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Celts
(08-27-2024, 08:32 PM)La Tene Wrote:
(08-14-2024, 08:33 AM)Gortaleen Wrote: That is using the name Celt to describe non-Germanic non-Italic speaking western Indo-Europeans who we believe spoke Celtic languages before the spread of the Roman Empire.  

Speaking a Celtic language does not necessarily make one a *Celt*. Modern Irish speak English, but they are not *English*

Modern Irish would, however, be correctly labeled Anglophone. 

It seems to me that "Celtic" is often used in a way that perhaps more precisely could be "Celtophone", as in "of the Celtic-speaking world." But I've never seen anyone use the term Celtophone, and I don't really think the distinction is necessary. It seems to me there was more than just language unifying the people of the "Celtic-speaking world", for example religion/mythology, and common origin. 

I think it's highly debatable to consider the Irish, for example, as anything other than "proper Celts." If they were "maybe linguistically celticized," then what were they before that happened?
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(08-27-2024, 08:32 PM)La Tene Wrote:
(08-14-2024, 08:33 AM)Gortaleen Wrote: That is using the name Celt to describe non-Germanic non-Italic speaking western Indo-Europeans who we believe spoke Celtic languages before the spread of the Roman Empire.  

Speaking a Celtic language does not necessarily make one a *Celt*. Modern Irish speak English, but they are not *English*

If the other qualifiers I provided aren’t sufficient we can add Celtic speaking peoples highly associated with Y haplogroup R-P312 to our definition.
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(08-28-2024, 12:43 AM)Cejo Wrote:
(08-27-2024, 08:32 PM)La Tene Wrote:
(08-14-2024, 08:33 AM)Gortaleen Wrote: That is using the name Celt to describe non-Germanic non-Italic speaking western Indo-Europeans who we believe spoke Celtic languages before the spread of the Roman Empire.  

Speaking a Celtic language does not necessarily make one a *Celt*. Modern Irish speak English, but they are not *English*

Modern Irish would, however, be correctly labeled Anglophone. 

It seems to me that "Celtic" is often used in a way that perhaps more precisely could be "Celtophone", as in "of the Celtic-speaking world." But I've never seen anyone use the term Celtophone, and I don't really think the distinction is necessary. It seems to me there was more than just language unifying the people of the "Celtic-speaking world", for example religion/mythology, and common origin. 

I think it's highly debatable to consider the Irish, for example, as anything other than "proper Celts." If they were "maybe linguistically celticized," then what were they before that happened?

like britain, the almost certainly IE bell beakers and there EBA food vessel successors hugely replaced the pre beaker fakers in ireland, absorbing only a very small amount of their dna locally. So Ireland is a place you would expect very little pre IE linguistic survival as there was so little pre beaker genes that survived.  Yet Ireland shows no convincing traces of any IE language other then Celtic. There is no trace of a mixing of Celtic and another IE language such as in Atlantic Iberia.

It’s often overlooked that that even the name of Ireland is from an IE root (something like Pivar meaning lush) and shows the typical Celtic dropping of the initial P. This form of recorded first in texts that’s likely go back to accounts of the 5th or 6th C BC. That is significant as that was a time of isolation for Ireland - no Hallstatt D of early La Tene in Ireland - and strongly suggests ireland must have been Celtic prior to its isolation. That pushed likely Celtic speaking in ireland into its (much more connected and wealthy) late bronze age which was roughly 1200-700BC. The late bronze age really is a local development of the mid bronze age of c.1400-1200BC.

There really are no sharp archaeological breaks in the irish bronze age so it’s much easier to picture that Celtic on Ireland just gradually emerged by interaction with others on an already v similar maybe para Celtic base. If looks like a constant process rather than the two wave/strata kind of thing you see in Atlantic Iberia where Celtic has overlaid Lusitanian/Asturian dialects that were likely non Celtic but  italo-Celtic dialects. There is no trace of a similar process in ireland. If an older non Celtic dialect has been levelled into Celtic in Ireland, my impression is it happened much earlier than in Atlantic Iberia and traces of the process were negligible to absent in Ireland compared to Iberia.

