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December 9th, 2011 | #1 | |||||||||||
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Join Date: Nov 2011
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Celtic vs. Gallic Ethnic Origins
Our understanding of who the Celts were and are is very much based on speculation that has circulated among scholars and academians over the past 300 years, and has changed a great deal during that time, as it is likely to continue to change in years to come as archaelogists and anthropologists reexamine their notions and conclusions by comparing their theories with the evidence.
In fact, it was not until 1707 that the Gaelic and Brythonic speaking inhabitants of the British Isles and their cousins in Brittany and Galacia on the European continent came to be identified as "Celts" by the 17th century antiquarian Edward Lhuyd, who first hypothesised that the Irish, Scots, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Bretons represented the descendants of the ancient tribes referred to as the "Keltoi" by the Greeks and the "Celtae" by the Romans, who learned of these people through the writings of early Classical explorers. These ancient accounts offer reason to doubt that the original early Celts even spoke languages that are related to those that we consider to be "Celtic" today, as the Gaelic/Gaulish/Galacian languages along with Cymraeg (Welsh) belong to the Indo-European family of languages that first evolved in Eastern Europe and the Near East; whereas the original Celts may have spoken an older, non-Indo-European language, more closely related to Basque. In fact, the Gaels/Gauls/Galacians as well as the Cymry are said in ancient records to have come to the British Isles from a region once known as Scythia, which covered a vast territory in Eastern Europe located roughly in the area of the present-day Ukraine, very near the original homeland of the ancient Aryan or Indo-European root language Only one tribe in the ancient era called themselves by a name resembling "Celts" and these were the Celtici, a tribe located in southwestern Spain. These are in fact the first "Celts" mentioned in history by the writer Herodotus in 450 B.C.E., who reported: Quote:
Below: Map showing the location of the original homeland of the Iberians along the coast of the Black Sea. The Iberians later migrated west across Europe along with the Gallic and Cimmerian tribes, before eventually settling in present-day Spain: Later, as the Gauls (known by tribal names such as the Galli and Galaeci) spread into Western Europe infiltrating lands originally occupied by the indigenous Celts, they would have introduced their Indo-European language and culture to the pre-Indo-European Celts who were most likely the descendants of the earliest native inhabitants of Western Europe whose ancestors were responsible for erecting the many megalithic monuments and barrows found throughout the territories inhabited by the Celts. Writing in the first century B.C.E. Diodorus Siculus spoke of how the Celts and Gauls were originally two distinct people, but had become merged, saying: Quote:
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If we look at genetics through DNA research, we find that the majority of the people living in countries like Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall are predominately of the R1b genetic haplogroup. The R1b haplotype is in fact the predominant haplogroup in Western Europe and occurs among a majority of the population in the same areas where the ancient megalithic monuments (dolmens, cromlechs, menhirs, and barrows like Newgrange, Callanish, Maes Howe, Avebury, Stonehenge, and Carnac) are found - which suggests that the majority of the people who we identify as "Celtic" are in fact descended from an aboriginal population that was native to Western Europe all the way back to the Stone Age. Below: Map showing the location of the highest concentration of Stone Age megalithic monuments in Europe: Below: map showing the areas of Europe which have the highest concentration of R1b DNA in their population Another interesting thing to consider is that Indo-European languages like Gaelic and Cymraeg would not have evolved among these people, but would have been introduced from Eastern Europe - the Aryan/Indo-European homeland, where the predominate haplotype is R1a - a fact which perfectly fits the old histories that record the Gaels as having originated in Scythia (present day Ukraine). Below: Map showing the origin and routes of distribution of the Aryan/Indo-European family of languages So the Gaels/Gauls/Galacians who we think of today as being "Celtic" would not originally have been, as the real "Celts" - the prehistoric R1b haplotype megalithic culture would have spoken a non-Indo European language probably very closely related to Basque. In fact, the Basque people who have remained a relatively isolated population in the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France have one of the highest percentages of R1b DNA in all of Europe, exceeded only by the inhabitants of Western Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and Wales, while among the remaining populations of both France and Spain R1b is still the predominate haplotype, though not found in the excessively high levels as it is among the Basques and the populations of the Western portion of the British Isles. This leaves us to draw the conclusion that while the Gaelic and Cymric languages evolved among an R1a population native to Eastern Europe, that these languages were at some point brought to Western Europe by their speakers who settled amongst the R1b Celts (who were the native population of Western Europe) and were eventually