h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You speak of Goidelic coming from Iberia and Brythonic coming from Gaul as if the two areas were isolated from each other. Where is the historical evidence for this? Remember that if the Celtic heartland was in central Europe then the Celtic languages/dialects spoken in Gaul and Iberia came from the same place themselves. Modern behaviour patterns can confuse us too - in the past it was often faster and easier to travel by sea. The Irish sea was a motorway as well as a barrier.

The 'very strong ties between the Gaelics' that you notice are, as you say, 'because....migration from Ireland [produced] Scottish and Manx Gaelic'. In simple terms Scottish and Manx Gaelic are like American and Australian English, produced by movement of people and/or culture to new territory; no wonder they're similar. The sister languages of Welsh, Cornish and Breton have ties to Gaelic, but much further back.

Basque is an interesting case. I heard recently that there are great DNA similarities between the Basques and the peoples of the Western parts of the British Isles. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, I suspect that there are elements of the modern Celtic languages that are not Celtic at all - they are remnants of the previous language(s) that we ignorantly lump together with the bits that clearly link to European Celtic languages.
It's not quite the same but imagine people in the future thinking that every word in the English language (like Karaoke or petit pois) was of Germanic origin!

I believe Gallician is closest to Portugese but both the language and culture have many elements which are considered by some to be of Celtic origin.

Gaul and Iberia, I got the impression, were somewhat isolated from one another. I believe there is a mountain range between modern France and Spain. And, at the time, there was one language that was spoken throughout that part of Europe. But there was a difference, just as there are different dialects throughout a country. The Iberians settled Ireland, and so I'd assume that the Gaelics were formed from the Iberian dialect. And I was under the impression that Britain and Brittany were settled by Celts from Gaul, which would lead me to believe that the Brythonic languages were formed from the Gaulish dialect.

As far as Scots', Manx, and Irish Gaelic being simply dialects of one language, I'd have to disagree. They're very different. Similar, yes, but not so similar as to be considered dialects so much. Irish alone has various dialects, of course, but the basic words are mostly the same. In Scots', verbs are entirely different, as well as pronunciation in a number of cases. (If I'm not mistaken, the word "agam" is pronounced quite differently in either language, plus the difference between the Irish "Ta/" and the Scottish "Tha" would lead me to think that they are indeed two different languages.) I'd say the variation between Dutch and German would better explain the variation between the Gaelics. I cannot speak for Manx, however I'd assume it has similar differences.

I'm very probably wrong about a lot of this, though, as I've never studied it formally. Corrections are most definitely welcome.

~Sirona

I still think that whatever local influences or flow of people, it seems wrong to over-stress a link between Iberia and Ireland on one hand and Britain and Gaul on the other. The distance between Britain and ireland is less than the other distances involved and there has always been a consistent flow of people between the two.
A journey from Gaul to Ireland is much shorter and easier than one from Iberia. From the perspective of an Iberian is it really easier to follow the coast and find Ireland? Or is it easier to find Wales, Cornwall and the British South coast? Indeed, some people think that the early Britons were from Iberia themselves.
All of the British isles have had trading links to Northern Europe and the Mediterranean since before Roman times. I'd like to know why the Iberians would choose one island and ignore the other. Is there any modern evidence of this and any theory for why? Can you imagine Indonesians going to New Zealand and only settling the South island (ignoring the North), while the Malaysians go there and only settle the North island (ignoring the South)?

Also, I was not clear with my comparison of the types of Gaelic with types of English and this was misleading. I did not intend to imply that they were currently dialects of one language; they are similar but different languages. My comment was meant to point out WHY they are so similar today. Gaelic had been spoken in Ireland for a long time, while other languages (Brythonic?) were spoken on the Isle of Man and in Scotland. Irish Gaelic then spread to these 2 areas and the languages have developed along different paths since then. Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic have diverged only over the last 1500 years or so, whereas Goidelic and Brythonic would have diverged from one source much longer ago.

They *didn't* ignore the other island (Albion, I believe, it was called) because they settled Scotland. However, it seemed likely to me because Welsh and Cornish, I thought, were related to Breton, and Breton, I thought, was in Northern France. That's where that idea came from.

