Have the British Ever Been Celtic

[Synophiucus]

So often we here the same ol arguments that the Celts are the original British population pushed westward by migrating Germanic Saxons, Scandinavians and or Normans. However genetics now shows that the majority of the British population are descended from those who migrated here soon after the ice sheets retreated about 15,000 yrs ago. Only 5% or so of British genetics can be traced to a so called Celtic, Germanic, Scandinavian or Norman colonisation and the majority of us Brits are descended from a Basque lineage which stretches way before the 'Iron age'. What we Brits have been very good at is adopting certain cultural trends that have arrived here by elite migrations which very quickly became geneticaly absorbed into the vast majority Basque population. Is it not about time we reclaimed our real heritage and stop spreading late C18th romanticism regarding our supposed Celtic origins and also reclaim what it means to be truley indigenous to these islands.

An interesting read http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2006/ ... hancestry/

[Bart]

Question is, are you trolling or baiting. I will take the bait: what genetic heritage would you propose. The Basques were considered to be Celts at some point and most of the influences are cultural.

Wonder if you want to go back to the iron age and build another Stonehenge.

BTW getting rid of the (C18th) romantisism or even older, is a admirable challenge. You might want to check in with the ADF.

[Dathi]

Greetings,
Something very similar was proposed in a couple of TV docs. Fair bit of info here:
http://www.rte.ie/tv/bloodoftheirish/index.html

Yours Aye,

Dathi

[DaRC]

That article will have been paraphrased from Stephen Oppenheimers "The Origins of the British". I suggest you read the book to form your own opinion. I liked the book, it has much of interest around the re-population of these isles after the Ice Age from the Glacial refuges in Spain and the Balkans. So your point about "the vast majority Basque population" is incorrect and is far too simplistic to describe the complexity of genetic migration.

However, you are assuming several points - which the book clearly draws out:
a) The definition of what a Celt is
b) The question of whether Celticism is cultural or genetic
c) What does Celt mean in a modern context

The book covers a & b but largely leaves c alone.
Oppenheimer's research indicates that there are two routes into the British Isles; one from the South / West and the other from the North / East. The two routes definitely seem to show genetic migration they also seem to show the same pattern for cultural migration. It seems to support Prof Cunliffe's view of an Atlantic Celtic culture based around the Celtic languages these then migrated up the western coast of the British Isles so it answers your question with an emphatic yes.

However the counterpoint is against the "Anglo-Saxon Invasion event" by suggesting that a Saxon culture had been in eastern Britain for about as long as the Celtic culture had and that the Angle, Viking and Norman migrations were a continuation of a process that had been happening since the last ice age. Thus eastern Britain (England / Scotland) has been part of a continous Germanic cultural connection to what is modern day Belgium, the Netherlands, north west France and western Germany whilst the modern day Celtic countries (Wales, Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany, western Scotland & England)) have had a continous Celtic cultural connection via the Atlantic with northern Spain and the Atlantic coast of France.

What is also interesting is that the genetic migration seems to support the Irish mythological view, written in the "Book of Invasions", which had long been dismissed by Historians as fantasy.

However, Oppenheimer's view is his perspective - not fully agreed (or agreed with at all) by linguists or historians - and the problems always come when a reporter wants to cause a stir by misinterpreting what he wrote.

[Synophiucus]

Hello Darc, I shall certainly check the book out, your recommendation seems enthusiastic and the article was informative. However Im not sure what you mean when you say that:

"So your point about "the vast majority Basque population" is incorrect and is far too simplistic to describe the complexity of genetic migration."

I was simply refering to genetic research that has recently shown that the genetic contribution that the Celts, Saxons and Scandinavians have made to the British is actualy quite minimal and their cultural contribution far outweighs their genetic contribution. It is well recongised that the Basques [South-Western Iberian peoples who immigrated here after the ice age] who are most closely related to the majority of Brits/Irish are of a more ancient population group than the Celts, and the fact that we are not the supposed mongrel nation that many liberal-Leftis would have us be, is most enlightening. Likewise Im not proposing that we revert to a pre-Celtic religious tradition but simply recognise that a Celtic religious tradition, as exemplified by the Druids, is just part of our makeup and not its root [as many Celtaphiles would have us seemingly believe], and that perhaps even the past 1500 yrs of Christianity has just as much relevence to us as a nation as the Druids .

