new scottish DNA study

[eaglemo]

When you start looking into family connections, the farther go you back, you may find that family and blood are mixed with many nations (Scots, Irish, English, etc...)! It is all in what you love and are interested in. We should not be alarmed or discouraged in finding that we may be related to many peoples, but enjoy the mix and the interesting things about all!

That way the world will get along much better!!!

[Clockwork]

Don't worry guys, we all came from Africa anyway.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

Cheers,
-Jake

[Tuirc]

Very interesting discussion going on here! I've read T. W. Rolleston's Celtic Myths and Legends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._W._Rolleston Before he goes into the Myths and Legends part of the book he discusses the history of the Celts and their origins and practices. I think, in light of some of the foregoing information, it would be useful to add some of the information that Rolleston discusses about the ancient Celts.

The Celtic Empire existed at roughly the same time as the Greek Empire. Their zenith pre-dated the Roman empire. Rolleston relates a story that Celts and one of the towns in present day northern Italy had a trading conflict about 300 BC. A delegation was sent from Rome to attempt to relieve the town which the Celts had beseiged. In the event however; they made it worse. They insulted the Celts who then ended their seige of the small town and marched straight to Rome. They did not pillage other towns or places until they got to Rome. They proceeded to sack Rome and occupy it for a year. They collected tribute from the Romans for that year and then left. This event left a very strong imprint on the Roman psyche.

The Greeks knew the Celts and in their writings, they refer to any part of Europe above their lands as belonging to the Celts. The Celtic method of governance, Rolleston said, followed this pattern:

The Celts would move into an area and occupy the high ground. They would not generally have much to do with the people then living in the area except they would demand tribute for the security they offered. And, this pattern was repeated throughout areas that the Celts controlled. Also, religion was very important and Druids went where ever the Celts went.

I would also mention that when the Saxons were dominating in Northumbria, their influence ran up and down the coast and a bit across the island from Northumbria. They didn't have success moving north and west into the Highlands. I point this out to suggest that the Saxons did not have an influence that would have impacted the Gaels coming in from the other side on the west coast of current day Scotland. And, here you have to origins of the two languages of Scotland. The Gaelic of the invading Gaels from the west and Scots from the Anglo-Saxons. On this latter point of the development of the Scots language as distinct from English, I heard a wonderful speaker who did a great job laying out how this occurred. The short version is that both English and Scots developed from this common influence the invasion and dominance of the Anglo-Saxons, but they developed separately and independantly until the 1500s. At this time the preponderance of printing presses on Britain were in the English area, so most written works were in English or Latin (or possibly French). But, to the point of English and Scots, the fact that more works were in English led more Scots to be able to read English and it had an influence on Scots (which was quite divergent from English at that time) to become more like English. A look at surviving maps and globes over the 16th and 17th centuries demonstrate how much Scots became like English from where it had been. Enough on that topic.

[Mike_Oettle]

To talk of a Celtic empire is stretching things a bit. There were certainly Celtic peoples living across Europe, as far apart as the Atlantic coast of Iberia (Galicia) and Asia Minor (Galatia), as well as in Gaul (France), most of Britain and Ireland, Switzerland (home of the Helvetii), Bohemia (named for the Boii), Austria and northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul).
They had a vibrant culture and maintained links with other Celts. They were renowned as warriors, but they tended to fall out among each other, and no enduring large kingdoms were created.
And to attribute Scottish use of the English language to the printing press is ludicrous, since the eastern side of the country and most of the south was English-speaking before the Scots conquered the four kingdoms of the north and called them Scotland. This was the legacy of conquest by the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria.
The surviving documents written in Old English all originate in Northumbria, and the peoples that fell under this kingdom still speak a different kind of English from those further south.
Certainly there was the influence of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which distributed Bibles and Christian literature in English in Gaelic-speaking areas, but this came close on a millennium later.
Regards,
Mike

[Tuirc]

For the description of Celtic Empire your argument is with T.W. Rolleston, not with me. I'll leave you two to get that sorted.

I think you misconstrue my discussion of the printing press primarily because you probably disagree with one of my premises, which is that Scots and English are two different languages that evolved from a common root. I'll admit this is a somewhat controversial position, but I'm going to favor it. Here's a wee video on the subject. You may wish to view it to better understand my previous post, since I was essentially trying, in a forum post, to summarize this 20 min. lecture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cENbkHS3mnY

[Mike_Oettle]

Well, Tuirc, regarding Rolleston you have not provided anything I can get my teeth into. The link to Wikipedia tells me little enough about him personally and nothing at all about his Celtic Empire cloud-cuckooland.
As for Dauvit Horsbroch, his arguments are valid enough when it comes to the separate development of the dialects of Anglo-Saxon (to use a less loaded term than English) under distinct political regimes, but fails to look far enough back into the past.
Scots, Inglis or Engels (as Horsborch terms it) traces its origins not to the kingdom ruled by the descendants of William of Normandy, but to Northumbria (as I have mentioned before), and it is narrowly nationalistic of him to regard the dialects of Northumberland and Durham as being distinct from it.
His inclusive view of the Orcadian and Zetland dialects is not necessarily wrong, but one has to acknowledge Norse influence on linguistic trends in those islands.
Regards,
Mike

[S.S.Muldoon]

It's funny this came up, since I just picked up my copy of Rolleston to re-read. I don't recall him using the term "empire", although I could be mistaken, but he is very clear that the Celts were never organized under a central government. Perhaps Tuirc was just using the term to mean the geographical area that ebbed and flowed under Celtic influence.
The popular (mis)usage of the term Celtic has been lamented on this board before... Its one of the few drawbacks of living with and communicating with a living, evolving plastic language. One can mow the grass, smoke the grass, or grass on the dodgy people a few doors down.