Read Stephen Oppenheimer’s follow-up to this article here, in the June 2007 edition of Prospect, as he answers some of the many comments and queries readers have sent in response to his analysis. You can also find out more about his work here, at the Bradshaw Foundation website.
The fact that the British and the Irish both live on islands gives them a misleading sense of security about their unique historical identities. But do we really know who we are, where we come from and what defines the nature of our genetic and cultural heritage? Who are and were the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and the English? And did the English really crush a glorious Celtic heritage?
Everyone has heard of Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. And most of us are familiar with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, who invaded eastern England after the Romans left, while most of the people in the rest of the British Isles derive from indigenous Celtic ancestors with a sprinkling of Viking blood around the fringes.
Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words “Celtic” or “Anglo-Saxon.” What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis (see note below) indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years.
The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language.
Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. These figures are at odds with the modern perceptions of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on more recent invasions. There were many later invasions, as well as less violent immigrations, and each left a genetic signal, but no individual event contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix.
Many myths about the Celts
Celtic languages and the people who brought them probably first arrived during the Neolithic period. The regions we now regard as Celtic heartlands actually had less immigration from the continent during this time than England. Ireland, being to the west, has changed least since the hunter-gatherer period and received fewer subsequent migrants (about 12 per cent of the population) than anywhere else. Wales and Cornwall have received about 20 per cent, Scotland and its associated islands 30 per cent, while eastern and southern England, being nearer the continent, has received one third of its population from outside over the past 6,500 years. These estimates, set out in my book The Origins of the British, come from tracing individual male gene lines from continental Europe to the British Isles and dating each one (see box at bottom of page).
If the Celts were not our main aboriginal stock, how do we explain the wide historical distribution and influence of Celtic languages? There are many examples of language change without significant population replacement; even so, some people must have brought Celtic languages to our isles. So where did they come from, and when?
The orthodox view of the origins of the Celts turns out to be an archaeological myth left over from the 19th century. Over the past 200 years, a myth has grown up of the Celts as a vast, culturally sophisticated but warlike people from central Europe, north of the Alps and the Danube, who invaded most of Europe, including the British Isles, during the iron age, around 300 BC.
Central Europe during the last millennium BC certainly was the time and place of the exotic and fierce Hallstatt culture and, later, the La Tène culture, with their prestigious, iron-age metal jewellery wrought with intricately woven swirls. Hoards of such jewellery and weapons, some fashioned in gold, have been dug up in Ireland, seeming to confirm central Europe as the source of migration. The swirling style of decoration is immortalised in such cultural icons as the Book of Kells, the illuminated Irish manuscript (Trinity College, Dublin), and the bronze Battersea shield (British Museum), evoking the western British Isles as a surviving remnant of past Celtic glory. But unfortunately for this orthodoxy, these artistic styles spread generally in Europe as cultural fashions, often made locally. There is no evidence they came to Britain and Ireland as part of an invasion.
Many archaeologists still hold this view of a grand iron-age Celtic culture in the centre of the continent, which shrank to a western rump after Roman times. It is also the basis of a strong sense of ethnic identity that millions of members of the so-called Celtic diaspora hold. But there is absolutely no evidence, linguistic, archaeological or genetic, that identifies the Hallstatt or La Tène regions or cultures as Celtic homelands. The notion derives from a mistake made by the historian Herodotus 2,500 years ago when, in a passing remark about the “Keltoi,” he placed them at the source of the Danube, which he thought was near the Pyrenees. Everything else about his description located the Keltoi in the region of Iberia.
The late 19th-century French historian Marie Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville decided that Herodotus had meant to place the Celtic homeland in southern Germany. His idea has remained in the books ever since, despite a mountain of other evidence that Celts derived from southwestern Europe. For the idea of the south German “Empire of the Celts” to survive as the orthodoxy for so long has required determined misreading of texts by Caesar, Strabo, Livy and others. And the well-recorded Celtic invasions of Italy across the French Alps from the west in the 1st millennium BC have been systematically reinterpreted as coming from Germany, across the Austrian Alps.
De Jubainville’s Celtic myth has been deconstructed in two recent sceptical publications: The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention by Simon James (1999), and The Celts: Origins, Myths and Inventions by John Collis (2003). Nevertheless, the story lingers on in standard texts and notably in The Celts, a Channel 4 documentary broadcast in February. “Celt” is now a term that sceptics consider so corrupted in the archaeological and popular literature that it is worthless.
This is too drastic a view. It is only the central European homeland theory that is false. The connection between modern Celtic languages and those spoken in southwest Europe during Roman times is clear and valid. Caesar wrote that the Gauls living south of the Seine called themselves Celts. That region, in particular Normandy, has the highest density of ancient Celtic place-names and Celtic inscriptions in Europe. They are common in the rest of southern France (excluding the formerly Basque region of Gascony), Spain, Portugal and the British Isles. Conversely, Celtic place-names are hard to find east of the Rhine in central Europe.
Given the distribution of Celtic languages in southwest Europe, it is most likely that they were spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to the British Isles. There is a dated archaeological trail for this. My genetic analysis shows exact counterparts for this trail both in the male Y chromosome and the maternally transmitted mitochondrial DNA right up to Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the English south coast.
Further evidence for the Mediterranean origins of Celtic invaders is preserved in medieval Gaelic literature. According to the orthodox academic view of “iron-age Celtic invasions” from central Europe, Celtic cultural history should start in the British Isles no earlier than 300 BC. Yet Irish legend tells us that all six of the cycles of invasion came from the Mediterranean via Spain, during the late Neolithic to bronze age, and were completed 3,700 years ago.
Anglo-Saxon ethnic cleansing?
The other myth I was taught at school, one which persists to this day, is that the English are almost all descended from 5th-century invaders, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from the Danish peninsula, who wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England.
The story originates with the clerical historians of the early dark ages. Gildas (6th century AD) and Bede (7th century) tell of Saxons and Angles invading over the 5th and 6th centuries. Gildas, in particular, sprinkles his tale with “rivers of blood” descriptions of Saxon massacres. And then there is the well-documented history of Anglian and Saxon kingdoms covering England for 500 years before the Norman invasion.
But who were those Ancient Britons left in England to be slaughtered when the legions left? The idea that the Celts were eradicated—culturally, linguistically and genetically—by invading Angles and Saxons derives from the idea of a previously uniformly Celtic English landscape. But the presence in Roman England of some Celtic personal and place-names doesn’t mean that all ancient Britons were Celts or Celtic-speaking.
The genocidal view was generated, like the Celtic myth, by historians and archaeologists over the last 200 years. With the swing in academic fashion against “migrationism” (seeing the spread of cultural influence as dependent on significant migrations) over the past couple of decades, archaeologists are now downplaying this story, although it remains a strong underlying perspective in history books.
Some geneticists still cling to the genocide story. Research by several genetics teams associated with University College London has concentrated in recent years on proving the wipeout view on the basis of similarities of male Y chromosome gene group frequency between Frisia/north Germany and England. One of the London groups attracted press attention in July by claiming that the close similarities were the result of genocide followed by a social-sexual apartheid that enhanced Anglo-Saxon reproductive success over Celtic.
The problem is that the English resemble in this way all the other countries of northwest Europe as well as the Frisians and Germans. Using the same method (principal components analysis, see note below), I have found greater similarities of this kind between the southern English and Belgians than the supposedly Anglo-Saxon homelands at the base of the Danish peninsula. These different regions could not all have been waiting their turn to commit genocide on the former Celtic population of England. The most likely reason for the genetic similarities between these neighbouring countries and England is that they all had similar prehistoric settlement histories.
When I looked at exact gene type matches between the British Isles and the continent, there were indeed specific matches between the continental Anglo-Saxon homelands and England, but these amounted to only 5 per cent of modern English male lines, rising to 15 per cent in parts of Norfolk where the Angles first settled. There were no such matches with Frisia, which tends to confirm a specific Anglo-Saxon event since Frisia is closer to England, so would be expected to have more matches.
When I examined dates of intrusive male gene lines to look for those coming in from northwest Europe during the past 3,000 years, there was a similarly low rate of immigration, by far the majority arriving in the Neolithic period. The English maternal genetic record (mtDNA) is consistent with this and contradicts the Anglo-Saxon wipeout story. English females almost completely lack the characteristic Saxon mtDNA marker type still found in the homeland of the Angles and Saxons. The conclusion is that there was an Anglo-Saxon invasion, but of a minority elite type, with no evidence of subsequent “sexual apartheid.”
The orthodox view is that the entire population of the British Isles, including England, was Celtic-speaking when Caesar invaded. But if that were the case, a modest Anglo-Saxon invasion is unlikely to have swept away all traces of Celtic language from the pre-existing population of England. Yet there are only half a dozen Celtic words in English, the rest being mainly Germanic, Norman or medieval Latin. One explanation is that England was not mainly Celtic-speaking before the Anglo-Saxons. Consider, for example, the near-total absence of Celtic inscriptions in England (outside Cornwall), although they are abundant in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany.
Who was here when the Romans came?
So who were the Britons inhabiting England at the time of the Roman invasion? The history of pre-Roman coins in southern Britain reveals an influence from Belgic Gaul. The tribes of England south of the Thames and along the south coast during Caesar’s time all had Belgic names or affiliations. Caesar tells us that these large intrusive settlements had replaced an earlier British population, which had retreated to the hinterland of southeast England. The latter may have been the large Celtic tribe, the Catuvellauni, situated in the home counties north of the Thames. Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul “the language differs but little.”
The common language referred to by Tacitus was probably not Celtic, but was similar to that spoken by the Belgae, who may have been a Germanic people, as implied by Caesar. In other words, a Germanic-type language could already have been indigenous to England at the time of the Roman invasion. In support of this inference, there is some recent lexical (vocabulary) evidence analysed by Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster and continental colleagues. They found that the date of the split between old English and continental Germanic languages goes much further back than the dark ages, and that English may have been a separate, fourth branch of the Germanic language before the Roman invasion.
Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans. These are consistent with the intense cultural interchanges across the North sea during the Neolithic and bronze age. Early Anglian dialects, such as found in the old English saga Beowulf, owe much of their vocabulary to Scandinavian languages. This is consistent with the fact that Beowulf was set in Denmark and Sweden and that the cultural affiliations of the early Anglian kingdoms, such as found in the Sutton Hoo boat burial, derive from Scandinavia.
A picture thus emerges of the dark-ages invasions of England and northeastern Britain as less like replacements than minority elite additions, akin to earlier and larger Neolithic intrusions from the same places. There were battles for dominance between chieftains, all of Germanic origin, each invader sharing much culturally with their newly conquered indigenous subjects.
So, based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers, who first ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets.
Note: How does genetic tracking work?
The greatest advances in genetic tracing and measuring migrations over the past two decades have used samples from living populations to reconstruct the past. Such research goes back to the discovery of blood groups, but our Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA are the most fruitful markers to study since they do not get mixed up at each generation. Study of mitochondrial DNA in the British goes back over a decade, and from 2000 to 2003 London-based researchers established a database of the geographically informative Y-chromosomes by systematic sampling throughout the British Isles. Most of these samples were collected from people living in small, long-established towns, whose grandparents had also lived there.
Two alternative methods of analysis are used. In the British Y-chromosome studies, the traditional approach of principal components analysis was used to compare similarities between whole sample populations. This method reduces complexity of genetic analysis by averaging the variation in frequencies of numerous genetic markers into a smaller number of parcels—the principal components—of decreasing statistical importance. The newer approach that I use, the phylogeographic method, follows individual genes rather than whole populations. The geographical distribution of individual gene lines is analysed with respect to their position on a gene tree, to reconstruct their origins, dates and routes of movement.
Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
g.sylvester
I enjoyed this article very much.During my working life,I travelled around Europe where my Accent/Origon clashed with the long -held belief that if one is “Irish” one’s name should reflect it.I learned that in Germany my name was readily identified as”The Woodsman” & in Sweden as “the Man who came in from the Woods”.This might indicate North Europe origon . In Italy however,I was told it was quite common–including a Pope.You can see how enjoyably provocative your Article is.After 75 years you’ve started the old “Grey Matter” moving again.Thanks, Yours Sincerely,George Sylvester.(52 yrs. in England–and loves it ! )
Jane Walsh
Oppenheimer’s theories are a nonsense and yet another attempt to grab the headlines by re-writing history. One only only has to stand English and Scandinavian people side-by-side to see the striking similarities. This is particularly true among children. A similarity very different when comparing the English with the Southern French, Spanish or Italians.
Jess
You’re kidding right? The average Brit isn’t even as fair as a Northern German, much less a Scandinavian. There are some Brits who could infact pass in Scandinavia but most CANNOT. Even the dark haired British look nothing like a dark haired Scandinavian.
Maria
I have to be fair, my daughter never had light blonde hair it was slightly golden but whilst in Greece she found herself a playmate of the same age from Sweden. Their hair colour was the exact same and I have a photo to prove it. Not all Swedes are the palest blonde, in fact you get more of that type in Slavs like Polish (they have extremely fair hair in some of their children – it can be the lightest white shade). My daughter had finer features though, a slightly smaller face, smaller frame and height. Her hair was also very fine but curly, where the Swedish girl’s was fine and straight. The Swedish girl’s mother’s hair was a dark brown and her complexion was slightly darker than that of mine (which is pale). So, it just shows that the stereotype is not always the case.
Jonny C
Jane, you seem angered by Oppenheimer’s theory…
Your argument is emotional, sorry, but when I look around, I see a lot to back up what he thinks.
The people of the UK are largely self-similar in appearance and culture, and many of the differences between our neighbouring countries are invented (the whole Romantic Celt nonsense for instance) as an outlet for vanquished pride.
Colin Berry
While I don’t agree with Jane, neither would i agree with you either Jonny. About the only certain thing one can say about us Brits is that most of us would be described by the Bill as ‘White Caucasian’. Within that category there is a vast number of types when you factor in all the permutations of hair and eye colour, shape of nose, distance between eyes, height of forehead, skin shade, facial bone structure.
I was in Slovakia last summer, and recall wondering what proportion of folk in the supermarket i could say were definitely Slav, and definitely not British. The answer was small – probably no more than 20-30%, if that.
Is that so surprising? Stephen Oppenheimer says that no one genetic input accounts for more than 5 or at most 10% of our genome – but there have been a lot of those small contributions over the centuries and millennia – the Romans, the Scandinavians, the Germans, the Normans and more recent additions, not all necessarily in the same person needless to say (thus generating phenotypic diversity). But I for one am still fascinated by the idea that “Anglo-Saxon” could be a mis-labelling in genetic terms, especially iff it was driven by some long-forgotten agenda in Victorian times, say. Maybe we ought to call ourselves Britannians. Nope, on second thoughts – English will do (even if that Mr.Singh next door keeps joshing me about being an immigrant, the same as him).
Maria
.. sorry just re-read that and was not clear (sorry): My daughter had blonde hair, light in colour but not the palest blonde shade. It was just more golden toned than ash. I also had golden (light red hues) hair as a child, far more reddish in tone than that of my daughters but would have lovely light golden blonde highlights throughout the summer months. Never knew where that type came from (?). Its quite rare in the UK; mid to dark copper and reds are far more common than the colour I had. Wondered if it was more Germanic, Basque or Nordic? Whatever site I go to I get conflicting views.
cpbm
@Jane Walsh
Oppenheimer writes above
“Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans.”
He clearly acknowledges the Scandinavian influence on the genetics in Great Britain, particularly in the north. Personally, I notice many similar traits among the British and south western Europeans. Take dark curly hair and large noses and there are plenty of darker skinned Englishmen than most people take note of. But of course his genetic study speaks for itself.
@g.sylvester
Your anectode is very entertaining but is about languages. Oppenheimer’s study is on genetics which as he implies might act independently of languages and hence culture.
“There are many examples of language change without significant population replacement”
The base of the English vocabulary is very closely related to Frisia and northern Germanic tribes.
Trevor Needham
Far from being nonsense, Stephen Oppenheimer’s genetic view of history/pre-history at last takes us beyond the speculative theories previously derived from small and often misleading glimpses through the frustratingly incomplete archeological record.
Yes, it may well mean re-writing the history books, and many people will find this hard to swallow. Let’s face it, many people are still struggling with Darwinian evolutionary theory 150 years later. But I find it all enormously exciting and I am keeping my eyes and ears, and especially my mind, well and truly open.
Thank you Stephen Oppenheimer for a new way of looking at our origins.
mo george
oppenheimer’s theory ignores lots of evidences that have proved a mass migration from Europe indeed took place in the fifth and sixth century….and Bede (7th century)just 100 years after these events took place should be in a good position to describe them.
GYMY
Bede wrote 3 centuries after the Adventus Saxonum he pretended to describe.
In fact, all his early stuff is from Gildas (writing a century later)
Christian Gildas wrote propaganda trying to provoke Welsh Kings to expel Saxon pagans
Bede was locked into a northern Abbey and never even entered Southumberland.
