So Celts were North Europeans after all?

[Fantomas]

Aside from them both being Indo-European, is there actually consensus/evidence that Germanic is part of one branch with Balto-Slavic, separate from Italo-Celtic?

Proto-Germanic, possibly, broke away from Italo-Celtic, but very early and had been in close contacts with Baltic for a very long time.

[SharpFork]

1. Correct me if i wrong, evolution of Germanic languages has very similar history with Proto-Celtic, if Jastorf and Nordic Bronze Age cultures are associated with it. From Corded ware culture to Nordic Bronze/Jastorf (proto-Nordic) around 1000-1500 years and they're also separated by sea and spread over a large geographic area. Proto-Celtic evolved from Late Neolithic/Bell Beaker and by 1000-500 BC began separating into different branches. Seaways are better means of communiactions than ground movements btw.

I don't believe it's the same because ultimately the land in the Germanic case is more tightly connected also because proto-Germanic is date relatively early in the process, a bit more that a century after the formation of Jastorf I believe. Plus nobody is postulating "lingua francas" or the kind of long-distance unity and communication between England/Ireland and Iberia.

2.it's impossible to state categorically where exactly lived that group of people who have caused proto-Celtic. But the version with Atlantic seashore contains much less controversy, than others and allayed many problems.

Such as? What exactly are the advantages? To me they are not apparent at all, I barely see anyone actively arguing about them outside Cunliffe and no actual good deciding arguments so far.

3. In that case Koch's version would be destroyed by other linguists long time ago. Particularly since Celts were the closest neighbours of Tartessians and even supposed to be related

http://www.bmcreview.org/2011/09/20110957.html

https://www.academia.edu/7649315/Som...eltic_language

Let's not beat around the bush, the classification of Tartessian as Celtic is highly unwarrantedn and a very low confidence claim given the evidence so far, plus it would not contradict a Central European expansion at all but it would merely help shape the timeline, given the earliest Tartessian inscription are not before the 8th century anyway.

4.Yes, i agee. There're still many problems and blank pots, just like with Central European hypothesis by the way. But Halstatt in fact doesn't look like huge monolitic culture that cover half of Europe as shown in Wiki, in contrast it's a limited area around Alps and La Tene is too late for that. Yes Western Halstatt was probably Celtic and La Tene was 100% Celtic culture, but that's just eastern periphery of Celtic world

Obviously nobody is makign the argument that material culture is 1:1 with languages, but we do see a lot of interconnectedness during the Hallstatt period and I still haven't seen anyone actually addressing what kind of secret knowledge they have that indicates Celtic from West is an actual necessary theory to explain the arrival of Celtic in Central Europe and Eastern France rather than a local development.

Regardless of material culture some Celts in Lombardy by this point, having Celtic in Spain can be argued using the same Tartessian language whose Celtic-like elements can be argued to come from borrowings. A Celtic from the West theory cannot possibly have had a different timeline of expansion than the Central European theory, so I still don't see why is it necessary, if you have just one very good argument for it please just show it.

[Fantomas]

I don't believe it's the same because ultimately the land in the Germanic case is more tightly connected also because proto-Germanic is date relatively early in the process, a bit more that a century after the formation of Jastorf I believe. Plus nobody is postulating "lingua francas" or the kind of long-distance unity and communication between England/Ireland and Iberia.

Proto-Germanic language originated for just one century?! I think you get process formation of languages incorrectly. Language doesn't just happen from nothing, it evolves long time, many centuries, on a definitive basis. Land in the Germanic case was not more tightly connected.
Why distance contacts from central Norway to Gotland or from Northern Nederlands to central Sweden as a matter of course for you, but distance between northen Iberia and Gironde or around La Manche is something fantastically incredible?

Such as? What exactly are the advantages? To me they are not apparent at all, I barely see anyone actively arguing about them outside Cunliffe and no actual good deciding arguments so far.

