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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Opps says "I have used the recent literature in several disciplines, and my own re-analysis, to ask when Celtic languages moved from the European mainland to the British Isles, with which culture and carried by how many people. My answers are 1) Neolithic 2) Neolithic and 3) not many." |
So he starts off with that baloney about Celtic languages moving from the European mainland to the British Isles! Whatever his 5% contribution is, it ain't Celts.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| 3. If the Celts were indeed the natural overlords of the English for thousands of years then this would be pretty much built in to the genes. |
The men's genes in particular.
The Megalithic Celts were lording it over large parts of Europe for ages, but this Rhesus Negative thing makes it likely that (officially) they kept their families in the family, so to speak. 'Course, men could unofficially sow their oats as much as ruling men ever do.
We need to start out with a good idea of what genes are representative of what.
And the professionals have a far from spotless record on this. (Since it's only professionals who are allowed to play, all the spots are on professional records.) In another application of statistical modelling, it was concluded that a giant sea wave would only occur once in 30,000 years. So all those eye-witness accounts were bound to be false; and the conviction was strong enough for captains to be blamed for the loss of their boats and their families defamed. It's not just an academic issue. It was only recently that they cottoned on to the fact that the statistical model was entirely wrong; and satellite radar imaging has identified several giant sea waves since.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| The data does, in fact show that the populations have mixed. YDNA data shows... Sykes has analysed the mtDNA for us... |
Duncan, will you please refrain from re-citing the genetic findings when the genetic methodology is called into question? They are far from first principles.
This topic deserves its own thread.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| They used that power to set up a Suzerain over their neighbours that lasted until the Beakers arrived as another elite but one which was less commercial and more militaristic. |
More militaristic seems fair -- especially if they brought the Bronze Age with them (to Britain at least) -- but less commercial? The Beakers are clustered around trade centres all over Europe and the archaeologists link them to long distance trade all the time. But surely we can say they were a new economic force in England and stepped up agricultural production.
Quick detour to Japan:
Modern Japanese culture (and supposedly, population) spread from the continent, eastward across the islands. 'Civilisation' was in the west and the aristocracy sent soldiers to take control of the east. Shogun means "generalissimo against the barbarians" and eventually, with control of most of the country and its wealth, he wrested power from the Emperor himself and established the Samurai as the de facto ruling class.
So how about this, back in Britain:
Agriculture is a job and so is implementing new developments. An echelon of land managers grew in power as the new agricultural techniques (doesn't matter where from, but cheerfully rolled out under Celtic rule) grew successful and powerful in farm-friendly England and ultimately threw off Celtic control.
Perhaps pivotal in this, international trade will have exposed the economic movers-and-shakers to the use of bronze. If memory serves: just about the oldest known piece of bronze in Britain is a pin found in a cremation burial at Sewell on the north edge of the Chilterns, pretty far from the West Country; the metal was from Germany; Sewell is on the Watling Street that runs to Dover; where there is a conspicuous lack of megaliths and a conspicuous wealth of Beakers immediately across the Channel. While the copper and tin were shipped out of the Celtic west, that doesn't mean they had control or use of bronze. (Those who were in control of it would do well to keep bronze technology away from Britain so that the value of copper and tin would continue to lie in exporting it. Interesting that there is a pocket of Celticness in Anatolia though, innit?)
The Bronze Age in Britain was instrumental in or hard on the heels of the Beaker take-over of lowland England. N'est-ce pas?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| I assume the graphics on your link show people moving slowly over time, perhaps a mile here and there as population densities rise. |
You have to assume it, Duncan, because what it shows and says is something quite different. Your common sense is at odds with the impression perpetuated in the High Street -- and, no doubt, in the minds of the scholars themselves.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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My model takes into account several known linguistic morphologies:
The Celts arriving latterly in the West can do all sorts of things and be all sorts of things over the (let's say) several thousand years they've got between arriving in early Megalithic times and losing their native superiority when the Romans come. F'rinstance:
1. If they are the Black Irish (ie a relatively small ethnic group) then they've got lots of time to create much larger Celtic-speaking areas by trickle-down expansion (ie with severely restricted Celtic genes)
2. If they are the generality of historical Celtic-speakers then they've got lots of time to create much larger Celtic-speaking areas by politically induced linguistic drift
3. They can easily have different cultural models at different times and in different places. Like the Carthaginians, they might start off as traders then evolve into military imperialists then (say, when they get isolated in the backward highlands and islands of Scotland) use the clan system for local defence
4. Given that Celtic-speakers appear to be very similar not only in the British Isles but in France and Iberia, it follows that vast areas of Western Europe would be susceptible to Celtic place-names, Celtic tribal names, Celtic trade goods without having more than a trace effect on the local genes.