[Equidae]

I recommend you also read Saxons, Vikings, and Celts by Bryan Sykes. I'm a pretty hardcore science reader so I wasn't overjoyed with the book since he delve into the nitty gritty studies and statistics as much as I would have liked, but it was still valuable for the general insight into the issue. I think Oppenheimer's book has become a bit dated now since the studies such as the Human Genome Project, Human Genographic Project, and others weren't around when he originally wrote and then later revised his book.

Even if the people of the British Isles did mostly originate from migrated Iberians I still wouldn't say that they have a Basque heritage. This migration supposedly occurred immediately following the Ice Age, and so I don't think you could even reasonably say there were in any Basque people in existence at the time (or Celtic for that matter.) Behaviorally modern humans have only been around for about 50,000, and only really began transitioning from hunter gatherers to a more agrarian based lifestyle about 10,000 years ago. Considering the prominent place that farming and permanent settlement have within the cultures of both the Celts and the Basques then I think it would be fair to say that, whoever the first humans in the British Isles were, they weren't what anyone would consider Celts or Basques. I also feel that if we somehow managed to bring some no kidding period Celtic or Basque people to meet the original settlers that they wouldn't have recognized any of them as being on of their people. This is especially true of the Basques when you consider how deeply even modern Basques identify with the actual physical ancestral family home, even if it had been demolished or abandoned for generations. I also think that modern Basques probably wouldn't recognize much of the culture of pre-Roman or pre-Spanish Basque people, either.

There is also evidence of a Celtic speaking Iberian population which further muddles things, and I can't even begin to imagine how you'd untangle that particular genetic Gordian knot. Being Celtic or Basque is just as much, if not more, a cultural identity as it is a genetic one. Therefore, even if we do discover that most of the inhabitants of the British Isles are of Iberian descent I don't think it would change the undeniably Celtic identity that they're had for thousands of years. Depending on which scholar you talk to about the origin of the Basques you might as well argue that they need to quit pretending they're Iberian, and embrace their actual Eastern European/Balkan/Caucasus/Sardinian/Anatolian/Whatever Else They've Managed To Come Up With identity.

This sort of question is why I've always been a Universalist pagan. I think that you have a stronger tie to the traditions of your family ancestors, but I don't see why you couldn't develop a connection with another tradition that you've never encountered and have no relation to. I personally have always had a strong personal connection with the peoples and mythology of Scandinavia, Germany, and the British Isles long before I had any idea that my family came from there. Genetically speaking we're more or less identical to our east African progenitors plus or minus the inevitable pockets of genetic drift and diffusion.

If you really want to know where you're family comes from then I recommend investing in a kit from the National Genographic Project. It costs $100 for a kit which is on the inexpensive side of the DNA heritage analysis house, and you need to buy two if you want both mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA tracking. But if you're really interested in that sort of thing then I can say it's well worth the money courtesy of the various bells and whistles you get and the knowledge that you're contributing in your own little way to a major scientific study.
https://genographic.nationalgeographic. ... index.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Basques
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtiberians
(Yes, I know it's a cardinal sin to cite Wikipedia, but I'm feeling lazy today )

[DaRC]

Like what Equidae sez
Lets just remember what mostly means - it still means that 30-40 of the populated derive from one of the other 2 Ice Age refuges in the Balkans and the Ukraine. In reality it means that each individual is a mongrel of different genetic influences from a variety of places.
Also after the people left the ice age refuges their mitochrondial DNA changed as well. To create new markers derived from the ancient one.

Also we shouldn't confuse the Basque culture with the north west Spanish Ice Age refuge.
To compare genetics and culture is comparing apples with oranges.
The Basque culture seems to have remained an isolated pocket, linguistically, whilst the rest of Europe changed around them.

Certainly within OBOD druidry there is the acceptance that Christianity is part of our continuum just like ancient Druidry before that. OBOD Druidry represents another turn of the philosophical wheel that is (hopefully) more appropriate to this time and place.

[Al Hakim]

I think there is a common misunderstanding of who "the Celts" were. Nowadays we tend to take them as one people, one nation. But they had probably been many different smaller or bigger tribes- each with a different culture.

What modern druidry has been doing is to pick a piece from the Germanic past and a second one from Brittanic archeology and so on to form a new coherent philosophy. That comforts our minds as we need the belief in a continued past. We dream of certain miracles that are unlikely to happen if we switch on our scientific mind.