It's very simple. There's no Urnfield/ Halstatt presence in Atlantic and even La Tene doesn't cover small part of area. Historians of the past resolved this problem easy, they just combined Central European archaeological cultures, idea that all migrations must have east-weat direction with ancient written sources which placed Celts on half of the Continent, and that's it!

http://www.bmcreview.org/2011/09/20110957.html

https://www.academia.edu/7649315/Som...eltic_language

Let's not beat around the bush, the classification of Tartessian as Celtic is highly unwarrantedn and a very low confidence claim given the evidence so far, plus it would not contradict a Central European expansion at all but it would merely help shape the timeline, given the earliest Tartessian inscription are not before the 8th century anyway.

To sum up, Koch's analysis reflects the author's superior scholarship, but is not really convincing. The reader is left with a number of inconsistencies, in form and content, ad hoc solutions and divergencies from the results of the other Hispano-Celtic sources. Nevertheless, it is a strong vote for a Celtic solution to the problem of Tartessian, and future research will not be able to avoid this approach. As in the case of Lusitanian, it may very well be a hybrid language with a non-Celtic matrix and extensive Celtic loanwords (as previously assumed by Francisco Villar) or vice versa.

I shall begin by saying I find no a priori reason to rule
out a Celtic classification of Tartessian. But it is important
to note that this idea, originally put forward by José
Antonio Correa, rests on the interpretation of a large
number of words as Celtic personal names (in fact, a third
part of the corpus in Koch’s approach). As is obvious to
nearly every linguist (including Koch, but interestingly not
some of the works on Lusitanian that he quotes), proper
names are not diagnostic of the genetic appurtenance of
the language in which the text is conducted. This is why –
briga place names mentioned in indigenous Lusitanian
inscriptions contribute nothing to the study of Lusitanian.
People travel, and the allusion to persons bearing Celtic
names in ancient epigraphy, whether Celtic or not, is
entirely unproblematic. But this faces us with a problem
that is seldom reckoned with: If the matrix language of the
SW epigraphy is not Celtic, but nearly a third part of its
contents consists of Celtic personal names, these may have
been borrowed (or simply consigned in writing) long after
the dawn of literacy, and consequently may reflect the
actual synchronic phonetics of SW Celtic dialects more
faithfully than the non–Celtic appellative vocabulary

Both of these reviews suggested that can be Celtic

Obviously nobody is makign the argument that material culture is 1:1 with languages, but we do see a lot of interconnectedness during the Hallstatt period and I still haven't seen anyone actually addressing what kind of secret knowledge they have that indicates Celtic from West is an actual necessary theory to explain the arrival of Celtic in Central Europe and Eastern France rather than a local development.

Regardless of material culture some Celts in Lombardy by this point, having Celtic in Spain can be argued using the same Tartessian language whose Celtic-like elements can be argued to come from borrowings. A Celtic from the West theory cannot possibly have had a different timeline of expansion than the Central European theory, so I still don't see why is it necessary, if you have just one very good argument for it please just show it.

OK. contemporaries described "Celtic world" in many respects, we know tribes, names, cities and sometimes even history of their origin. But the main problem that most of these tribes, maybe 90% were not in Central Europe, moreover they're recent migrants from west there! Furthemore we even know from written sources when they began to move to Italy for example and what mountain pass they used, its a Ha D1 period. so i honestly don't understand why it is bothering you so much. There are no discrepancies at all, no between Celts in Iberia and Italy nor between presence of Lepontic and Tartessian inscriptions and its Celtic origin, just if we accept western theory of course.

[SharpFork]

Proto-Germanic language originated for just one century?! I think you get process formation of languages incorrectly. Language doesn't just happen from nothing, it evolves long time, many centuries, on a definitive basis. Land in the Germanic case was not more tightly connected.

What I mean is that proto-Germanic started to split around 500 BCE I believe. Although it is also dated as late as 200 CE when through glottochronogical-based comparison between North and West Germanic, as people consider East Germanic to be a more basal split between it and North-West.

Plus the late dating is explained by actual migrations from north to south, not magical trade-driven lingua francas taking over entire regions somehow. When proponents of Celtic from the West make actual argument using migration we can compare the 2 theories, but they aren't.

Why distance contacts from central Norway to Gotland or from Northern Nederlands to central Sweden as a matter of course for you, but distance between northen Iberia and Gironde or around La Manche is something fantastically incredible?