His fairy stories about “sparrows” and “flaxen haired Angles” in a Roman slave market
are a delight, but NOT history! His claims about the “miracles” of his Arustocracy are nonsense. He tells us that Cadwallon of Gwynedd reconquered Northumbria, but suggests that this should be written out of history!
Some historian!
Yet Bede’s invention of an invasion by “three great nations” called Jutes, Saxons and Angles is still taught in English Schools and even repeated in Oppenheimer’s excellent article!
BJ Mac
Surely Spanish stereotypes would have had racial mixing with subsaharan and saharan racial types and doing the side by side comparison of childrens features would take no account of this mix. This mixing clearly would clearly be less pronounced with northern europeans from scandnavia. Prejudices are terrible things to erradicate.
Xavier
Science [genetic studies] has shown that population in Spain only shares a minimal 5% of the genetic stock with people in Northern Africa [from the Maghreb region to Phoenicia, and the Phoenicians had a longstanding presence in Spain via their commercial posts and colonies, much before than romans ever arrived in Iberia].
Something which is not very well known outside Spain is that even today all the northwester quarter of the penninsula still preserves its Celtic origin; it can be seen easily in Santander, Oviedo or Santiago. They even play bagpipes!
jenn
they play the bagpipes in iran, so i’m not sure your point has any relevance in this respect.
Miss Vivian
Interesting. I find it great to see where we have all come from! We seem to have all shared and imbibed our tongue or culture or blood with one another at some point. I am however mainly curious to understand the genetics or origin of my Cornish ancestors. My family’s traits seem to be: short stature, mainly stocky body, big noses, tall forehead, square jaw, dark hair. And being a pighead! (Ok, I joke, that’s only some of them)
richard payne
reference to bagpipes it is intersting that the pipes in Cumberland are similar to those of Galicia than to the scots piples which are closer to them than spain. i still favor the dna studies as well explained by bryan sykes in blood of the isles
John
i’ve always been struck by the difference between most Britons from most Scandanavians. As Britain has been in relative genetic isolation for thousands of years it is to be expected to have ended up with its own distinctive looks.
As for southern Europeans, which Italians and which Spaniards are you comparing? – go around those countries and you’ll be amazed by the regional diversity of looks, and I’ve seen plenty who would not look out of place in France, Britain or Germany – they just tan well.
Wayne
Genetic is a very fascinating way of classifying people and their migrations. I have been studying Celtic history as a specialist subject for most of my adult life and so feel quite qualified to speak on the matter. One thing I have noticed regarding all these genetic studies which are currently being undertaken, is that when dealing with ancient groups such as the Celts the first mistake that is made is that you are searching for a \race\. I doubt that in a period even as far back as the neolithic that many isloted races existed by then. What the studies prove is that ultimately most people are descended from various general stocks. However witin each stock unique cultures and languages may occur whic are then shared and sipersed from the point of origin (s). It is much like one street developing decorating styles that differ from their neighbours despite the fact that genetically there isnt much difference. Therefore it is, and has always has been a waste of time to try and prove or disprove racial differences between Europe and British Islanders. A blackbird comes from the same ancestor as the emu – ultimately but they dont sing or even act the same. Celtic migration into Britain and Ireland cannot be therfore disproved or proved by genetics as a reliable migration indicator in my opinion. Your work confirms a common heritage of ANCIENT ancestry but these results are way to old to relate to a bronze age and iron age culture.
Sakara Gold
A brilliant article, well researched and entirely believable. And there I was thinking that the Romans had slaughtered the inhabitants of south-eastern Britain after the Boudicca Revolt to prevent a repetition and had re-populated the countryside with saxon mercenaries. Who were the barbarians, the Celts or the Romans!
Linda Dale Burns
Having just received my results from the Megamtdna testing from the Genographic Projects Family Tree DNA, I find this article very interesting. My mothers family immigrated to the U.S. in 1922 from Northumberland, England, having lived there as far back as I have been able to go in the 1600′s. Her grandfather came from Sussex tho. It was said he was of ancient French descent. My mother and her sister and the grandfather are very dark haired, tanning darkly with large Roman noses. Our mtdna is J2b1a1. Some female family names were Carmichael, Cole, Fail, McKenzie, Johnson. We look more Basque or Mediterranean than Germanic.
chris jones
what a typically arrogant english historian!! i switched off when he described england as england.england obvioulsy didnt exist at this time,it was just britain.as a historian he really should have got the basics right.this is typically pompous and speculative work with no hard evidence
Greg
He was using the word`England` to define a particular geographic area of Britain, which you might have grasped had you not allowed nationalism and anglophobia to cloud your judgement. Strange how some who regard themselves as `Celts` get so hot under the collar when cherished myths are subjected to question and scrutiny.
JC Loach
I found Stephen Oppenheimer’s article fascinating, quite a change from academia’s tendency to rely upon the assumption that what they were taught at university is indisputable ‘fact’, much like the Victorian scientists who stated as fact that gorillas did not exist.
One minor note, Britain is named for the Roman name for the British Isles, Britannia, so ‘Britain’ wouldn’t have existed in the dim and distant either. I would assume that the word England was used in order to allow Mr Oppenheimer to specify in simple terms where he was talking about.
markus wallett
If the ancestors of the English were in the minority, then the British tongue (Welsh) would have prevailed over 3 or 4 generations. There’s no doubt that there was an indigenous “British” survival when the Germanic invaders came over in waves between the fifth and seventh centuries and carved themselves out a country called England, but I think the British population numbers were small. The only way to solve this is to test every white member of the population in the UK, then we’ll know for sure.
Barry
Oppenheimer is no geneticist, infact the last i heard he was/is a pediotrician.Oppenheimer says that English as a fourth branch of Germanic could have been spoken in Britain for tens of thousands of years; that clearly is utter nonsence, since proto-Germanic dates to the bronze age.Furthermore he is no historian either, it has been established beyond dispute that the earliest identifiable Celtic culture did first appear in central Europe, there is ample evidence for this.
Oppenheimer dismisses myths of Anglo-saxon origins very quickly claiming its all welsh propaganda, yet he seizes on the words of Tacitus and Julius Caesar, whom many would consider more unreliable than Gildas-Bede etc.
Its quite possible that some pockets of Germanic speakers were in England in Roman times and indeed late preRoman times, but quite mad to say tens of thousands of years ago.
The Romans were in Britain for four hundred years, Latin was the language of the legions and was the language of law and the government, yet for all that, latin did not replace welsh; but we are asked to believe that a tiny minority elite; less sophisticated than the Brits, in less than half the time the Romans were in Britain managed to impose or somehow make their language widespread? utter nonsense.
barnstormer
If the Anglo Saxons were settled in Britain before and during Roman times, how come there are so few Latin borrowings into the language. Welsh is full of Latin borrowings yet Anglo-Saxon – which according to Oppenheimer flourished in the most romanised part of Britain – doesn’t.
Of course Oppenheimer ignores Sims-Williams’ book on Celtic placenames in Europe, surely because it blows his theory out of the water. No doubt his theories appeal to the English nationalists but they don’t stand-up to scutiny.
Paul Metcalfe
Jane Walsh says Oppenheimer’s theory is nonsense as you only have to stand English people and Scandinavian people side by side to see the likeness. Firstly away from East Anglia and Lincolnshire more children are not blonde than are. In Scandinavia most children are blonde with higher cheek bones.
Secondly you are comparing Mediterranean people with the English. The original Basques were not Mediterranean unlike today where there is a considerable Latin DNA influence.
Sven Olafsson
Besides, Scandinavian women are beautiful. So clearly there is no connection.
Michael
Yes I agree with the findings, truth is where’s the evidence of what language people spoke before the Romans, Anglo-Saxons arrived here. It not as though ordinary people wrote things down. The Celts to me are a language, culture not a ethnic group or people. These genes have simply been here a long time and there are genetic similarities across northern Europe. Germanic speakers could of come into Britain at any date. It politics and historical ideas that separate people not genes.
robert
fascinating article but i am quite amazed at how many people are taking this story as gospel. One, oppenheimer is not a qualified geneticist nor historain, two; ‘gene tracing’ is still somewhat of a very rudimentary science with various differing opinions and interpretations on the same subject. three; people in this modern climate are so eager to believe on first glance ‘evidence’ that dispiutes the norm, whether or not this is influenced by modern social-political ideas one can only begin to imagine. Many modern scientists are so eager to dispute historical opinions due to political influences to deny us all a common heritage. according to some the white race doesnt even exsist but is merely caucasian, ignoring completley the fact that outside europe most in the middle east and north africa and caucasus have been ‘mongrelised’ to use of a better term with african and orientals,but still maintaining there white features. What has this got to do with the above article you may ask; well its has got precisely EVERYTHING to do with it, the fact that common sense,historical and linguistics are ignored in determing heritage and the same misguided moves to deny us our roots. linguistics in a lot of cases are a prominent decider in affirming genetic heritage. but the fact is everyone knows that the ancient british came from the iberian peninsular,whats new??? the oldest myths even state it, but these iberians holed up in the mountains were just the advancement of more ‘white’ tribes coming in from the east. and germanics were another aspect of these. another notion that hasnt even got a mention here is that the gene pool of the original inhabitants no matter how diluted and assimilated will always remain strong!! thats a fact.. so celts,saxons and angles could of well came over in vast numbers as many historical records state and assimilated with their genetic cousins. many people in england and infact the whole of the british isles look like germans,northern spanish, scandinavians…we all look similar, because we are all from the same originally!!!!ok some mighthave different hair or shapes of faces but we are all vaguely similar… some of the comments here have stated that many english look like southern mediteraneans, and some incling we are as dark? if you ask the majority of spanish they would proclaim temselves as white and tanned but the fact is that many in southern spain and italy notably scilily have got mixed heritage due to north african moors raping and colonizating the population during their invasion.so to compare the english to certain southern med people is ludicrous at best, scandalous at worse. fact is the entire isles are a mixture of celtic and germanic now but still retaining their original neolithic genteic markers, so oppenheimers article is stating what we already know but trying to aggravate what is also fact, that celts and germanics have contributed significantly to our gene pool but not massively over ran it, but due to the fact that they already from the same stock as the neolithics it doesnt really show, apart from innorthern countries where their halotypes regarding hair colour are more significant as they were the original settlers and not their iberian cousins…….common sense tells you we are all the same poeople…..how hard is that to understand
Clematys
Strange, since the British have mixed ancestry, and they also have North African genetic elements in its composition, you choose to peg them to Germanic and Celtic elements, ignoring the North African ones. Are you ashamed of your North African origins?
Fernando
As a Spaniard, do not think I really feel confortable with any genetic relationship with the English (it would be different with the Irish), but that is just cultural. I just wanted to comment that it might be helpful to relate that theory with the origin, spread and datation of the megalithic architecture and art of Western Europe.
Greg
What a good thing we can use science to override the prejudice and stereotype of people like you then.
John drummond
Are Basques Spaniards?
connor
So basically what he is saying is that British and Irish people are not Caucasian then? As in, they predate the waves of Indo-European’s who colonized Europe some time ago… Granted I am sure there is some “neolithic” ancestry but it wouldn’t make sense for the British to be completely that one race, it doesn’t make sense given the number of people who have settled there over years. I think his theory is kind of a stubborn and biased crock of shit if you are asking me. It has many holes in it.
connor
I concur with what chris jones said, a typical example of some mediocre oxford professor who thinks he knows every answer to every question ever pondered. His theory is definitely an acquired taste anyway, to say the least.
Luis
I find Oppenheimer’s study very realistic. I am an argentine of spanish origin. My mother was galician and my father is asturian. They were born in regions often considered of “celtic” origin. My look matches that of many irish or other british people (pale skin, blue eyes and brown heair) and in my few travels to USA or europe, people found hard to believe I was “latin” (whatever that means). I am a strong believer in that the celtic heartland was located in northern spain / souther France, as Herodotus comment implied. There are hundreds of celtic place names in iberia, and many historic mentions of “celts” and “celtiberians” in the peninsula. On the other hand, there is hardly any historic evidence of celtic presence in the british isles. There isn’t any mention of a british historical character considering himself a “celt” or calling his own people with this name. The point is, history, missconceptions ans stereotypes conspire to make a big confussion out of all this. The generalized notion of dark featured mediterraneans (spanish, portuguese, etc) vs nordic featured british is largelly inaccurate. There are millions of british peoples with dark features as well as many spaniards with light features, and this just demonstrates the millenarian mixture of peoples. I believe the first modern humans (cromagnon) achieved geneticall homogeneity in northern spain/souther france. Having different genotypes in this population (dark and light features) they reconquered much of western europe after the ice sheets retreat, including the isles (which were not yet isolated by the sea). Different phenomenoms such as genetic drift, population bottlenecks and/or social selection made those features change their proportion in different areas (causing more percentage of blue eyes in ireland, for example). But in general, all western europe keeps sharing the same genes. Basque and celts may have had different languages, but not differen genes. As said in the article, languages and races don’t match always. Perhaps the spread of agriculture and other techniques helped the expansion of the celtic language into the west. We are more connected than we used to think. I believe that languages and accents contribute largely to our perception of people’s ethnicity. I grew up in an argentine neighbourhood were many of my friends were of italian, german, polish, jewish, and even irish origin. Being all of us middle class kids with no socio-economic differences we never felt there were any difference amongst us while growing up. Actually, we all looked strickingly similar one another. It was only when we were becoming adults when our environment, the society, prejudices and stereotypes affected the perception we had of ourselves and the supposed differences we had. What I mean is, if we put many naked people in one room (spaniards, british, french, etc) with no clothes, no visible cultural signs and with their mouths shouted, any of us would find it very hard to tell the origin of any of them. Languages aside, we are all very similar.
al-dhabih
Ummm! I know for a fact that one of my ancestors arrived in East Sussex, from Normandy, in 1124 AD; the rest seem to have been located in York, Wales, & Ireland. I have never seen any Britons who looked like Basques; yet Galicians do. Language & Gene Pool do not always correspond. Cheddar Man’s ancestors still live en situ. Perhaps we have enough failed Social Engineers, without trying to re-engineer history.
MindYaSel
@al-dhabih
Pardon?…
History is mostly myths and fantasies, not fact.
DNA is fact.
Andrew
There is nothing new about this article.
It is a regurgitation of the Nazi doctine of prehistoric nationalism and as such is an evil fantasy.
ALL the historical records tell us the Anglo-Saxons replaced the Romano-Celts.
You can dabble in archaeology, interpret linguistics, quote genetics – but all these are imprecise.
The written HISTORICAL records are clear and unambiguous.
Janclantara
If the Saxons had mass slaughtered ‘all the natives’, this would be in the archaeological record. However, mass graves on this scale are just not found (2 sites,in Chester and Norfolk show some violence…but not to the level of earlier mass graves from the Roman period or later ones from the viking era.)You can’t trust writers such as Gildas, a cloistered monk; being a native he’s hardly going to write, ‘We let them have our land because we were afraid’, now is he? If we believe Gildas, that means we must believe all ancient ‘historians’ such as Geoffrey of Monmouth–heck,we don’t still believe Merlin built Stonehenge,do we?
Actually,away the dna side of things, VERY recent isotope testing on a bones from a bronze age ritual site in Kent has shown a mix of native born people, Iberians and Scandinavians. This would actually accord pefectly with the article above, with Scandinavians coming to the north and east coast long pre-vikings, and Iberians approaching from the western seaboard into south-western England.
I don’t think British people look particularly Scandinavian or Germanic either, btw; some do, but there’s a mix,and the further west in England you go, the more dark hair/eyes you find (this has been officially mapped out.) Certainly a fair amount of Welsh and Irish people DO look somewhat ‘Spanish’(even the Romans noticed this in the Welsh and mentioned it!)–hence the mythical Irish tales of the Armada in the west. My own family are of this type,some even having black hair.
As for the guy trying to claim modern Spanish people are somehow ‘mixed’; that flies in the face of recent dna testing,and besides that, the Moors were north African (caucasoid),AND I’m not so sure about his lurid rape n pillage fantasies either (the Moorish cities of Spain (which were in the SOUTH also)had sections for Jews,Christians and Muslims but seemed pretty fair overall–actually showing a LACK of mixing rather than the reverse.)
But back to British archaeology, it actually was known for YEARS that the people buried in long barrows were of a physical type known as Mediterranean, and probably came from Iberia via France (esp Brittany). I have books over 100 years old that state this! Things seems to have got more muddied in the early 20th C, when big migrations/extermination theories seemed popular–ie that iron age central European CELTS killed off the British/Irish aboriginal people (which if believed should have been a slap for those ‘celts’ who loved to bang on about the ‘evil’ Anglo-Saxons!)
si
ORIGIN !! not ORIGON
si
chris jones says:
March 15, 2010 at 2:41 am
what a typically arrogant english historian!! i switched off when he described england as england.england obvioulsy didnt exist at this time,it was just britain.as a historian he really should have got the basics right.this is typically pompous and speculative work with no hard evidence
Wow Chris Jones what rubbish you are spouting.. England is England, and The English are English. Just facts nothing pompous. What is your agenda ? Additionally, if you read the article he was examining genes, which provide hard evidence.
