2009 UPDATE: Both Proto-Celtic
(Lusitanian) and Celtic (Tartessian) ancient inscriptions
translated in Portugal and Spain (see point 10 b below).
In
the 20th Century unfounded myths were put forward
that the Celts were just undeducated barbarians whose
language was brought to Britain and Ireland by invasions
from continental Europe only a few centuries before
the Roman invasion. In these myths, the ancient stone
monuments like Stonehenge were said to be built by
a mysterious pre-Celtic people of unknown origin who
were said to have been annihilated by the alleged
Celtic invaders. The Welsh and Gaels were thus to
be denied any pride stemming from what would have
been their heritage from the Ancient Megalithic Civilisation.
Now,
in the 21st Century, the application of scientific
methods to the study of the evolution of language,
archaeology, DNA ancestry and place names are showing
that the Celts are descended from the builders of
the stone monuments like Stonehenge and the Cymraeg/Welsh
language is descended from the language of builders
of Stonehenge (who were part of the The Ancient Celtic
Megalithic Civilisation). 20th Century mythmakers
have been busted by 21st Century science !!! In the
following article, I will be compiling this scientific
evidence.
(Please note
that when reading Wikipedia and some other informational
links below that it takes some time for the latest
scientific evidence to be reflected in the information
provided and so may lag behind the evidence presented
here)
Now at last we can see the reason why
Central Europeans and Rhinelanders joined the Celtic
network - it was in their economic interests. In an
ABC News Radio interview the archaeologists involved
in this dig stated that the route the Stonehenge Cymraeg
builders took to move the bluestones from Mynydd Preseli
in Cymru to Stonehenge has been found to be littered
with quarried worked bluestones from Cymru dropped
en-route (thus busting the
myth that they were transported to Stonehenge by glaciers).
The wooden henge built at around 3,100 BC that preceded
the stone construction can also be correlated with
us Cymro and Cymraes (there is a remarkable correlation
between the henge building people as mapped, the distribution
map of certain DNA haplogroups and us Cymro and Cymraes
- see under point 7 below). More news on the Stonehenge
latest at these sites:
The Timewatch archaeological dig's progress
at Stonehenge has been published by the BBC at "Stonehenge
- The Healing Stones" web site.
The dig is lead by world-renowned archaeologists Professors
Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright (who was born in
Sir Benfro). With their discoveries combined with
a mass of other evidence that I have compiled, we
can now say even more emphatically that Stonehenge
is Celtaidd Cymreig (Celtic Welsh) and that us Cymro
and Cymraes (Welsh men and women) are the direct descendants
of the Celtic
Megalthic Civilisation that built it
whose language was Celtic.
This civilisation was of the Neolithic
(Agricultural) Stone Age. Add to this
the evidence that other major European Beaker,
Atlantic
Bronze Age, Urnfield,
Hallstatt
and La
Tene phases of European civilisation,
spanning the Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages were also
Celtic and the implications become profound for both
Cymru,
other Celtic
nations, England,
Britain,
and Europe
as a whole.
Read more about the Ancient Celtic Megalithic
Civilisation at the following sites:
"The whole purpose of Stonehenge
is that it was a prehistoric Lourdes," says Wainwright.
"People came here to be made well."
This is revolutionary stuff, and it comes from a
reinterpretation of the stones of the henge and the
bones buried nearby. Darvill and Wainwright believe
the smaller bluestones in the centre of the circle,
rather than the huge sarsen stones on the perimeter,
hold the key to the purpose of Stonehenge. The bluestones
were dragged 250km from the mountains of southwest
Wales using Stone Age technology. That's some journey,
and there must have been a very good reason for attempting
it. Darvill and Wainwright believe the reason was
the magical, healing powers imbued in the stones by
their proximity to traditional healing springs.
The bones that have been excavated from around Stonehenge
appear to back the theory up. "There's an amazing
and unnatural concentration of skeletal trauma in
the bones that were dug up around Stonehenge,"
says Darvill. "This was a place of pilgrimage
for people...coming to get healed."
Read further details in Hugh Wilson's following article
"Neolithic
medicine - better than a hole in the head?".
Please note the people's faith in the bluestones brought
from Mynydd Preseli in Sir Benfro in Cymru all the
way to Stonehenge in Witshire in England.
What evidence it there that Stonehenge was built
by our Cymreig ancestors and how did they perform
this amazing feat ? What is the evidence that the
builders of Stonehenge spoke ancient Cymraeg ?
Place Names - the geographic features around Stonehenge
and the English West Country in general have many Cymraeg
names. Afon means river in Cymraeg and is pronounced a-von.