Yes look at a map please. Plus nobody is postulating that Germanic was FORMED as a lingua franca over a large region, while those proponents do for celtic.

Plus Celtic from the West postulates Celtic was also spoken in Ireland and Britain prior to expanding into central Europe. The distance between Tartessus and Scotland is much large than even the distance between Trondheim and Thuringia. Celtic from the West also doesn't explain why the language broke up at all if primitive societies(yes they were primitive stateless societies by all accounts) could create and maintain linguistic unity over such distances.

I[QUOTE]t's very simple. There's no Urnfield/ Halstatt presence in Atlantic and even La Tene doesn't cover small part of area. Historians of the past resolved this problem easy, they just combined Central European archaeological cultures, idea that all migrations must have east-weat direction with ancient written sources which placed Celts on half of the Continent, and that's it![QUOTE]
There is Hallstatt influence in Britain, not a lot but at the same time it is not necessary to explain the migrations, we know there were Lepontii in Italy prior to La Tene without having Lombardy being part of the Hallstatt cohesiveness.

Also no, scholars did not invent Hallstatt or La Tene unity to fit with the sources, you are literally making stuff up simply because you don't want to revise or defend the theory you prefer with actual arguments.

Both of these reviews suggested that can be Celtic

It can be Celtic and it could anything because if use such weak arguments you could argue a lot of things. Not enough to base an entire theory, especially given it's not like Tartessian has incredibly early dating.

OK. contemporaries described "Celtic world" in many respects, we know tribes, names, cities and sometimes even history of their origin. But the main problem that most of these tribes, maybe 90% were not in Central Europe, moreover they're recent migrants from west there! Furthemore we even know from written sources when they began to move to Italy for example and what mountain pass they used, its a Ha D1 period. so i honestly don't understand why it is bothering you so much. There are no discrepancies at all, no between Celts in Iberia and Italy nor between presence of Lepontic and Tartessian inscriptions and its Celtic origin, just if we accept western theory of course.

Maybe they weren't in Central Europe, maybe Tartessian was Celtic, maybe the scholars made up material cultures. All maybes.

What's bothering me is that there is no reason this theory should exist, it doesn't explain anything at all while claiming so much stuff WITHOUT evidence. There is no discrepancy in the Hallstatt theory either if you think there are non in the Western theory, you are hypocritically criticizing only Hallstatt for faults that the Western theory has, if you can demonstrably show that Hallstatt derived inctrovertably from Western sources from Iberia or Britain fell free.

[SharpFork]

Double

[Fantomas]

What I mean is that proto-Germanic started to split around 500 BCE I believe. Although it is also dated as late as 200 CE when through glottochronogical-based comparison between North and West Germanic, as people consider East Germanic to be a more basal split between it and North-West.

Plus the late dating is explained by actual migrations from north to south, not magical trade-driven lingua francas taking over entire regions somehow. When proponents of Celtic from the West make actual argument using migration we can compare the 2 theories, but they aren't.


Yes look at a map please. Plus nobody is postulating that Germanic was FORMED as a lingua franca over a large region, while those proponents do for celtic.

Then, how proto-Germanic before splitting around 500 BC was managed to develope in Northern Europe all that time? If only you have got alternative theory of speedy occupations of all Northern Europe by proto-Germanics in 500 BC from some small point

Plus Celtic from the West postulates Celtic was also spoken in Ireland and Britain prior to expanding into central Europe. The distance between Tartessus and Scotland is much large than even the distance between Trondheim and Thuringia. Celtic from the West also doesn't explain why the language broke up at all if primitive societies(yes they were primitive stateless societies by all accounts) could create and maintain linguistic unity over such distances.

It's not inconceivable, provided that language used by relative, neighbouring communties in close contacts with each other preserve some language for a couple of times. Don't look at the map of whole Europe if it's iterrifying to imagine for you, just look at it like it's a continuum of settlements in clear line of sight.

There is Hallstatt influence in Britain, not a lot but at the same time it is not necessary to explain the migrations, we know there were Lepontii in Italy prior to La Tene without having Lombardy being part of the Hallstatt cohesiveness.

