Celts descended from Spanish fishermen, study confirms

[Theodosius the Great]

Avete, Omnes.

Hey, all you Brits are really Spaniards (well, most of you anyway)

It's a very old theory but the evidence seems to confirm it.

Enjoy


Theo

[FAVENTIANVS]

Wodan

Second most common clan arrived from Denmark during Viking invasions in the 9th century.

Sigurd

Descended from Viking invaders who settled in the British Isles from AD 793. One of the most common clans in the Shetland Isles, and areas of north and west Scotland.

And the Anglo-Saxon-Jutes?

[Aryaman2]

"Although Celtic countries have previously thought of themselves as being genetically different from the English, this is emphatically not the case," Professor Sykes said.
This is significant, because the idea of a separate Celtic race is deeply ingrained in our political structure, and has historically been very divisive. Culturally, the view of a separate race holds water. But from a genetic point of view, Britain is emphatically not a divided nation."
That seems to be the main political conclusion, and I suspect there was a political agenda behind it.
I would be interested in knowing what haplogroups/haplotypes are represented in those fancy names, but the work, or at least the press commentaries, don´t look very scientific

[Robert Vermaat]

When o when will people learn to distinguish between race, culture and language? A separate Celtic culture – sure. Language – OK. Race? I thought we left all that behind after the Nazis were crushed.

at least the press commentaries, don´t look very scientific

No surprise there….

[Ebusitanus]

Why would it be outrageous to say, based on genetic evidence, that a certain population group might have originated from point X? I find studies like the recent Nat. Geographic about the spread of Phoenicians throughout the western Med based on genetic study quite interesting and eye opening as it shatters points many had taken for granted.
If by such studies one could find out, per example, a close relation between North Iberian populations and the original Britons (before Anglos, Romans, etc..) then that much better.
I believe there is still to much stigma attached to such a modern and useful tool as genetics nowadays and we should really try to diasociate it with the demented rampage of Germany in the 30´and 40´ since it does not invalidate its reality and modern use.

[Aryaman2]

Why would it be outrageous to say, based on genetic evidence, that a certain population group might have originated from point X? I find studies like the recent Nat. Geographic about the spread of Phoenicians throughout the western Med based on genetic study quite interesting and eye opening as it shatters points many had taken for granted.
If by such studies one could find out, per example, a close relation between North Iberian populations and the original Britons (before Anglos, Romans, etc..) then that much better.
I believe there is still to much stigma attached to such a modern and useful tool as genetics nowadays and we should really try to diasociate it with the demented rampage of Germany in the 30´and 40´ since it does not invalidate its reality and modern use.

I think you miss the point, there is nothing outrageous in searching the origin of a given population on genetic grounds, the problem was with mixing of political or cultural terms. celtic is a cultural definition, sometimes used in politics, but not a biological one. Celtic are not genetically different just because that is not a genetically related term, and its use on genetic grounds is misleading. The same goes for English, of course.
BTW It has been known already for years the close genetic relation between the Basques and the population of Britain and especially Ireland, but the preneolithic fishermen theory seems to me rather bizarre, It has been generally asumed that those relatively isolated populations simply has preserved better than others the original genetic composition of the first wave of European post ice age colonization. It is true that there is a IB haplogroup subclade that can only be found in significant numbers among the Basques of Southern France, and beyond that only in very small numbers in Western Ireland and Norway. This genetic marker has been related to Basque fishermen mixing with native population, but in Historical times, as their activitty in the area can be determined as early as the XIII century, but certainly not to neolithic times.

[Arthes]

Strangely enough, my late father's family name, which is from the West Country comes under a DNA section - Iberian Celt-Scandanavian...... Norman/Viking and Celtic also the Jute included on his side...lol
On mum's side I have Southern Irish, more West Country and early Breton....
I am Rh'O'Negative, which has it's highest percentage amongst the Basques....and is a typical Celt blood group...
regards
Arthes

[Aryaman2]

Again, what is "a typical Celt blood"? Celttic is a linguistic or cultural term, not that it can be proved, but I doubt that Irish and ancient Galatians shared that same typical Celt blood.

[Theodosius the Great]

I am Rh'O'Negative, which has it's highest percentage amongst the Basques....and is a typical Celt blood group...

That would be consistent with this article's findings : Myths of British Ancestry

Written by Stephen Oppenheimer who has come out with two books on the subject. The article is about 7 printed pages long and it explains how genetic tracking works at the very end of it.

He says there were already many people speaking Germanic languages on the island before the Roman conquest. Interesting.

Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul "the language differs but little."

The common language referred to by Tacitus was probably not Celtic, but was similar to that spoken by the Belgae, who may have been a Germanic people, as implied by Caesar. In other words, a Germanic-type language could already have been indigenous to England at the time of the Roman invasion.


Theo

[Robert Vermaat]

He says there were already many people speaking Germanic languages on the island before the Roman conquest. Interesting.

Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul "the language differs but little."
The common language referred to by Tacitus was probably not Celtic, but was similar to that spoken by the Belgae, who may have been a Germanic people, as implied by Caesar. In other words, a Germanic-type language could already have been indigenous to England at the time of the Roman invasion.

Caesar implied the Belgae were Germanic? Can you find the quotes for that?

As to the question if Germanic was spoken in Britain before the Roman invasion, i have held many discussions with people about that. Some of these come from the ultra-right wing and claim that English was spoken in Britain since the Ice Age! The claim that Celts were the aliens and Germans the indigenous people.
Others are from Belgian language-debate, who want to prove some language-divide in Britain, too.

So far, I have yet to encounter any evidence for Germanic in pre-Roman Britain.

[Praefectusclassis]

Caesar discusses the Belgae at the beginnings of books 1 and 2 of the BG. He does seem to imply there that the Belgae are different from the other Gauls, but at the same time implies that they are not German either. The latter is made most clear (after a quick search) in 2.3: "that all the rest of the Belgae were in arms; and that the Germans, who dwell on this side of the Rhine, had joined themselves to them."
This sentence implies that a) Germans are not just those who live on the other side of the Rhine (and therefore the criteria are something else, prolly language) and b) Germans and Belgae are two different things.

[Peroni]

AFAIK the ancient language of the Britons was akin to Welsh and Cornish(?) Probably similar to Frisian too.

[Robert Vermaat]

AFAIK the ancient language of the Britons was akin to Welsh and Cornish(?) Probably similar to Frisian too.

Frisian? That's very Germanic!

[Ron Andrea]

The problem with stating categorically that "all you Brits" are Spaniards is that it ignores centuries, if not millennia, of migration and conquest. Assumedly, we are trying to identify a cultural and linquistic, if not physiological and genetic type for the Britons who lived in what is now the British Isles before the Roman invasions.

Angus Konstan offers the following analysis, in his Historical Atlas of the Celtic World:

In the southeastern corner of Britain a succession of Belgic tribes had established themselves [by mid-first century BC], at the expense of other Celtic tribes who were displaced further north. These were Gauls, driven across the Channel by a combination of a population increase in northern Gaul, and by pressure from the Germans to the east.

Differientiating the Belgic tribes from "other Celtic tribes" may explain some of the cultural and genetic variance identified among the resulting populations. (Julius Ceasar may have been a better soldier and politician than ethnologist.)

This multi-step dispersion of Celts into Britain, Spain, Turkey and elsewhere on the fringes of the Celtic world, of course, has long been credited with the variations among the languages spoken by those Celts, especially between Brythonic and what became modern Irish and Scot.

[authun]

As far as the genetics are concerned. Both Sykes and Oppenheimer use a hypothesis first made by Jim Wilson in 2001.

His hypothesis was based on the suggestion that the Basques represent the Paleolithic population of europe. Wilson argued that levels of R1b was so high amongst Basques, any later derivatives of it in europe must be derived from this paleolithic population. The high levels found in Ireland and North Wales therefore must be indicative of their origin from somewhere in the Iberian peninsular.

The hypothesis, which was well reasoned and which was well supported by other earlier findings was nonetheless, just a hypothesis. Indeed Jim Wilson stated:

"We know of no other study, however, that provides direct evidence of a close relationship in the paternal heritage of the Basque- and the Celtic speaking populations of Britain."

Since 2004 however, R1b has been more thoroughly investigated and it now seems likely that its distribution is indicative of several migratory paths. In 2005, Jim Wilson stated:

"At the moment we are on the cusp of learning something very important about R1b."

Moreover, in a study in 2006 comparing 3 separate Basque populations with 20 from various parts of Europe and the near East, Santos Alonso found that:

"Contrary to previous suggestions, we do not observe any particular link between Basques and Celtic populations beyond that provided by the Paleolithic ancestry common to European populations, nor we find evidence supporting Basques as the focus of major population expansions."

It would appear therefore that, given Wilson's important caveat and given the new data, equating British R1b with paleolithic Iberians is premature.

Harry A