Avon
is the name of the following features near Stonhenge: a)
The river that runs south past Stonehenge to the English
Channel. b) The river that drains the Downs north of Stonhenge
west-north-west to Aber Hafren opposite Cymru past Bristol.
c) The County of Avon (until 1996). Cwm mean glen or upland
valley in Cymraeg and is pronounced Coom. Coombe
is a town in the upland part of the Avon valley just north
of Stonehenge, Compton nearby has the same derivation as
does Burcombe and Coombe Bissett south of Stonehenge. Mynydd
means mountain in Cymraeg and is pronounced meunidth. The
Mendip
Hills are located to the west of Stonehenge.
"The
Boscombe Bowmen". Some of the Cymro
who built Stonehenge have actually been found in an ancient
grave with Beaker
pottery. Chemical analysis of their teeth have show they
were almost certainly born in Cymru.
Geochemical analysis has shown that some of the bluestones
from the inner horseshoe at Stonehenge probably came from
Carn
Menyn, Carngoedog, Carnbreseb, Cerrigmarchogion
and other sites in Mynydd Preseli , while rhyolite fragments
may have come from Carnalw and further afield. Michael
Bradley in his article "Megalithic Movers"
explains from evidence of 15-20 metre cwch/curragh "skin"
boats and canal earthworks from the northern Avon river
how Cymro moved these stones by cwch to within 3 km of Stonehenge.
Professors Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright have found the
ancient
quarry site on Carn Menyn where the bluestones
were sourced and a worked bluestone has been recovered from
the seabed where it was dropped in transport to Stonehenge.
By applying the scientific methods used in studying genetics
and evolution to the study of the evolution of languages,
researchers Peter Foster and Alfred Toth in their 2003 paper
"Toward
a phylogenetic chronology of ancient Gaulish, Celtic, and
Indo-European", found that the ancient
Insular
Celtic language which is the ancestor of
Brezhoneg,
Cymraeg,
Gaeilge and Gaidhlig
(Breton,
Welsh,
Irish
Gaelic and Scottish
Gaelic) arrived/developed in Britain/Ireland
around 3,200 BC (possibly as early as 4,700 BC) as
a single language. This is when the continental Celtic language
Gaulish
and Insular Celtic start to become different from each other.
They also found that the Celtic
language subfamily is very ancient indeed
going back to the time of the start of the spread of agriculture
and animal husbandry when it split from other Indo-European
languages at 8,100 BC (possibly as
early as 10,000 BC). This paper was published in the prestigious
scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America. Note that radio-carbon
dating puts the date that the first bluestones were erected
at Stonehenge at 2,300 BC (possibly as early as 2,400
BC) for comparison so most likely the builders spoke the
Insular Celtic ancient Cymraeg language. In an ealier study
using a methodology similar to that used in evolutionary
biology, Gray
and Atkinson [“Language-tree divergence times support
the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin,” Nature
426, 435-439] compared 95 present and past
languages of the Indo-European family based on a list of
200 basic terms for each. The results of all analyses, irrespective
of the initial assumptions were very robust:
"We test two theories of Indo-European origin:
the 'Kurgan expansion' and the 'Anatolian farming' hypotheses.
The Kurgan theory centres on possible archaeological evidence
for an expansion into Europe and the Near East by Kurgan
horsemen beginning in the sixth millennium BP7, 8. In
contrast, the Anatolian theory claims that Indo-European
languages expanded with the spread of agriculture from
Anatolia around 8,000–9,500 years BP9. In striking
agreement with the Anatolian hypothesis, our analysis
of a matrix of 87 languages with 2,449 lexical items produced
an estimated age range for the initial Indo-European divergence
of between 7,800 and 9,800 years BP. These results were
robust to changes in coding procedures, calibration points,
rooting of the trees and priors in the bayesian analysis."
The branching pattern is also in agreement with an independent
linguistic analysis of Indo-European languages [Rexova,
K., Frynta, D. & Zrzavy, J. “Cladistic analysis
of languages: Indo-European classification based on lexicostatistical
data.” Cladistics 19, 120–127 (2003)].
The estimated times strikingly confirm the Neolithic
dispersal theory, showing a divergence of Indo-European
languages from Anatolian ones, with an independent branching
of the mysterious Tocharian [Yuezhi] language which spread
eastwards, and the descent of all other languages from
what is almost certain to be a Balkan homeland.
The scientific techniques used
by Foster and Toth, and, Gray and Atkinson avoid the inherent
subjective bias that has plagued other approaches relying
on specialist (i.e. narrow) linguistic knowledge - these
researchers are justly proud of the fact that their methods
avoid such bias.