People who make comments like you are subversive to the average Britan.
Daz
@Fernando You’re just sore because us English have a respect and connection with the Basques. Whats the matter? Not happy they’re not rolling over and dying like you want?
Valhalla_Next
Hahahhaha its pretty easy to get, the majority of the population of britain and western europe descends from the basque(R1b) hablogroup. although celts, romans, sarmatians, anglo-saxons , vikings and normans may have lived in britain they were to small in number to actualy kicked the britons(basques) out.
it doesnt take a genius to figure out the answer why the british population doesnt speak basque. all theese aryan people spoke and indo european language and the reason why they today in britain speak an indo european language is just beacause the aryanic peoples conquered britain with weapons and the basques were forced to learn indo european. for example just look at Turkey and Hungary the majority of the turkish population are byzantines(greeks) and the majority of the hungarians are a mixture of north iranian and thracians.
Greetings from Sweden a proud decender of the blond north iranians!
Chelsea88
Maybe the best answer to this article yet mate !!!
The modern day britsh people (english,scottish,irish,welsh) are all a mix of peoples even though the majority comes from the earliest inhabitans that colonized this lands after the ice melted away.
I would describe the british people just as the french, german and dutch as western aryanic people = people who speak indo european and have indo european blood in their vains , celts and the germans were both indo europeans just as the slavs and thracians, scythians and italic and greek people.
Perphaps the biggest mystery and lie are the myth that R1B isent aryan but native european.
Both R groups are Aryan and the pre-indoeuropean peoples of europe are of haplogroup I and N origin !!
aperson
@chris jones: You idiot, he’s describing the general area which would latter become England! Why whilst he’s at it doesn’t he just include India and Australia?
Duh! Because he’s talking about events relating to the ENGLISH, but his book also relates to the rest of Britain, maybe you should read it like I have done instead of passing idiotic comments.
Fernando
@Daz: I don’t understand your comment to mine. I just meant that historically Spaniards and the English have been very frequently enemies, and that we feel strong sympathy towards the Irish, also historically.
Not being an expert in Demography or Genetics, I just wanted to remark that there is a megalithic culture that spreads through Iberia, West of France and the British Islands, which is specific of western Europe, and whose origen could be related to people migrations, maybe accompanying a softening of climatic conditions after the last glaciation (probably, nobody lived in the British Isles 12.000 to 10.000 years ago).
Michael
Truth is a lot of genes like R1a, I1a and R1b were all here before the Romans. There is no evidence of a link to a haplogroup and a historic group of people as most of these people were all mixed haplogroups too. Oppenheimers information makes sense. We should stop dividing haplogroups as coming at particular historic periods. Language too I believe is older and has been in Britain for a lot longer – these later groups merely were taking over from previous already Germanic speaking groups – it makes sense. Mercian dialect in the West Midlands simply wouldn’t have developed so distinctively as it was in the 7th century if the Anglo-Saxons had just arrived there, there wasn’t time enough to develop.
Dave
Instead of using the abusive word Viking for the peaceful Danish and Norwegian settlers in Northern England and eastern counties in the Midlands why not use the abusive term white niggers instead? The Anglo-Saxon extermination myth is useful for the far right in excusing the extermination of Jews by the Nazis and more recent events in central Africa. If the Anglo-Saxons exterminated Celts then why not continental Germans exterminate Jews?
Michael
What seems to be quickly forgot is that Sutton Hoo and Beowulf show huge Scandinavian influences prior to the Vikings, yet because this doesn’t fit a nice Celtic-Roman-Anglo-Saxon-Viking-Norman view of British history it is quickly brushed to one side. Who knows when Scandinavian influences came in after all Britain had been trading with northern Europe for thousands of years.
WALSH
For a start the genitic study done suggests that the Celts and Basque come from a common line .It is ment to suggest that the two are closely related and not that they are two seporate groups.The Basque and island celts have a common gene that covers both
“To try to work out where the Celtic population originally came from, the team from UCL, the University of Oxford and the University of California at Davis also looked at Basques.
“On the Y-chromosome the Celtic populations turn out to be statistically indistinguishable from the Basques,” Professor Goldstein said.”
They results of the study can be read here
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/1256894.stm
Oppenheimer once again not reading the results before he opens his mouth
Andrew
Just had a quick glimpse at the article. But the whole concept of the indigenous population of the entire British Isles i.e England, Scotland, Wales, both Irelands and the Isle of Man originating from the same base genetic stock would be simply too much from many sentimental Irish, Scottish and Welsh to accept. Even if there was numerous exhaustive and conclusive genetic studies supporting the concept scores of Irish and Scottish would continue to recite the banal and trite mantra that the Irish and Scots were Celts which makes them inherantly different from the Anglo-Saxon English and you would still have those revolting sentimental cultural abominations like \Celtic Fire\.
n0p
This is interesting. I have English and German ancestry but I’ve always been mistaken for having Mediterranean ancestry (Greek/Italian mostly). I’m not sure why but I have very, very dark hair and eyes. Maybe I have some ancestry I’m not aware of. This is interesting though and I’ll continue to keep reading things.
Ghostmojo
Oppenheimer is on to something and people shouldn’t be scared of it all. A thorough reading of his book (as opposed to just the article above) would help. He is not a revisionist Englishman (he explains his own mixed heritage) and approaches the subject in a calm, methodical and quite neutral manner. The only people getting uptight are narrowminded nationalists clinging on to some sense of pseudo-cultural superiority based upon poor Georgian/Victorian research making the supposed Celtic fringes somehow more ethnically pure and longer resident than much of England. If that is all tosh, then it is all tosh. Let’s look for the truth with an open mind. I have mixed British (English/Welsh/French Hugenot/other) background and embrace new well-researched and argued views which replace old myths.
Mixedupbrit
Finally, an open mind. A lot of heat and not much light elsewhere. Origin myths don’t attract disinterested discussion so no surprise. But we might all get on a bit better if we accepted we all share the common label of mongrel.
claus
yea thats right! puny britons are r1b noobs.
but what about r1b in the rest of europe?
Liz
Has anyone considered the impact of the Black Death in Europe? What about other pandemic diseases before and since? Perhaps the book mentions this, but I find it intriguing to think that we’re the decendents of virtually a handful of people who survived a plague that decimated the population of Britain and much of Europe. Perhaps there are genes that died out with the plague, the survivors having a natural genetic resilliance to the desease? Maybe many gene markers that represented the old population of Europe didn’t survive, so the modern population might not be fully representative of the gene pool of our prehistoric ancestors? I also think you need to test a much larger sample of the population to be sure of anything, these gene tests are hugely expensive, so many folks are not able to participate, myself included! I daresay the population of pre-Roman Britain was more varied than this article even suggests, bearing in mind the UK’s position on the Western Atlantic as well as Northern Europe.
Speaking for myself, my recent immigrant ancestors came from Denmark (also Germany and Sweden via my Danish great grandmother) France and all the British so-called Celtic groups and I look as you’d expect a mixture of Nordic and Southern European. If it happened in the 19th C why not back in prehistory? I think the article has a point and from studying Anglo Saxon burials a little on my degree, as someone else mentions, there was little evidence of violence and hostility between ethnic groups suggesting they were well established before the 5th C.
Roger Henderson
Thanks for your comment about the Oppenheimer book. I had also thought about the issue of the plagues (there were at least 3 in Roman times, apart from the ones in the Middle ages). The idea of carrying out a DNA test when most of the evidence is absent doesn’t make much sense. The sample taken was very small, another weakness in the argument on which so many sweeping conclusions have been made.
All the best,
Roger
Badger40
I’ve read as much as I can find on this subject, as well as Oppenheimer’s other books.
As a HS science teacher, I extensively use several videos that deal with this subject, as well as the Out of Africa DVD, as a springboard after studying genetics to explore the origins of the human races in my 10th grade biology classes.
I loaned Oppenheimer’s book on the British Origins to our English teacher.
She also teaches English Lit & Myths & Legends & I think it will enhance her presentation of those subjects.
I am eager to see more genetic research on the various human population groups of the world.
I find it a fascinating subject.
Badger40
According to that study, Walsh, the studied samples are not very numerous.
I think it would be prudent to have some more DNA samples, a lot more, analyzed & evaluated before calling Oppenheimer full of it.
And that study was in 2001.
R T Martin
Oppenheimer is media-magnet and a chavinist.
He’s pushing crap science and selling crappy books.
The R1b haplogroup has its highest peak diversity in ASIA. It is NOT native to western Europe and British people are NOT Basques or whatever you want to call the remnant of the last ice age. It’s never been proven, and is becoming increasly unlikely, that the Basque people themselves represent any sort of early post-ice age population.
The low-diversity, high concentration of R1b haplotypes in the Pyreenes is most likely the result of “other factors” that are easily demostrated in small populations. The founder effect is one.
Looks like we’re back to conventional wisdom.
Old-fashioned, pen-and-paper science where facts matter more than selling books
This is an embarassing article.
Siegfriedson
@Andrew: “It is a regurgitation of the Nazi…”
Stopped reading at the word ‘Nazi’. Anyway…
Perhaps the truth regarding the origins of the people of the British Isles (including Ireland) is not as complicated as we are all making it out to be.
The first inhabitants of these lands came over from continental Europe many thousands of years BC. They were the descendants of Cro-Magnon Man who had replaced the Neanderthal, either actively or passively.
Then came the great migration of the Indo-European (‘Aryan’) peoples into Europe from the Russian steppe. A branch of these Aryans, the Celts, settled in Britain and Ireland and were there when Caesar encountered them about 55 BC. They were in Ireland when the Vikings founded Dublin 800 years later.
After Caesar’s landing, waves of successive Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking/Norman migrants settled in Britain.
So perhaps the truth is staring us in the face…the British and Irish peoples are simply a mixture of the above mentioned tribes/nations.
Bill Clogston
I agree totally with Oppenheimer. Winston Churchill wrote in his Birth of Britain” that a Saxon mercinary group was invited into Britain to settle a dispute between the natives. Apparently the natives didn’t want to use their own men. After the battle the Saxons decided they liked the women and decided to stay. Having no land they settled in the ports, and their language intermingled with Latin became the language of commerce. Churchill said that the only reasom there was no Gaelic in use was because all the Britons spoke Latin. There is so much Latin in English that I believe him. As an aside I am sure you know that is how the Anglo Normans arrived in Ireland. They were invited in to help an Irish King keep this power. I think so many people want to think of themselves as wild, bloody conquerors and I can only wonder why.
Basque
Why are there some morons that are in denial? Look up who the basques were n youll feel proud…the basques are the original europeans,we unofficially discovered america,1st man to circle the globe sebastian elcano was basque,the stonehenge were built by ancient basques,we were the 1st seamen,hell the white race is founded on by the cromagons who gave rise to the basques and the basques gave rise to the so called “celts”.The anglos etc sure brainwashed you…
Manuel Rosa
We as Portuguese also tend to ignore our recent gene associated discovery of being closely related to all western European, in fact by 2 Y haplogroups that account for some 4/5 our gene pool. We were told for the last 100 years that we were Mediterranean and African… today I ask myself if that wasn’t done with the clear purpose of justify our slavery past, which if fact, was no different from any other empire in history. We have 2 taboo’s the one I just mentioned and the other one is that we live in a hot, dry and almost African land… we, in this Atlantic, forested and green land, have rain from October to late April (especially north of the Tagus river), of course we can’t say this otherwise we won’t have tourists. They will prefer Africa… The Portugal that Brits know better (Algarve) is more different and people have darker skin… but the Algarve population accounts only with 3% of the total and the whole south with 8%. After this introduction I have to say that, in my opinion, indeed, we look different from Brits, no question about that but it comes from adaptation to a milder and sunnier climate. For sure our skin tone looks southerner. But please take this in consideration, maybe the next time you pay us a visit you take at us a different look. I live in central Portugal and I have 2 daughters and my family kind of is a micro cosmos of who we are here: two of us were really blond in early childhood, two of us have green eyes (a pair dark and another light), one of us has blue eyes, one of us has brown eyes, two of us have mild brownish skin, two of us have light brown skin, tree of us have dark brown hair and one of us have light brown hair. When my daughters went to kindergarten I did noticed that more or less half of the kids had blond hair but they kind of loose that tone before 6, so when they go to primary schools those tones almost disappeared, especially in the boys and it is not common to see adult males really blond. Women are more commonly blond but never as light as Scandinavians. We do have also people with really dark skin color. I can tell you some history now: the only peoples that really migrated here in numbers were the same ones that in this article you call Basques and Germanics (Goths and Sueves). In all the other cases there were people coming but is was in fact a kind of military occupation (Romans and Muslims). About the Muslims, in northern Portugal they took control, not for 8 centuries as it is commonly known, but for no more than 150-170 years. Coimbra was “reconquested” in 871, but it wasn’t an effective conquest until 1064. It became the border and all the lands south until the Tagus river stayed no man´s land for almost the next 200 years. My hometown Tomar, for example, was in that strip of land and was abandoned for 200 years. Anyway we do have some north African blood between 12 and 5% when you travel from south to north but today it is accepted that we got it well before Muslim invasion and as I told you, Roman, Muslim, Jewish, Greek and Phoenicians are all together nothing more than milk drops in a cup of coffee. Sorry about my English and I have to say that I don’t care if I’m more northerner or more southerner, I’m proud of my ancestry, of that “tribe” I belong to, no matter what!
fascinatin
u are gona think i am off my rocker but many experts say basque is the universal(literally) language n that all advanced languages derive from basque….fascinatin stuff especially if u are basque like myself.
Detretius
The Roman cavalry remained even though the infantry were withdrawn. There are also many more than just six Celtic words in English.
ben
While I find the ideas Oppenheimer presents in this essay very intriguing and worth taking a second look at, I am disinclined to change much my (and the prevailing) views regarding ancestry in ancient Britain. While it may be true that Celtic peoples did not even form a majority in Britain at these times (though we actually don’t have enough evidence one way or another to say with certainty that this was or was not the case), I doubt very much that a small elite population from a different ethnic identity/language could not have had a great impact on the subsequent culture and heritage of later peoples living there. One only has to look at the small elite of English settlers and lords who decimated the Irish language use over the course of several generations, or the Conquistadors who with one swift stroke, managed to wipe out the cultures and languages of dozens of dominant peoples in Mesoamerica. It does not take a large population to eliminate a more indigenous culture – it only takes a minority elite with a penchant/desire to do so. Belief probably also plays a big part in how cultures interact – and we have little to no evidence of what these various peoples thought about each other at their initial meeting.
enough said
the Sumerians were the basques’ ancestors…
Scratchy7929
…..or a more recent connection the Cimmerian’s a tribal group that can be originated to Sumerian lands (but also were none to have settled in Anatolia in Turkey – believe the R-M269 / R1b gene (the Western European gene – 100 million men carry the gene, reaching frequencies of 90% or more in Spain, Ireland and Wales) has been traced to farmers from Turkey.
gorka
Edgar Kacey (the greatest psychic of all time) said while he was in a trance? that the Basques came from atlantis.
ibon
The Basques are the MOST unique genetic people in the entire world!
The Basques have the LONGEST THREAD OF CIVILIZATION IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!
The Basques are the MOST PURE FORM OF CRO-Magnon in the entire world!
The Basques have the OLDEST LANGUAGE IN The WORLD!
The Basques developed the FIRST high technology in the world…
They developed astronomical technology…such as the “Stone circle technology”…..thousands of years before any other people!
The invented solar and lunar calculators thousands of years before any other race!
They invented the SAIL and harnessed wind power thousands of years before any other known people!
They invented the mirade of high technology needed to creat SEAWORTHY oceanic sailing ships…..tens of thousands of years before any other people!
It is now believed that they were the First HOMO-SAPIENS TO REACH THE “NEW WORLD”….AND THEY DIDNT JUST FOLLOW SOME GAME ACROSS AND ICE-SHEET……..THEY BUILD SEAWORTHY SHIPS AND COLONIZED THE LANDS OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN….from north Africa…….to the Canary Islands….to Storm swept Islands of Ireland, England…Orkney….ect…ectc…
They beat the Viking by a good……10,000-20,000 years on ALL ACOUNTS!!!…..(the Vikings were very surprised to find these pale skinned dark haired sailors living on nearly every remote island they ever found!…..the Vikings called these tough little sailors….the Vanir)
The Basques developed some of the OLDEST ART in the world….
ohh…and BTW…its not just some crude stick from art….the painted caves of the Basque country are examples of VERY HIGH CULTURE…..These painting capture the essence of MOVEMENT…a entire skill set not found in any known population until relatively modern times…..(like the great master painters of Europe and Asia…in the 1400′s)…..and yet these painting clearly hold their own in skill and mental technique……to these later masters!