absorbed by the indigenous Celtic population that they settled among, though their language survived and was adopted by the Celts. The original Scots were not native to the country now called Scotland (which did not exist until the High Middle Ages), but were a tribe of Gaels who inhabited the north of Ireland. These Gaels or Scotti, as they were known to the Romans, eventually established an outpost colony called Dalriada in what is now Argyllshire around the year 500 A.D. About 350 years later, Kenneth MacAlpine, a descendant of both the royal lines of the Irish Scots of Dalriada and of the Picts (who were descendants of the native Britons that inhabited the non-Romanized northern third of Britain) united both tribes to form the Kingdom of Alba, which would eventually become known as "Scotland" several centuries later. At one time Ireland was referred to (in Latin) as Scotia after the Gaels or Scotti. When the Scotti emigrated to the northern third of Britain, that part of Britain came to be known as Scotia Minor while Ireland was known as Scotia Major. These Irish Scots, together with the Picts and some Viking admixture, became the ancestors of the Highlanders. The Lowland Scots were descended mainly from the native Celtic Britons and Picts together with a bit of admixture from the Angles who came to Britain from Germany during the Dark Ages and settled in Bernicia (Northumbria). The majority of the population of Britain however is descended from the native Celtic Britons, a people who the Germanic Anglo-Saxons referred to as Welas meaning "strangers", from which the modern words Welsh and Wales are derived. The Britons of Ystrad Clud, Rheged, and Goddodin, which were located in the Scottish Lowlands were ethnically and culturally the same people who are known as the Welsh today, though in Scotland they became the ancestors of the Lowland Scots. According to their own accounts the Gaels who first came to Ireland from the European continent by way of Spain were of Scythian origin. Scythia was a vast region that in ancient times encompassed much of Eastern Europe including present day Ukraine and the Caucasus. The Scythians were known by many names: Scyths, Sacae, Skuthes, Skuda, Scoloti, etc. (meaning "archers") and from them the Gaelic tribe known as the Scotti or Scots is descended. It was in that part of Scythia, located along the current Polish-Ukranian border, that the ancient province of Galicia is found. Below: map of the original Gallic kingdom of Galicia located in ancient Scythia (present day Ukraine/Poland) Galicia was the original homeland of the Gallic people, who were the earliest ancestors of the Gauls of Europe, and the Gaels of Ireland and Scotland. This history is recalled in the words of the Scottish Declaration of Arbroath, addressed to the Pope in 1320: Quote:
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The Scythian origin of the Scots is also recorded in the text known as Chronica de Origine Antiquorum Pictorum (The Pictish Chronicle), which is based on an earlier work, dating to the 7th century, entitled Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville, who wrote: Quote:
The Picts were simply non-Romanised Britons, as the Romans didn't conquer the entire island of Britain, they ended up building a coast to coast fortification (Hadrian's Wall) to separate Romanised Britain from the non-Romanised Britons living in the northern third of the island of Britain. Because the Britons living north of Hadrian's Wall were not under Roman control, they retained their own indigenous native Celtic culture and language, whereas the Britons living south of Hadrian's wall were more influenced by Roman ways and manners. The names Briton and Britain themselves come from the Celtic words Pretani and Prydain, which the Britons used to refer to themselves and their island. These words are derived from the Celtic root word Pryd, meaning "to mark" or "draw" and refer to the native Briton practice of painting or tattooing their skin with designs using a dye or ink obtained from the woad plant which produces a blue color; a trait described by Herod of Antioch in the 3rd century A.D., who wrote: Quote:
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Somewhat earlier, in about 60 B.C., Diodorus Siculus wrote: Quote:
The Cimbri, or Cymric tribes as they were known in Britain, were descendants of the ancient Cimmerians who originally inhabited what is now the Crimea on the northern shores of the Black Sea bordering Scythia, until they were scattered after generations of intramural struggles for rulership with competing Scythian tribes; not unlike the events described in the Lebor Gabala Erenn. Below map of The Cymric kingdom of Wales, known anciently as Cambria in Latin: While the Britons living in the southern two-thirds of Britain became more "civilized" under Roman military rule and adopted Roman ways and manners, the Britons living in the northern third of the island beyond Roman control retained their own native Celtic customs and practices, which included tattooing their skin with woad. Thus by the end of the third century AD, the Romans began to refer to the Britons living in the northern third of the island as the "Picti" or Picts (from the Latin word Pictus, meaning "painted"). The term Pict first appears in a in a verse praising the emperor Constantius Chlorus written by the Roman orator Eumenius in 297 AD; while in 416 A.D. the Roman poet Claudian wrote:"This legion, set to guard the furthest Britons, curbs the savage Scot and studies the designs marked with iron on the face of the dying Pict". Below: map showing the ethnic divisions found in the North of Britain after the 5th century A.D. |
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