In remarkable agreement with Peter Foster and Alfred Toth's
Insular Celtic starting date, radio-carbon dating of burials
and cremated remains of the dead at Stonhenge have recently
been dated from at least 3,000 BC by Mike Parker
Pearson, archaeology professor at the University of Sheffield
in England and head of the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological
Project in his study "Stonehenge
was a burial site for centuries". In
addition at nearby Durrington Walls seasonal homes from
this time occupied at Alban Arthan (Winter Solstice) and
Alban Hefin (Summer Solstice) have been found: "The
village also included a circle of wooden pillars, which
the researchers have named the Southern Circle. It is oriented
toward the midwinter sunrise, the opposite of Stonehenge,
which is oriented to the midsummer sunrise." The picture
below shows the Stonehenge sunrise at Alban Hefin in the
northern hemisphere (Alban Arthan in our southern hemisphere):
DNA ancestry tracing is perhaps the most compelling evidence
of the antiquity of the Celts in Britain, Ireland and Brittany.
Stephen Oppenheimer, a medical geneticist at the University
of Oxford, has traced individual genes in mitchondrial DNA
and on the male Y-chromosome using the phylogeographic method.
"The geographical distribution of individual gene lines
is analysed with respect to their position on a gene tree,
to reconstruct their origins, dates and routes of movement".
In his article "Myths
of British ancestry" in Prospect Magazine,
Issue 127, October 2006, he states the following: "The
genetic evidence shows that [around 80%] of our ancestors
came to this corner of Europe between 15,000 and [3,700]
years ago [13,000 to 1,700 BC]... [A] wave of immigration
arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed
about 6,500 years ago [4,500 BC]...Celtic languages
and the people who brought them probably first arrived during
the Neolithic period...The connection between modern Celtic
languages and those spoken in southwest Europe during Roman
times is clear and valid. That region, in particular, Normandy,
has the highest concentration of ancient Celtic place-names
and Celtic inscriptions in Europe. they are common in the
rest of southern France (excluding the formerly Basque region
of Gascony), Spain, Portugal, and the British Isles...Given
the distribution of Celtic languages in southwest Europe,
it is most likely that they were spread by a wave of agriculturalists
who dispersed 7,000 years ago [5,000 BC] from Anatolia [Turkey],
travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to
Italy, France, Spain and then up the Altantic coast to the
British Isles. There is a dated archaeological trail for
this. My genetic analysis shows exact counterparts for this
trail both in the male Y chromosome and the maternally transmitted
mitochondrial DNA right up to Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and
the English south coast. Further
evidence for the Mediterranean origins of Celtic invaders
is preserved in medieval Gaelic literature. According to
the orthodox view of "iron-age Celtic invasions"
from central Europe, Celtic cultural history should start
in the British Isles no earlier than 300 BC. Yet Irish legend
tells us that all six of the cycles of invasion came
from the Mediterranean via Spain, during the late Neolithic
to Bronze age, and were completed 3,700 years ago
[1,700 BC was the LAST one].". A critique of
of Dr. Oppenheimer's work was published in the New York
Times titled: "English,
Irish, Scots: They're All One, Genes Suggest"
by Nicholas Wade: "...Other geneticists say Dr. Oppenheimer’s
reconstruction is plausible...“Once you have an established
population, it is quite difficult to change it very radically,”
said Daniel G. Bradley, a geneticist at Trinity College,
Dublin. But he said he was “quite agnostic” as
to whether the original population became established in
Britain and Ireland immediately after the glaciers retreated
16,000 years ago, as Dr. Oppenheimer argues, or more recently,
in the Neolithic Age, which began 10,000 years ago.
Bryan Sykes, another Oxford geneticist, said he agreed
with Dr. Oppenheimer that the ancestors of “by far
the majority of people” were present in the British
Isles before the Roman conquest of A.D. 43. “The
Saxons, Vikings and Normans had a minor effect, and much
less than some of the medieval historical texts would
indicate,” he said.
His conclusions, based on his own genetic survey and
information in his genealogical testing service, Oxford
Ancestors, are reported in his new book, “Saxons,
Vikings and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland.”
...another geneticist, Christopher Tyler-Smith of the
Sanger Centre near Cambridge...As to the identity of the
first postglacial settlers, Dr. Tyler-Smith said he “would
favor a Neolithic origin for the Y chromosomes, although
the evidence is still quite sketchy.”
A summary and discussion of Professor
Bryan Sykes's research team's findings is
published under "Celts
descended from Spanish fishermen, study finds"
and "Now
we are all Celts!" . The summary is
a copy of an article "We're nearly all Celts under
the skin" by Ian Johnston (Science Correspondent) published
in "The Scotsman" on Thursday 21 September 2006.
Professor Sykes, who acknowledges his own Celtic origins,
comments: "If one thinks that the English are genetically
different from the Scots, Irish and Welsh, that's entirely
wrong,".
"In the 19th century, the idea of Anglo-Saxon superiority
was very widespread. At the moment, there is a resurgence
of Celtic identity, which had been trampled on. It's very
vibrant and obvious at the moment."