Also no, scholars did not invent Hallstatt or La Tene unity to fit with the sources, you are literally making stuff up simply because you don't want to revise or defend the theory you prefer with actual arguments.

Sorry i don't understand you. Are you supporting Celtic invasion theory from central Europe in Iron Age or not? because it's a classic. Open any book and you'll see how Celts do conquer Gaul, Iberia, Britain, Ireland etc. just right from Halstatt and La Tene cemeteries.

It can be Celtic and it could anything because if use such weak arguments you could argue a lot of things. Not enough to base an entire theory, especially given it's not like Tartessian has incredibly early dating.


Maybe they weren't in Central Europe, maybe Tartessian was Celtic, maybe the scholars made up material cultures. All maybes.

What's bothering me is that there is no reason this theory should exist, it doesn't explain anything at all while claiming so much stuff WITHOUT evidence. There is no discrepancy in the Hallstatt theory either if you think there are non in the Western theory, you are hypocritically criticizing only Hallstatt for faults that the Western theory has, if you can demonstrably show that Hallstatt derived inctrovertably from Western sources from Iberia or Britain fell free.

I already said that Hallstatt is a supranational phenomenon. Even in classic hypothesis it belongs to different ethnic groups, western Halstatt is Celtic and eastern Halstatt is not. The picture is much more complicated. Halstatt as such is not derived from Britain and Iberia surely, but its the result of wars and collapse of Urnfield culture. so Celts just took a part of its developing right there together with local previous population and not had been brought it Central Europe as a ready-made.

[SharpFork]

Then, how proto-Germanic before splitting around 500 BC was managed to develope in Northern Europe all that time? If only you have got alternative theory of speedy occupations of all Northern Europe by proto-Germanics in 500 BC from some small point

Because contrary to Western Celts they don't have a oceans dividing them, c'mon now. Also nobody is talking about small points, you are building strawmans, sure glottochronology might fail in small regions but here we are talking about distances of dozens of hundreds of kilometers through the Atlantic, not a couple hundred.

Also like I said before virtually everyone takes into consideration the importance of migrations from the north reinforcing the unity. In 500 BCE Germanic was just moving south from Mecklenburg, Holstein and northern Lower Saxony.

It's not inconceivable, provided that language used by relative, neighbouring communties in close contacts with each other preserve some language for a couple of times. Don't look at the map of whole Europe if it's iterrifying to imagine for you, just look at it like it's a continuum of settlements in clear line of sight.

Yes I totally forgot about the line of settlements between Galicia and Ireland, silly me. Even if you consider France it's an extremely large area, the distance between Northern Scotland and Tartessos between 1.6 and 2 times as long of a distance as from Trondheim to Thuringia or Harz, plus it's based on the idea that the language was spread by trade and contact, NOT migration. Are you ever going to address that?

Sorry i don't understand you. Are you supporting Celtic invasion theory from central Europe in Iron Age or not? because it's a classic. Open any book and you'll see how Celts do conquer Gaul, Iberia, Britain, Ireland etc. just right from Halstatt and La Tene cemeteries.

Not sure what the fuck you are saying but neither Hallstatt nor La Tene have been invented, the fact that such large material cultures exists coincides with what we know of Celtic migrations happening both in the Balkans, Italy and Southern France and Iberia. It's evidence converging, not bias.

I already said that Hallstatt is a supranational phenomenon. Even in classic hypothesis it belongs to different ethnic groups, western Halstatt is Celtic and eastern Halstatt is not. The picture is much more complicated. Halstatt as such is not derived from Britain and Iberia surely, but its the result of wars and collapse of Urnfield culture. so Celts just took a part of its developing right there together with local previous population and not had been brought it Central Europe as a ready-made.

And your evidence for that is? If you can come up with such a theory that totally ignores archeological cultures to talk about the expansion of linguistic communities, what fucking argument do you have against Hallstatt? You literally have nothing against Hallstatt, just tell one argument that applies against only to Hallstatt Celtic expansion theory that doesn't to yours.

