Posted on 07/27/2012 9:55:32 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
I thought that Cornish died out in the 18th century but could be wrong. I think there is a group which is trying to revive it (as a second language) but they may have to fill in some bits from Welsh. (Sort of like using frog DNA for dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park”...)
Maybe you’re right about the Celtic origins of the Picts. I did a quick Wikipedia search just now and couldn’t find any mention of some non-Indo European language. It might be a disproven old theory. I read a long time ago that the Romans described the Picts as being smaller and darker than other Celtic speakers and that they guessed that they had an Iberian origin.
As for the origins of the Scots, I refer you to SunkenCiv.
what a colossal waste of time
Thanks harold e. :’)
I’m often surprised at the relative interest in the various topics. Like for example, this one’s not huge yet, but what a great discussion! And the topic that went up maybe an hour ago, about a Roman fort at Alderney, has six replies already. That’s probably more than the one I posted about five years ago about Precolumbian Bison populations in Illinois. ;’)
“Who were the Picts”
That’s a great question. Some think they were Celts, maybe, maybe not. The Celts were from central europe and spoke an Indo-European language. (The Iberians weren’t Celts ) Early missionaries considered their language very different. Venerable Bede called the Picts, “Scythian” which some think means Scandinavian. What if they were exactly what he called them Scythians which were a horse culture from the Eurasian steppes and Black Sea. The Picts had horses and horse culture. I can’t help but notice how similar images of Pictish horses are to Scythian. How they got there is anybodies guess but it’s not to much of a stretch to see them as mercenary horse soldiers stranded in a strange land who got the urge to settle down.
I don’t know why you say the Iberians weren’t celt.
The Iberians were a non Indo-European group, the last rements of which exist as the Basque. They are sometimes thought to be true decendents of CroMagnon Man in both genetics and language. The Celts are largely considered a cultural group from central Europe and all forms of their language are Indo-European. In Britian there is a disconnect between culture and genetics where some populations are genetically close to Iberians but culturally Celtic.
If your’re interested in learning more, there is a sub field in archaeology called archeogenetics.
Late ancient authors, dealing with various ethnic groups not mentioned in earlier historians, often applied to them the names of unrelated people who had lived in the same area many centuries earlier who were mentioned by Herodotus and other early writers. So tribes living north of the Black Sea might be called Scythians even if not really Scythian. It may be that Bede was following that practice (although the original Scyths were never as far west as Britain).
I believe the builders of Stonehenge are thought to have spoken a non-Indo-European language. There were definitely people living in the British Isles before any Indo-European languages arrived there.
Given the genetic evidence for relationships with people in the Iberian peninsula, perhaps before the Celts arrived there was a language related to something spoken in Spain (either a relative of Basque or some other pre-Roman language of Spain).
I also had read that calling peoples “Scythian” for anyone from above the Black Sea was common practice in late antiquity. Bede was a learned churchman known as a great scholar and it’s hard to imagine he would use that word while trying to describe Scandinavians. The horse culture of the Picts doesn’t square with Scandinavians anyway.
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