The Celts : a comparative analysis

[Señor Malo]

Originally Posted by Milesian

Yeah, as I said - I have more faith in Ross Kemp's expertise

Good point, then.

Anyhow, I'd better get some general notions on genetics (haplogroup, allele, phenotype, etc) in order to follow better the post exchanges

[Gesta Bellica]

Originally Posted by johnraciti

Celtic Sicilian Peoples: The Normans
Here is interesting article written by Vincenzo Salerno:

http://www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art171.htm

Genetics & Anthropology in Sicily

http://www.bestofsicily.com/genetics.htm

I think R1b's could be result of - the influx of the "Celtic-Nordic" Normans intermarrying with the local Sicilian population.

Nordic - most generally, refers to native inhabitants of Scandinavia, northwestern Europe and regions bordering the North Sea.

Normans - residual Norse civilization of medieval Normandy, amalgamated with the essentially Gallic-Celtic population already resident there. In the medieval context, the Normans were Frankish as well as Scandinavian.

R1a = Nordic
R1b = Celtic

There would have to be a few Celts in Sicily.

There are 52% Celtic-Italians that are R1b's.

The notions explained in these websites must be taken "cum granum salis"..
he contraddicts himself quite a lot.
I find rather ridicolous his attempt to portray Sicily as an unique phenomenon of multicultural society, claiming in the same time that there are no differences between italians..
As if some distinctive southern italian traits were not clearly visible...

[Menydh]

For a start, afaik R1b is not "Celtic-Nordic" (I assume that he refers to the Hallstatt Kelt racial type). It is most abundant in the West, especially among the Irish people of Connacht and the Spanish Basques. None of them "Keltic" and only the Connacht people lightly celticised in a cultural sense.

If the Normans brought R1b in Sicily, that would have been admixture in the Normans themselves acquired through mixing with the inhabitants of modern Normandy.

At least that's what makes sense to infer.

[johnraciti]

Is M170 – a Celtic Culture? or is M343? I thought M173 & M45 is the journey of R1b…?

[Gil]

First of all, M170 = Haplogroup I or Eu7.

According to current theories the I Haplogroup arrived in Europe around 20,000-25,000 years ago from the Middle East. It is believed to be associated with the Gravettian culture.

During the last glacial maximum it is believed that this group temporarily migrated to the region of modern day Croatia before permanently migrating north.

There are also indications that this lineage is tied to the Celtic culture. The spread of the I group in western Europe is consistent with the Celtic expansion that occured in the mid-first millenium BC.

Also:

Hg I accounts for more than one-third of paternal lineages in two distinct regions of Europe: among Scandinavian populations and in the northwestern Balkans.
Relatively high frequencies are also characteristic of some French regions, like Low Normandy and southern France.

Note this table for percentages:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/art...e=table&id=TB1

also:

Subhaplogroup I1a is mostly found in northern Europe, with its highest frequencies in Scandinavian populations, where it accounts for 88%–100% of Norwegian, Swedish, and Saami M170 lineages. I1a has a decreasing gradient from its peak frequency in Scandinavia toward both the Urals and the Atlantic periphery (fig. 1C). Its I1a4 subclade has been found mainly as single observations scattered in eastern and southeastern Europe. Since the Scandinavian Peninsula was completely depopulated during the LGM, two main European refugia, the Iberian Peninsula/southern France and the Ukraine/Central Russian Plain (Dolukhanov 2000), can be considered as possible source regions of Scandinavian I1a chromosomes. Although Hg I occurs in the Ukraine at a higher incidence (22%) than in western Europe (11% in France), the virtual absence in Scandinavia of the most represented eastern European I1b* subclade, together with the higher I1a microsatellite diversity background, point to western Europe as the source of the Scandinavian I1a chromosomes, since the STR diversity of I1a decreases from western to eastern Europe, showing a significant negative correlation (r=-0.63; significance level 0.99) with longitude. In France, I1a is the leading subclade, representing 45% of the Hg I lineages, which, however, occur in a focal rather than clinal pattern. Hg I is more frequent in Low Normandy (I = 23.8%; I1a = 11.9%) and southern France (I = 15.8%; I1a = 5.3%), whereas it has a much lower occurrence in the Poitier and Lyon interior regions (I = 4.0%; I1a = 2.0%). Interestingly, subclade I1a shows a distribution similar to the second PC of the synthetic maps based on classical genetic markers (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994) and reveals a significantly positive correlation with mtDNA haplogroups V and U5b (rV=0.47; rU5b=0.60; significance level 0.999), which have been suggested to mark a postglacial population expansion from Iberia

Also note that, as i've said before, there can be no correlation between haplogroup and culture because cultures are mobile and interchangeable and cultural changes can occur with minimum impact on the gene pool, mainly due to commercial trading, micro-settlement, etc.