The most obvious period for and dialect levelling towards Celtic in Ireland would be about 1300-800BC when Ireland had a brilliant, wealthy and highly connected late bronze age elite and major hillforts as central places. Unlike Atlantic Iberia, Ireland remained well linked in with Britain and the continental channel and indirectly with Unetice through to Urnfield Europe. So it may have always been subject to linguistic parallel development and convergance with the groups that ended to speaking Celtic. This likely intensified as the bronze age progressed and the elites became more powerful and centralised. I’ve very little dount that Ireland spoke Celtic in what was thd urnfield era on the continent and that it was easy for that to happen due to the strong rich internationalist elite with large hillforts seen in ireland 1300-800BC. In fact Ireland had a very precocious early hillfort tradition compared to Britain where in contrast most hillforts are iron age. Britain really only started to build hillforts at the point that Ireland’s 500 year long late bronze age tradition of hillfort building was ending.
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(08-28-2024, 01:29 AM)Gortaleen Wrote:
(08-27-2024, 08:32 PM)La Tene Wrote:
(08-14-2024, 08:33 AM)Gortaleen Wrote: That is using the name Celt to describe non-Germanic non-Italic speaking western Indo-Europeans who we believe spoke Celtic languages before the spread of the Roman Empire.  

Speaking a Celtic language does not necessarily make one a *Celt*. Modern Irish speak English, but they are not *English*

If the other qualifiers I provided aren’t sufficient we can add Celtic speaking peoples highly associated with Y haplogroup R-P312 to our definition.

one of the reasons Celtic is associated with P312 is its likely all P312 originally spoke Italo-Celtic and it’s much easier to converge or dialect level towards proto Celtic if you are already speaking a dialect on the same branch. I suspect most Italo-Celtic dialects other then in Italy and western Iberia were converging towards some kind of dialect with some of the Celtic features ‘para Celtic’ even in the early to mid BA. The elites on places like the isles, northern france and west central Europe were connected in those eras c. 2200-1200BC so I think parallel development in the direction that led to proto Celtic would have been underway to some degree -para Celtic? This probably made the more intense interactions of the late bronze age just the completion of a long process.
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(08-28-2024, 12:43 AM)Cejo Wrote: Modern Irish would, however, be correctly labeled Anglophone. 

It seems to me that "Celtic" is often used in a way that perhaps more precisely could be "Celtophone", as in "of the Celtic-speaking world." But I've never seen anyone use the term Celtophone, and I don't really think the distinction is necessary.

It absolutely is. Its a good suggestion

Quote:It seems to me there was more than just language unifying the people of the "Celtic-speaking world", for example religion/mythology, and common origin. 

What common origin? There is no common origin apart from a late 3rd millenium BC BB package that brought different p312 ydna lines ( mostly R1b L21). If there was a common origin, that would imply a post BB era original group of "ethnic" proto Celts that spread out across western Europe and replaced the descendants of the mainly the R1b L21 BB settlers. What is the ratio of U152 and G2a in ancient Britain and Ireland compared to south Germany and east France? The % of EEF? Not to mention the regions harboured different autosomal groups

Quote:I think it's highly debatable to consider the Irish, for example, as anything other than "proper Celts." If they were "maybe linguistically celticized," then what were they before that happened?

Its not controversial. Before the linguistic celticization of the island, probably they spoke a related IE "speech" that they inherited from their Bell Beaker ancestors (and/or subsequent BB derived migrants from Britain/north France) who colonised the island at the end of the Neolithic/EBA, IIRC around 2200-2000 BC, and perhaps maybe related to other BB varieties spoken in Britain and/or northern France at that time 2000BC-1200BC, with a high chance that these varieties could be part of the Celto-Italic Branch of IE, but maybe not, who knows.