5. But practically any model you care to run through the computer I am pretty sure you could reproduce exactly the genetic make-up reported by Oppenheimer et al simply because we don't know what the genetic starting point was.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Because agriculture introduces a step-change in population numbers, there is some reason to believe that the original, non-agricultural population of post Ice Age Britain may not be represented in the current linguistic line-up. However their genes certainly would be.
Do you mean to say the rapid growth could have meant an economically dominant people in sufficient numbers set up a language cline that walked all the way across the island without displacing the entire population? (Otherwise, it seems to say the people and their language were displaced, but their genes weren't.) |
This is an important matter that we have not given nearly enough attention to. The fact of the matter is that, so far as we know, there are only two cultural advances that lead to step-changes in population numbers: a) the introduction of agriculture and b) the industrial revolution.
The latter, for instance, altered the Celtic/English lingustic (and propably genetic) make-up of Wales in a matter of a few decades. And (casting the Revolution a little more widely to include mass emigration) did the same in Ireland too. So we know it can happen. In the case of the introduction of agriculture, it seems reasonable to argue that the population of a given area might rise ten-fold. Now clearly if the agriculture is being introduced by a discrete genetic population of incomers then the native language will likely die out, and their genes will be heavily discounted. Or both may live on in severely diminished numbers in agriculturally unfavoured areas.
This is what makes Beakerdom important. Is it co-eval with the introduction of agriculture and/or were the Beakers an invading horde or were they merely the folks that spread the agricultural message? One can ask the same questions of Megalithia , assuming Beakerdom and the Megalithics weren't the same people/set of circucmstances.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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The original Irish written language transliterated by early Christian monks; the language written in the Book of Kells and Darrow. Modern Irish is a 19th century invention created to conform to the invention of the typewriter. Old Irish was written with a series of accents and diacritics for pronunciation which were difficult if not impossible to convert to typewritten script so these were given letter values that don't often represent the original sound.
A good example of this is bodhran (a type of ancient drum used in Irish folk music) it is pronounced 'bow-rawn'.
Most of the street names and place names are hybrids of English/Irish extraction rendered such in the 19th-20th century. Many others are very poor translations of the original Old Irish names.
Irish has no h, j, k, q, v, w, x, y or z. Anywhere these letters appear in modern Irish they are latter day insertions to conform to typewritten script.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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DP Crisp wrote:
| Duncan, will you please refrain from re-citing the genetic findings when the genetic methodology is called into question? They are far from first principles. |
Way too premature for that.Who is calling into question the geneticists' methodology? I've seen nothing coherent yet that does this. If the following is a step in that direction:
| Opps says "I have used the recent literature in several disciplines, and my own re-analysis, to ask when Celtic languages moved from the European mainland to the British Isles, with which culture and carried by how many people. My answers are 1) Neolithic 2) Neolithic and 3) not many." |
So he starts off with that baloney about Celtic languages moving from the European mainland to the British Isles! Whatever his 5% contribution is, it ain't Celts. |
then I'm happy to chew the fat on this one. If the celtic languages didn't come from Europe where did they come from, unless you're with Komorikid who, I think, holds the view that the celtic languages came from the middle east via north Africa? Or do you think they're native to our shores? Perhaps Oppenheimer is a little 'old school' in the sense that he sees a European origin for the Celts but in his book, following John Collis, he develops the idea that the Celts came from Spain and southern France rather than central Europe. So please explain the baloney part of your sentence.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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Mick wrote:
| This is what makes Beakerdom important. Is it co-eval with the introduction of agriculture and/or were the Beakers an invading horde or were they merely the folks that spread the agricultural message? One can ask the same questions of Megalithia , assuming Beakerdom and the Megalithics weren't the same people/set of circucmstances. |
The Beakers turn up in the British archaeological record well after the introduction of agriculture. The Early Neolithic began around 4000 BC whereas the Beakers emerge in 2400 BC. That's one big gap. I think it's more likely that the Neolithic begins with celtic immigration in the west, probably as an agricultural elite imposing their rule over the mesolithic descendents of the original hunter-gatherers. The Beaker people would then be the bringers of copper and then bronze metal working technology, again enabling them to achieve a dominant position over the natives and their Welsh masters. Beakerdom reaches its apotheosis in the Wessex culture of the Amesbury Archer.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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DPCrisp wrote:
KomoriDude wrote:
I didn't say that manufactured goods were shipped from Britain.