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by Nadvojvoda Janez Kranjski

R1b appears to have emerged in Eastern Europe but is now most frequent in Western Europe.

http://www.worldfamilies.net/Tools/r..._in_europe.htm

Based only on that text? I looks to me like much speculative.

And, by the way, only the rivers in the northern slopes of the Pyrenees flow NW and northwards, whereas the rivers in the southern slopes flow SE and southwards.

[The Flying Dutchman]

The Celts, Celtic, Kelts or Keltic, wasn't that just a Latin name for all the "Strange People, Strangers so to say" the Roman Army encoutered with during their conquest of Europe ?

I believe Haplogroup R1b1 (previous R1b) are the direct descendants of the Cro-Magnon people who came to Europe from Central Asia around 35,000/30,000 years ago and who were forced south to live in Northern Spain and Southern France due to the last Glacial Periode wich covered most of Norht Europe. These are the people who painted magnificient pictures in the caves of North Spain and South France.

After the last Glacial Periode some of these people moved north others stayed behind (explains the high 95% percentage of R1b1 in North Spain).

The ones who moved North settled into France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, England, Scotland and Ireland. Ireland like North Spain has also a very high R1b1 percentage, maybe because the landbridge between Ireland and England disappeared ? resulting in these people being isolated on a Island.

So the Celts or Kelts in Spain, France, Ireland, England, Scotland, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany (and others probabley) with Y-chromosone R1b1 (and subclades) are the descandents of the very first people who came to Europe.

Above is my opinion anyway, today nobody can put a label on Haplogroup R1b1 w'll have to wait for on-going DNA investigations carried out in Europe and USA. As goes for other Haplogroups like I, G and R1a.

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by The Flying Dutchman

The Celts, Celtic, Kelts or Keltic, wasn't that just a Latin name for all the "Strange People, Strangers so to say" the Roman Army encoutered with during their conquest of Europe ?

From Keltoi I believe. Greek not Latin. But I've never heard that it was used to mean stranger. The ancient Greeks used Barbaros to mean stranger, foreigner.

I believe Haplogroup R1b1 (previous R1b) are the direct descendants of the Cro-Magnon people who came to Europe from Central Asia around 35,000/30,000 years ago and who were forced south to live in Northern Spain and Southern France due to the last Glacial Periode wich covered most of Norht Europe. These are the people who painted magnificient pictures in the caves of North Spain and South France.

After the last Glacial Periode some of these people moved north others stayed behind (explains the high 95% percentage of R1b1 in North Spain).

Yes. Only that I don't know of a percentage as high as 95% anywhere in Northern Spain.

The highest percentage anywhere is in Connacht, Ireland. It is near 90% (maybe as much as 95%?). Followed by the Basque Country (around 87%?). I don't remember the exact percentages.

The ones who moved North settled into France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, England, Scotland and Ireland.

Apparently as far North as Norway. Not sure about Sweden, but I suspect that percentages of R1b* there must be lower.

Ireland like North Spain has also a very high R1b1 percentage, maybe because the landbridge between Ireland and England disappeared ? resulting in these people being isolated on a Island.

Prior to the invasions of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, the genocided Britons would have been carriers of R1b*.

So the Celts or Kelts in Spain, France, Ireland, England, Scotland, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany (and others probabley) with Y-chromosone R1b1 (and subclades) are the descandents of the very first people who came to Europe.

Maybe you are confusing Celtic with [Hallstatt] Keltic here. Celt is only a cultural term while Keltic is [sub-]racial.

Above is my opinion anyway, today nobody can put a label on Haplogroup R1b1 w'll have to wait for on-going DNA investigations carried out in Europe and USA. As goes for other Haplogroups like I, G and R1a.

