Celtic Found to Have Ancient Roots

NY Times ^ | July 1, 2003 | NICHOLAS WADE

[Pharmboy]

In November 1897, in a field near the village of Coligny in eastern France, a local inhabitant unearthed two strange objects.

One was an imposing statue of Mars, the Roman god of war. The other was an ancient bronze tablet, 5 feet wide and 3.5 feet high. It bore numerals in Roman but the words were in Gaulish, the extinct version of Celtic spoken by the inhabitants of France before the Roman conquest in the first century B.C.

The tablet, now known as the Coligny calendar, turned out to record the Celtic system of measuring time, as well as being one of the most important sources of Gaulish words.

Two researchers, Dr. Peter Forster of the University of Cambridge in England and Dr. Alfred Toth of the University of Zurich, have now used the calendar and other Celtic inscriptions to reconstruct the history of Celtic and its position in the Indo-European family of languages.

They say that Celtic became a distinct language and entered the British Isles much earlier than supposed.

Though the Gauls were strong enough to sack Rome in 390 B.C., eventually the empire struck back. The Romans defeated the Celts, both in France and in Britain, so decisively that Latin and its successor languages displaced Celtic over much of its former territory. In the British Isles, Celtic speakers survived in two main groups: the Goidelic branch of Celtic, which includes Irish and Scots Gaelic, and the Brythonic branch, formed of Welsh and Breton, a Celtic tongue carried to Brittany in France by emigrants from Cornwall.

Because languages change so fast, historical linguists distrust language trees that go back more than a few thousand years. Dr. Forster, a geneticist, has developed a new method for relating a group of languages, basing it on the tree-drawing techniques used to trace the evolutionary relationships among genes. His method works on just a handful of words, a fortunate circumstance since only some 30 Gaulish words have known counterparts in all the other languages under study.

Dr. Forster and his linguist colleague Dr. Toth have used the method to draw up a tree relating the various branches of Celtic to one another and to other Indo-European languages like English, French, Spanish, Latin and Greek. In an article in today's issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they say that soon after the ancestral Indo-European language arrived in Europe it split into different branches leading to Celtic, Latin, Greek and English.

Within Celtic, their tree shows that Gaulish — the continental version of the language — separated from its Goidelic and Brythonic cousins, much as might be expected from the facts of geography.

The researchers' method even dates the fork points in their language tree, although the dates have a wide range of possibility. The initial splitting of Indo-European in Europe occurred around 8100 B.C., give or take 1,900 years, and the divergence between the continental and British versions of Gaelic took place in 3200 B.C., plus or minus 1,500 years, they calculate.

These dates are much earlier than previously estimated. "The traditional date of the Indo-European family has been 4000 BC for some time," Dr. Merritt Ruhlen of Stanford University said. Dr. Ruhlen said the new method "seems pretty reasonable" and should be useful in tracing back the earlier history of the Indo-European language.

Specialists have long debated which country was the homeland of the Indo-Europeans and whether their language was spread by conquest or because its speakers were the first farmers whose methods and tongue were adopted by other populations. The second theory, that of spread by agriculture, has been advocated by Dr. Colin Renfrew, a Cambridge archaeologist.

Dr. Forster, who works in Dr. Renfrew's institute, said in an interview that the suggested date 8100 B.C. for the arrival of Indo-European in Europe "does seem to vindicate Renfrew's archaeological idea that the Indo-European languages were spread by farmers."

Agriculture started to arrive in Europe from the Near East around 6000 B.C., much earlier than the traditional date proposed by linguists for the spread of Indo-European. This timing would fit with the lower end of Dr. Forster's range of dates.

Dr. Forster said that his estimated date of 3200 B.C. for the arrival of Celtic speakers in England and Ireland was also much earlier than the usual date, 600 B.C., posited on the basis of archaeological evidence.

Dr. Forster said his method of comparing groups of languages was unfamiliar to historical linguists, many of whom study how words in a single language have changed over time. Asked what linguists thought of his method he said: "To be honest, they don't understand it, most of them. They don't even know what I'm talking about."