****JUST COMPARE THE ANCIENT BASQUE CAVE PAINTING TO …the very best of the EGYPTIANS ever managed…..its like putting Leonardo again a school kid with a number 2 pencil!!(LOL)
…ohhh…and just for the cherry…they were painted at about 20,000 years PRIOR to them!
…ohhh and just in case you want TWO CHERRIES….these fantastic paintings..are not just paintings but rather are representativces of the SOLAR SYSTEM!!!!!!
(the HALL oF BULLS……is not just a painting of BULLS….its a representation of The constelation TAURUS……made circa~15,000BC!~!~!!!
….The Basques have NEVER BEEN CONQUERED!
The Summerians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Romans…..the Carthaginians…..etc…etc….etc…..All came and went…passed away into history……..BUT THE BASQUES never were conquered by any great power…and outlasted them all!
I could go on and on and on and on….
I could go into the unique biology of the Basques….
vasco ibon
Basques,Etruscans,Trojans,Sumerians,Thracians,Pelasgians,Atlanteans were all the same people….These people are the true founders of european culture……however they were unjustly overlooked…
vasco ibon
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/humanmig.htm
vasco ibon
The Basques are the original europeans and 80% of europeans descend from them.Etruscans were ethnic Basques and these people founded rome n taught the romans everything yet the romans took all the credit and glory wtf the basques created the 1st known civilization n now to finally drop ur jaw they also created egypt,mesopotamia,the indus valley n troy…enough said….research it if u think? i am off my rocker…..
basque guy
There is much to learn concerning the mythology and the magic-spiritual practices of the Basque peoples. They contain the archetypes from which all the knowledge of the world has emerged. Within the deep knowledge of this people it seems that are hidden the keys to open the secret doors of all the world Traditions. The genetic and ethnic-cultural constitution of the Basques, the remote origin of their language that seems to stem directly from the ancestral memory of the earth and possibly from words, sparks of life fallen from the gods of heaven, allow us to perceive a remote enchanted garden, beyond the barriers of time, inhabited by fantastic and wonderful creatures.
santiago
This article is very interesting because the majority of the world thinks England is a germanic country.
Are the people (today english) of the anglish kingdoms more germanic than southern England?
basque guy
Philology in 1984 and since 1994, genetics, demonstrated that Basque people are the direct descendants of the Homo Sapiens. Thus, the common roots of all the inhabitants of the planet are rooted in the Basque country. In 1995 National Geographic magazine published an article entitled The Basque: The first family of europe.
A recent DNA study of the British shows that their first ancestors came from the Basque country. Something their mythology had mentioned repeatedly. In the introduction and the epilogue of the last glaciation the widespread colonization of Europe was initiated from the Basque country.
In 1999, two American archaeologists established the thesis that America was populated by Basque sailors 20,000 years ago.
The current Cantabria can not hide its basque substrate. Its capital Sant-Ander, Castro Urdiales or Mazcuerras gives us an idea of which people settled there in the past.
In Euskera(Basque) ezpain(end,extreme), was used to refer to Spain, as the peninsula has always been the extreme land of the known world, the West. Hence the british named it Spain.
Throughout the whole basque country constitutes a real faculty of anthropology where all europeans and even people around the world are represented.
As a prehistoric people, they are jealous cultivators of their ancient traditions and festivities.
The fact that the Sanfermines(the running of the bulls) be recognized as the world’s most universal festivity is genetically and chemically pure atavism.
Over the coming decades, the world will discover puzzled how cultural manifestations of humanity originated in Basque lands.
As a mother tongue of all european languages, Basque should become a compulsory subject for all European institutes and universities, replacing the Greek and Latin, which are sons, too,of the basque language.
I have always been surprised by the large number of basque names that are scattered around the world, and the similarity of basque with other very distant languages and parallel customs with other remote cultures. This can only be understood when we recognize that after the ice age basque people scattered throughout the world sharing their culture in the backpack. Denying it indicates ignorance and fanaticism. Archaeology, Genetics, philology and anthropology have the final say in this regard.
Nobody knows today that even in a british italian map of the eighteenth century,called greek ocean to Cantabrian Sea or Sea of biscay…when the Greeks never sailed this sea..
In the coming years,the world will discover and will be stunned how the ciclopes or titans both very talked about in classical mythology (which are recognized as ancestors of all rational people on the planet)built a bridge of over 300 ms. length, which served as a reference and model for all bridges, dams and aqueducts that antiquity has left us … All this happened in the basque country for about 40 / 50,000 years thus before the last ice age …which makes the bridge in question, not only the oldest known artwork in the history of mankind, but also the oldest architectural monument in the world, tens of thousands of years older than the oldest known megaliths , in rare cases over 7,000 years and this, alone, in the megalithic monuments of the Iberian Peninsula. The Egyptian pyramids do not exceed 5000 years old. Compare, then, with those 50,000 years …
Do you understand better now why Basques like lifting stones of great weight and size?
If the Homo Sapiens was born and was forged as such in basque lands, only benefits will derive for our specie to reunite with the people and the culture that spawned him and made him like he is…
GO BACK TO YOUR ROOTS: visit, study, and learn to love the Basque country..because it is still your land..the land of all.
If Castile and, by extension the rest of Spain, is removed from its Basque substrate, it reduces to nothing …
As undisputed cradle of all europeans, the basque country should host the headquarters of the council of europe and european parliament”
Bill Clogston
Hasn’t anyone read Churchill’s “Birth of Britain.” He gives the most believable scenario on the origin of the English language. Churchill writes that the language of commerce (and indeed the spoken language) in early England was Latin. Remember that 500 years of Roman occupation. By the way, what happened to their descendents. Churchill goes on that two British or “Celtic” tribes, fueding, invited a mercenary group of Saxons in, with the Saxons taking sides and waging a battle. The winning Saxons would determine the winning Celtic side. History shows the Celts did that type of thing to save their own. Churchill wrote the Saxons liked the Celtic women and decided to stay, but having no land engaged in commerce which resulted in the huge Latin influence on the English languge sixty percent according to him. I also was taught in school a long ago that the Romans called the early natives of Britain the Latin word for Angles because they were universely red and blonde haired with blue eyes and blond haired. Check out the Latin word for yourself and see the closeness. By
john cornford
Nennius’s “Historia Brittonum” – written in the 9th-10th C – refers to the pre-Roman myth that “Britain” derives from Brutus, son of Aeneas who sailed from Rome and Troy around Spain and whose descendents populated Britain.
Did I also read somewhere that the use of the chariot by the pre-Roman Britons was unique in N Europe ? (In other words it had been learned from those early Greek settlers)
James
I find the article interesting but not entirely correct. DNA results in the past do not go with what Mr. Oppenheimer says here. I do not belive that all Englishmen, Irishmen etc…are celtic or non celtic. There is no DNA for celt or german or roman. That is bullshit. The word celt came from the greeks to refer to ‘barbarians’ from the north. The romans came up with the terms ‘teuton’ meaning germanic today for people living east of the rhine and used the term celt or gaul for people living west of the rhine. In reality all western europeans are the same barbarians. As the romans documented celts and germans were of tall stature, bright haired, muscle build, and bright eyed. I doubt all of them appeared this way but to the roman soldiers their enemies [our ancestors in this case] were pretty scary looking ot them. The romans themselves were of the same stock at one time but were very influenced by the greeks.
Our mythologies are a great example of our similarities. Different names for dieties but they all represent the same meaning. I however find it hard to believe that I am not descended from barbarinas of any of these tribes and just descended from hunter gatherers from the basque region of spain. On top of this Basques are pretty much Gauls in Spain, maybe the last bastion of them? Genetics prove nothing when it comes to inheritence. As a Swede/Irish/English/French american I find and believe I have inherited a diverse heritage lol. Im proud of the barbarian roots wether they are basque, norse, irish, etc…. they are all great cultures, nationalities and worthy of their own praise!
V.W. Gravlin
Stephen Oppenheimer’s analysis of the origin of the Celtic people sounds correct for the most part in that the Celts came from Anatolia [if indicated by blood type & DNA, but the Romans were fighting the Celts in Spain and the Phoenicians were trading & estabished the port of Barcelona around 1500 BC with a Celtic population. I see evidence that the Celts migrated from Spain to northern Europe and nearby France. The Celts or Basque population has a high incident of RH-, and Spain was the 1st and last site for Neanderthals. It’s possible the RH- factor developed from inter-marriage between the Neanderthals & an original Celtic population tht came to Spain via northern coast of Africa.Extensive DNA & Y cromo studies have to be continued.
V.Gravlin, Florida
V.W. Gravlin
LIZ made a great comment about the impact that the Black Plague might have had on genetic/DNA analysis on English DNA as it wiped out half the population in Europe and from 1337 to 1339, the Black Plague wiped out 1/2 the population in Italy. The kill rate dropped to 20% or 30% over generations and by 1730′s, the European population had antibodies but not cleaner living conditions. Liz appears to make the point that the black plague might have wiped out certain populations –perhaps a lot of Celtic descendants–that didn’t have a high level of resistance. The Plague could wiped out other groups missing in the current genetic pool. My theory is that many groups migrated out of Northern Africa into Spain across Gibraltar. During the last Ice age 50,000 yrs ago, N. Africa was well watered and the Sahara was a well watered plain with giraffs and antelope according to the cave paintings found in the area. Other groups migrated along the East end of the Med. I read one article that mentioned that red hair was a Neanderthal gene and red hair shows up along the Viking trade & raid routes, Portugal having a high rate of red hair as well as the Scots and Irish. There are a lot of fascinating, intelligent comments. V. Gravlin, Jupiter, Fl.
basque guy on a mission
the cromagnons gave rise to the basques, the original white people and original europeans who settled in Atlantis, Egypt, Greece & Rome,troy,sumeria mesopotamia etc and laid down the foundations of? western civilisation.? The Basques were the first explorers too, known as the Vanir(the vikings considered them gods) to the Vikings n settled America n many places many thousands of years before the Vikings did. The Basques? have the original European language & the most rh-blood? and? first settlers to the British isles & Ireland.
U know this is a big deal n needs to be spoken about on tv etc
JUSTICE
basque guy on a mission
Basque villages were devastated by bombs,Franco’s bombers pursued the ships, but they arrived safely. Basque children who were orphaned were adopted by the British people. God? gathers the various remnants of His chosen race in His own way and in His own good time. We leave our Basque brethren in the Pyrenees til the day when “Their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed the? Lord has blessed.”
Partridge
Turns out that Oppenheimer was wrong. He, not unlike Sykes, based his conclusions on the idea that a certain type of yDNA, namely R1b, which constitutes 65% of yDNA in England (not Britiain as a whole where it is even higher), is not found in the source populations of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, I.e. ‘North-Western Germans’, West Frisians, Scandinavians. It turns out that this assumption is flawed, as we now know, that R1b makes up 70% of yDNA in West-Frisia (northern Netherlands) it also accounts for 45% of yDNA in north-western Germany. What separates most English R1b yDNA from that found in Wales and the highlands of Scotland, as well as Ireland, is that about 60% of it is of the type R1b-U106 – the dominant type in Germanic-speaking areas mentioned above, but hardly present at all in the so-called culturally Celtic nations of the Isles. Together with the yDNA types I1a and R1a which Oppenheimer concedes to have arrived in Britain via Germanic migration, we arrive at a paternal line of ancestry in England that is 60-75% Germanic. It would be quite easy to accuse Oppenheimer of trying to promote an agenda, in the process abusing his position as a ‘trustworthy’ scholar, but let’s just suppose he made a mistake.
Mike
100% agree partridge. Over the course of my life in the UK, observing faces and characteristics of the people from different regions, it seems quite obvious to me that their are differences in ancestry.
The Welsh are different in temperament and appearance to the English. The lowland Scots differ from the people of Strathclyde, and the Highlanders are different again.
In England, according to the other way of determining ancestry, East Anglia is 100 % English, NE England, 77%, Cumbria 57% (despite the name Cumbria, meaning welsh) I would love to know what the percentages are for the Scottish borders, much the same as NE England and Cumbria, depending on how far west I’d guess.
. Somerset and Devon, and the west country might be a mixture, Dorset seems more British ancestry?
Gregory
I read your comment on The Daily Telegraph, RE David Starky with reference to celtic ancestry. In the chronicle of English history it is written that the first inhabitants of Britain were from Armenia and settled first in the southern part of Britain.
Here is the video link for your info.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHDaPXny3pw&feature=related
There have been a few books written on the Basque and Armenian connection. Unfortunately I do not have the titles to quote. I wonder if you have come acrosss these and also would you be kind enough to shed some light on these theroies. There was a British academic who was obsessed with finding an ancient Armenian Kingdom in Britain (unfortunatley he did not find any). I would be interesed to know your opinion on this matter also.
greg
unless the “elite” have the benefit of being disease-ridden with germs, viruses, bugs and bacteria the indigenous populations have no immunity to never having been exposed to the pathogens, then it is very doubtful that an immigrant invading population is able to get an upperhand. the filthy (literally) brits and spaniards had the distinct advantage of infecting their way through the new world…their infectious agents did the bulk of the dirty work for them. this and the ndgns definition of honor worked to create a huge disadvantage that the europeans were quick to exploit….kinda like an invasive species.
catalina
Ebon, basque guy, get a life and go out more! ‘Unique genetic people’ ‘direct descendents of homo sapiens’. Jesus! You sound like a bunch of fascists! I’m also unique and I must be a descendent of homo sapiens,unless I’m related to a monkey, which I am of course.
Maybe you are too, importa?
Fietsbode
I agree with Catalina. The Basque people posting here sound shockingly racist, and it makes me think about their bomb attacks on the Spanish.
We are all related. We are all cousins. The degree of consanguinuity is interesting and so are the migration patterns our ancestors took, but we should think of ourselves as relatives, not as superiors and inferiors,
Michael Byrne
Makes complete sense to me and fits with all the evidence, we have all genetic similarities, look at red hair and dark hair in ireland, which is mixed suggesting two post ice ages groups migrating to ireland. same in britain. red hair matches that found in parts of scandinavia and germany. But I wouldn’t use the term basques thats a more recent ethnic term. England is a Germanic country linguistically and culturally to much extent but this is because of earlier groups not anglo-saxons etc. The Anglo-Saxons were eaily integrated as they spoke a similar language, similar culture. But you have to separate culture and language, England would have had what is termed a celtic culture but a germanic language, in effect it’s its own country all of england adopted a germanic language – that’s where old english comes from a native language of england. http://www.proto-english.org is a great site.
Fietsbode
Red hair, like blue eyes and white skin, is a recessive gene and not the marker of a “race.”
Michael Byrne
R1b groups are all related, yes different r1b sub groups came to britain but all are related. I1 is native to europe too so is r1a. not everyone in ireland is all the same type of r1b and many in england are r1b that is found in ireland and wales etc, but these are still from hunter gatherers who moved north, none of them knew their r1b grouping and most shared common culture. but r1b types found in england probably have been there as long as r1b types found in ireland have been – all r1b is however related from the same male ancester
basque guy
The Basques(direct descendents still) are a colony of the lost tribes of judea thats why they say the “celtic” people and to a lesser extent the english descend from the judeans (watch the video “british dna”).The etruscans(pre indo european people just like the basques and the etruscan language also was an agglutinative language just like basque!!) who founded rome also were a colony of the lost tribes of judea but the cheatin and ungrateful romans who learned everything from the etruscans turned against them and the roman catholic church concealed the etruscans identity and the so-called jews(edomites) claim this birthright(lol ridiculous edomites they are frauds too by the way) If you dont believe me here are some facts that will convince you.
The original cromagnon man evolved into the basque man ask any honest scientist.No language in the world is related to basque.The basques are the people with the highest % of rh negative blood in the world and its believed they are the originators of this blood and this blood is known as the blood of the gods or blue blood.The word “original” is of basque origin,pretty tellin right?.The Basques are the original europeans and the oldest european tribe and 1st white tribe around.Experts have claimed the basques are of a holy bloodline so more evidence..hell experts even say the basques are the atlanteans because there is strong evidence for this and the basques were the only seafaring people with rh negative blood.
care to pass it on? guys n gals i need ur help =)
thanx
Fietsbode
“Experts”? “Holy”?
You are really turning me off the Basques. Think I will donate my berets to charity now.
Irish Man
Migrationism is the main method of colonization of an area eg USA. Elite invaders don’t tend to bring women with them so limiting breeding potential, they use a “snatch & grap” approach usually accompanied by “shock & horror” tactics but they will leave a work force of native peasants eg in Ireland there are large tracks of land still owned by British lords living in Britian taken in the 1650′s & we still have a huge majority of Irish Catholics with most of the Irish culture still intact (except the Irish Language but we have mutated English to suit us), while the North of Ireland has a huge Protestant community originating from migrants that arrived from Scotland in 1600 to work on the land & of course the number of Irish around the world eg in the USA estimates put the Irish community at about 60/70 million & we never had an Empire. Please note I only used Ireland as an example as I know Ireland best. The Basque seem, from the descriptions, as the polynesians of the Atlantic.