~Sirona

The standard view is that Breton actually came from Britain (and thus from Brythonic) c. 600 AD due to pressure from the English push to the West. There are some who believe that the migration to Britanny was (a) voluntary, not forced (b) 'reinforced' the Celtic language (remnants of Gaulish) which was still being spoken there. After all, there have always been strong links between Cornwall and Britanny.

Remember too that Britanny in some ways could be considered as close to Ireland (by sea and culture) as it is to what is now NE France/Belgium.


My knowledge on this is limited, but I wonder if Brythonic and Goidelic 2000 years ago were more closely related to each other than either one was to the continental forms of Celtic?

I would assume so. All the languages are so closely related, and, of course, stemmed from the Indo-European languages... I'm assuming that before the branching off, before they left the continent, the language was very close that the different styles would be like dialects as opposed to completely different languages. I'd say they weren't isolated enough from one another for that to happen. Just a guess. This is where my knowledge stops and my guessing begins.

~Sirona

Just wanted to say that mitochondrial DNA is not part of the main human DNA. It is not correct to say that it is inherited through the female line. In fact mitochondrial DNA is still a big enigma. What is known is that most of the mitochondrial DNA is likely to be inherited from the mother simply because the egg takes up most of the space in the reproductive cycle.

I would like to know the definition being used when you say these women are direct descendants of the woman in the bog. To be a direct descendant of someone you don't need to have exactly the same DNA as your ancestor (which incidentally would make you a clone of your ancestor). I think it is a bit over-confident to make such a claim based on mitochondrial DNA alone. Certainly the best you can say is that the women are related to the woman in the bog.

That said I agree there is a high chance they are direct descendants based on the assumption that countless generations will have lived out their lives near to where they were born.

On a slightly different track, Professor Sykes' claim can easily be explained when you realise that the conquerors almost always end up breeding with the conquered. Look back at the attempt by the English government to breed the native Irish out by using colonisation methods. Inevitably a lot of people across Ireland and Britain are descendants of several cross-breeding occurrences (Celtic, Teutonic, Norman, Viking and several shrouded in mystery). There are very few people in the world that could claim to be "pure-breeds", mainly because in-breeding causes DNA degradation after a few generations leading to early deaths. Usually you will find these people in isolated places such as the heart of Papua or the Amazon.

However, people are perfectly entitled to value one part of their heritage over another. (Something to do with free-will I think)

Irish is the oldest of the Insular Gaelics. Though it was not orgianally in Ireland... Scotta princess of Egypt (which by the way...DNA has linked the Irish to Eygption royality) her husband and sons lead the envations of British Islands... her grandsons from one of the three sons...make up the 4 tradtional kingdoms of Ireland... The other two became the fathers of the Picts and Britons. The other groups came from the peoples already there and the intermarrying of the Celts within them. It was not nessisarily a total "envation" concore...but battle to win land to START their kingdoms. ^_^ This at least can be back by history.

As to the languages, Galitia used a language very closely linke to Old Gaelic...and the last king of Galitia was in the 20's BC. And that was in Asia Minor...diffently contempory with Old Irish in Ireland which was know as early a 500 BC.

Thirdly, if one studies the phonetics of the old gaelic closely...it is the closest phonetically to Hebrew with only Yiddish being closer.

Morria (an Irish name of Hebrew roots.)

No, I don't believe any of that. Celtic was never spoken in Egypt, and Ancient Egyptian has no common ground with any Celtic language. One is an Indo-European language and the other belongs to the Nilo-Saharan or Hamitic family. Celtic is also totally unrelated to Hebrew.

"This at least can be back by history"

Interesting that there should be such an accurate depiction of Irish history when Ireland did not as such *have* a history then. There is not a shred of written evidence from this period.

Also Ireland had 5 kingdoms and not 4. County Meath was a kingdom in its own right, but is now subsumed into Leinster.

I believe Cúchulainn defended Ulster against the "Four Kingdoms of Ireland".