The method has two parts. One is to draw a tree on the basis of carefully chosen words; the second is to date the splits in the tree by calibrating them with known historical events. This is similar to the way geneticists date their evolutionary trees by tying one or more branch points to known dates from the fossil record.

Dr. April McMahon, a linguist at the University of Sheffield in England, said that Dr. Forster's method "seems to me to be a good start" and that it was reasonable to base a language family tree on just a handful of well-chosen words. She had less confidence in the dating method, she said, because language changes in an irregular way based on social factors like the size of the speaker's group and its degree of contact with others.

Geneticists often assume that the rate of mutation will average out over time, so that if one or two branch points in a tree can be dated by fossil evidence, the timing of the other branch points can be inferred.

Dr. Forster says he assumes that the rate of language change can also be averaged over time. But Dr. McMahon says she thinks that historical time, being much shorter than evolutionary time, is less friendly to averaging and that linguists should not even try, at least yet, to put dates on language trees.

[Pharmboy]

Did they hollow the heads out and put candles in them??

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

I don't know for sure. Probably some locale where the English landed, stayed a while, then left. Good question.

[Swordmaker]

Forster's area of expertise is genetics... and gene tree charts are an effective tool in that discipline. I do not know whether it is as effective in linguistics. That remains to be seen... and it might turn out to be very useful. However, it strikes me that Forster's expertise in genetics necessarily limits his expertise in linguistics. Both disciplines require completely differing fields of in depth study and it would be surprising if Forster could be expert in both fields.

On the other hand, interdisciplinary fusions of techniques and knowledge may result in completely new (and accurate) insights or uncover relationships that were heretofor unsuspected.

Words do not necessarily follow peoples... words can precede them. A trader from a people who do not use a word MAY bring it back from a trade expedition. The word may become popular and become adopted into the local language. Captives and slaves bring words and customs with them when they are sold, often at some distance from their roots.

There is also the problem that some words derive from common noises made by babies... mama, dada are prime examples... to assume that unrelated cultures are related based on such words would be falacious.

Sometimes words are coined in one culture and then provide a needed usage in another culture that lacked both the word and the concept. It is my understanding that the Japanese word for "Thank you," "Obrigato" is a transplant from the Portuguese "Obligato." Japanese culture did not include the concept of thanks... it was based on expected class oriented duties and privileges which not require any thanks... it was merely accepted as due. Interaction with a differing culture required a word for "thanks" and an already existing, foreign word was adopted. To then confabulate a familial relationship between Portuguese and Japanese would be erroneous.

[ZULU]

No.

As a matter of fact, in Ireland, where a lot of our Halloween rituals come from, hollowed out turnips with candles in them were used in place of pumpkins.

The heads taken by Celtic warriors were battle trophies and religious offerings.

Various ancient warrior people from Scythians to Aztecs took the heads of their enemies and used them as trophies.

Personally, I admire the Jivaro custom of producing Tsan-Tsans or shrunken heads from their dead enemies. That way you could hang them on the rear view mirror of your car - they take up less room than the entire skull.

[Cronos]

The article raises an interesting point: most people assume that languages spread by conquest, but that doesn't seem to hold so well. The Romans conquered the Greeks, but the Greeks still speak Greek and probably more Romans learned Greek than Greeks learned Latin. Likewise, the Gauls maintained their language for centuries after Caesar's conquest, but lost it after they successfully conquered back territory. The Germanic Franks conquered Romanized Gaul, but wound up speaking a language more Roman than German.

There are differences in each 'example' you raise --
The Greeks -- the Romans admired the Greeks and held them to be the founts of Culture, so the GReek language held sway as it was considered the language of culture.
The same thing happened for hte Franks and the Normans.
Int he case of hte Gauls, the Roman culture was more advanced so was adopted. Also, it was the language of Empire, of commerce and even more so, because Caesar carried out what was practically a genocide of the Gauls in the years 55 to 44 BC.

[Cronos]

Basketball does have some origins in Aztec games, soccer has origins elsewhere, but what matters was where they were codified.