Luis González
Saying that all these peoples descend from the basques is not correct. They don’t descend from basques, rather, they share a common origin with them.
When the ice sheets covered most of Europe, small groups of humans found refuge in in the southern part of the continent. It is believed that Spain and southern France was one of them. There, the endogamic practice of these few humans achieved genetic homogeneity originating the R1B haplogroup, which is commonly considered “celtic”. However, this is a mistake. It’s origin is prior to any notion of “celtic”. It is the main haplogroup found in basques, french, spaniards and britons.
Moreover, there many evidences (archeological as well as historical sources) that confirm a strong celtic presence in Spain: tribe names, comments by classical authors (greeks and romans) and war registries such as the celtiberian wars.
On the other hand, there are no mentions of “celtics” in britain from historical sources. No one ever called britons “celts”, and we don’t know if they ever considered themselves as such.
There is only a comentary by Julius Caesar, who said that the language in the cost of britain (facing towards the continent) was similar with that of the belgians, but that the inhabitants of the inner parts of the island were natives and different. And we don’t even know if the belgians were celts. They were more likely germans of celticized germans.
In sum: I strongly believe in a common origin of all the western europeans, specially on the Atlantic fringe, from Spain to Skandinavia. Those natives received through the centuries many immigrants from other parts of Europe, Asia and even Africa, changing their genetic makeup to some extent, and creating different variations. But the truth is that, if we put together in a room a few individuals coming from all parts of western europe, naked and with their mouth shut, anyone would have a very hard time figuring out who is who…
john
the basques are phoenicians-sumerians(hebrews of the bible)
mike
The term “Keltic”, which is no clear matter given that its usage was less than consistent historically. The term may have been drawn from a Keltic root word attached to several tribes of Continental Europe, in a region known to the Romans as Gaul, which encompassed parts of France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and the Po Valley. However, in the Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar refers? to the the Aquitani tribe, for which the Aquitaine region of France is named, as Keltic, yet these were in fact a Basque peoples, whose ethnic and cultural constitution was quite separate from the peoples referred to as Keltic, a point which Caesar himself makes clear
good job julio caesar u moron…
michael
firstly i pretty much.agree with the article and that is totally possible a germanic language was spoken in britain, especially as mercian was a distinct dialect quite quickly after the anglo-saxons.supposed to.have arrived, i disagree the people were basques. basque culture is more recent. genetics show the people in the british isles belong to a distinct form of r1b, infact even some i haplogroups are unique to britain.
the languages arent related to the genetics. infact there is.no evidence the people in central europe spoke a celtic language it was probably germanic. infact the germanic speakers in central europe were.the.original celts although a celtic race never existed. people across europe shared celtic culture but spoke different languages and slightly different.mixes of the same genes, only.one of.these tribes called themselves celts, england is a germanic country from a linguistic view, but it shared a common celtic culture but england is actually unique, like everywhere, the basques and irish culturally are different.look at the irish many have dark hair but actually nearly half carry red hair, not like the basques, theres no evidence the r1b in ireland comes directly from the basques, basque identity didnt exist then neither did spanish identity, infact the irish look different. even.the basques contain i haplogroup. all europeans are genetically related, even r1a is related to r1b. each population has. a unique haplogroup mix, but haplogroups are that gene groups, not racial, ethnic groups. they found northern european dna on the female lines amongst the welsh, irish etc hence the fair skin, blue.eyes etc. the english look different to the irish, small populations living in small tribal villages in the past have resulted in particular cultural and genetic characteristics. all haplogroups living in a singular area adopted either.celtic and germanic language and all adopted what is termed celtic culture, old english has been spoken in england a long time, the slight genetic differences in the british isles reflect the settlements after the ice age. red hair has always been near the british isles infact parts of britain were habitable and people lived.close to the ice sheets, theres no evidence england spoke a celtic language, the britons clearly didnt like the other so called celts and why invite germanic speakers to defend them? cheers.
michael
not everybody settled in northern spain in the.ice age, some settled in various places including north italy and the alps. people followed.migrating herds north in summer and south im winter hence peoples characteristics today, evem the irish are fair skinned despite dark hair for many. dark haired hairy hunters.met red and blond.haired fair skinned people and had sex. maybe they did this in the continent or britain. whereever it happened you ended up with dark haired fair skinned and red/blond gene carriers many also with body hair. body hair mainly comes from insect prone areas such as swamps, forests.
Ardent Seeker
It is a genetic, linguistic, historical, and archaeological fact that before the invasion of Western Europe by the Indo-European speaking Latins, Celts, and Germans, the non-Indo-European speaking Basques were widespread throughout prehistoric Western Europe, living in northern Spain, the Atlantic coastal plains of France right up to the Strait of Dover, and in Britain and Ireland. The invading Indo-Europeans were to subsequently impose their language on the conquered Basques, until the only Basque speakers were confined to an area of northern Spain in the Pyrenees where they live to this day. The Indo-Europeans originally lived as pastoralists in the steppes and prairies north of the Black and Caspian Seas in present day Ukraine and southern Russia, and they campaigned on horseback as mounted archers.
The reason why the Latin vernacular survived in the Gaulish-French language, although it had formally belonged to the Celtic language family before the Roman conquest, despite the invasions by such Germanic groups as the Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths in the 400′s A.D., was because it was connected to Italy by land, and therefore had attracted many Italian-Roman settlers, especially in the south of France. Roman Britain, on the other hand, was a far flung province of the Roman Empire, separated from Roman Gaul/France by water, and therefore had attracted fewer Roman settlers. This explains why the Celtic language survived for so long in Wales and Cornwall. The reason why the Celtic language survived in Armorica/Brittany in Gaul/France was because it has thin, rocky soils, and was therefore economically neglected by the Romans. The Gaulish Celts of Armorica were reinforced by British Celtic settlers in the 400′s and 500′s A.D. When the Germanic Anglo-Saxons invaded Roman Britain in the 400′s and 500′s A.D., most of the Celtic British peasnts spoke Celtic rather than a Latin vernacular. The Germanic invaders of Roman France were prepared to learn the Latin French vernacular, associated with the grandeur of the Roman Empire, but the Germanic invaders of Britain probably looked down upon the British Celtic language as a peasant language. The mountainous Balkans was another area economically neglected by the Romans, with the exception of Roman Dacia/Romania, where the Romans found valuable gold mines, and where a Latin vernacular survives to this day.
The fall of the West Roman Empire can be partly attributed to the recurrent dynastic civil warfare which plagued it in the years from 383-388, 392-394, 407-411, 423-425, 432, 454-457, and 468-472 A.D., which weakened its ability to present a united military front against Germanic invaders, who themselves were fleeing the Mongolian speaking Huns. The Huns, with their powerful recurve bow, proved to be quite effective cavalry archers, although they too used swords and lances in battle.
Per
Where does the red hair from as many Irish have? Has the Irish potentially strong features from Neanderthals? Neanderthals had genes for red hair and no other people in the world have red hair than the Scots, Irish and people of Eastern Europe.
basque guy
“And these “Sun-worshipping” Hitto-Phoenician Catti? Barats or Early “Brit-ons,” (Basque people)whose long-lost history and origin are now recovered for us in great part in these pages by my new keys, are disclosed by a mass of?? incontestable attested facts? and confirmatory evidence to be a leading branch of the originators? and propagators of the World’s Civilization and of the Higher Religion of the? One God”- David Icke.The original europeans n the holy people that gave rise to white people
justice n pass it on
Sam Haskell
Viking Blood? The Vikings were not a people. There is no viking blood, no more than there is woodcutter blood or merchant blood or farmer blood.
archer
Well, people may argue back and forth about where R1b came from and when,and how much Saxon ancestry is or isn’tr in England, but the indisputable archaeological facts are that after the hunter-gatherers (who have left too little material remains to really make comment on possible origin)though a western seaboard route makes the most sense geographically) the neolithic people who build the megaliths were a slight,gracile people with long ‘Meditteranean’ type skulls, whose culture stetched the length of the western Atlantic seaboard right up to the tip of Norway, with its main centres in Iberia, Brittany and the British Isles. They had a thriving culture, augmented by later continental arrival, the Beaker people, who were taller and inclined to brachycephaly (round heads) who mostly crossed from the Low countries/Germany but also may have early Iberian origins. There is NO evidence of huge movements of people into Britain/Ireland in the Iron age (what there were was mostly from France to England) so presumably the peoples the Romans found were descendants of hunters,farmers, and Beaker migrants. There were several million people living in England at the time of the Saxon incursions–the idea they could annihilate so many is ludicrous,esp. given there is no physical evidence. Celtic languages did survive in several western areas of England (outside of Cornwall) till the Normans.
Bob M
In the introduction we are told:
*Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words “Celtic” or “Anglo-Saxon.”
Is this true? I see that Wikipedia seems to be able to find apparently knowledgeable people to write on both topics. I wouldn’t doubt that there will be some debate about the scope of the terms but “no agreement … on the meaning of the words” looks like overstatement to me.
michael
for me the british are not basques, there is no evidence people came iberia, what about southern france, alps etc, basque identity didnt exist they were hunter gatherers. even genetically the british have unique sub clades of r1b and i haplogroups. there is no evidence the english saw themselves as germanic, despite speaking a germanic language and sharing culture with their neighbours. the ancient brits were hunter gatherers, with their own tribal identity. the genes are just related, modern celtic identity is modern from the 1800s and celtic nationalism, the vikings were a band of various groups without a singular ethnic identity. they followed leaders rather than race and they contained various haplogroups.
michael
totally agree with the rest of the article, vikings were not one people but various war bands who genetically contained r1b, r1a and i haplogroups anyway although these groups.reached britain way before the vikings, the celts have never been a race
basque guy
Basque villages were devastated by bombs,Franco’s bombers pursued the? ships, but they arrived to england? safely.Basque children who were orphaned were adopted? by the British people.God? gathers the various remnants of His chosen race in His own way? and in His own good time.We leave our Basque brothers in the Pyrenees til? the day when? “Their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the peoples;all? who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the? seed the? Lord has blessed” http://www.ensignmessage.com/basques.html
Frankster
The genetic makeup of Britain and Ireland is overwhelmingly what it has been since the Neolithic period and to a very considerable extent since the Mesolithic period, especially in the female line, i.e. those people, who in time would become identified as British Celts (culturally speaking), but who (genetically speaking) should more properly be called Cro-Magnon[citation needed]. In continental Europe, this same Cro-Magnon genetic legacy gave rise to the Basques. But both “Basque” and “Celt” are cultural designations not genetic ones and therefore to call a Celt “Basque” or a Basque “Celtic”, is a fallacy.
Read ‘Blood of the Isles’ by Bryan Sykes (former Professor of Genetics at Oxford University)
basque guy
“Their seed shall be known among the Gentiles (Nations), and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they [are) the seed [whom) the Lord hath blessed.”
http://www.ensignmessage.com/basques.html
hes speakin about the basques
basque guy
oops sorry i didnt know i already had posted that link
basque guy
http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/shepherd-kings-the-restoring-of-spains-ancient-history-on-the-basques/17526865
Shepherd Kings is the history book which ties together and corroborates the ancient histories of ancient Egypt, the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Irish in the light of modern DNA discoveries and other scientific studies showing the Basques along with the Spartans and Trojans to be an ancient branch of the tribe of Judah
basque guy
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t42478-3/
read poster kukulkon
basque guy
http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/ltbmu/learning/history-culture/?cid=fsm9_046612
“The First Family of Europe”
basque guy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZEY-7Vqzd4
basque guy
poor catalina is jealous u can tell shes spanish lmao
Iconoclast
Mr. Oppenheimer needs to look at his own source material more carefully. He admits that the people of the Celtic countries have very similar DNA, yet makes a big deal of the fact that this same DNA is found (in abundance) in Spain.
Also, he is trying to assert that the english language existed at the time of the Roman empire. WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE? The roman historians said that the languages of Gaul and Britain differed very little. This is consistent with the idea of the original Britons being CELTS who spoke a CELTIC tongue.
If he spent less time reading crackpot theories, and more time studying the ancient writings, he would know that THE IRISH HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN THEY CAME FROM SPAIN. Mr Oppenheimer should have read the Lebor Gabala Erenn, where Irish history pretty much begins, and he could have saved himself all that DNA testing!
Here is the truth, based on years of my own independent research:
THE RACE REFERRED TO AS \THE CELTS\ REPRESENTS THE ORIGINAL EUROPEANS. THEY DO NOT REPRESENT SOME CULTURE THAT MIGRATED FROM INDIA OR JUDEA OR WHEREVER. THIS IS WHY THE BASQUES AND CELTS SHARE COMMON DNA…BECAUSE THEY TOO ARE OF THIS SAME ORIGINAL EUROPEAN RACE!
I’m not talking about some nazi aryan-race theory, nor am I talking about its thinly-disguised grandson, the \Indo-European\ theory.
Also, does this author know ANYTHING about the Celtic roots of Spain, which are well-documented and well-known?
The indigenous legends of the CELTIC countries tell us that the stone megaliths were not built by some imaginary pre-celtic race…they were built by the Celtic peoples as monuments to commemorate important events. Legendry is FULL of stories that tell how these megaliths were built.
He is right, though, to assert that the Hallstatt culture was probably not related to the modern-day inhabitants of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Man, Cornwall, and Galicia. And also correct to assert that the continental Celts, better known as Gauls, are not directly related to the modern nations that identify themselves as Celtic.
JUST BECAUSE THE WORD \CELT\ WAS NOT IN COMMON USE UNTIL A COUPLE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, RACIST HISTORIANS ARE SEEKING TO TELL AN ENTIRE CULTURE THAT THEIR HERITAGE IS FAKE. The word \Celt\ as we know it today, was not in use in ancient times, this is true. HOWEVER, there is a good reason for this. It is because we are talking about a people who were too fiercely independent to ever have been totally unified. Yet, at a later time, when people from the Celtic countries began examining their culture, and examining other cultures, they realized that they shared a huge number of similarities with certain other cultures. They needed a word to denote this obviously related group of subcultures, so they adopted an old Greek term. So, why do roman-biased historians continue to assert that this connection between seven nations is not real, just because it wasn’t fully realized until a few hundred years ago?
Oh yeah, and people only use the word \Celt\ as a term to denote the shared culture of the Celtic countries, as opposed to its numerous subcultures, which have names of their own. The Celtic identity that you are attacking does not exist, but there is a real Celtic identity and clearly Oppenheimer knows nothing about it.
SO HERE IS THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION, MR OPPENHEIMER: If the seven nations are NOT inherently related, Why do all these cultures play similar music, speak similar languages, have similar folklore/mythology, practice very similar customs, have similar folk dress, AND (according to your own words) A COMMON GENETIC HERITAGE.
I am Celtic and proud, and so are millions of others. Disprove that, you racist pig.
Kevin Beach
When the Roman historians wrote about the language in South-east Britannia being very similar to that of north-east Gaul, they weren’t necessarily talking about a Celtic language. Indeed, in his “Gallic Wars”, Julius Caesar indicated that translators were sometimes needed between different tribes in Gaul.
The theory (and it can be no more than that until it is conclusively proved or disproved by hard evidence) is that a Germanic language, similar to Belgic, had existed in east Britannia for some hundreds of years before the Roman invasions. That is not inconsistent with what the Roman historians wrote.
Jonny C
The real question is
Why do you need to believe this myth of yours so badly?
Injured pride?
Let it go. No myth is more important than what lies ahead. Your identity is as much in the future as the past.
Aren’t you pleased to know that you have more “Celts” than you realised living nearby in Merrie Ol England?
MArk
From caer feddwyd emssage board :
Language (or culture!) and genetics, however, have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
As soon as he moves away from genetics, Oppenheimer’s theories are, frankly, bollocks. The evidence suggests that the genetic makeup of the British Isles has not changed significantly since the Neolithic, which is all fine and dandy. However, genetic continuity does not indicate cultural and linguistic continuity: in fact, all the evidence points in the opposite direction.
Oppenheimer seems to be under the impression that populations do not change their languages, rather language replacement only stems from population replacement. Evidence for language shift without wholesale population replacement is abundant throughout the world, an particularly in the British Isles: the Cornish, for example, did not stop speaking Cornish and start speaking English because they were slaughtered or driven off by Anglophone immigrants.
He also seems to be under the impression that a lack of Celtic place-names in eastern England is an indication that there have been no Celtic speakers there. While few modern placenames in eastern England derive from Celtic, we have plenty of evidence for pre-Saxon Celtic placenames in the area: Camulodunum, Dubris, Noviomagus, Verulamium etc are all Celtic names, not Germanic. If during the Roman occupation of Britain this area was speaking some early form of English, why don’t we have records of Germanic place names here?
