al Tordin de Frieres, y al coro marinero de Luanco, y cualquier cosa que me recuerde de donde soy, (y llamalo como quieras, asturiano, celta o no, o lo que sea). A proposito, el convertido total de mi familia a la musica "asturiana" o llamala como quieras, es mi suegro de Edinburgo (enqamorado total de los Lagos de Covadonga) que siempre me esta pidiendo mas cintas y CDs. Al final, casi que a mi no me importa tanto la cuestion del nombre que le demos, cuando veo que incluso versiones menos autenticas o genuinas pueden emocionar de tal forma a otros "celtas" como mi suegro. Y esto por supuesto sin contradecir a Terechu que apuesta por la preservacion de la pureza de la tradicion. Lo que pasa en mi caso es que parece que solo estoy empezando a conocer esa tradicion desde que emigre.

Con carino
Tere

Traduccion libre
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i'm really enjoying myself enormously while getting to know you all, specially Terechu, Carlos and Mouguias. you've got me laughing while I was browsing through past messages (the posting about the Pilona delegation to the Feria de Abril, was most amusing). I do agree with many of the things you say, for example, I, like Mouguias, got to know ( I mean, get really interested in and make an effor to find) Asturian music, having started with the Irish first, and the more trite Irish-celtic concept. But probably foremost because I think (at least, this was in my case), when you live in Asturias. you take the Asturian culture for granted, youdon't value it so much, as it is constantly surrounding you, and you don't really need to analyse it in this way. Then I wouldn't probably have been puzzled like Art, with the question of when did the Asturians started using the bagpipes, and was it pre- or post the Roman invasion. It would never have occurred to me to think about this, although now as an emigrant, I see this as a very interesting question, of which I'd like to know the answer! Thus, there are now so many things which didn't concern me before that I feel now the need to investigate, and know and discover. And it is because I feel now that they are part of my identity, and that without this interest, I am perhaps at risk of seeing my identity disintegrating. I am not English, I will never be, I don't want to be. But after so long living here, sometimes I feel that my cultural references have changed so much that it is uncomfortable, and I end up wondering where I belong. So every time I go back home to Luanco, I come back full of videos, books and CDs etc, about the etnographich history of our people. And this way I've got to appreciate (near to my 40s) el Tordin de Frieres, el Coro Marinero de Luanco, and everything that reminds me of home, of where I'm from (call it asturian, celtic or whatever). By the way, the most enthusiastic convert to the asturian music is my father in law from Edinburg, who is always asking me for new tapes, and who utterly fell in love with the Lakes at Covadonga. In the end, I does not bother me so much the name we give to it seeing than even "newer" or spurious versions of it still can touch the hearts of other "celts" like my scottish father in law. And this is in no disagreement to Terechu, who is for the preservation of tradition. Only in my case, it seems I'm only getting familiar with this tradition since I emigrated.

Love

tere

Ay Terina, si yo te contara lo que yo hacía cuando vivía en EE.UU! Me leí toda la bibliografía de Liam O'Flaherty sólo por sus descripciones de los paisajes de Irlanda, porque me recordaban a los de Asturias! ¡Sé perfectamente la añoranza que se siente por Asturias cuando se está lejos - y eso que tú estás aquí al lado, como quien dice.

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Oh Terina, if I told you all that I did when I lived in the USA! I read Liam O'Flaherty's entire bibliography just for his descriptions of Ireland's landscapes, because they reminded me of Asturias! I know perfectly well the yearning one feels for Asturias when you're far away - although you're practically right around the corner, so to speak.

Un besu
Terechu

Earlier I asked about the origins of the bagpipe. There is recent news that suggests this instrument goes back thousands of years before the Roman era:
http://www.asturianus.org/forum/viewtop ... =2485#2485

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Antes pregunté sobre los orígenes de la gaita. Hay noticias recientes que sugieren que este instrumento se remonta hace milenios antes de la era romana:
http://www.asturianus.org/forum/viewtop ... =2485#2485

La gaita, o un instrumento parecido fue bastante abundante en toda la europa medieval, e incluso en el norte de Africa. No tiene porque ser un instrumento "celta". Aparecen instrumentos muy parecidos a la gaita por ejemplo en las pinturas de Breughel el viejo y El Bosco. En zonas eslavas hay un tipo de gaita. Incluso los bereberes, según tengo entendido tiene un tipo de instrumento parecido. En cuanto a la etimología de los toponimos, es muy dicifil saberla con exactitud. Los hay de origen vasco, luego celta, despues latin. Pero resulta que a su vez, el latin deriva del griego o idiomas prelatinos, la mayoría indoeuropeos, a excepción del vasco. Resulta que cualquier toponimo, puede tener dos o tres etimologias totalmente convicentes, incluso los mas parecidos al castellano, asturiano, o latin.
Un foro muy interesante, y por eso no me resisti a hacer una pequeña aportación en forma de opinión.

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translated by Art

The bagpipe, or a similar instrument, was abundant enough in all of medieval europa, and even in the north of Africa. It does not have any reason to be [in origin] a "Celtic" instrument. Instruments very similar to the bagpipe appear, for example, in Breughel the Elder's and Bosch's paintings. In the Slavonic areas there is a type of bagpipe. Even the Berbers, as I have understood it have a similar kind of instrument. As for the etymology of the toponyms [place names], it is very difficult to know with accuracy. They are of Basque origin, then Celtic, and later Latin. But it turns out that in turn, the Latin derives from the Greek or Pre-Latin languages, the majority Indo-European, with the exception of the Basque. It turns out that any toponym can have two or three totally convincing etymologies, even those most similar to the Castilian(Spanish), Asturian, or Latin. A very interesting forum, and because of this, I'm not going to be able to resist making a small contribution of my own opinion.