Celtic Found to Have Ancient Roots

NY Times ^ | July 1, 2003 | NICHOLAS WADE

[CaptRon]

*ping*

Thought this might interest you. You and I exchanged posts about an item that is in this article.

[irish_links]

English is not a major language family. But I believe Greek, Latin, and Celtic are considered major language families. It's just awkward to make English a fourth "example".

You're right. It's probably just another example of a NYT reporter condescending to American readers.

[Doctor Stochastic]

It is a staggering mistake to say that English is one of 4 early offshoots from the ancestral Indo-European language.

Neither the article nor your quoted phrase say this, either.

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[Scenic Sounds]

Genealogy ping.

[blam]

The salt water flooding of the previously fresh water Black Sea in 5,600BC caused the proto-Celtics living there to migrate up the river valleys all over Europe, bringing farming and their language with them.

[unread]

And we defeated Mexico, but we are going to end up speaking mexican for sure!!

[SevenDaysInMay]

"does seem to vindicate Renfrew's archaeological idea that the Indo-European languages were spread by farmers."

The value of farmers' daughters...just talking about them spread language.

A tour of really old Europe would be a time tripper's dream.

Think of the skiing with all those newly melting glaciers. Picnics in newly flowered glens...hunting big and dangerous game for campfire feasts and jerky...bathing in snowmelt...urine tanned skins for clothing and bedding...being guests of honor with new maiden brides (small petite to say the least) at every village - if one were not murdered or killed in jealous challenges by fearfully superstitious people.

For selective breeding opportunities, at least I'm 186cm tall at 110Kg., 150cm at the shoulder, and with my all my teeth, but no tattoos. Yes, I'd carry a rifle with brass, primer, American know how & Gore-Tex gear and Mg fire starters, spices, my glasses, and rock hammer, blade and saw. In deep prehistory, modern man needs his accrutrements. {8^)

The D-2 steel, fire stick, black powder, and fire rendered liquid metal sorcerer, father of giants for those tiny maidens not killed by childbirth. The death rate of beautiful young children would have me long for the bitching about high priced, modern medicine and those rich doctors and drug companies. Who would not be king...

That human life progressed at all from melt to melt to "global warming" is a miracle.

It makes me long to visit earlier inter-glacial and full glacial periods before our trace of pre-history could begin. To visit humans of 1,000 to 25,000 generations ago would be as awesome as dangerous. Would there be blonds and redheads? Available? Central governments promoting sodomy? Plastic? Unlikely because plastic has never been found, surely lasting thousands of human generations. Was agriculture "remembered" 8,000 years ago from survivors of those deep, now dark days - too often frozen out and killed off during climate change survival migrations as tribe after tribe fought their way into occupied unfrozen lands such as those still contested by cousin Jews and Arabs?

[2nd Bn, 11th Mar]

He is certainly a cunning linguist.

[MalcolmS]

>>>But serially, you do nmention Montreal; that is one real example. <<<

I knew if I tried I might get one right.

Actually, if you look closely, you will see that English is being replaced in your post with another, yet to be determined, language. (I know whereof I speak, it happens to me all the time--must be a bug somewhere in the server.)

[A_perfect_lady]

Bookmark....

[epluribus_2]

The library at Ebla, which provided us with our first historic (and non-Biblical) references to King David also provided us with messages from Celtic kings in the near Middle East to each other and to the folks at Ebla. They were written in a Celtic language Do you have a source/link for this?

[ZULU]

"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."

Other geneticists challenge this, and the concept of a gradual evolution of one species into another has been displaced in many circles by another conept that states evolution occurs suddenly by large jumps instead of slowly over a long period of time as formerly believed. If this is true, dating based on an average rate of genetic change is invalid (i.e. the "African Eve" theory.)

[ZULU]

"Likewise, the Gauls maintained their language for centuries after Caesar's conquest, but lost it after they successfully conquered back territory."

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

[muawiyah]

I have a book published shortly after the initial forays into that library (of clay tablets), but I guess it doesn't exist without a URL, eh?!

Just do a search for "EBLA".

[ZULU]

Good catch. "English" should read "Germanic", also they left out the Balto-Slavic Lingustic subfamily, ,more distantly related to the other four, but still an Indo-European language, like the Iranian languages, Sanskrit and it modern descedants Hindi, etc, ancient Hittite and the Anatolic Language related to it, Armenian, and Tocharian, an extinct language spoken in Central Asia by a long dead people who looked European.

[ZULU]

The ancient Celts didn't play with baseballs. They collected human heads - of their enemies of course, and decorated their temples and gates with them. Our custom of Halloween pumpkins comes from that tradition.

[wideawake]

Gallic tribes participated in the Swabian invasions of Roman territory in the 300s.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Pumpkins? I still use skulls.

[muawiyah]

Quite civilized Germans living within the Roman Empire attempted mightily to resucitate the place. Even such reputed barbarians as Alaric came from inside the Empire as did the followers who ended up stranded in North Africa. (See Visigoths).

You have to keep separate in your mind the Christianization of the Roman Empire, the Fall of Rome (in the West) and the Dark Ages. They each had an impact on all or part of the Empire, but each had it's own impetus.

Barbara Tuchman (the famous historian) noted that the mere fact something was reported amplifies its apparant importance a thousand times. People often overlook this phenomenon and incorrectly assume that the Roman Empire fell to barbarians sometime during the Dark Ages since Rome, barbarians and Dark Ages were reported. Actually Rome did not fall until the 1400s when the city of Byzantium and it's environs were seized by the Turks (who were, by that time, quite civilized themselves, or things would have been much, much worse).