So Celts were North Europeans after all?

[J. Ketch]

We already know they weren't though, because of all the Iberian-S French-like samples, who get higher in number the later the samples are. The Northern French are the upper tip of the genetic cline of the samples, the average is going to be a lot more south.

Northern French are, by all intents and purposes, Northern Europeans, you're basically arguing for a Bell Beaker replacement of Neolithic farmers in a latitude as low as Switzerland more comparable to the replacement of British Isles neolithic farmers than neighbouring Italy, or nearby Hungary. Not to mention the Alpine region was one of the most populated and most culturally developed neolithic area outside of southern Europe. In a place like Scandinavia, Netherlands, England, N. Germany, where populations were tiny, near full population replacements seem plausible, in central Europe around the Alps? I guess it's possible, given the Alps are the biggest genetic border in Europe today, but it just seems highly unlikely.

Target: Constance:MX279
Distance: 2.9491% / 0.02949132
77.4 Bell_Beaker_NLD
19.4 FRA_MN
3.2 AUT_LBK_N
(one of the N. French-like Swiss BA samples)

Target: French_Brittany
Distance: 1.7005% / 0.01700488
77.6 Bell_Beaker_NLD
11.4 AUT_LBK_N
11.0 FRA_MN

Target: England_MBA
Distance: 1.0496% / 0.01049620
88.4 Bell_Beaker_NLD
11.6 FRA_MN

Target: English
Distance: 2.1195% / 0.02119519
81.2 Bell_Beaker_NLD
10.4 AUT_LBK_N
8.4 FRA_MN

----------------------------------

Areas closer to Switzerland(Hungary, Italy) and equally far as England(Iberia):

Target: HUN_BA
Distance: 2.0107% / 0.02010734
61.4 AUT_LBK_N
36.8 Bell_Beaker_NLD
1.8 LUX_Loschbour

Target: ITA_Rome_Latini_IA
Distance: 3.5805% / 0.03580536
40.0 AUT_LBK_N
39.8 Bell_Beaker_NLD
20.2 FRA_MN

Target: Iberia_North_BA
Distance: 1.4066% / 0.01406614
55.6 FRA_MN
37.0 Bell_Beaker_NLD
5.2 AUT_LBK_N
2.2 LUX_Loschbour


-------------------------------

This seems more likely as what happened in Switzerland, something intermediary:

Target: French_Occitanie
Distance: 1.1324% / 0.01132432
63.4 Bell_Beaker_NLD
23.8 AUT_LBK_N
12.8 FRA_MN

Can I see it for proto-Celts? Sure, they were probably even more northern than N. French but by the time of Hallstatt, La Tene, the Roman Republic, to me there's no way a population as north shifted as N. French lived in Switzerland.

With your model of Celts as Southern French like, roughly how much genetic impact do you believe early unmixed Celts had in the following places?

1. Northernmost France/Belgium/Southern Netherlands (Belgae territory)
2. Southern Britain
3. Ireland
4. Iberia

[SharpFork]

"Favor", in this case, means score more of. Swiss Germans/French(who really are the only two populations I'm arguing about) do not score more of Italic than they do the samples I labeled Celtic. I never once argued Swiss don't have Roman admixture, it's the how much I'm arguing about. You, and others, argue for Swiss pretty much being the result of northern Europeans+southern Europeans, I make the argument they're a mix of northern+already central+southern, and more northern/central. You and token have modeled Swiss as 30-50% Italic, I argue the number is below 20%. The fits are literally better when using the samples I labeled Celtic than Italic if I use them seperately, and together Swiss/French populations score much more Celtic than they do Italic. How do you get favoring Italics from any of this information?

I don't believe that Celts were 45-50% Steppe, rather I imagine they were exactly midway between Italics/Iberians and pre-Celtic Britons and Scandinavians, that is around 40% Steppe, if that were the case the homeland model for Celtic expansion would work better, although obviously there is no inherent reason why it should.

