Posted on 09/09/2004 3:59:23 PM PDT by blam
Irish, Scots and Welsh not Celts - scientists
September 09 2004 at 08:15PM
Dublin - Celtic nations like Ireland and Scotland have more in common with the Portuguese and Spanish than with "Celts" - the name commonly used for a group of people from ancient Alpine Europe, scientists say.
"There is a received wisdom that the origin of the people of these islands lie in invasions or migrations... but the affinities don't point eastwards to a shared origin," said Daniel Bradley, co-author of a genetic study into Celtic origins.
Early historians believed the Celts - thought to have come from an area to the east of modern France and south of Germany - invaded the Atlantic islands around 2 500 years ago.
But archaeologists have recently questioned that theory and now Bradley, from Trinity College Dublin, and his team, say DNA evidence supports their thinking.
Affinities don't point eastwards to a shared origin Geneticists used DNA samples from people living in Celtic nations and compared the genetic traits with those of people in other parts of Europe.
The study showed people in Celtic areas: Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany and Cornwall, had strong genetic ties, but that this heritage had more in common with people from the Iberian peninsula.
"What we would propose is that this commonality among the Atlantic facade is much older... 6 000 years ago or earlier," Bradley told Reuters.
He said people may have moved up from areas around modern-day Portugal and Spain at the end of the Ice Age.
The similarities between Atlantic "Celts" could also suggest these areas had good levels of communications with one another, he added.
But the study could not determine whether the common genetic traits meant "Celtic" nations would look alike or have similar temperaments. Dark or red hair and freckles are considered Celtic features.
Doesn't that just tell us that there was a strong Celtic presence in pre-Roman Iberia?
The folk music and dance of Northern Spain is Celtic all the way.
non-sequitur.
Just follow the hearldry
2. Until the Germanic invasions starting in the first century BC, Spain was a Celtic country, as was Gaul.
SO9
It's called Ireland today since the Scotians moved Scota to Scotland about 900 AD.
This is not a new discovery ~ rather, it's an admission that the ancient archives kept in Carvajal were correct.
Now, moving backwards, the leadership elite of the Western Celtic culture arrived in Iberia from the Black Sea several hundred years earlier than this according to the ancient stories.
Could it be that what was meant here was a "perceived wisdom" and not a "received wisdom." Just wondering.
Funny how this seems to fit with British Israelism.
Some sources I've read say the Scythians were the red headed freckled descendants of the Hebrew tribe of Dan, which didn't return to Israel after the Babylonian exile and became one of the 'Lost tribes of Israel'.
So, Dan supposedly migrated up around the Black Sea & disappeared to history. About the same time the Scythians appear around the Black Sea.
What does this do to the Mummies of Tarin and the fabric similarities with the Scots, etc??
There were a lot of Celts in Switzerland at one time, but they were pushed westward by more-warlike tribes.
Very True, takes a scientist to confirm a legend.
Actually, I think you'll find it had something to do with being forced to drink wine instead of whiskey.
November 10, 2000
Web posted at: 2:08 PM EST (1908 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Four out of five men in Europe share a common male ancestor who lived as a hunter on a wild continent some 40,000 years ago, researchers say.
In a study appearing Friday in the journal Science, researchers say an analysis of a pattern found in the Y chromosome taken from 1,007 men from 25 places in Europe shows that about 80 percent of Europeans arose from the Paleolithic people who first migrated to Europe.
Peter A. Underhill, a senior researcher at the Stanford Genome Technology Center in Palo Alto, California, and co-author of the study, said the research supports conclusions from archaeological, linguistic and other DNA evidence about the settlement of Europe by ancient peoples.
"When we can get different lines of evidence that tell the same story, then we feel we are telling the true history of the species," said Underhill.
Underhill said the researchers used the Y chromosome in the study because its rare changes establish a pattern that can be traced back hundreds of generations, thus helping to plot the movement of ancient humans.
Y chromosome used to trace ancestry
The Y chromosome is inherited only by sons from their fathers. When sperm carrying the Y chromosome fertilizes an egg it directs the resulting baby to be a male. An X chromosome from the father allows a fertilized egg to be female.
The Y chromosome has about 60 million DNA base pairs. Changes in those base pairs happen infrequently, said Underhill, but they occur often enough to establish patterns that can be used to trace the ancestry of people.
He said researchers looking at the 1,007 chromosome samples from Europe identified 22 specific markers that formed a specific pattern. Underhill said the researchers found that about 80 percent of all European males shared a single pattern, suggesting they had a common ancestor thousands of generations ago.
The basic pattern had some changes that apparently developed among people who once shared a common ancestor and then were isolated for many generations, Underhill said.
This scenario, he said, supports other studies about the Paleolithic European groups. Those studies suggest that a primitive, stone-age human came to Europe, probably from Central Asia and the Middle East, in two waves of migration beginning about 40,000 years ago. Their numbers were small and they lived by hunting animals and gathering plant food. They used crudely sharpened stones and fire.
Neolithic people brought the chromosome to Europe About 24,000 years ago, the last ice age began, with mountain-sized glaciers moving across most of Europe. Underhill said the Paleolithic Europeans retreated before the ice, finding refuge for hundreds of generations in three areas: what is now Spain, the Balkans and Ukraine.
When the glaciers melted, about 16,000 years ago, the Paleolithic tribes resettled the rest of Europe. Y chromosome mutations occurred among people in each of the ice age refuges, said Underhill. He said the research shows a pattern that developed in Spain is now most common in northwest Europe, while the Ukraine pattern is mostly in Eastern Europe and the Balkan pattern is most common in Central Europe.
About 8,000 years ago, said Underhill, a more advanced people, the Neolithic, migrated to Europe from the Middle East, bringing with them a new Y chromosome pattern and a new way of life: agriculture. About 20 percent of Europeans now have the Y chromosome pattern from this migration, he said.
I just don't know Jim. I wish the Chinese would let us have some DNA, that would help. Things are so complicated that I doubt we'll ever figure it out completely.
Does not compute. These folk are known on the Danube for thousands of years. If there's any connection between them and the Hebrews, it would be the other way around.
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