[Cronos]

The blind poet Homer pretty well covered the destruction of the Milesian colony at Illium (Allium) by the more primitive Greeks. That Scythians adopted Celtic culture, weapons and words is beyond dispute

Helloo. Greeks more primitive than Celts????? When was this? Or are you talking aobut Doric Greeks who smashed the Mycenean civilisation in 1200 BC?

[Cronos]

The milesians.

Accorind got Irish Myths, the Emerald Isle was conquered by 5 (?) groups of invading people. The 3rd were the Fir Bolgs (probabaly the Celtic Belgae), the 4th were hte Tuatha de Danaan(the tribes of Dana) and the 5th were the Milesians, the sons of some Mil dude supposedly from Spain.

[Chris Talk]

In South Africa, to some degree, it looked like it would be replaced by Afrikaans, then by some Xhosa dialect, with Zulu of course in the Natal.

Only lately has it had a resurgence, since the black government wants to be able to scream to the West for aid in its own language.

[Cronos]

Sorry blam, maybe we should agree to disagree, but I've seen no real evidence or even proper reasoning to state that there was a Celtic culture distinct from proto-Aryan culture before 900 BC.

[Cronos]

When did the Celts ever conque territory back from the Romans? Rome fell to invading Germainc barbarians,not to Celtic invasions.

Ooh,, this is fast becoming my favourite piece of knowledge to disseminate. Seems that the term German is taken from the Latin word Germanus meaning authentic or genuine. The distinction between Germans and Celts in terms of physical structure is non-existant and the differentiation was givent ot hem by the Romans. tHe Romans considered the Germans to be the genuine Celts while those in the West were mixed with other tribes...

[Cronos]

Quite civilized Germans living within the Roman Empire attempted mightily to resucitate the place

That was in the years 400 AD. The Germans who entered imperial lands became civilised

[Cronos]

The Major Indo-European languages are considered to be:

The Major Indo-European languages are:

Subfamily	Group	Subgroup	Languages and Principal Dialects
Anatolian			Hieroglypic Hittite*, Hittite (Kanesian)*, Luwian*, Lycian*, Lydian*, Palaic*
Baltic			Latvian (Lettish), Lithuanian, Old Prussian*
Celtic	Brythonic		Breton, Cornish*, Welsh
Celtic	Continental		Gaulish*
Celtic	Goidelic or Gaelic		Irish (Irish Gaelic), Manx*, Scottish Gaelic
Germanic	East Germanic		Burgundian*, Gothic*, Vandalic*
Germanic	North Germanic		Old Norse* (see Norse): Danish, Faeroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish
Germanic	West Germanic (see Grimm's law)	High German	German, Yiddish
Germanic	West Germanic (see Grimm's law)	Low German	Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Flemish, Frisian, Plattdeutsch (see German language)
Greek			Aeolic*, Arcadian*, Attic*, Byzantine Greek*, Cyprian*, Doric*, Ionic*, KoinE*, Modern Greek
Indo-Iranian	Dardic or Pisacha		Kafiri, Kashmiri, Khowar, Kohistani, Romany (Gypsy), Shina
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan		Pali*, Prakrit*, Sanskrit*, Vedic*
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	Central Indic	Hindi, Hindustani, Urdu
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	East Indic	Assamese, Bengali, Bihari, Oriya
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	Northwest Indic	Punjabi, Sindhi
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	Pahari	Central Pahari, Eastern Pahari (Nepali), Western Pahari
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	South Indic	Marathi (including major dialect Konkani), Singhalese (Sinhalese)
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	West Indic	Bhili, Gujarati, Rajasthani (many dialects)
Indo-Iranian	Iranian		Avestan*, Old Persian*
Indo-Iranian	Iranian	East Iranian	Baluchi, Khwarazmian*, Ossetic, Pamir dialects, Pushtu (Afghan), Saka (Khotanese)*, Sogdian*, Yaghnobi
Indo-Iranian	Iranian	West Iranian	Kurdish, Pahlavi (Middle Persian)*, Parthian*, Persian (Farsi), Tajiki
Italic	(Non-Romance)		Faliscan*, Latin, Oscan*, Umbrian*
Italic	Romance or Romanic	Eastern Romance	Italian, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romanian, Sardinian
Italic	Romance or Romanic	Western Romance	Catalan, French, Ladino, Portuguese, Provençal, Spanish
Slavic or Slavonic	East Slavic		Belorussian (White Russian), Russian, Ukrainian
Slavic or Slavonic	South Slavic		Bulgarian, Church Slavonic*, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian
Slavic or Slavonic	West Slavic		Czech, Kashubian, Lusatian (Sorbian or Wendish), Polabian*, Polish, Slovak
Thraco-Illyrian			Albanian, Illyrian*, Thracian*
Thraco-Phrygian			Armenian, Grabar (Classical Armenian)*, Phrygian*
Tokharian (W China)			Tokharian A (Agnean)*, Tokharian B (Kuchean)*