In any case, proto Celtic lacks maritime vocabulary, so automatically this rules out Ireland, Britain and northern France from the Proto Celtic homeland. So the key question is did continental migrants arrive into Ireland after 1200BC? Maybe. But we lack adna samples from Iron Age Ireland. However, the general consensus is that modern Irish are descendant largely from the EBA people living on the island(s) who derive their ancestry from the British and Irish BB settlers. So, for now it does not look like later continental migrants had a large genetic impact, or if they did, it was small and/or diluted

Migrants from celticized Britain is a different case as some of these may have contained increased continental ancestry, especially after 900BC.
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(08-28-2024, 01:32 AM)alanarchae Wrote: like britain, the almost certainly IE bell beakers and there EBA food vessel successors hugely replaced the pre beaker fakers in ireland, absorbing only a very small amount of their dna locally. So Ireland is a place you would expect very little pre IE linguistic survival as there was so little pre beaker genes that survived.  Yet Ireland shows no convincing traces of any IE language other then Celtic. There is no trace of a mixing of Celtic and another IE language such as in Atlantic Iberia.

It’s often overlooked that that even the name of Ireland is from an IE root (something like Pivar meaning lush) and shows the typical Celtic dropping of the initial P. This form of recorded first in texts that’s likely go back to accounts of the 5th or 6th C BC. That is significant as that was a time of isolation for Ireland - no Hallstatt D of early La Tene in Ireland - and strongly suggests ireland must have been Celtic prior to its isolation. That pushed likely Celtic speaking in ireland into its (much more connected and wealthy) late bronze age which was roughly 1200-700BC. The late bronze age really is a local development of the mid bronze age of c.1400-1200BC.

There really are no sharp archaeological breaks in the irish bronze age so it’s much easier to picture that Celtic on Ireland just gradually emerged by interaction with others on an already v similar maybe para Celtic base. If looks like a constant process rather than the two wave/strata kind of thing you see in Atlantic Iberia where Celtic has overlaid Lusitanian/Asturian dialects that were likely non Celtic but  italo-Celtic dialects. There is no trace of a similar process in ireland. If an older non Celtic dialect has been levelled into Celtic in Ireland, my impression is it happened much earlier than in Atlantic Iberia and traces of the process were negligible to absent in Ireland compared to Iberia.

The most obvious period for and dialect levelling towards Celtic in Ireland would be about 1300-800BC when Ireland had a brilliant, wealthy and highly connected late bronze age elite and major hillforts as central places. Unlike Atlantic Iberia, Ireland remained well linked in with Britain and the continental channel and indirectly with Unetice through to Urnfield Europe. So it may have always been subject to linguistic parallel development and convergance with the groups that ended to speaking Celtic. This likely intensified as the bronze age progressed and the elites became more powerful and centralised. I’ve very little dount that Ireland spoke Celtic in what was thd urnfield era on the continent and that it was easy for that to happen due to the strong rich internationalist elite with  large hillforts seen in ireland 1300-800BC. In fact Ireland had a very precocious early hillfort tradition compared to Britain where in contrast most hillforts are iron age. Britain really only started to build hillforts at the point that Ireland’s 500 year long late bronze age tradition of hillfort building was ending.

I remember reading that prior to 200BC there was a rather very heavy depopulation, not entirely, but still massive on scale which led to the bottlenecking of Irish R1b L21 subclades on the Ireland. Apparently most modern Irish descend from the few subclades that survived the bottleneck. To support the large depopulation of the island I think are pollen analysis that reveal the recolonization of land by trees that had previously been felled or used for agriculture. This may explain why Ireland, a "forest island", was not a relevant player demographically in antiquity until the late Roman period and possibly could explain a dominance of Celtic toponyms, hydronyms etc as the result of a small bottlenecked population that was (re)colonizing into depopulated/scarcely populated areas of the island
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(08-28-2024, 03:15 AM)La Tene Wrote: What common origin? There is no common origin apart from a late 3rd millenium BC BB package that brought different p312 ydna lines ( mostly R1b L21). If there was a common origin, that would imply a post BB era original group of "ethnic" proto Celts that spread out across western Europe and replaced the descendants of the mainly the R1b L21 BB settlers. What is the ratio of U152 and G2a in ancient Britain and Ireland compared to south Germany and east France? The % of EEF? Not to mention the regions harboured different autosomal groups

I don't think a post-BB era migration is necessary. There seems to be continuity between BA and IA population genetics throughout much of the "Celtic-speaking world", while it seems dubious to think that the language was spread during BB times. Therefore, I don't think it's correct to view "Celts" as a genetic group that spread through migration or otherwise.