The "favoring" Italic bit was referring to all the models, despite you using Italic and Celtic sample very close to one another you ended up with Central and Southern French scoring 30+% Italic, that's what I mean by "favoring", for some reason the model prefers Etruscans to the Swiss/Lech samples.

You make good points about the other Empuires samples, but what are the chances of them sampling all 5 Celtic migrants?

Empuries is basically on the French-Spanish border, if the locals were not Celts I think they can say something about how Southern French Celts looked and to me it would be surprising if Celts/Celtized southern France ended up looking more Southern than those N-E Iberians.

Here's the problem with this point, even though it's a decent one, we have no idea if the Celts in Iberia are from the actual Celtic homeland of the Alps and Hallstatt/La Tene. Celts in Iberia could've came from literally anywhere and acquired more admixture in France, how likely is it they went straight from Switzerland to Iberia? If they came from or passed through W France and then just followed the coast, it makes sense they'd be more northern because coastal central/NW France did have large Bell Beaker replacements because of low population density, the Bell Beakers from Britanny are more northern shifted than the only other BB samples from Central and southern France. Again, fine enough point but it's just silly to use samples from Iberia to use as Celts when you literally have samples from the Celtic homeland, and they aren't that old, some are mid-1000s BC, lots of ethnicity specific genetic drift already present in populations of that age.

I'll try to look more into the archeology of early Hallstatt to understand better how it expanded, at least we can agree that the early Celtic expansion must have involved a fair amount of assimilation to preserve at least partially the northerness of Northern France and the British isles and to even spread it to Southern France.

Did you consider any other theory on how Celts spread outside the classical Hallstatt-La Tene theory?

As for your point on Germanic ancestry in the French, yes I agree, I was only trying to not stray too far away from your original model. I said as much myself, French(especially Britanny, but all of them do) need LBA/MBA insular Briton(French Beaker works as well) to remove inflated Germanic, that still has nothing to do with what I'm originally arguing about: Roman admixture in Swiss people(of whom Germanic admixture was also inflated in your models).

My model was just to compare using northern and non-northern samples for Celts, I just wanted to show that both concepts fail at explaining both Northern France and the Alpine region in one single swoop.

and yes, we do see Near Eastern/North African components north of Provence, why would there be more Republican era migrants than Imperial outside of Italy when Republican Rome held Gaulish/Celtic lands for what, 100-50 years,

I based my claim on ancient components based model, when you use later ones for some reason the non-European adxmiture becomes more evident. I noticed it some time ago with Iberian models already but I'm not sure why G25 works like this.

while Imperial Rome held them for what, nearly 400-500? While the Imperial Rome sample is just a mishmash of native Romans, immigrants, and their mixes, there is substantial evidence the average Roman(not dwellant of the city of Rome but inhabitant of Italy) was South Italian-Greek Islander like because of the impact said Imperial immigrants, as one Roman colonist in Iberia shows, and the Collegno outliers in Northern Italy and Pannonia/Hungary(the outliers to the Scandinavian-like Germanic migrants, not Republican Roman-like other Italians).

You are not wrong but the problem with Rome_Imperial it's that it's a bit of an abstract proxy, because we can safely say that within Italy it was an extreme outlier that in effect didn't directly influence all of the territories you showed(especially not Northern Italy) while on the other hand more MENA populations directly influenced the gene pool of northern Roman territories somewhat, I'm not sure how the models would look if we adjust for using iron age North Africans and Anatolians/Levantines.

and that's not even getting into Y-DNA, most of the exotic Y-DNA found in Europe today(your Es, Js, Ts, what have you) is nearly completely absent from neolithic farmers, especially in western European farmers.

I don't know much about Y-DNA, but didn't we find E around Bronze age Europe?

I guarantee you when Hallstatt/La Tene samples finally get released(I agree with you they need to stop fucking studying neolithic and bronze age populations whom we know everything about already) and they show up as N. Iberian/SW French or even Central French people are going to be saying "hue hue Rhaetians" when similar samples already exist 1k years before then as far north as fucking Mecklenburg.

