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

I 've just posted the following on Gnomon's thread, then remembered that I'd mentioned something similar ages ago, in relation to your '40 shades...'

There was something on the telly about the Celts at the weekend. I only caught snatches of it because I was making my famous Chilli Omelettes for some friends. The bit I did see looked at the genetic relationships between the inhabitants of Ireland and the rest of Europe. They said that the population hasn't changed substantially since neolithic times, and that the Irish relationship to the Celtic peoples of Europe is cultural rather than genetic.

How strange; I read the very same thing two days ago in a book I was given for my birthday, "Ireland in the World, Further Reflections" by Garret FitzGerald. His first essay is on the decline of the Irish language, already reduced to about half the (geographical) country before the big famine in the mid-19th century.

He begins by noting that the Irish language came with the Celts, who possibly began invading from around 500 BC; and though pre-Celtic language influenced the Goidelic (as the historians call Irish-Celtic--the Brittonic Celtic language was also spoken in Ireland from the earliest times) it is remarkable how quickly and completely the Celts wiped out the former culture and language, so that we simply do not know what the pre-Celts spoke. "The contrast with the relative failure of eight cnturies of English rule to displace our Celtic place-names or to wipe out our Celtic language is remarkable."

But here's the relevant quote to what you mention: "These earlier, pre-Celtic inhabitants are the people who, according to current genetic research, seem to be responsible for some 80 percent of the genes of today's Irish population."

We like to think of these great population movement in terms of 'invasion'. Sometimes, though, the longer-term truth is more like a trading relationship, settling and inter-marriage. For example - ceertainly the Vikings initially raided Northern English coastlines and captured Eboracum. But the Norse influence was consolidated not by an army but by a network of trading and political influence.

With the Celts...it's important to remember that Celtic was a Lingua-Franca up and down the western seaboard of Europe.

Anyway...here's a link from C4:
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/c-d/celts08.html

Nice link. Short and to the point. I saw a programme about the Vikings in Iceland once, making the point that they were peace-loving farmers, home-loving type, all complete with slippers and pipe, with the occasional useful exception such as Rollo the Berserker.

Descriptions of Vikings in Russia differ, though; the burial of a warrior was celebrated with the gang rape of his wife, who then joined her hubby in burial (possibly among the fishes, I can't remember).

There was something else on the telly ages ago. A disbled actor whose name I temporarily forget (Damn! I can remember what he looks like...I know he was Palestinian born...brittle bone disease...gay) made a documentary investigating the possibility that a legendary Viking leader was also disabled. I forget the leader's name. Let's call him 'Olaf the Vertically Challenged'. Apparently he was carried into battle atop a shield.

Anyway...inter alia, he mentioned the 'blood eagle' torture. This involved spreadeagling the victim face town, suspended from the limbs, then cutting through the ribcage, ripping them upwards and watching the lungs inflate and deflate.

ick!

Must tell that to my friend who recently had a double lung transplant. He'll bust a gut.

I mean, split his sides.

oof!

Just shows all the same, the humour of "live organ transplants" is not new.

What is new is, I met an old school friend who had written a book about his childhood (Rathcormick, by Homan Potterton) and checked up on a detail I wanted to clarify. He is the descendent of one particular strain of Anglo-Irish: his people came over with Cromwell, and became (and remained) tenant farmers, never owning their land. They had only professional dealings with, and no affection for, the horse-and-hounds set. They intermarried with their own class, which must have been a fairly narrow choice.

I saw in the supermarket the other day that the March edition of National Geographic has an article about the Celts...and also one about tracking migration and intermixing through DNA.

I wonder if it's actually true that a small gene pool yields six-fingered simpletons?

What, *any* small gene pool?

It has been claimed that Anne Boleyn had six fingers, but good ol' Wiki says "Nicholas Sander, an English catholic priest, who was opposed to the Church of England . . . made a number of claims about Anne . . . [publ.] 1585. Sanders was the first to claim in print that Anne was deformed, giving her the features of a witch. His allegations included the claims that . . . she had six fingers . . . on one hand. All these features were traditionally associated with witches, and there is no contemporary evidence to support such allegations, despite their popularity and inclusion in many modern textbooks."

Anne B had the smarts big time, whatever about the digits.

She is also incidentally Irish by adoption, her father having been made Earl of Ormond (he was already Earl of Wiltshire). Ormond is "East Munster", viz Tipperary/East Cork/Waterford.

Anne Boleyn is also reputed to have had three nipples - but that's extremely common, apparently (I forget the figures).

On a related theme...I heard a while back that intersexuality (either having indeterminate genitals, or having the outward appearance of one sex but biological characteristics of the other) is about 1 in 100 - slightly less common than twins. As Kinsey observed, diversity within species is the norm.

One in 100! That's a hell of a lot!

There used to be a figure put out of one in twenty people being gay; I think that is not universally agreed.

Yes, the statistics on sexuality are notoriously politicised. I think that Lambeth council once declared it to be 1 in 8 - a combination of sheer fabrication, the concentrating factor of the metropolis and the unrepresentative sample they spoke to,

1 in 100, though. Makes you think! The things we don't know about the private lives of others.

Absolutely. Bravo to those who challenge our presumptions. Without them would we be aware we were assuming things at all?