Rather I view it as a culture, which (generally) spread throughout the pre-existing BB "peoples". Even then, the shared language family is the most significant continuity between an otherwise diverse culture. How or why this language group became dominant in those areas, I don't know.

But to claim that one Celtic-speaking population was "proper Celtic" and another was not contradicts my understanding of what "Celtic" means in the first place, since the only real commonality between all "Celtic" people seems to be the languages.
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(08-28-2024, 03:15 AM)La Tene Wrote: Its not controversial. Before the linguistic celticization of the island, probably they spoke a related IE "speech" that they inherited from their Bell Beaker ancestors (and/or subsequent BB derived migrants from Britain/north France) who colonised the island at the end of the Neolithic/EBA, IIRC around 2200-2000 BC, and perhaps maybe related to other BB varieties spoken in Britain and/or northern France at that time 2000BC-1200BC, with a high chance that these varieties could be part of the Celto-Italic Branch of IE, but maybe not, who knows.

In any case, proto Celtic lacks maritime vocabulary, so automatically this rules out Ireland, Britain and northern France from the Proto Celtic homeland. So the key question is did continental migrants arrive into Ireland after 1200BC? Maybe. But we lack adna samples from Iron Age Ireland. However, the general consensus is that modern Irish are descendant largely from the EBA people living on the island(s) who derive their ancestry from the British and Irish BB settlers. So, for now it does not look like later continental migrants had a large genetic impact, or if they did, it was small and/or diluted

Migrants from celticized Britain is a different case as some of these may have contained increased continental ancestry, especially after 900BC.

It's not that complicated.  After 3000 BCE Indo-Europeans began migrating away from the Steppes.  The Indo-Europeans that migrated essentially due west tend to bear the R-P312 Y DNA marker and their branch of Indo-European language we call Celtic.  It's debatable whether or not the descendant of R-P312, R-U152, brought the branch of Indo-European language we know as Classical Latin to the Italian Peninsula or perhaps, is associated with the development of Vulgar Latin.

Ireland and Western and Northern Britain remained isolated for millennia after this wave of Indo-European migration thus are still strongly R-L21.  Southern and Eastern Britain bore the brunt of invasions during that period:  first P-Celtic speakers, then Romans, and finally Ango-Saxons.  Thus, Eastern and Northern Britain is less "R-L21" than Ireland and Brittany.

Conjectures that Indo-European languages spread around Europe like viruses have been virtually debunked by DNA findings.  Populations moved and their languages went with them.  I am literate in Irish Gaelic.  Less so in Scottish Gaelic.  I am well aware that these are not "lingua francas."  These languages are rather "linguistic gatekeepers" in that virtually anyone who masters one of them learned it at his mother's (or wet nurse's) knee.  Old Irish is well attested and is even more of a "linguistic gatekeeper" - I've looked at it a bit and know I'll never be a "made member" of the Old Irish speaking tribe.  Once we understand not only is there no common dialect between Q-Celtic and P-Celtic, there is no cultural  memory of a common origin, we can understand that vast amount of time it took for that situation to occur.  Consider Scottish Gaelic and Munster Irish.  Certainly it's been at least a millennium (1000 years) since they split from a common parent language yet, even a layman can tell they are closely related languages.  How much time must have passed between the split of Q- and P-Celtic?  2500 BCE does not seem so long ago now.
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(08-28-2024, 04:17 PM)Cejo Wrote:
Quote:I don't think a post-BB era migration is necessary. There seems to be continuity between BA and IA population genetics throughout much of the "Celtic-speaking world", while it seems dubious to think that the language was spread during BB times. Therefore, I don't think it's correct to view "Celts" as a genetic group that spread through migration or otherwise.

But there was movement of peoples into Britain in the LBA as proven by the Patterson et al paper. 

Quote:Rather I view it as a culture, which (generally) spread throughout the pre-existing BB "peoples". Even then, the shared language family is the most significant continuity between an otherwise diverse culture. How or why this language group became dominant in those areas, I don't know.