[SharpFork]

Regardless it's not like I'm going to defend the Hallstatt theory for the sake of it, there are some problems about the dating of proto-Celtic that could push the expansion some centuries prior to the Iron age Hallstatt period, but they don't benefit at all Celtic from the West, as they would still be unable to explain the diversity in Spain, the division between Brythonic and and Gaelic and of course they would still have to rely on Hallstatt to explain the Celtic expansion past the Rhine.

[Creoda]

Well, here's my go to model for Western Europeans+new Swiss samples. Every single sample labeled Celtic has their closest distance to a N. Iberian or S. French population. I still use Collegno_o1 to represent Imperial Romans in my go to model over Imperial_Rome because the Imperial_Rome sample was likely too southern shifted for the average Italian colonist, a plurality of samples were Cyprus like, not to mention all the literal fresh off the boat MENA immigrants, South Italian-Greek islander seems more about right to me. Based on K36 results south of the Rhine Dutch are pretty different from all other Dutch and Flemish are pretty different from Walloons, so there's definitely some regional variation there, but those pops aren't on G25.

model(same model for all the pops, if you use the model yourself I recommend using DEU_MA as individuals rather than the average, not a good idea comparing averages of pops vs individuals of pops, I was just too lazy):


Target: English_Cornwall
Distance: 1.2712% / 0.01271192
43.4 Pre-Celtic-Briton/Beaker
29.6 Germanic
27.0 Celtic
(darkest eyed British Isles pop scores the most S. French-like Celt, coincidence?)

Target: English
Distance: 1.1496% / 0.01149641
45.2 Pre-Celtic-Briton/Beaker
34.0 Germanic
19.2 Celtic
1.6 Italic

Target: Irish
Distance: 1.3893% / 0.01389258
72.6 Pre-Celtic-Briton/Beaker
16.4 Germanic
11.0 Celtic

Target: Dutch
Distance: 1.0855% / 0.01085496
71.2 Germanic
15.0 Celtic
13.8 Pre-Celtic-Briton/Beaker

Target: Belgian
Distance: 0.8557% / 0.00855729
35.8 Germanic
24.8 Pre-Celtic-Briton/Beaker
23.6 Celtic
8.6 Italic
7.2 ImperialRoman

Target: French_Nord
Distance: 0.8087% / 0.00808733
34.2 Celtic
28.8 Germanic
21.6 Pre-Celtic-Briton/Beaker
8.6 ImperialRoman
6.8 Italic

Target: Spanish_Castilla_La_Mancha
Distance: 0.9247% / 0.00924716
39.8 Celtic
25.0 Iberia_Central_BA
17.4 ImperialRoman
8.0 Italic
5.0 Mozabite
4.8 Pre-Celtic-Briton/Beaker



Maybe the Empuires samples were even all Celts, it's still silly, imo, to use samples from Iberia instead of from the actual Alps, regardless of age. If anything the older age of the Alpine samples should make them prefer any newer Italic samples but they don't. I do not disagree with late period Alpine Celts being 34-40% steppe. The only thing I disagree with is people with however much % steppe N. French have making up the average of people in the Hallstatt/La Tene period Alps.

No samples from the Basque area, but as far as I know, Iberia, from the North-East all the way to Portugal, was Basque-like pre-Celtic/Roman invasions, going on PCA plot position. Not just "around Basque", but very specifically Basque. Celts likely shifted them north as Empuires shows but North Africans and Imperial Romans back down to modern Iberians. Southern France clearly got more southern via Imperial Roman admixture, perhaps even modern Spanish, but may also likely have extra northern admixture from post-medieval northern French migrating, etc, which can explain why they still cluster around my hypothesized Celts. It's like N. Italians, they are almost identical to Etruscans but obviously they are not 100% Etruscan, nowhere close to it, despite circumstances of later migrations making them extremely similar.

E has been found in neolithic Europe, nearly all of it in the south-east, nearly all of it the specific clade E-V13, and still in tiny tiny amounts, nowhere close to the rate modern Europeans have it. J has even been found in EHGs and Yamnaya, that does not mean the vast majority of modern European J isn't from later Middle-Eastern migrations.

I believe La Tene areas in N. France and Belgium are dated older to anywhere else in France(but of course oldest are in La Tene/Switzerland) along the Rhine, maybe that supports Alpine Celts moving north first before they spread to southern France/Iberia.