Overall, he doesn’t seem to have the first clue about historical linguistics. Which is fair enough, he’s a geneticist. I know sod all about genetics. On the other hand, I don’t concoct wild theories about genetics and foist them on the unsuspecting public in paperback form. Were I to come up with such a theory, I’d make damn sure I read the relevant literature on the subject before publishing: something Oppenheimer clearly hasn’t done. For example, claiming that speakers of a Celtic language arrived in the British Isles around 9000 BC is ludicrous, and indicates that he hasn’t bothered to read the literature. Proto-Celtic’s own parent language, Proto-Indo-European, probably wasn’t even spoken at that time.
(Furthermore, if I may comment on the quote from the article on romanarmy.net: “Dr. Oppenheimer agrees with Dr. Forster’s argument, based on a statistical analysis of vocabulary”. There’s nice, two geneticists agree on something they know nothing about. Glottochronology dates from the 50s, and was abandoned by linguists only shortly afterwards. Because it does not work. It’s not a matter of being “too cautious”, it’s abandoning a tool that doesn’t work. Would you try to fix a computer with the remote from your telly? No, because it wouldn’t work, no matter how much two carpenters tell you that you’re being “too cautious”.)
In summary: it’s bollocks.
Ed. Selleslagh
Just a few remarks:
1. When talking about Celts, one has to distinguish between Goidelic (Q-Celtic)(Irish, Scottish,) and Brythonic (P-Celtic)(Welsh, Cornish, Breton). It is likely that the Belgae were Brythonic, as it is plausible that their tribe’s name is related to Welsh ‘balch’ (‘proud’, maybe ‘brave’ in much earlier Welsh); which would explain why J. Caesar tells us they were ‘horum omnium fortissimi’, the bravest of all these, i.e. the Celtae/Galli, the Aquitani and the Belgae – a misinterpretation maybe of the interpreter’s words. Even so, it is equally likely that some eastern Belgic tribes were either Celticized Germanics or vice versa.
If the Belgae were Brythonic, it would also explain why at the time the language on both sides of the Channel, north of the Seine mouth, was very similar.
2. J. Caesar tells us that the Galli (in Latin) called themselves ‘Celtae’. He doesn’t apply this to the Belgae (nor the Aquitani, who were demonstrably Basque, through inscriptions). So the term Celts could not be used for all we call Celts nowadays: only for the Q-Celts, the Goidelics.
3. Welsh has a few quirks, like some egativity (i.e. an absence of direct object and resorting to what amounts more or less to a passive mode) in certain cases. The only ergative language in Europe is Basque, so that looks like a substrate effect..
4. During the last Ice Age northern populations were pushed southward and ended up along a line that can be described very roughly as ‘Paris to Vladivostok’. Archeology shows there was great mobility of cultures along that ice cap rim, and most of the languages (Finnic, Ugric, Uralic in general, Altaic/Turkic languages, en possibly Mongolic lgs., Siberian ones etc., and the emigrant relatives in the Americas) are related or at the very least members of an ancient language association (‘Sprachbund’). After the Ice Age many of these hunters followed the receding ice cap rim northhwards, because of the animals living there. Evidence is mounting that not all these populations moved northward, but that large pockets remained in southern locations, giving rise to Etruscan (now shown to be related to the ancient Proto-Hungarian, and originally from the Egean Islands), Basque (which contains a few but significant traces of Altaic and Uralic), Caucasian and Sumerian. Remarkably, also (Proto-)Indo-European seems to be a rather peculiar member of this group, at least in its oldest form. Within IE, Itaiic, Celtic and Germanic seem to stem from one the same IE branch, but heavily influenced by older languages acting as substrates. It is remarkable that such diverse languages like German, Finnish, Turkish and Basque share the same ancient genitive ending -en. It is quite obvious that IE was originally agglutinative like Uralic, Altaic and Basque still are. Also the original division into animate and inanimate ‘gender’, (like still in Basqe) instead of masculine/feminine/neuter is a common characteristic (feminine was ‘invented’ later to differentiate the animate genders, while the neuter was the original ‘object’ form, for inanimate ‘gender’; that’s why the masc. accusative and the neuter nominative are the same, as are the neuter nominative and accusative : this is due to the original idea that dead things ‘can’t do’ anything, i.e. cannot be the subject. My conclusion: western IE is built on top of an older layer of languages related to Uralic, Basque (vasconic ancestor) and possibly Altaic (via Uralic).. I think the pre-IE frontier between vasconic and uralic must have been somewhere at the latitude of the Belgian-Dutch border or the Thames mouth.
5. Brythonic and Basque: both have the same labializing tendencies (In IE this means that the original KW (QU) sound becomes W or P or B (like in Welsh, Classic and later Greek, and P-Italic like Oscan-Umbrian. Goidelic (Gaelic), Latin, Germanic, Mycenean Greek are Q-languages that preserve the QU or make it into HW, (later V/F) or K.
6. English has a few words that don’t have a satisfactory etymology in IE, like ‘kill’ and ‘ill’. But in Basque that would be obvious: the semantic field of ‘hil’ and ‘il(un)’ covers ‘darkness’, ‘death’ etc.
7. Germanic has tens of % of words that don’t seem to be of IE origin.
8. The problem of the Picti (painted ones in Latin, Prytyn (i.e. Britons) in Brythonic, Cruithni in Goidelic): In later centuries it was thought they were Celtic, but it is more likely they were aboriginals of non-IE origin, maybe Basques or Uralics. They were certainly celticized at some stage, whence the idea.
BTW, I am not confounding genetics and language, but there is a pretty high degree of statistical correleation between tribal groups (which may be genetically diverse) and language under favorable circumstances, like isolation caused by sparse population in large territories. When regions become more populated, cultures start to merge, overrun each other but always leave substrate traces and the like.
My viewpoint on Basque: A mixed language of ancient Pyrenean (language of the Basque glacial refugium) and Iberian, imported from the eastern Mediterranean via the islands. The Iberians brought a much higher dominant culture to Iberia that probably started of as an elite culture and language. This same Iberian elite switched entirely to Latin in less than 100 years. Iberian and Basque share many characteristcs and even grammatical particles etc., but do not seem to be more than extremely remotely related in spite of appearances. I call them unrelated sisters.
Joe Soap
Hilarious and depressing reading to some of the comments here, especially from those who can’t tell a Jew from an Englishman. Forget ‘Britain’. This is another thinly veiled attack on English identity from a corrupt Leftist establishment.
‘Bill Clogston’, who wears his indifference like a badge of honour, typifies those in the modern world who parade ignorance as socially progressive. Churchill? He wrote as a unionist. What do you expect him to say? Furthermore we absorbed Latin through religious scholarship much later, not by dint of the Roman Legions here 400 years before us. Saxons invited by Vortigern to help with troublesome Picts stayed, what is more, because their employers turned out to be unreliable tossers and as such easy prey, not because they ‘liked the women’.
You’d know that if you knew what you were talking about at all. When a London University study of 2006 revealed an unexpectedly widespread genetic influence from Germany even in the west of England [traditionally lied about as ‘celtic’] researchers cited a system of apartheid as the only plausible explanation for a pronounced absence of the very inter-breeding you ‘think’ is true.
Stakes are high and the ambitions of an internationalist political elite remain unsatisfied. Remember too that universities are gatekeepers. Bastions of impartial intellectual endeavour they are not, as many who strive to live up to the ideological demands of honesty and impartiality find to their cost. That 2006 study? I happen to know that one of its authors left the field of Anglo Saxon genetics in disgust after coming under pressure from publishers and academic authorities to alter his findings.
People believe what they want to believe in the end. Real English people know who they are. Unlike the ‘Cornish’ and all the other ‘celts’, the scent of direct subsidies from Brussels a sudden reminder of their ‘historical independence’, they have no need to lie or connive at leaving what rats think of as a sinking ship [it can be hard finding a taxpayer to live off when you need one, but a taxpayer’s just a taxpayer wherever he's from in the world, especially when you just need someone to pick up the tab for all those ‘fiercely independent’ poses you like to assume for tourists. I wonder who pays for ‘Catalonia isn’t Spain’ if not the taxpayers of Madrid?]
Scotchmen appear to be descendants of rather stupid Spanish fisherman. Today’s Irish were pirates [some say still are] who fetched up around 2nd Century AD, laying siege to the north east corner of that island and the native Uliti people [it’s where we get the word ‘Ulster’]. Brythonics or ‘Britons’ are Welchers. Welchers gave us a useful word for dishonesty but not much besides. They were handed a new home and left to get on with it, other remnants being forced into Northern France ['Brittany'?].
These are the salient facts. Accept them and get on with your lives. As renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma points out: ‘There is no culture in this world that is not the result of successful and sustained invention.’ Your real enemies are money men and writers who agitate on their behalf, who would strip you even of that harmless indulgence.
DrivelServant
I’m not sure which is oddest, your frothing xenophbia, or the notion that you’re feigning it for the purposes of some recreational trolling.
Linda Dale Burns
I contributed to this discussion years ago. Britain is a melting pot just as America is. We are who we are. My grandmother in her later years looked very “English”, white hair, rosey cheeks, thick Geordie accent. When she was young she had very dark hair. My mother and her sister were very dark haired with green eyes and would tan very darkly, looking more Mediterranean which with DNA testing by the Genographic Project by National Geographic proved. We are J2b1a1. My grandmother’s line included McKenzie, Carmichael, Fail, Johnson, Thompson and many others going back as far as I can to the 1600′s. They all were from Northumberland and the Borders area. My grandparents were British through and through till their dying day here in America. I dare say most people would be very surprised to find out who they really are through DNA testing. We suspected but were still surprised by the results. Prejudice against any race, ethnicity, so called “class” of people is really ridiculous. Before anyone thinks they are better than any other person or race they better find out “who they really are”!!!!
Igor
In the old days (before modern medicine), Basque women had to choose basque men or they were going to have only one children, I live in a small village (<400) and everyone I know has Rh-, so that can explain why is less permeable culturally and genetically. The difficult part is to explain how it started, somehow there was a group with Rh- big enougth to survive all the time and not necesarilly in the same place, but taking in account how easilly can disappear a civilization I can guess there was a time it was a really big group, a lot bigger than now otherwise we have had disappeared
Ed. Selleslagh
Actually, even the first child is at risk if the father is RH positive and the child inherits this trait, but the danger worsens with each pregnancy. Whence the former belief in certain parts of the Basque country that ‘a child from a stranger (non-Basque) is a child of the devil’. That is a clear indication of how they thought about marrying non-Basques. Another symptom of this attitude is that the Basques had a matrilinear inheritance system, so ‘intruding’ non-Basque husbands could not inherit Basque property.
Indeed, there must have been many more Rh- people because safe natural reproduction can only occur if both parents are Rh-, preferably O/Rh-. Intermarriage with other people would inevitably led to reduction of Rh- baby numbers.
BTW, RH negative is not a feature, but rather the absence of a feature: the lack of an antibody (even though it can arise following sensitizing events). Something similar can be said about bloodgroup O. Many think O/Rh- is the oldest bloodgroup of mankind because the antigens that characterize other bloodgroups seem to have arisen from later mutations. O/Rh- people can give blood to everybody else.
Alejandro
As a spaniard having lived in the UK, I have to admit there are some people who could pass as Spanish. As being from Basque region, there are usually whiter looking people there than the south, but apart from those few english (or british), who look like spanish, I think the rest of the english population are definitely more german looking to me than spanish. Having recently visited germany (Frankfurt, then stayed in Berlin for a bit) I think the english and germans might be a lot closer than they realise or care to admit. Perhaps I find it easier to see such differences as an outsider of england, but even here in spain we relate the english to germans, dutch etc than french, spanish etc. Also worth mentioning that from my trip to germany, having arrived in southern germany, i saw many men and women who resembled basques, certainly more than english as a whole. both great countries though! saludes desde mi pais!
Iam Yue
If there are any doubters out there I would suggest that you have your
mitochondrial DNA tested by a company such as Oxford Ancestors.
Hailing from a classic Irish background, I found that my dna belonged to
Halpogroup K; “Haplogroup K appears in West Eurasia, North Africa, and South Asia and in populations with such an ancestry. Overall mtDNA Haplogroup K is found in about 6% of the population of Europe and the Near East, but it is more common in certain of these populations. Approximately 16% of the Druze of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, belong to haplogroup K. It was also found in a significant group of Palestinian Arabs.[5] K reaches a level of 17% in Kurdistan. Approximately 32% of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are in haplogroup K.”
That destroyed a number of ancestral myths I can tell you!
Fietsbode
Wait, are you talking about Y-chromosome haplogroup K or mtDNA K?
Thomas Jefferson carried Y haplogroup K, so if it’s the former, you’re related to him. He was of Welsh and Scottish ancestry (and a redhead).
Scratchy7929
What I find the most misleading part in this article is by calling the Belgae Germanic.Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call the Belgae Nordic rather than Germanic.From the small amount of research I’ve done there seems to as much as a split between Nordic & the South Western Germanic tribes (west of the Rhine) than there is between the ‘so called’ Atlantic Celts (who did actually travel as far as the Southern Coasts of Norway to begin with anyway).As far as I can work out there is no case for there being a Germanic gene.
The Danish definately have a predominantly Norse gene pool, although the East Germans have a predominantly Slavic gene pool.The German population in the south west have a general Western European gene pool (although even they have other genetic mixes).The south eastern Germans have a very much more mixed gene pool again – Slavic, various Asian & other mid european plain gene pools that are hard to pin down.
Really haven’t got a clue why the Belgae could be considered Germanic (genetically) really.The word Germania basically means border people.Basically the dividing line between the Western European population (most of which gene pool came from the Atlantic Celt) & the Slavic / Barbarian population’s to the east.
The Belgae were probably Atlantic Celtic to begin with but have been highly Nordicised in the last 3k years.It must be remembered that Belgium is very much split to this day even with the Walloons (now French speaking – probably more Atlantic Celtic) & the Flemish (probably having a more Nordic gene pool).Will leave it to others to decide how Nordicised the Belgae were who came over & inhabited Southern England (below the Midlands) as this was at a time when there was a big change of the make-up of the gene pool who lived in the Belgae area as far as I can make out.
Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens
The Flemish are mostly the direct descendants of the 5th. century Frankish invaders, Salic ones inthe center and Ripuarian ones in the east. In West-Flanders there is an older stratum of coastal Ingwaeonic Germanics (related to the Frisians and coastal English). At the arrival of the Franks Flanders was very sparsely populated (marshes in the west, heath in the east), so they became the majority; in the south (Wallonia) the already heavily romanized original Celts (Belgae) remained the majority, which gave rise to the present language border (which has shifted a little to the north since then). Note that the largely French speaking island of Brussels in Flanders is a recent phenomenon that started in the 18th. c. under the influence of the elites under the Habsburg regime.
As to the Belgae Caesar speaks about, they were undoubtedly Celts (in the present meaning of the word, not Caesar’s), but as he says, clearly distinct from the Gaulish people (Galli, Celtae). The claim that they were Germanic has to do with the shift in meaning: the Romans called ‘germanic’ all peoples east of the Rhine. It is very plausible that some of them were also Celtic and related to the tribes west of the Rhine. Which kind of Celts were the Belgae? In my opinion, they were most likely Brythonic (like the Welsh, Bretons, Cornish): the etymology of their name seems to point to ‘balch’ (‘proud’ in modern Welsh, maybe a shift from an earlier meaning of ‘brave’ or the like). That would explain Caesar’s words that they were ‘horum omnium fortissimi’, ‘the brvest/fiercest of all these’. Just a little misunderstanding…
In Wallonia there are lots of Brythonic toponyms (e.g. Marbehan, Bohan…) and hydronyms (e.g. Amel/Amblève, from Aber), in Flanders rather few, but those are pretty significant: the region arounfd Veurne (Fr. Furnes, West-Flanders) e.g., is called ‘Veurne-Ambacht’. The word Ambacht is purely Celtic, and derived from ‘ambatus’ (as mentioned by Caesar), the head of such a region. ‘Ambacht’ also occurs in the SW Netherlands. Cf. ‘riocht’ = kingdom, realm of the Ri (King). One of the tribes living in the marshlands behind the dune belt of Flanders were the Morini, a pretty transparent name derived from ‘mor’, ‘sea’ in Celtic.
In summary: I believe the Belgae (Balchai??) were a Brythonic (P-) Celtic people. The Germanic element in Belgium (and most of the Netherlands, except Frisia) stems from the 5th c. Franks.
The Gaulish language record is very confusing, so much that some categorize the language as P-Celtic (Brythonic), others as Q-Celtic (Goidelic). It is possible that they didn’t form a unitary people, and that there was dialect gradient from purely Q-Celtic (like the original Celts in Iberia) to more P-influenced dialects in the north. That would nicely explain the conflicting evidence.