What culture? Urnfield (RSFO) and late Hallstatt was not in Britain

Quote:But to claim that one Celtic-speaking population was "proper Celtic" and another was not contradicts my understanding of what "Celtic" means in the first place, since the only real commonality between all "Celtic" people seems to be the languages.

Out of all the regions, peoples and cultures that you could claim are Celtic, only 1 of those regions can ever wear the crown of being the origin of the Celts. We know this because Celtic is not an indigenous language to coastal areas. Proto Celtic has no maritime vocabulary. This implies that an inland, continental population spoke Proto Celtic, and over time the language of this population spread over vast areas. But the key point here is that Proto Celtic had to have been spoken somewhere, and the people that spoke that language are naturally and rightfully to be called "Proto-Celts". And given that there is a postulated Celto-Italic phase preceding Proto-Celtic, its only natural to assume that Proto-Celtic would be located somewhere in the vicinity of Italy, like the north Alpine region. Then there is also the common partaking by north Alpine and Italic populations of subclades of U152 and G2a2b L497, which could also be linked in some way to a Celto-Italic phase of U152 blending with G2a2b L497 north and south of the Alps, and in the Alps themselves, not to mention subsequent back and forth movements over the Alps, as we see with the increase of 'southern' EEF in our south west Germany Hallstatt samples.

If a population group in the late Iron Age has a similar genetic profile to the south German late Hallstatt Celts, and/or are largely or entirely descendant from them, then yes, I would say this particular population (and others with the same ancestry) in the La Tene era could be labelled as "proper Celtic" as they would descend from the Hallstatt population that we have an actual written reference to as "Celts".

We can only start with the earliest written references to Celts, such as Herodotus referencing a "city" called Pyrene north of the Alps near the source of the Danube, which some scholars like to link to the Heuneberg "princely seat" in todays south west Germany. In the recent adna paper about Celts in south west Germany, one of the conclusions is that these late Hallstatt Celts are largely descendant from the EBA people that were living nearby in the Lech river valley in Bavaria, also in southern Germany, despite the Iron Age Celts having received more southern ancestry by the MIA. 

But what if late La Tene/Roman era populations are only partially descendant from south Germany Hallstatt? 

Well for example if the south German ancestry survives partially in east French samples, we would be here looking at a part of the "Gauls" as an evolution in time from "Celts". But if the survival of this ancestry is minimal, then we may have to come to the conclusion that the original south German profile did not survive, albeit only partially in the ancestry of its western kin. However, according to a French flag forum user, this south German Hallstatt ancestry survives in modern dna samples from the Auvergne region, which he claimed could justify a westward movement of the last Celts from southern Germany into France (but we must still keep the door open to earlier waves of south Germans moving into France in previous eras such MBA Tumulus, Urnfield, Hallstatt etc)

So as you can see, "proper Celts" has got nothing at all to do with the natives of the Isles and the Iberian peninsula, and what's more, as I mentioned by citing the Patterson paper, we have actual evidence of continental migrants moving into Britain from south of the channel in the LBA. A possible good way to look at movements of peoples could be as incremental, neighbour to neighbour movements over long time periods. So despite a Celtic language being brought to Britain and Iberia, it need not imply a direct migration from the north of the Alps either. With regards to Britain and Iberia, perhaps people regularly forget that Belgica and southern France would had to of been intermediate regions were hypothetically north alpine migrants would of settled and mixed first with the local peoples, creating mixed more northern "EEF+ increased steppe%" or more southern "Steppe+ increased EEF%" genetic profiles in comparison with the north Alpine region. From intermediate regions such as these, these mixed populations could migrate (from Belgica to Britain, and southern France into NE Iberia)

The actual genetic evidence of an impact of "central european ancestry" in Italy or Iberia in the BA/IA is afaik still scanty. In Italy from what I understand the the impact of this ancestry, as things stand, on the local gene pool was very weak, if not totally insignificant. As for Iberia, IIRC some people put it in the range of 10-20% during the LBA-EIA, others (a Spanish genetics researcher, forgot the name) gave a presentation a good few months ago, and was making claims of IIRC the % reaching even 40% IIRC. (Have to double check).

