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
shareshare
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.
the Sumerians were the basques’ ancestors…
Edgar Kacey (the greatest psychic of all time) said while he was in a trance? that the Basques came from atlantis.
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….
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…
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/humanmig.htm
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…..
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.
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?
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”
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
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)
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!
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
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.
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 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.”
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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…
the basques are phoenicians-sumerians(hebrews of the bible)
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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)
“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
oops sorry i didnt know i already had posted that link
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
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t42478-3/
read poster kukulkon
http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/ltbmu/learning/history-culture/?cid=fsm9_046612
“The First Family of Europe”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZEY-7Vqzd4
poor catalina is jealous u can tell shes spanish lmao
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.
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.