The Celtic speakers that crossed the English straight definitely weren't S. French like, they undoubtably picked up admixture from the Rhine area/NW France area, a region which I do think was N. French-like, if not even more northern similar to England/Scotland MBA/LBA, so while English/Irish may show low amounts of S. French-like admixture(don't forget the case of elite language conquest in Hungary/Finland btw), that wasn't the entire % of the population movement by people who spoke the language.


The Celts were pretty civilized and urbanized for their time, I would be more surprised if they were overwhelmingly Bell Beaker descended rather than heavily neolithic farmer. The Celtic language is literally closer linguistically to Italic than it is to Germanic. Keep in mind back then Latium or anywhere in Italy should really be considered the same thing as northern Italy, Slovenia, etc geographically, the Mediterranean sea used to be a barrier between gene flow, not a conduit. It's not really that far fetched for populations on both sides of a mountain range(albeit big) to be pretty similar(Celts were more northern anyway, again I'm not arguing for the Celt average to be around N. Iberians lol, the distance between Iberians and S. French is pretty big).

There's also one important point I forgot earlier, populations like Czechs, Slovaks, southern Poles show this southern shifted Celt signal. Are we really going to say Czechs and Poles have Italic and Roman admixture now?

Was just thinking, a possible point in favour of your theory that the original Celts were SW Euro-like was the Italian affinity that NW Euro countries scored surprisingly high amounts of in the Viking paper.


English = 19% 'Celtic' in your model, 18% (17-20%) 'Italian' in the paper
Irish = 11% 'Celtic' in your model, 9% (7-12%) 'Italian' in the paper
Scandinavians get 5-10% of it as well, which would be hard to explain through Romans or something.

Might be a coincidence, but just putting it out there.

[Fantomas]

Because contrary to Western Celts they don't have a oceans dividing them, c'mon now. Also nobody is talking about small points, you are building strawmans, sure glottochronology might fail in small regions but here we are talking about distances of dozens of hundreds of kilometers through the Atlantic, not a couple hundred.

Also like I said before virtually everyone takes into consideration the importance of migrations from the north reinforcing the unity. In 500 BCE Germanic was just moving south from Mecklenburg, Holstein and northern Lower Saxony.


Yes I totally forgot about the line of settlements between Galicia and Ireland, silly me. Even if you consider France it's an extremely large area, the distance between Northern Scotland and Tartessos between 1.6 and 2 times as long of a distance as from Trondheim to Thuringia or Harz, plus it's based on the idea that the language was spread by trade and contact, NOT migration. Are you ever going to address that?


Not sure what the fuck you are saying but neither Hallstatt nor La Tene have been invented, the fact that such large material cultures exists coincides with what we know of Celtic migrations happening both in the Balkans, Italy and Southern France and Iberia. It's evidence converging, not bias.


And your evidence for that is? If you can come up with such a theory that totally ignores archeological cultures to talk about the expansion of linguistic communities, what fucking argument do you have against Hallstatt? You literally have nothing against Hallstatt, just tell one argument that applies against only to Hallstatt Celtic expansion theory that doesn't to yours.

Allright, i've seen your arguments. Proto-Germanic language that developed for 1000 years, covered whole northern Europe (Nordic Bronze Age) and divided by sea is absolutely par for the course for you, but almost the same process in Atlantic Bronze Age is something fantastically impossible.

Is that so difficult to understanding? Not from Scotland to Tartessos, you're improperly going by direct distance. But people those era travelling from settlement to settlement, between closest havens, that might be half day away from each other. If the connection between areas was intensive enough, and archaeology shows that it really was, there's nothing unusual, that these people spoke one language.

That's what western Hallstatt and La Tene look like in reality




There must be wild flights of imagination. to make up hypothesis how people of these archaeological cultures populated whole Atlantic part of Europe right up to Ireland and Portugal. From another side western theory is much more realistic because coastline and lower parts of large rivers is much better for connecting people and long distance travelling, than mountain Alpine area (Halstatt homeland). Journey that took a week by sea, on the ground took a months especially in mountainous region