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But you did say "as most technologies develop at the source it is fair to say that the entire Bronze Age began in Britain and spread east", which, as we have seen is not supported by the evidence of copper and tin ingots shipped out of Britain. |
When I made that statement quite a while ago on the Quest site I was unaware at the time of Kestel in Anatolia. The data from which has only been published recently. So Britain was not the earliest evidence of Bronze Age technology. My apologies but my assumption about the Phoenician shipping ingots and not ore is correct.
| The assumption by you and others that the Phoenicians operated a fleet of 'ore ships' is not supported by the evidence. |
We have orthopaedic shoes. |
It would seem the Phoenicians didn't
The quarried calcite ore bearing gold, copper or mercury along with quartzite were extracted from the metamorphic zone. It was then mortared by hand to a crushed dust, put through sluices to extract the fines, then packed into small brick kilns constructed of numbered reinforced bricks of refractory dolomite and slag in the usual small refinery manner. Dolomite was mined from the east reefs and ingots of metal cast as wedges or 'ox hides' were then packed in straw as ballast in Phoenician vessels, according to tradition.
Reject quarried ore was used to surface roads and landing areas. Slag cement from the blast furnaces on the beach was recycled in jetty construction. In the east jetty, huge andesite boulders taken from adjacent beaches were set in slag cement, presumably in wooden formes. In the north jetty complex, piers were constructed at intervals in the same manner. The Phoenicians were renowned for this type of unique slag cement construction. These andesite boulders do not absorb water and are unable to swell and crack the cement, as the tendency is with other rock. |
First question: Where would you expect to find this Phoenician Harbour?
Second Question: Does this sound like the Phoenicians shipped ingots or ore?
Third Question: Does anywhere in Southwest Britain have any of the above?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| 3. They can easily have different cultural models at different times and in different places. |
I agree. For a start, they stopped building megaliths at some point. (I also think the Northern lot had a different history from the Central lot, to the point that no one else thinks the Northern lot were ever Celts at all.)
| 4. Given that Celtic-speakers appear to be very similar not only in the British Isles but in France and Iberia, it follows that vast areas of Western Europe would be susceptible to Celtic place-names, Celtic tribal names, Celtic trade goods without having more than a trace effect on the local genes. |
Quite so. We had the result a few years ago that Irish genes bear little resemblance to mainland European genes (where Celts are reckoned by Orthodoxy to have come from): a surprise to them, no surprise to us.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| The fact of the matter is that, so far as we know, there are only two cultural advances that lead to step-changes in population numbers: a) the introduction of agriculture and b) the industrial revolution. |
Do we know that they produce step changes? The highest populations are in India and China, neither of which is known for its industrialisation or efficient agriculture.
Do we have any confidence in ancient population estimates when we disagree with the professionals about how and where people lived? A rough-cut calculation once told me that the human population could have been growing at the same exponential rate since Cro-Magnon popped up.
But if there were sudden increases, what was it in those revolutions that caused them? Could similar effects have arisen at other times as well? What if it's the population explosions that led to the revolutions?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Who is calling into question the geneticists' methodology? I've seen nothing coherent yet that does this. If the following is a step in that direction: . . . then I'm happy to chew the fat on this one. |
We have questioned it, at least in a hand-waving sort of way. The trouble is that when it is the paradigm, what is taken to be self-evidently true, that is at fault, it is unlikely to be spelled out in the geneticists papers in such a way that you can point and say "Ah-hah! This premise is false, therefore your conclusions are invalid."
Instead, we have pointed out that virtually everything they say about how and where people live and who goes where is wrong; that they must calibrate against identities determined by historians; and that a paradox lies squarely at the heart of it (namely that the accumulation of genetic variation presupposes a very static population: which invalidates the logic of any conclusions about population movements; and flatly contradicts that other presupposition of migrant populations). I also pointed out that 'verification' of a statistical analysis of genetic data is completely unlike, say, verification in the physical sciences.
This topic deserves its own thread. But in some areas we can do no more than cast doubt, since we work at a level at which no publications are pitched: neither fully detailed nor popularist. No one writes books for Applied Epistemologists.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| If the celtic languages didn't come from Europe where did they come from, unless you're with Komorikid who, I think, holds the view that the celtic languages came from the middle east via north Africa? |
Incomers to the western shores is the clear part; and via North Africa is the likely explanation, yes.
| Perhaps Oppenheimer is a little 'old school' in the sense that he sees a European origin for the Celts but in his book, following John Collis, he develops the idea that the Celts came from Spain and southern France rather than central Europe. So please explain the baloney part of your sentence. |
A few years ago it seemed to me that "Celt" was applied to (at least) two distinct peoples (the Continentals and the Insulars) and I had a suspicion that the (British Isles) Insular Celts would turn out to be the Cynesians. I found Collis' book to lay out what is known about the Celts rather nicely and virtually settle the matter, but my conclusion is the opposite of his. This is the subject of the Will the Real Cynesians Please Step Forward? thread.
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