In Bohemia, the Hallstatt samples seem to plot close with the south German samples, but the La Tene samples show a significant northern ancestry intrusion. Similarly, the north French samples from sites like Bucy le Long and even Vix IIRC also show a northern ancestry intrusion, perhaps related to McColl's ENS cluster from the lower Rhine/NW Germany.

I am not even going to discuss Transdanubia, Slovakia, Slovenia, north west Croatia and even parts of Austria because IIRC from the EBA perspective these areas did not share a profile with the EBA south Germany Lech river samples, and are therefore the target of later Celtic expansions, I'm guessing from southern Germany in the MBA in the form of the Tumulus culture, yet IIRC even in the IA some these presumed eastern Celts  do not overlap, at least not in G25, with the Hallstatt South Germany samples, implying a genetic profile that became partially mixed over time in a different way to south Germany (perhaps they were mixing with peoples who carried a lot of pre-Celtic ancestry and overtime additional foreign ancestry from surrounding non Celtic areas), but even so, a MBA Tumulus culture origin of some the Eastern Hallstatt peoples should be disregarded, not to mention possible subsequent waves of Urnfield, Hallstatt era population movements from the middle Danube into Bohemia, Moravia, Pannonia etc

And lastly, speaking about the MBA Tumulus culture, we now know that it spread into eastern France as well from southern Germany. It remains to be seen if the dna moved west as well, was already there, or possible moved west in later eras
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What are some thoughts on this forum of Patrick Sims-Williams and his work? 

I found this article to provide both an interesting overview of the prevailing theories of Celtic origins (and their foundations), in addition to an interesting third option.
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(08-27-2024, 08:32 PM)La Tene Wrote:
(08-14-2024, 08:33 AM)Gortaleen Wrote: That is using the name Celt to describe non-Germanic non-Italic speaking western Indo-Europeans who we believe spoke Celtic languages before the spread of the Roman Empire.  

Speaking a Celtic language does not necessarily make one a *Celt*. Modern Irish speak English, but they are not *English*

Please be respectful.  We do not need to be admonished that certain things are possible.  

For the sake of science, we are interested in what is likely.  

We know what is meant by Celt.  A Celt is someone who descends from the Indo-Europeans who occupied much of Continental Western Europe, Britain, and Ireland after 3000 BCE and, either speaks a Celtic language or whose ancestors spoke Celtic languages.  This group of Indo-Europeans is strongly associated with Y DNA haplogroup R-P312.  The association of Gaelic and British languages and Y DNA haplogroup R-L21 is especially strong.
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Let me briefly summarize my points which I have not done before at this forum, but I have touched upon it in my papers the Celtic and Italic from the West and the High Resolution Paternal Genetic History of Ireland (also let me mention that hopefully an extended version of the latter with a few more septs would be published soon).
I think it is clear now that most Y-DNA lineages recorded as Gaelic Irish later in early medieval times arrived to Ireland in EBA around 2100 BCE.
It is also nearly sure that Celto-Italic (incl. Celtiberian) genetic and linguistic variation cannot come from Hallstatt-La Tene, and especially we see the emergence / resurgence of Neolithic and "sleeping EBA" lineages spreading out of Hallstatt-La Tene (I2a-L233, G2a-L497, E-V13 subgroups, R1a-M458, I2-L621 just to mention a few) vs. a very monolithically R1b-P312-dominated Bronze Age in Western Europe.
With all due respect to the great job done by Patterson et al. on the samples, as I noted in my paper, they have not found any Gaelic Irish-type DNA (or precursor) in the LBA transition, and if you carefully check the data the Continent vs. British admixture on Y-DNA is actually measurably lower than on autosomal, which might indicate more elite outward migration towards the continent than inward movement of "Celtic patriarchs" into Britain. So my take is more like a "Cornwall to Britanny" or "Vikings out-of&back-to Scandinavia" type genetic exchange than any Proto-Celtic coming from France/Low Countries.
The genetic evidence is so numerous and strong now that I doubt any significant change to these findings (and this is also supported by the well-written McColl paper proving the significant genetic replacement in Britain in the 5th-6th cent. CE).