[Cronos]

Although the Indo-Europeans may have originated in eastern Europe

The evidence rather poitns to Central Asia or to eastern Persia-Western India.

[Cronos]

all evidence indicates the Celts originated in central Europe, in what is now Austria and neighboring areas. They then spread south into north Italy (Cisapline Gaul, west into Switzerland and Gaul, southwest into northern Spain (the Celt-Iberians) and across the English Channel or Bay of Biscay into the British Isles. Another group spread south and east into Anatolia (see the Galatians in the Bible) and even as far as Egypt where they served as mercenaries

I concur. Also, about the relation between the languages, the Germanics/Italics/Celtics may have been originally one group before splitting with the GErmans giving rise to the Celts or vice versa. I do find similarities between German and Latin (but htat may be due to the influence of the latter on the former), but Polish is completely different.

[Cronos]

The Carthaginians never sacked Rome - though Hannibal certainly tried very hard. The Carthaginian language (Punic) was eliminated in Africa by eliminating its speakers through genocide (and a well-deserved genocide it was),

And pray tell, why was it a well deserved genocide? The Phoenicians were respected by the GReeks and Romans as great traders, maritime adventurers and the only one of the ancients who traversed beyond hte pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar and Jabl al whatever on the other side inMorocco).

The phoenician alphabet is the first phonetic alphabet in the world and the Greek alphabet is derived from the phoneician. How was it good to have slaughtered these wise ancients?

[Cronos]

Most of the barbarian invaders were seeking incorporation into the empire, not the destruction of the empire. Charlemagne himself had himself crowned a Roman Emperor.
you're combining 400 years in one sentence. THe early German barbarians wanted the riches of the Roman lands and conquered them. They then realised that this was a superior culture they captured (like hte Romans capturing Greece said 'Captive Greece encaptivated Rome', but even more so) and became completely Roman. Rome did not become Germanicized as the Germans had nothign culturally to offer Rome. The Germans became Romanized whether within or without hte Empire. Modern Western civilisation is nearly exclusively Roman with Christian morals.

[Cronos]

Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages form another

ARe you sure? Ancient Irani (Avestan) related to Slavic and Baltic languages)? But Avestan is very similar to Sanskrit, almost brother dialects in a way. I don't think the Slavic language is so closely related to these two more highly evolved Aryanic languages.

of course in a broader sense they are related, but on what basis do you say that the Slavic language is comparatively closer to Sanskrit-Avestan than German or Latin? I'd think the opposite was true.

Or maybe you're basing it on geography

[VadeRetro]

English is a Germanic language, with heavy influence from French (a Romance language, based on Latin).

It's very Latinate, not just from the French influence but from legal, medical, and scientific terms which since the Renaissance and the abandonment of the direct use of the Latin language have been creeping into common use. What happened in English which didn't happen to the same degree elsewhere in the Germanic community is that commonly-used Latin words were slightly anglicized but otherwise incorporated untranslated. ("Paternitas" became "paternity," etc.)

Pick up a dictionary and sample the derivations. Latin is very heavily represented now. It's probably the single most common source of word roots although the core vocabulary of the language is Germanic.

[Rytwyng]

You ought to read "Island in the Sea of Time" and its sequels, by S M Stirling. It doesn't go back to the Ice Age, but it does go back to the Bronze Age, which is almost as fun.