The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[Quadratus]

Yes, I already assumed that you and Keith (and myself) were on the same wave-length..

Yes Robert - I'm pretty sure we are.

While I'm on my soap box I'll air two concerns which I have as a layman. They apply to many (most?) areas of study, but seem particularly relevant to the field of linguistics/prehistory/archaeology.

The first is the presumption of homogeneity, to which I have already referred. It is almost mandatory to assure the reader that no such assumption must be made, and then the next moment to speak of 'the Romans', 'the Celts' or as I did (mea culpa :oops: ) 'the lowland brits' etc. No harm done in some contexts, but lethal in this one.

The second is what happens when experts step out of their own field. Colin Renfrew is a classic case. A world authority on certain fields of archaeology, but not on linguistics, it seems to me that he uses his eminence in one field to puff up some fairly speculative and to put it mildly, debatable conjectures in another. Stephen Oppenheimer does exactly the same. An expert on genetics, but by my estimate little more than an informed layman in linguistics. I am very interested in what Tom Cruise has to say about acting, but couldn't care less about his views on the origins of life on Earth: I place great weight on Oppenheimer's views on genetics, but have no more than curiosity for his views on the origins of the English language – unless adequately evidenced and supported (which in my view they were not).

I am not suggesting for a moment that only certified 'experts' can give opinions or make speculations, only that we should be very careful here, as elsewhere, about argument ad hominem. Fred Hoyle was a great astronomer, but a crap biochemist and Linus Pauling was a great biochemist, but a terrible medical theorist.

Sorry about this little rant, folks, but I must be still suffering from an excess of Christmas.

Aaaah … I feel better now.