So now we face the question how to synchronize genetic evidence with linguistic findings.
I have two observations regarding that.

1. I have bought an Irish coursebook for beginners just for fun. A quite superficial and not academic-linguist observation that when they explain differences between Ulster, Galway and Cork Irish, it is really a pain in the... to follow and these are very divergent. I have encountered a lot of Slavic languages and even learnt some to different levels but believe me if Irish has only dialects than all Slavic languages (apart from Polish probably) can well be one language as well... So my point is that Irish dialects should be neutrally re-evaluated and they would likely make good for 3 different langauges at least

2. Languages regularly diverge and converge, so Brythonic-Gaelic similarities might derive from a secondary convergence period and not from a common ancestor spoken in LBA. This phenomenon can be proven historically at least for Greek and Italic branches. Ancient Greek already having recorded dialects then unification into Koine Greek in the Hellenistic Period, then divergence again in Medieval and then unification with modern state language. Same goes for Italic dialects and later languages diverging then unification under Latin, divergence after Vulgar Latin in Medieval and then unification processes in Modern era with state languages (see graph attached for an uneducated draft)

3. Religious / poetic languages tend to live long even if extinct in speech, e.g. Sanskrit, Latin... Historians from 2900 CE based on official docs might think that most of Europe was still speaking Latin around the 18th c.

So based on the three observation above my assumption (not proven and not perfect) is that Pre-Proto-Celtic type dialect of PIE arrived to Britain and Ireland around 2200-2100 BCE, then started diverging, in LBA trade and exchange processes it started to converge again, leading to some areal similarities among Insular Celts and close P-Celtic relationship across the Channel (L21 on one side and L2 on the other) and quite possibly was spread out in La Tene era towards South-Eastern parts of Europe but originating from Rhineland / Paris area P-Celtic dialects. The Ogham script might represent an old liturgical language not spoken in the early medieval era and thus falsely closing the time gap between Q and P-Celts.
The possible relative/periodic unification of Ireland in the 5th-9th c. CE could have lead to convergence among different earlier Q-Celtic languges to form Old Irish but the deep pre-Irish Gaelic languages made their mark (just like pre-Latin languages around the Roman Empire) and thus lead to relatively large differences between Modern Irish "dialects".

Sorry, probably this is not as brief as I intended to...


Attached Files Thumbnail(s)
   
Y-DNA: R1b-U152>Z36>BY1328>L671 (Late Roman North Italy to Pannonia)
mtDNA: U4c1 (Proto-IE > Germanic/Scandinavian branch?)
maternal grandpa Y: G2a-L13>L1263>Z38846 (Saxons to Hungary)
maternal grandpa mtDNA: B4c1a (Hungarian conquerors)
maternal grandma's Y: R1b-U106>S5520>BY33291 (Saxons to Hungary)
paternal grandpa's mtDNA: HV0
paternal grandma's mtDNA: H5a (Slavic)
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Some claims in recent studies that I found interesting and that may be relevant to the topic of this thread. From Speidel et al.: 

Quote:In this MDS analysis, we note a close affinity of wide-ranging individuals from Portugal, France, Germany, Austria and Britain. We hypothesize that this corresponds to areas associated with the Celtic-speaking world, and that their close genetic affinity is due to earlier expansions. Sparse sampling limits our understanding of the full extent of regional ancestry variation in central Europe and some other regions, but the continental ancestries differentiated in the MDS model suggests that major ancestry variation across Europe in this period is relatively well captured.

From Cassidy et al. which seems to support a similar stance as Patterson's study from 2022

Quote:Indeed, whereas most of Britain shows majority genomic continuity from the Early Bronze Age to the Iron Age, this is markedly reduced in a southern coastal core region with persistent cross-channel cultural exchange. This southern core has evidence of population influx in the Middle Bronze Age but also during the Iron Age. This is asynchronous with the rest of the island and points towards a staged, geographically granular absorption of continental influence, possibly including the acquisition of Celtic languages.

While not conclusive, it is certainly interesting.
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