Quote:
Originally Posted by Truth-Finder
If I remember well, the Irish Book of invasions claimed that celtik speaking peoples migrated from Spain;
The celtic culture might have come from Austria and South germany in to the Iberian peninsula and after absorbing iberian genes, they would have passed in to Ireland...
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The most sensible view to take is that there were in fact several migrations of Celtic speakers to Ireland, from different geographical regions, of different linguistic types, and with differing physical anthropological heritages.
The Lebor Gabala, or Book of Invasions, has to be read very carefully. What many Celtophiles and interested observers fail to realise is that the work was a highly political text, and has been described by respected Hibernicists as not much short of a deliberate falsification and distortion of the true history of the peopling of Ireland. I would refer the interested to T. F. O'Rahilly's History and Mythology of Early Ireland (or whatever it's called, it's something like that anyway!), as he argues it much better than I could. The fact that I refrain from completely paraphrasing him or attempting to encapsulate his arguments, is the fact that the subject is so horrendously complicated in real life that we couldn't possibly hope to satisfactorily discuss it on a mere Forum.
What we are dealing with in the present time is the result of peculiar historical circumstances whereby the layman has in huge numbers gained access to the primary texts that discuss his ancient past, and yet has not been sufficiently exposed to the generations of criticism of these texts that built up before their mass publication. Thus, people are voraciously reading and trying to make sense of it all themselves, from first principles, without any guidance. Those who have delved a little deeper are thus put in the position of having to reinvent the wheel, and argue points that should have been settled a century ago!
Ireland does seem to have received Celtic migrants from Galicia sort of area, but this may have been the last wave of Celtic migrants to the island, after the initial bringers of IE speech seem to have trickled through via Britain, later Belgic and Dumnonian waves came from respectively northeastern and Armorican Gaul by a mixture of land routes and the more direct passage up through the Irish Sea.
As for Wales, well, there's all sorts of non-Celtic substrates going on, as there is all over the Isles, and for Koch to simplify this to get sensationalist headlines demonstrates to me that he is little other than a self-interested showman. He's puzzled me in the past, with his often maverick theories, so don't be surprised if we hear more of him in future, as he attempts to ride other up and coming trends in public life - as he is doing here with this poorly understood adoption of genetic science.