I don't see any mention of anything under the kilt.
Posted on 12/06/2001 6:35:33 AM PST by blam
SUNDAY DECEMBER 02 2001
Genetic survey reveals hidden Celts of England
JOHN ELLIOTT AND TOM ROBBINS
THE Celts of Scotland and Wales are not as unique as some of them like to think. New research has revealed that the majority of Britons living in the south of England share the same DNA as their Celtic counterparts.
The findings, based on the DNA analysis of more than 2,000 people, poses the strongest challenge yet to the conventional historical view that the ancient Britons were forced out of most of England by hordes of Anglo-Saxon invaders.
It suggests that far from being purged and forced to retreat into Wales, Cornwall and Scotland when the AngloSaxons invaded in the 5th century, many ancient Britons remained in England.
The study, conducted by geneticists at University College London, found that as many as three-quarters of the men tested in some parts of the south of England have the same Y-chromosome as the ancient Britons or Celts, rather than that of the Anglo-Saxons.
Overall, the scientists found that between 50% and 75% of those tested in parts of southern England were directly descended from Celts, implying that they had survived the Anglo-Saxon invasion. In Scotland the proportion of those with Celtic ancestry was found to be little different from the population of southern England.
"The evidence is quite strong that there is a substantial indigenous component remaining in England," said Professor David Goldstein, who led the study. "Genetics has opened up a powerful window on the past. We can now trace the movements of peoples and address questions that have proved difficult to answer through history and archeology alone."
The study, commissioned by BBC2 for its current Blood of the Vikings series, was designed to assess the impact of Norwegian and Danish Vikings, as well as Anglo-Saxons, on the British population.
Researchers took swabs of saliva from 2,000 people in 30 locations around Britain, and from 400 people in Norway, Denmark and Schleswig- Holstein, the area in northern Germany identified by the team as a homeland of the AngloSaxons. Those taking part had to have lived in the area for at least two generations.
Scientists then examined the Y-chromosome, which is passed unchanged down the male line of a family and is thus not altered by intermarriage.
The analysis showed that 60% of the men tested on Orkney were descended from Norwegian Vikings, as well as 30% of those in the Hebrides. While the Viking influence in these areas has been well known, it had been suggested that they were simply a ruling elite who did little interbreeding with the local population.
On the mainland, the survey found that 70% of those tested in York were from the continental European groups rather than the indigenous population, suggesting that the Anglo-Saxons made more of an impact on the Celts in northern England.
Only 10% of those tested in Wales were of Anglo-Saxon origin, confirming that it has retained an almost exclusively Celtic population.
In recent years the fate of the Celts in England has become hotly debated. Many historians have come to doubt the traditional story about the flight of the Celts from southern England, which was based largely on the account of Gildas, the 6th-century historian.
"There are various schools of thought ranging from near genocide (of the Celts) to almost total survival," said Patrick Sims-Williams, professor of Celtic studies at the University of Wales. "There could have been mass flight as well — it’s partly a matter of scholarly fashion, coming and going from generation to generation."
The genetic data will be eagerly received by scholars. Many of the place names in southern England have Celtic origins. Among them are Leatherhead, in Surrey, which meant "the grey ford".
"If you believe Gildas, the Anglo-Saxons would have been chasing the ancient Britons, catching up with one who wasn’t fast enough and saying, ‘Look here, before I cut off your head, just tell me the name of this place’," said Dr Margaret Gelling, a leading authority on place names.
Yup. See my post #22.
I haven't heard that, but it is interesting. There may be a link: in the Scottish Declaration of Independence, which hails from the era just after William Wallace, it is mentioned that the Scots had previously been to the land where the 'Pillars of Hercules' is, which is known as the gateway to the mediterranean, and usually associated with Spain. More study needs to be done regarding these matters.
I know from my own last name entered the lexicon of the Scots-Irish from the Normans, who came from France, and Scandinavia before that. Too bad this article didn't mention them, they have a heavy influence on England as well.
My G'father was from Sterling Scotland, and as I also play the pipes, I know the story well. I Sat throught Braveheart 3 times the first time I saw it. I prefer to consider the movie to be an alegory to Goldwater and Reagan.
Alba Go Bragh!
Erin Go Bragh!
A History of the Basque Language
By Manfred Owstrowski, a German linguist and professor
I. Language families and genetic language relationships in Europe
Most of the languages spoken in Europe belong to one single language family: Indo-European. Basque is the sole surviving non-Indo-European language in Western Europe, it is classified as a language isolate. Besides Indo-European, there are to be found languages of four other families in Europe; the Uralic family and the Altaic stock are represented, and we have to add two language families in the Caucasian area, namely South Caucasian and North Caucasian.
The Indo-European language family can be divided into 11 branches, consisting of living and/or extinct languages of Europe and parts of Asia: Indo-Iranian, with Sanskrit and modern representatives like Hindi and Punjabi on the Indic side and Persian, Kurdish, Pashto and many other languages on the Iranian side; Armenian; Classical and Modern Greek; Albanian, which presumably is a descendant of the ancient Illyrian language; Italic, originally consisting of Osco-Umbrian and Latino-Faliscan, today represented by the modern descendants of Latin, the Romance languages (Rumanian, Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese and others); Celtic, with Irish (= Gaelic), Welsh and Breton still spoken; Germanic, with the extinct Gothic language, North Germanic (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic) and West Germanic (German, Dutch, Frisian, English); Baltic, here we have to mention Lithuanian and Latvian; Slavic, with Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo- Croatian, Bulgarian and some others; Tocharian, which is divided into two languages (called „Tocharian A“ and „Tocharian B“) once spoken in an area of western China; finally, Anatolian, a group of long extinct languages (e.g., Hittite and Luwian) of what is now Turkey. All these branches of Indo-European are believed to go back to a single proto-language, called Proto-Indo-European. The area where Proto-Indo-European was originally spoken (the Proto-Indo-European „homeland“) is still a matter of dispute, but various hints point to Eastern Europe, north and north-east of the Black Sea, and it seems to be rather clear that Indo-European languages are relatively late intruders in Western Europe. Concerning the time when Proto-Indo-European must have been in use, one may think of the end of the stone age in Europe.
....snip....(I've read reports from linguists that the 'mother tongue' originates in Anatolia.)
I don't see any mention of anything under the kilt.
Aye, but there is nothing worn under those kilts. All parts are in working order ;-)
If you go into a town and kill all the men, then you have to do all the work to keep the town going, and frankly, that's the very thing you got in your boat to avoid doing in the first place.
You know, the ancient Celts would rush upon their enemy without a stich of clothing, aside from perhaps a golden torque around their neck, screaming and whooping up a storm. Scared the mess out of the Romans. And the Irish had a thing they called warp spasm, in which the warrior became un-naturaly enraged as he plunged into the throes of battle-his eyes would burn, he would seemingly loose all sense of reason and ration, and strike out into the midst of his enemy's lines whooping and hollering, his sword flinging about, simply terrifying his foe. N B Forrest, who, incidentally or not, was of Gaelic axtraction, acted muc hin the same way in battle: he would rush into enemy lines (a major general now) with not a gray clad soul near him, and begin whacking Federal troopers off their horses with his saber in the left hand, and blasting away with a revolver in his right, with an energy and force that would quite often turn the Union troops and send them fleeing. In one battle, he killed at least four or five soldiers with his sword and likely wounded many others-all while surrounded by enemy calvary men. Perhaps that ancient warrior Celt in his blood coursing through. It kept the sceer up!
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