Scratchy7929
Thanks for your expanding of my above post Eduard.Still don’t understand why the Ingvaeonic tribal peoples could be considered Germanic – surely they have gene pools more connected to Nordic’s.Surely a seperation should be made between Nordic gene pools (confusingly termed North Germanic) & the rather more mixed gene pools found in present day Germany.It causes utter confusion as far as genetic studies are concerned to the less informed.
The cultural / linguistic influence the Nordic peoples had over the people that now live in Germany are a different matter of discussion, although did have a small influence on changes in ‘what is now’ German genetic mix.
Genetically speaking there are large differences between the so called Germanic peoples (a linguistic grouping more than anything) – North Germanic (surely Nordic is much more understandable), North Sea Germanic, or Ingvaeonic (mixture of Atlantic Celt & Nordic gene pools), Weser-Rhine Germanic, or Istvaeonic (mixture of (North) Western European gene pool (R1b…) & more Slavic to the east(R1a…)), Elbe Germanic, or Irminonic (a very much more mixed gene pool – North coast mostly Slavic / East German), East Germanic confusingly covers most of present day Poland & has a prodominantly Western- Slavic gene pool)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_tribes#Classification
Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens
To add further to the confusion about the Germanic peoples, you should read Ago Künnapp’s article (U. of Tartu, Estonia) “Possible Language Shifts in the Uralic Language Group” (http://www.ut.ee/Ural/kynnap/kpls.html) . Especially his Fig.1about the re-population of N. and NW. Europe after the Ice Age, from three refugia (Iberia: Basques, Balkans: Indo-Europeans, Ukraine: Uralics) is interesting. If true, it would show that Germanic peoples are indeed indo-europeanized Uralics and/or Basques (both related via the V-haplogroup), as has been hypothesized for a long time. The pre-IE Altlantic border between Basques and Uralics (actually: Finno-Ugrics) would have been somewhere around the mouth of the Thames, Rhine etc.(51º N). That would make the Germanic Ingwaeonics ex-Uralic, and thus related to Nordics.
In this whole picture, the Celts don’t appear yet. That is a later phase, when indo-europeanized peoples in Iberia (or IE themselves) formed the Celts and then moved northward, overlapping the earlier Basque migration. Note that the Basque language has a marked labializing tendency (Uralic too, but to a lesser degree, in my opinion), something that could explain the inception of the P-shift in Celtic. The more indo-europeanized inhabitants of Gaul, which was also far more densely populated than ‘Belgica’, seem to have resisted labialization better (they always remained the majority) than the Belgae, who were relatively less numerous as compared to the migrants from the south. This is, of course my own guesswork, but I think it represents at least the general context of the historical facts (largely unknown, and probably unknowable).
BTW, there are lots of Basque hydronyms (Cf. Theo Vennemann) and other toponyms south of 51-52º N., e.g. IJzer, Isère, Isar…; Our, Orthe… (Bq. ‘ur’ = water; Bq. root ‘i(t)s-’ = live water, like in a stream, the sea,…). Some toponyms declared of Celtic origin, are actually based upon Basque loanwords in Gaulish Celtic. Even Celtic ‘aber’ might be based on Basque ‘ibar’, river valley, river bank. Note that the vigesimal (base 20) number system (cf. remnant Fr. quatre-vingts) stems from Basque via Gaulish Celtic.
Another important source are the writings of Kalevi Wiik (U. of Turku, Finland); most are available online. A summary of his views can be found in WikiPedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevi_Wiik
General conclusion: the whole matter is very complicated and very hard to trace back, but progress is being made (basically by trial and error) by some people, brave original thinkers/academics, who dare to stick their neck out, notwithstanding the the incrusted ideas and the often cheap criticism of a powerful class of traditional academics.
J. Reedman
There has been some question as to the actual age of Y-dna R1b; it may not be as old as once was thought in western Europe (not post Ice age after all.) However, it has just been discovered in males of the Beaker Culture of the late neolithic. Every where where R1b is high, the beakers seem to have been. Their origins may be in Portugal.
re: RH- neg blood. The Irish also have a high %–more evidence of links to ancient Iberia?
Actually I don’t know why so many are shocked by this; archaeologists have known for years that the western seaboard was the great route for migration and trade in prehistory. The Irish monument of Newgrange has Iberian smiliarities, a Portuguese bronze age earring has also been found in Ireland. A third of skeletons in a bronze age cemetery in southeastern England appear to have been recent migrants from Iberia by the isotopes in their teeth. Perhaps its just the huge survival of these genes that surprises, despite later ‘invasions.’ However, it’s actually quite logical if you think about it!
The further west you go in Britain the more you see people with darker phenotypes as well. I’m in the southwest and brown and hazel eyes far outstrips blue among people I work with. Many Welsh, Irish and Cornish people are very dark, even black haired (like my grandmother who was Irish–she also had olive skin and brown eyes.) The east of England and parts of the north and lowland Scotland-MUCH fairer. Most of Ireland is dark haired (43% dark brown and 3% black)
But even amongst the more eastern English i can usually always tell them apart from German who tend to be slightly taller and heavier set, with rounder heads and faes and larger jaws, as well as lighter hair (except in southern Germany where nearly 40% of men have a celtic maker…though NOT the same ‘celtic ‘as Britain /Ireland, which is Atlantic,,,but rather that more ‘Hallstatt’ central type.)
Vahan Setyan
I believe we are forgetting or not cognizant of the fact that Basque language is an Armenian derivative, including the language, which has the closest link to the Armenian language. Thus, the key in understanding this link is through the Armenian language. You still have regions and names in Basque that are only Armenian in nature.
Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens
Basque is NOT an Armenian derivative: Armenian is an Indo-European language with an earlier substrate that might be related to a common or related ancestor of Basque, most likely one of the subarctic languages of the last Ice Age. So, I think you’re turning things upside down. Armenian is related to a very early form of Greek and has both characteristics of satem- and kentum-languages, a fact that is very likely the result of influence by neighboring languages (Indo-Iranian).
Basque is anything BUT Indo-European (ergative, agglutinative etc…) ; if related with any language groups, which is still to be demonstrated, it would be with Uralic and Altaic, an just maybe, with some very ancient ancestor of some Caucasian languages; Iberian comes to mind as an immigrant language in Spain, originally from the eastern Mediterranean or the Caucasian-Pontic area. Evidence is slowly growing that Basque might be a pidgin, a mixed language, of Pyrenean (from the Refugium) and Iberian. Basque has some Altaic cognates, and Iberian some Finno-Ugric ones.
Kevin Beach
How many people were left in Britannia when the Roman legions and cohorts left in the fifth century? I’ve read an estimate of four million.
Many of them led recognisably Roman lives, which they were no tin a hurry to relinquish. There was a Romanised aristocracy, which expected to be defended against marauders, both internal and external.
They had to form their own armies to replace the Roman armies. Who were best to do pick for the job of training them? Perhaps it was the established warriors of north-western Europe that the Britons turned to: Jutes, Angles and Saxons maybe.
How many people were there in the areas occupied by those peoples? I have read that the figures may have been less than one million.
What percentage of any population could be put under arms, let alone be persuaded to emigrate (in effect) overseas? Has it ever be more than ten percent, anywhere, at any time? And what proportion of those would consent to leave there own people? A fraction, I suggest.
So let us assume that some thousands of Germanic warriors arrived in Britannia to help train the aristocracy’s armies. What chance would they have had of conquering four million people, many of whom were already under arms?
The figures simply don’t support the theory of Angle/Saxon/Jute invasions that defeated British natives and supplanted a Celtic language with Germanic tongues. It is more likely that there was already a Germanic language in the Eastern half of Britannia, similar to and perhaps mutually intelligible with the languages of the post-Roman Germanic immigrants.
And by the way, the term “Germanic”, when used in linguistics, refers to a group of languages that includes all the Nordic languages and Icelandic, as well as those from further south in Europe.
John
The problem with trying to get this type of interesting article over
to the modern day welsh is that they are taught complete and
utter rubbish (mostly without any evidence) in their schools.
They would not even read past the first couple of paragraphs
as it flys in the face of what they have been mis-taught in their early life
at school.
Us pure English on the other hand are far more open minded
and welcome such a new and inforamative article,
olala
armenian comes from basque not the other way around…..
olala
The catalans are blood brothers of the basques
olala
btw the basques are the original celts not the gauls…everybody wanted our identity…bunch of stealers…english journalist also admits the basques are the original celts
K. balch
In regards to genetics, and especially Y, why are the genetic contributions of Roman legionnaires never mentioned? Are we to suppose that none of these males, in Britain and Europe for hundreds of years, contributed to the gene pool? It is important to realize that “Roman” legions were not “Italian” or “mediterannean” legions, genetically speaking. I recall reading that very young boys were taken (as one form of taxation) from all areas of Roman occupation to be trained as soldiers for the Roman legions, which would seem to indicate that a legion was not necessarily a genetically homogenous group in itself. Also there were many Roman soldiers from many genetic backgrounds over many years in Brittain (and Europe.) Even so, historians and geneticists, when speaking of the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain, ignore these genetic contributions as if when the troops left they took all the progeny of 400 years with them.
Yes, I do note the term “Romano-British” but I never see any reference to the fact that there must be much legionnaire (meaning ” from most anywhere in the Roman world”) YDNA in Britain before the main Anglo
Saxon invasion of it. Almost as if, when Rome chose to leave Britain, all “roman” DNA left too.
Ben
Thank you for your great work Mr. Oppenheimer.
Gary
British people are a mix of European people, NO ONE here is a pure Basque, Roman, Saxon, Jute, Viking or Norman. We are a mix of most of these.
The only slight difference is your haplogroup, if your a male then R1b is the dominant one in Britain, followed by I1a and R1a.
There is differences though in parts of Britain – more western areas like Ireland, Scotland are 80-90% R1b, whereas the further east you go (especially Eastern England) then you will find more men who are I1a and R1a.
I1a is a funny haplogroup as it doesn’t determine for sure where your paternal grandfather came from, he could of either been a Anglo Saxon, Jute, Viking or Norman. The same could be said for R1a men aswell.
Whereas R1b is most likely from Basque Spain.
Sometimes you can guess a males haplogroup by the way they look. I’ve had quite a bit of luck from doing it, I haven’t been right all of the time but quite often I have been right.
Don’t forget if you are a member of a Y-Haplogroup you decend from one man who you will get at least some features passed down to you that was there thousands of years ago.
I’ve found most I1a men to be tall with rounder faces and more visible higher cheekbones also generally slimmer.
R1b men are generally a bit shorter in height and stockier in build.
R1a men tend to be slim but can be very tall, sometimes way over 6ft.
redmanrt
Of course the Anglo-Saxons landing in England encountered a general population already speaking a Germanic language. The Belgae (a Germanic tribe) were already present in Britain when Julius Ceasar arrived, and his continental jumping off point Portus Iitius > Gesoriacum > Bononia Germanorum > Boulogne was in the territory of the continental Belgae who were some pretty rough customers.
Thus over centuries the Romans gradually marginalized the celtic language speaking people of Brittain with a lot of help from the descendents of the Belgae.
I can just see the recruiting posters on the walls of Portus Itius in the year 43 AD – Oom Claudi heeft je nodig (Uncle Claudius needs YOU).
Alyson
Wow! What a lot of comments – Belgians, Basques and bagpipes in Iran??
Indeed folks travelled the globe in the distant past, and from the shores of Wales, with its ‘oldest language in Europe’ the mix of Hindi words and Roman concepts seems to be thrown into a basically Celtic language related to the Gallic and Gaelic of Scotland and Ireland. However this much misunderstood concept called Celt seems to me to be the Gallic, Gaulish, Galician and Moroccan mountain Berber seaboard identity which sea-farers from Morocco to Iceland travelled. The languages are related. Old Irish as was on the old punt or pound note was remarkably similar to old Icelandic. The bagpipes of Galicia join with the central European Vizigoth traditions of music and dance, and Idris is found in Wales and Morocco as a mountain and a name.
The small dark people were seemingly the first settlers of Britain but the Celtic languages are evidenced in Welsh names like Cymru and Cumbria. Waves of invaders have since integrated changes for good and ill over the millennia, but it should be remembered that travel by ship was probably easier than overland through thick forests and across rivers and mountains.
kentucky wildcats
The original galicians were the basques not the people in galicia now
“You do not have to be a Biblical scholar to know that God Almighty was referring to his real Chosen People as the English and their Celtic-Saxon brethren who, largely emanating from the Basques (the original Celts), came to settle on the coastal shores of the British Isles, which includes Ireland” English journalist Mike James
The basques(the original europeans) are the milesians and they speak the oldest language aka the original one
RelativelyWelsh
I`m sure I just saw David Icke mentioned in one of the extensive posts from the Basque chap.
Amjad Sergiwa
Hi
Guys Guys Guys .. no need for genetics , no one could believe that a group of germanic tribes either Dutch or Scandinavian coming to the English shores crossing the sea in boats and then changed the the whole race of the people who have already been there for centuries or maybe thousands of years , of course they (GERMAN TRIBES) came to the land of the English but they were only tribes on boats and they just mixed with the much greater number of people of the isle , counting on reason History would need so many boats that could carry a number of people equals relatively to their English descendants of today … finally I have once read on a book that the Danish tribes who came to England were about 5000 and the English (Celtic Race) on their own land were more than a million ( I bet you all know maths )…
I never been to England or any English speaking country before and yet I can’t help loving England .. GOD SAVE YOUR COUNTRY ,,,
Now I leave you all in peace
tina
all this waffle everyone talks about!! yes, you are right, how could a few thousand people who came over to england change everything us brits have had in our genetic make up, yes, we are differant from all the rest !! ha ha
Colin Berry
Has anyone suggested that the Saxons became Anglo-Saxons by means of a protection racket, at least in the first instance. Why squander a valuable source of labour, one that understands the local crops, soil and conditions. Instead, they installed a headman and his family to oversee operations, being content to take a (major) proportion of the farm produce. In return they offered protection from – guess what? Yup, other immigrant Saxons. That way they amplified their presence in terms of power and control, while having a minimal impact on the gene pool. Each party, boss man and employee, would have kept themselves apart initially, intermarriage being frown upon, at least for the first few centuries until the identities of one gradually merged with the other to produce today’s English. Not so much conquest – more a case of creeping takeover, largely bloodless, except for some sporadic “example-making” of those who refused to cooperate.
As for Stephen Oppenheimer: I was quite taken with his ideas initially, when reading about them, and did a couple of posts on my original (Old) Dreams and Daemons blog. But I did not get on at all well with his book, and felt, among other things, it would have benefited from some fairly radical pruning and editing. I might have another go shortly, but can’t but help feel he should have stuck to the genetics, and kept his precocious proto-Germanic ideas under wraps until there was some more solid evidence.
Colin Berry, aka sciencebod
Enigma
But what is a `Celt`?
Scratchy7929
What is a Finn, Swede, Norwegian or a Dane ? What is a Scandinavian ? What is a Norse person ?
What is a Dutch person ? What is a Belgic person ? What is a Flemish person ? What is a Fresian ? What is a Walloon ? What is an Atlantic Celt ?
Who could be considered an Ingwaeonic person ? Could the Eastern side of the British population be considered Ingwaeonic / Nordic / Germanic / Celtic ?
What is an Anglo-Saxon? What is an English person ?……………
You started it Enigma
Colin Berry
Well, this retired biochemist was taught that those differences in phenotypic expression that are heritable, i.e. passed on, represent the result of past mutations in the genome (DNA). Stephen Oppenheimer and others use DNA and haplotypes to investigate the mix of genes that determine our ethnic make-up. But my biochemistry was about genes that determine metabolism, and how defects in those genes can lead to inborn errors of metabolism. So that’s two of us who have to do some catch-up reading (but it sounds as though you might have to do rather more than me!)
I’m in fact re-reading SH’s book right now. I have to say, I am still somewhat underwhelmed by his style of exposition. You know, the clarity thing. I may give a sample or two shortly, but first have to see whether or not this site allows html tags, like italics
Colin Berry
Here’s an example of the kind of passage that gives me difficulty (but maybe I’m just old and stupid). My thought processes, if they can be so dignified, are in italics. I’ve taken the liberty of removing the author’s italics for words like ‘foederatit’ and other Latinisms.