I mean how do we explain Empuries1? The 3 non northern samples and BylanyA111 are already 34-38% Steppe and given how modern France looks, having early Celts be 30-35% Steppe implies that there was little replacement insofar as Northern France goes, or maybe Celtic was spread into southern France after the mixing and Celtization of Northern France(EDIT:like you said, I reply non-chronologically, don't mind this entire part).

BTW this leads me to question, were Basque at time basque-like themselves? All Iberian samples are quite a bit less Steppe, although not especially so.

[J. Ketch]

I don't believe that Celts were 45-50% Steppe, rather I imagine they were exactly midway between Italics/Iberians and pre-Celtic Britons and Scandinavians, that is around 40% Steppe, if that were the case the homeland model for Celtic expansion would work better, although obviously there is no inherent reason why it should.

Agreed, to me it explains the equally Northern and Southern shifts of SW Europe and NW Europe respectively, between the Bronze Age and Iron Age/Present.

[SharpFork]

Agreed, to me it explains the equally Northern and Southern shifts of SW Europe and NW Europe respectively, between the Bronze Age and Iron Age/Present.

At the same time the theory that Bell Bearized- Celts expanded into Iberia and Britain would also explain that...
I guess at this point we need more on either the Middle German region or the Eastern Celtic region to see if we see any difference. So far HRV_IA and the Western Bylany are in the 35-40% range, maybe the reality is that somehow Celts ended up expanding from a core region that was relatively southern but ended up being middle of the road by assimilating their direct neighbours in all directions. Bizzarre but not really impossible or impossible to believe given the evidence we have.

[J. Ketch]

At the same time the theory that Bell Bearized- Celts expanded into Iberia and Britain would also explain that...
I guess at this point we need more on either the Middle German region or the Eastern Celtic region to see if we see any difference. So far HRV_IA and the Western Bylany are in the 35-40% range, maybe the reality is that somehow Celts ended up expanding from a core region that was relatively southern but ended up being middle of the road by assimilating their direct neighbours in all directions. Bizzarre but not really impossible or impossible to believe given the evidence we have.

Yes, well, Occam's razor and all that. It could well be the case, certainly for places like Scotland or Ireland where any non-NW European input seems a bit small to affect a major language/cultural change directly.

[Raizen]

you guys are wrong in assuming celts were all the same. the celts that got into britain and iberia were already mixed with French_BA, they didn't just jumped over france and settled these places. xenophobicprussian is prob. referring to celts from the core celtic area, which is a direct continuation of hallstatt culture. these would be sw european-like.

[SharpFork]

Here's a summary showing all iron age samples surrounding Celts during this period plus some Bronze age ones and also including the Lech samples and recent Iron age Celtic samples + presumed Celts from earlier samples, I didn't include Bronze age Swiss samples:

[SharpFork]

you guys are wrong in assuming celts were all the same. the celts that got into britain and iberia were already mixed with French_BA, they didn't just jumped over france and settled these places. xenophobicprussian is prob. referring to celts from the core celtic area, which is a direct continuation of hallstatt culture. these would be sw european-like.

You must agree that it's peculiar that population as far south as Latium had as much Steppes people on the other side of the Alps, you can understand the skepticism.

[TheOldNorth]

Because ancient celt peoples were not one people and recent genetic evidence does not support the notion of a significant genetic link between these peoples.

basically they used inodeuropean languages, and some of them shared some cultural costumes.

The term "celtic" encompassed many realities.

Maybe those Celt ancient individuals had nothing to do with those who settled in Ireland.Or they did...

This is false modern propaganda, traces of Hallstatt related DNA can be found in modern Welsh, and Scottish and to a lesser extant Irish, it does make up a small percent, probably 10-15% but if that and their languages doesn’t make them Celtic, then what does that make the Turks? Or the northwestern English?

[Raizen]

You must agree that it's peculiar that population as far south as Latium had as much Steppes people on the other side of the Alps, you can understand the skepticism.

but italic people came from the other side of the alps. the proto-villanovan had croation isotopes, don't he look very similar to the italics?