But you hit the point, and I myself always had difficulties in accepting a transformed philosophy from doubtful ancient origins into modern life.

[Bart]

Does the origin of a philosophy needs to be spotless, if it rings your bells? Most people use it as a starting point on an ecclectic route.

That is the beauty of most modern day Druid philosophies: you can add and subtract anything you want. Want to add dragons and faeries go ahead, want to add christianity go ahead. Only a few directions are militant in their dogma's.

If you have trouble you need to add/subtract, or find a dogmatic belief system which thinks/feels/beliefs for you.

[Gus]

Well did the celts even exit is probably a more poignent question seeing as Keltoi was a Greek term. If some alien race suddenly started calling humans ~"wiggys" and in time we adopted the name it wouldnt mean our whole cultural history was suddenly invalidated. The word Britain itself probably relates to the Brigantes tribe who were found in both Britain and Irelant according to Ptomely and Roman sources. The word Britain (root Bri- or Pry) probably gave rise to the name of the goddess Briagantia (England) Brigid (Ireland) so the old tribes were definately British. Ofc= ourse they had probably never heard the word "celts" but that does nothing to detract from the ancient pagan history of the country or the fact that we had common cultural and religous links with the rest of europe. That there were tribes here previous to the celts is undoubtable and that the genetic heritage didnt change much is also well known - theres a strong chance celtic languages borrowed words from previous languages - so it doent really alter anyhting much - nor take away from celtic identity which probably incorporated many previous customs anyway - just as christians didnt suddenly disapear just because they start speaking English instead of Italian or Hebrew. .

[Al Hakim]

Gus,

in fact the term "keltoi" was a superordinate concept of the ancient Greeks and later the Romans to classify every foreigner living in the North of their empires while the Southern tribes were all "barbarian". The celtic tribes haver never called themselves "kelts", as far as I know, but by their tribal names "Treveri", "Lingones" on the continent. Our modern classification still stems from the old Roman authors who did not care who the other people were but just wanted to show their inferiority compared with the Roman culture and from a specific grave culture.
Because of the lack of written lore we just assume a straight line of tradition from the time of the ancient "celts" to the early middles-ages.
The big world religions developed several deviant paths throughout their history. Therefore, it is probable that a unique celtic philosophy - if such existed at all - had split up into different directions, too. But most of the branches have disappeared without leaving any traces. So, the present Irish/Welsh (celtic) lore will be a minimum cultural remain of what the ancient tribes really thought and taught.

[DJ Droood]

Imagine someone trying to reconstruct "Christianity" in the "English World" in 2000 years when all the hard drives have rusted out and cheap paper has disintigrated, and the nasty athiests have destroyed everything....Catholic and Protestant, all the small snake handling sects and denominations and apostacies...related cults like Mormonism and Johos....all of which trace back to a shadowy cult figure 2000 years earlier still....I can just imagine all the hippies dressed in Pope's hats dancing around Easter eggs....and we are so much more careful with record keeping than the Iron Age Brits and Gauls.

[Gus]

Gus,

in fact the term "keltoi" was a superordinate concept of the ancient Greeks and later the Romans to classify every foreigner living in the North of their empires while the Southern tribes were all "barbarian". The celtic tribes haver never called themselves "kelts", as far as I know, but by their tribal names "Treveri", "Lingones" on the continent. Our modern classification still stems from the old Roman authors who did not care who the other people were but just wanted to show their inferiority compared with the Roman culture and from a specific grave culture.

Agreed - thats what I just said in my post.

Because of the lack of written lore we just assume a straight line of tradition from the time of the ancient "celts" to the early middles-ages.
The big world religions developed several deviant paths throughout their history. Therefore, it is probable that a unique celtic philosophy - if such existed at all - had split up into different directions, too.

All the evidence indicates there was no "pan celtic" tradition. Apart from Lugh and a couple of other Gods, as well as some textiles, and religous links it seems very likely that Britain and Ireland had very localised traditions from the outset (ie one town could worship a different God to the next) - so again - agreed. However to deny there wasn't any cultural and religious connections of what we now call the Celts across Europe (in actual fact there probably hundreds of different tribes that came under the Celtic umbrella term Celt and had never heard the word celt) would seem to disagree with the mainstream view. There was a culture across Europe tha made beautiful swirly jewelry, wore tartan etc - they just didn't call themselves celts. In just the same way the fact that some Welsh people have adopted the term Welsh, when Welsh is actually the Anglo Saxon word for foreigner, doesn't mean the Welsh dont exist and their entire cultural heritage is false.