A label? You mean like adscribing the haplogroup to a some identifiable anthropological type?

I think that it was Galaico who said that haplogroups are older than anthropological/sub-racial types.

[The Flying Dutchman]

thanks for the corrections

[The Flying Dutchman]

[quote=Mynydd]
Yes. Only that I don't know of a percentage as high as 95% anywhere in Northern Spain.

The highest percentage anywhere is in Connacht, Ireland. It is near 90% (maybe as much as 95%?). Followed by the Basque Country (around 87%?). I don't remember the exact percentages.

Southern England as high as 70 %, the Basque Country and some parts of Irland above 90% [from the Geneographic site]

[Pro Hibernia]

As a general reply to those in the thread who have suggested that the Celtic people conquered and imposed their Culture and Languages on the indigenous people of the British Isles for example, well whilst reading a book, the author suggested another theory. Bear in mind, this is a book on general Scottish history, and it isn’t an in depth look into the Scottish peoples origin:

Who were the Celts?

The popular notion persists that at some time around 700 bc, Scotland was conquered by the Celts. These woad-painted, sword wielding warriors from central Europe had already over run most of the continent; now they arrived at these shores, subdued the natives, and made this land their own. By such means did the Celtic become apart of the European wide Celtic society stretching from Ireland to eastern Europe, a culture that would in time defiantly resist the armed might of Imperial Rome. The truth is very probably something different.

The idea that our history evolved around a cycle of invasions, colonisations and displacements is relatively recent. It originated in the nineteenth contrary through archaeologists attempting to explain how certain material objects or physical structures sharing close characteristics came to be found dispersed over huge distances. Hence the invention of the ‘beaker folk’, who at the start of the ‘Bronze Age’ created a form of pottery that is found widely around Europe. The creation of the Celts as an all conquering race followed the same logic. It was based largely on the discovery of decorative metal work from a lake near La Tène in Switzerland, of a type also to be found over great swathes of Europe. Archaeologists put 2 + 2 together - and came up with 5. They presumed that language and material culture (art, architecture and so forth) could be spread only through conquest.

That there was a tribe called the Celts is undeniable. The Greeks referred to the ‘Keltoi’ in the sixth centaury bc, and subsequent Roman authors wrote of the ‘Celtae’. By Julius Caesar’s time in the first century bc, these Celts were inhabiting southern and central France. Nowhere is there any hard evidence that these same Celts had invaded and conquered Scotland centuries earlier.

What there is evidence for, though, is of several closely related languages linking the people of a substantial part of northern and western Europe - and these tongues, which included Scottish Gaelic, Pictish, Cumbric and Brittonic, have been labelled ‘Celtic’. The error archaeologists made in the nineteenth centaury was to equate the linguistic spread with the material evidence. So how could language spread if not through conquest?

The answer is that it could have just been easily spread through the process of exchange and trade. As far back as Stone Age times, highly prized commodities like stone axes were traded over immense distances. During the Bronze Age the rare metals of gold and tin were similarly ‘exported’. In order for good to be traded, merchants would have needed to converse. Even if their respective languages were quite different and mutely unintelligible, some form of common language would have been required. This is after all how Swahili developed in more recent times, a fundamentally bandu tongue modified by Arabic through the extensive East African trade and now spoken by 30 million people world wide.

That said there might conceivably have been some small-scale conquests, or movements of tribes, from continental Europe into Scotland during pre-Roman era. Caesar him self wrote that Belgae, whose southern boundary marched with that of Celtae, having crossed to Southern England sometime before 100 bc, and it may be that similar encroachments were made along Scotland’s eastern coast. It is also conceivable that the arrival of the Belgae put pressure on new indigenous population and forced them north in search of pastures new. Famine and disease may also have prompted such wholesale movements of people.

Notwithstanding the passage of time, there is still a unique bond uniting the ‘Celtic’ peoples, chiefly those of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and Man. There is no denying the common language and culture that identifies us, that marks us out of being from a common root. But it is most unlikely that the Scottish link with the Celtic tradition all came about with a single conquest, as attractive and as fascinating as that idea sounds.

This theory makes some sense too me, but then again I don't know all the theories out there.