Title: The coast of New Saxony? (that description is not used again, so one is left to guess what it refers to geographically and when)
… Several hundred years later, the inhabitants of the ‘Saxon shore’ were still known as East Saxons, South Saxons and West Saxons. Given our complete reliance on Gildas for the intervening period, and his lack of dates or useful context, the coincidence seems remarkable. (What coincidence, given there was mass immigration of Saxons, whether or not the original inhabitants were a first wave of Saxons who had already settled during the period of Roman occupation?)The only named non-Saxons in this region were the inhabitants of Kent. Kentish people, supposedly derived from Jutes and Britons, spoke a dialect of Old English heavily influenced by Norse. (A lengthy section now follows on the Kentish people. Why, given the section is ostensibly about Saxons? The post-Roman self-identified name of the men of Kent, ‘Ceint’, is argued to be a Jutish version of the original Romano-British Cantiaci of Cantium (‘Cantia’ in Bede) (Better make a careful note of that ‘Ceint’ because we will need it later to make sense of a passage several lines later. “Self-identified”: does that mean the name they gave themselves? “Cantiaci of Cantium”? If that is the Latin for Kentish of Kent, could the author not have said so, instead of assuming that everyone remembers their Latin, assuming they have some formal training). Authorities differ on the derivation of the original Roman place name ‘Cantium’ but one point on which they all agree is that some version of the root Cant- was already old, even in Roman times, since Pytheas and Diodorus used it. Ptolemy’s Kantion promontory in Kent is regarded as one of the ‘Harder ?British’ place names to identify etymologically in the recent analysis of Ptolemy’s map (Figure 7.2) of Britain. (Ouch. ‘Cantium’ is referred to now as a place name, without indicating if it’s a town or what now we call a county or region even.. What’s the meaning of promontory in this context? Are those of us familiar with modern Kent supposed to know what feature is being referred to? ‘Harder ?British’. Is that an error? Are they proof-reader’s mark ups or what? Did the writer say ‘harder British place names’ originally. Did the proof-reader add the question mark – and if so that should have been in the margin surely? Ptolemy’s map is several pages back in the book – in a previous chapter in fact. Why is the author making it so hard on the reader?) Jute is cognate with Jutland, part of modern Denmark. (Cognate? Is there not a simpler term. How many folk know the meaning of cognate?) Why the new Jutish overlords should hang on to an old, possibly immigrant name as their tribal designation is not clear. (If that’s what they called themselves on arrival, based on their original home, why should there be a compelling reason to adopt a new description of themselves? But in any case, what name are we talking about – Jute derived from Jutland, or the earlier ‘Ceint’ referred to 4 sentences earlier?
The later Huguenots settling in Britain continued to describe themselves as Huguenots). Caesar clearly regarded the Cantiaci as non-aboriginal, although whether they were Belgic/Germanic-speaking or Gaulish speaking he did not say (see above). (Oh dear. Why are we bothering right now with what language the Cantiaci/Jutes/Ceint (?????) spoke when it’s supposed to be a section about Saxons. Why is my head spinning. Why is my brain hurting?
Just one more paragraph still to do….
Pryor sees Anglo-Saxon communities as already present in the southern English archaeological record of Roman times, and points, for instance, to the Saxon site of Mucking in Essex, where Late Roman bronzes are found in both Saxon graves and Saxon huts dated to around AD 400. He argues strongly against the standard rationalization that these were just random homes of immigrant Germanic mercenaries, the foederati. I shall come back to the archaeology of the transition later; but returning to the question of identity and timelines, it is worth examining several consistent differences between Gildas and Bede’s ‘rendering of Gildas’, which are revealing as to how recently the Saxons had immigrated and who Bede’s ‘Britons’ and ‘English’ really were.
Again, I find myself hung up, and this time it’s just one word in the final paragraph of the section, right near the end. It’s that ‘how recently’ the Saxons immigrated. The question being addressed is not how ’recently’ surely, but how early on, whether that was concurrent with the Romans or even preceded them.
But we have still not had the section title explained: “The coast of New Saxony?”. How new is new? Is New Saxony a tongue-in-cheek designation for a pre-AD410 settlement of Saxon immigrants, arriving before the final departure of the Romans. How can the author be so vague and imprecise, given this is the crucial question that the book explores – whether the Saxons really came as an invading hoardes of warriors, or as colonising families who did not necessarily displace an aboriginal population, especially if the latter were not all settled farmers but pastoralists?
Enigma
Well my scratchy friend, it`s not who starts it but who finishes it! Theb point is that the whole definition of `Celt` appears somewhat vague, let`s face we don`t even they came here, perhaps it was just their culture, a bit like imported US culture you see around the world today. The Angles and Saxons were here though perhaps there is some question over numbers. Unlike some`Celts` though, modern English people tend not to get so hot under the collar when their identity is questioned.
Scratchy7929
Weren’t the English named after the Norse God ‘Ing’,'Yngvi’,'Ingunar-Freyr’ (the friesians were also named after him as well).’frea Ingwina’ (referring to Danish king Hroðgar) is also named in the ‘Beowulf’.Ing was also worshipped all the Ingaevones including the ‘oriiginal’ Saxon’s.You could say they were all English if you follow that meaning of what it means – worshippers of Ing,The Angles were exactly the same.There is no historical truth that a tribe / tribes called the Angles actually existed (it was only a religious term given to them).
Since the English no longer worship Ing, theoretically, are they no longer English.
Enigma
No, the English were named after the Angles who came for Angleland in what is now south eastern Denmark. For convenience, historians and archeologists refer to Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians and Franks as `Anglo-Saxons` they were all culturally and ethnically almost identical. As we still live in `Angleland` or England if you prefer and the dominant culture is that brought here by the Anglo-Saxon migrants, I think we can still call ourselves `English`.
Scratchy7929
Isn’t `Angleland` just a way of saying ‘ a place where people worship Ing’.Just the same as ‘Friesland’ could be said to be ‘a place where people worship Frey’ – Yngvi-Frey was the same person that supposedly created the oldest known Swedish dynasty the Ynglings.The Skylings are a direct dynasty that were the earliest lords that ruled in ‘Angleland’ – a continuation of the Yngling dynasty.These dynasties were suppedly direct descendant’s of Yngvi-Freyr or living Gods if you like.
It could be argued the Brython population in the eastern part of Britain were converted to this ‘Ing’ faith, therefore you could say they were converted rather than defeated – became English.
Scratchy7929
‘For convenience, historians and archeologists refer to Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians and Franks as `Anglo-Saxons` ‘ – yes it’s a very vague ‘victorian’ interpretation isn’t it.Don’t disagree with what you say, apart from the Angles being a tribal name.No historical proof that an Angle tribe / tribes actually existed in their original homeland, apart from the interpretion I have mentioned.
Scratchy7929
Wasn’t the Saxon Shore created to KEEP OUT the Saxon’s & Frank’s (all other pirates – lnc. Irish, Vikings etc.).After a few decades (while Britain was still under Roman rule), weren’t these defences (on both sides of the English channel) manned by desirting / conscripted Saxon soldier’s / sailer’s.
The Saxon shore wasn’t named so, due to the fact they controlled those area’s, to begin with anyway.A common mis-understanding.
Colin Berry
“Saxon shore” seems an odd name to use if the intention is to keep the Saxons out, even if there was a chain of forts/strongholds/trading stations – call them what you will..
That lends credence to the idea that there was already a string of Saxon coastal settlements even while the Romans were in occupation. Displacing them might not have been considered worth the time and effort, especially if the indigenous population was happy to stay in the interior, living off the fat of the land, so to speak, and not yet accustomed to fish on Fridays. (Or maybe they traded fish for furs or grain).
The locals’ fear would have been one of further encroachment inland. Maybe that’s why the strongholds were built in the first place, not so much for pro-activenaval patrols and other policing (there being relatively unsuited as customised military garrisons were we are told) but as retreats if or when the locals felt threatened by any new activity or arrivals on the shoreline.
As for the brief Carausius take-over, lasting less than 10 years, there is a suggestion but no proof that he initiated the construction of those forts, but if they had preceded him, he may have been more than happy to adapt them to a more aggressive military posture, fearing that the Empire might strike back at any time, sending in fleets of ships to retake Britannia.
The initial (Roman) policy of containment could then have morphed into one of creeping “Saxonisation” , loosely defined to include a rag bag of Angles, Saxons, Danes, a few Gauls maybe as when the Romans departed. Just think – an inland indigenous population, used to paying taxes to their Latin masters, suddenly get a tax holiday, but knew they were living on a borrowed time without P60s. The temptation for the coastal Saxons etc to simply run up a flag and declare themselves the new masters and tax-collectors must have been enormous, and was made so much easier when control of the coastline had already been established with an advance guard in place. So no massive invasion was needed – just bring in more and more shiploads of one’s relatives from the old country. Result: creeping infiltration, pacification and subordination of the natives (who may in any case have taken a philosophical view – better the devil you know than a bunch of even wilder barbarians from more distant parts – Scotland or Scandinavia.
It’s all speculation of course, but one can never resist a jigsaw puzzle… even one with so many pieces missing.
Scratchy7929
‘Two interpretations were put forward as to the meaning of the adjective “Saxon”: either a shore attacked by Saxons, or a shore settled by Saxons’
‘Whatever their original purpose, it is virtually certain that in the late 4th century the forts and their garrisons were employed in operations against Frankish and Saxon pirates’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Shore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_of_the_Saxon_Shore
Colin Berry
OK, but look at the pictures of the 9 forts in Notitia Dignitatum (see your wiki ref for Saxon Shore). Do they look like military ops centres for intercepting and attacking pirates? Not to me they don’t – merely secure strongholds for resisting attack by land-based militias. The archaeology too says they were not military garrisons in the ordinary sense, according to SO.
Colin Berry
PS to my previous reply: I’m having second thoughts about the depictions of those nine forts along the Saxon Shore They would appear to come from a colour illuminated copy of the Notitia published in the 16th century, so may be idealized versions, the product of fanciful16th century imaginations.There’s certainly an age-of-chivalry Arthurian look about them, a far cry from the reality of the fort at Portchester (which I need hardly add is still in an amazing state of preservation, notably the original flint/slab walls that preceded the later medieval additions).
enigma
Angleland was a geographical location,migrants brought the name with them. The name England didn’t change with the reintroduction of Christianity anymore than that of any ethernation. The whole thrust of this article is that the dominant gene legacy comes from the Basque area, not Anglo Saxon,roman,Norman or even belt. By the way there is no evidence that the angles or Saxons did carry out a military conquest,as the article alto confirms.
Scratchy7929
Don’t disagree.’England didn’t change with the reintroduction of Christianity’ – although, theoretically, perhaps England should have been renamed, as there is no connection to it’s original conceived meaning any more.North Normandy would be more contemporary historical correct naming of England perhaps
Ernie W
Good day all,
Please forgive me but I like to list some facts. 1. The is no German DNA project so how would you know that your ancestry comes from German. 2 Germans had many medievil Slavic tribes but thats right if they speak German they are not Slavic. 3. Celtic dna does not exist because it is a Culture from the Iron age. And there where many cultures before the Celts. 4. If mass mirgration happened explain why in over 1400 years not one Avar or Hun grave has been been located on Bohemian soil. History gets rewritten all the time and continues to be updated. So read and learn.
http://www.sachsen.de/en/1068.htm
John drummond
I’ve studied most of the comments. What an amazing response and interst shown in the question of who we (English) really are, and where we are from. I prefer it remains a mystery, much more romantic than the alternative.
max
the people normally mistake north spanish with the southern spanish. the north of spain was never conquered by the muslim and didnt got much mixed with saharian people.
anyone that goes to catalonia, aragon, the basque country, asturias or galicia can see the similarities with the people in the brit islands.
Barry
Complete BS I’m from Australia, my family migrated from Newcastle, without hearing my accent, you would think I was German or Scandinavian. I’ve got no doubt at all that most people are a mix of the original British isles stock and Invading/ migrating north Germanic peoples.
Look at your genetic claims, the sample sizes, the controlling for if the people were local to the area, and obvious bias also the fact that when a population grows from a smaller number of founding individuals the DNA is going to differ from the original source population.
Think about this a certain DNA sequence “signiture” is common in say Denmark, maybe 60% of population there having it, the small source population to England may have spread from individuals with a lower proportion of that sequence due to selection from disease or many other factors, so for starters genetically you are always going to see what appears to be an underestimation just due in fact to this founding effect on the DNA.
Secondly you really have to be careful who you are choosing to DNA test. These events did not take places millions of years ago, they were relatively recent, and there is a good deal of evidence, written and physical to support it.
Finally, my grandfathers Y DNA does show that he is of Scandinavian/ German origin, which is at odds with your results here. I’m sure many other people would have similar results.
The other thing to consider is it is not all or nothing with genetics, you can be part Germanic part Celtic or original British Isles mix, and that is in fact what I strongly believe most English people are. But I think that the people to the north and North East are definitely more Germanic in appearance than the people to the south and in Wales.
Obviousness
Half of you people here, are using basque heritage to try and prove that you are *olive* skinned and *dark*. I guess being of north european / central european heritage is not “exotic” enough for the english.
Let me state one thing though. Very few people in england will have true olive skin, extremely few. The basque do not have olive skin either. Have any of you traveled to other parts of europe? Even then you might only pick what you want to see, but the French are the same as the english look wise. In the south they might get a bit more tanned in the summer but by no means are even a majority *olive* skinned. I was in basque country in 2004 in the winter. The people are pretty much indistinguishable from british or french.
So using this to prove that you have dark features is barking up the wrong tree. You might have a better chance of getting olive skin from an ancestor from india. Truth is though 95 percent of people don’t have olive skin. Most of europe is very light skinned and pale. I lived in Rome for school. If i counted for how many british talking about they could fit in because they have olive skin it would be over 15 times. I tell them they would never fit in because the majority of people in Rome *do not* have olive skin. It’s just a belief that persist to be true and will never go away. In deep southern italy, pale skin is still extremely common. Pale skin is still common even in malta, and there we can start talking about olive skin being as equal or higher to pale. but still pale is not considered a minority. People in Spain all over are mostly light skinned. If you goto Seville and you see a few dark people you will be like, oh boy they are dark down here. Not to mention your eyes just glance over the rest of the population because they don’t fit your dream stereotype of dark tanned and “exotic”
so if you want prove darkness, claim southern greek heritage from the islands, malta, how about some left over north african soldiers that used to stay in Britain. I will say it again though, I don’t care how dark any north or central or even southern in many cases european thinks he / she is, they are most likely *not* olive skinned.
It’s not a lie if one believes it as they say
Richard
As I have said elsewhere, I have recently returned from Norway. I cannot say that the Norwegians looked any different from most Britons, except that they they looked fitter and happier.
When I was born and up until I was about 8 or so, I was a blue eyed blonde. Then as I got older my hair turned brown. What does that say about racial origins I wonder? I might add I was not unique. I think most kids of my generation (post war baby boom) had the same change in hair colour.
John
I hold the personal view-based on what I’ve observed-that 70% of Spaniards and 70% of Scots and Welsh look the same.
Only 5% of Scots have blond hair,hardly aligning them with Anglo Saxon or Scandinavian ancestry.
I’m not surprised by these findings.
Plenty of British people with dark hair and eyes could pass for Italian,Greek or Spanish.
Remember Basil Faulty rediculing his Spanish ‘birdbrain’ waiter on faulty towers? They both looked exactly the same race.
John
A lot of arrogant assumption in this supposed thesis.
Since when has there been a british race anyway,
The term british isles which is offensive to most Irish people, is a invention of the 18th century.
up until the early 20th century evry part of westminster’s terrorist empire were labelled british. Ireland is no more naturally british than India was, made British by force of Westminster state terrorism.
The sheer arrogance and ignorance of this supposed thesis.
What about the millions of irish who emigrated into Britain over the years. How many millions would their offspring have now. Credible estimates place the Irish DNA in Britain at 25%.
The population before the westminster designed supposed famine in Ireland.
was near 9 million, the population of the entire island of britain was only 12 million.
Millions of you supposed English or Britsh are Irish.
Oppenheimer is as ignorant as most from britian who assume a British identity for everyone, sorry that does not add up historically.
British is even more mythical than Anglop saxons
Val
Even if the wipeout myth was true which even if you are of the pro anglo-saxon English side, have to accept just was not the case, the movement of not Britons, but Welsh, Scottish, and English since the unions to form this Country, have been massive, thus, those 3 groups have created a British race as a whole. Obviously, those three groups never had to do that, because basically all us Britons are the same, but even more so because of the migration around Britain. I myself am a product of the union. Most of my ancestors originally come from Scotland and Cornwall, even though I have never been to those parts of the Country. I dare say there are many, if not more ancestors from the victors of Bannockburn in England than there is in Scotland. I know there are so many Welsh surnames in England too, not including those maidan names that have married and taken on what is seen as a English name
I feel that because we are Country and the union is natural and Britons are all the same, this is one reason why we have nationalism in Britain, because people want to be not British (even though it is our natural true selves) but something else.
The other reasons are political, and that is felt by not just Scotland or Wales but huge parts of England that feel cut off from Westminster and also manipulation from nationalist polticians add to this.
Nick
With all due respect Ireland’s population before famine was around 8.2 million and Britain’s around 18.5 million. But yes, there are many of us that have some ancestry from Ireland.