But most of the branches have disappeared without leaving any traces. So, the present Irish/Welsh (Celtic) lore will be a minimum cultural remain of what the ancient tribes really thought and taught.

Here I disagree. Cultures do not spring out of a vacuum - it is very likely that we have cultural traits that we are unaware of that go back a very long time - even if the linguistic vernacular has changed.
One example is a wishing well which is considered to be a direct throwback to the Celtic practise of throwing precious metal objects into lakes and wells. However there are no doubt subtler cultural traits than this which have their roots in ancient times - one might be the British attitude to women for example. That cultures ,like languages, evolved over time is of course obvious. I cannot understand a word of old English but without it English in its current form would never have existed - so to discount the importance and relevance of Old English to modern English would be foolish . Take it back even further without PIE (protoindo European) English wouldn't be spoken the way it is today either. Modern English has its roots in ,and has evolved out of, Old English and even earlier languages and despite the numerous invasions and the injection of a heavy dose of Latin from the Normans etc the legacy of Old English and its predecessors have still had a massive influence on how we speak today.
The same goes for ancient cultures - medieval cultures evolved out of the older iron and bronze age cultures and our modern culture has evolved out of medieval culture. Even though cultural practises in iron age Britain may be totally incomprehensible to me now they are just as relevant to modern day British culture as Old English and its predecessors is to modern day English.
What ,however, is kind of false, is to recreate new and detailed ceremonies from scratch and pretend that they are somehow identical to Iron age Britain. Thats almost as if I made up some gobbledygook and called it old English. You could point out that the gobbledygook I made up is in itself a product of thousands of years of culture and then in some peculiar way just as valid - for example a Chinese neo pagan trying to reclaim the culture of hiss ancestors would probably invent an entirely different set of ceremonies because his ideas would be the product of a completely different cultural background .
However this is completely different to acknowledging that what happened 3000 years ago in Britain has a cultural influence on what happens in Britain today - if Iron age culture had been completely different in Britain - then we would also, no doubt, be culturally very different in modern day Britain.
Ok so if we think Iolo Morganwg just made up a pack of lies - my point it that he was a product of his environment and his culture - if he had been born in China he would have written a very different pack of lies.
We often think of our culture as being the big dramatic ceremonial aspects of it. However in actual fact the real substance of our culture goes completely unnoticed by us in the same way a fish might not realise its swimming in water or we dont notice the air we breathe .
Nothing brings this home like travelling - I never realised how idiosyncratically British (and possibly Northern European or American) reading on trains was until I went travelling to Spain , Thailand and South America where you never see it.

[Gus]

Imagine someone trying to reconstruct "Christianity" in the "English World" in 2000 years when all the hard drives have rusted out and cheap paper has disintigrated, and the nasty athiests have destroyed everything....Catholic and Protestant, all the small snake handling sects and denominations and apostacies...related cults like Mormonism and Johos....all of which trace back to a shadowy cult figure 2000 years earlier still....I can just imagine all the hippies dressed in Pope's hats dancing around Easter eggs....and we are so much more careful with record keeping than the Iron Age Brits and Gauls.

Too funny. I guess my point would be the future British hippies would be dancing around Easter eggs in Pope hats (again - lol) whereas the Chinese Hippies of the future would , oh I dont know, be deep frying kittens and worshiping pictures of Chairman Mao.
Who knows there may be a future neo neo reconstructionist pagan sect who base their ideas on a recovered harddrive that had outlines of OBODs sylybus
Ancient peoples had cultures which evolved over a long time. Even if a lot of the details are lost one thing we have in common is imagination inspired by our environment - that the same now as it was then.
And although most people of an academic background might be uncomfortable with this - who knows - maybe some of those gods and spirits and otherworlds are real - no reason someone today cant rediscover them without discourse to ancient practises.

[DJ Droood]

And although most people of an academic background might be uncomfortable with this - who knows - maybe some of those gods and spirits and otherworlds are real - no reason someone today cant rediscover them without discourse to ancient practises.

And although we may be veering off-course from the ops post, I don't see why "druidry" can't be used to describe this process of rediscovering, with the caveat that we don't make false claims about following ancient practices. If the original spirit of the druids was to discover the truth in the world around them, does that spirit not still exist today? And if we are heirs to their world, can't we lay claim to that word?

[Al Hakim]

And although we may be veering off-course from the ops post, I don't see why "druidry" can't be used to describe this process of rediscovering, with the caveat that we don't make false claims about following ancient practices. If the original spirit of the druids was to discover the truth in the world around them, does that spirit not still exist today? And if we are heirs to their world, can't we lay claim to that word?

An excellent point. I think it is impossible to untangle the mysteries of history and - as Gus pointed out - discover the true roots of the celtic philosophy. So it is useless to even waste time on it !? But to strive for the truth is an everlasting topic. It only needs the single assumption that the old druids wanted to find the truth, too.

[DJ Droood]

An excellent point. I think it is impossible to untangle the mysteries of history and - as Gus pointed out - discover the true roots of the celtic philosophy. So it is useless to even waste time on it !? But to strive for the truth is an everlasting topic. It only needs the single assumption that the old druids wanted to find the truth, too.

I wouldn't say it is useless..any pursuit of knowledge is valuable, and I think trying to "suss out" the beliefs of the original druids and Celts is a fascinating and useful thing to do...most of us are at least hobbyists/enthusiasts in this field, I would think...and if you can/wish to incorporate your findings into your spiritual practices, more power to you. I think there is, however, a tendency in some schools of modern druidry to think this focus on the past is the "only" way, and that these spiritual archaeologists are the only one's who can lay claim to the word "druid".

It only needs the single assumption that the old druids wanted to find the truth, too.

Actually, if you (or anyone) had a sliver a proof that that was true, I would love to see it...."The Truth Against The World" is lovely, and Druidic words to live by, imo, but they feel somewhat tainted as they came from Iolo. Is there a reason to believe this is what the Iron Age Druids were interested in? I'd like to believe it, but a big part of me thinks they were simply elite cogs in the power structure who used bogymen and superstition to keep the Hoi polloi from eating them and their warlords..and all the intellectual (and physical) heavy lifting had already been done for them by the Neolithic henge builders...(who I think I am far more fascinated by, but have no catchy word to describe what they did.)

[Equidae]

I agree. Striving solely for authenticity is futile, and even if it weren't there were a lot of things in those societies that wouldn't be pleasant to experience. That reminds me of an article about medicine I read once. It went into how a lot of westerners will pay exorbitant fees to go to foreign and/or third world countries for these supposed millennia old cures and herbs, but if you ask anyone in the culture about ancient healing practices vrs Johns Hopkins they go for a doctor almost every time.

[Gus]

This from another forum , its well observed and also reminded me that "celtic" could be considered as much a culture as a race. To base these assertions on genetic evidence alone would be silly - after all everyone in the UK now uses computers - that doesnt mean we've been invaded by the Japanese or there should be any marker on the genetic record of Britain :

As a fairly solid rule, yes. Language is the vehicle for culture. 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.

1.

Ref
1. http://caerfeddwyd.proboards.com/index. ... hread=1818
last available 04/14/2012

[DaRC]

Ermmm having read the book quite recently I can say that quite a lot of that post is bs.

e.g.

Oppenheimer seems to be under the impression that populations do not change their languages, rather language replacement only stems from population replacement.

Absolutely not he's quite clear that populations change their language with culture.#

claiming that speakers of a Celtic language arrived in the British Isles around 9000 BC is ludicrous,

He doesn't say that he says that various linguistic models indicate that the earliest it could've arrived is. He then clearly states that the frustrating thing about linguists is their refusal to date anything!

On the other hand, I don't concoct wild theories about genetics and foist them on the unsuspecting public in paperback form.

He's quite clear in stating what he know, genetics, and what he's taken from other studies in other disciplines. He then had his book reviewed by experts in the field. He also clearly references his information to the research papers it is based upon - so suggesting that he's concocted wild theories is somewhat of an overstatement.

There is only one area, from my reading of the book, where the quotes from the other forum raises a valid point

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 (Ed DaRC - those In eastern England)?

This is something that is a valid criticism - although once again it's looking at a specific point rather than the themes which are around a genetic & cultural split between Eastern and Western Britain that started in the Mesolithic and has continued into recent times.