"Britain's indigenous population is descended from
a tribe of Iberian fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay
6,000 years ago.
DNA analysis has revealed the Celts have an almost identical
genetic "fingerprint" to the inhabitants of
coastal regions of Spain, whose own ancestors migrated
north between 4,000 and 5,000BC, a team from Oxford University
has found.
[NOTE: This genetic "fingerprint"
in Britain does not have a mutation that developed millenia
later in coastal Spain showing that Celts are NOT descended
from Spanish Armada sailors - another myth busted]
The discovery, by Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics
at Oxford University, will herald a change in scientific
understanding of Britishness.
People of Celtic ancestry were thought to have descended
from tribes of central Europe. Professor Sykes, who is
soon to publish the first DNA map of the British Isles,
said: "About 6,000 years ago Iberians developed ocean-going
boats that enabled them to push up the Channel. Before
they arrived, there were some human inhabitants of Britain
but only a few thousand in number. These people were later
subsumed into a larger Celtic tribe... The majority of
people in the British Isles are actually descended from
the Spanish."
Professor Sykes spent five years taking DNA samples from
10,000 volunteers in Britain and Ireland, in an effort
to produce a map of our genetic roots.
Research on their "Y" chromosome, which subjects
inherit from their fathers, revealed that all but a tiny
percentage of the volunteers were originally descended
from one of six clans who arrived in the UK in several
waves of immigration prior to the Norman conquest.
The most common genetic fingerprint belongs to the Celtic
clan, which Professor Sykes has called "Oisin".
OISIN
Descended from Iberian fishermen
who migrated to Britain between 4,000 and 5,000BC and
now considered the UK's indigenous inhabitants.
ESHU
The wave of Oisin immigration was joined by the Eshu
clan, which has roots in Africa. Eshu descendants are
primarily found in coastal areas.
RE
A second wave of arrivals which came from the Middle
East. The Re were farmers who spread westwards across
Europe.
WODAN
Second most common clan arrived from Denmark during Viking
invasions in the 9th century.
[NOTE: Drs. Oppenheimer and Tyler-Smith
both agree that the so-called "Anglo-Saxon-Danish
mass invasion" is a myth - there is NO "Saxon
marker" in the English population (a later mutation
present in Saxony AD onwards) - this agrees with East
Anglian archaeology that shows no evidence of a massive
invasion but rather continuity. A Palaeolithic to Neolithic
origin is indicated. Note in this regard that the Celtic
Megalithic Civilisation extended to the Netherlands, North
Coast Germany, Denmark and Scandinavia enabling much peaceful
population interchange - see the Wiki
Megalithic map. To
quote Dr Oppenheimer futher:
'When I looked at exact gene type matches between the
British Isles and the continent, there were indeed specific
matches between the continental Anglo-Saxon homelands
and England, but these amounted to only 5 per cent of
modern English male lines, rising to 15 per cent in parts
of Norfolk where the Angles first settled. There were
no such matches with Frisia, which tends to confirm a
specific Anglo-Saxon event since Frisia is closer to England,
so would be expected to have more matches.
When I examined dates of intrusive male gene lines to
look for those coming in from northwest Europe during
the past 3,000 years, there was a similarly low rate of
immigration, by far the majority arriving in the Neolithic
period. The English maternal genetic record (mtDNA) is
consistent with this and contradicts the Anglo-Saxon wipeout
story. English females almost completely lack the characteristic
Saxon mtDNA marker type still found in the homeland of
the Angles and Saxons. The conclusion is that there was
an Anglo-Saxon invasion, but of a minority
elite type, with no evidence of subsequent "sexual
apartheid."']
SIGURD
Descended from Viking invaders who settled in the British
Isles from AD 793. One of the most common clans in the
Shetland Isles, and areas of north and west Scotland.
ROMAN
Although the Romans ruled from AD 43 until 410, they
left a tiny genetic footprint. For the first 200 years
occupying forces were forbidden from marrying locally."
So to summarise, by far the
majority of the population of Britain and Ireland is Celtic
in origin and most of these Celts came to these Celtic
Isles either as fishermen in the Epi-Mesolithic or as
farmers/pastoralists in the Neolithic from Portugal/Spain
(via Brittany probably - La Hoguette culture) but with
the early Celtic speech being brought there along the
north coast of the Mediterranean from the Balkans-Greece
(via Liguria and Apulia in France and Italy) and ultimately
from south-eastern Anatolia (Turkey, Syria). We are a
mixture of peoples of a number of different origins as
shown on Dr Sykes's maps below:
Y-chromosome haplogroups "clans"
- according to Professor Sykes the first people
to arrive in large numbers 7,000 years ago were
fishermen from Portugal and Spain who were of the
Oisin clan "Celts" accompanied by the
Eshu clan in coastal areas (see top map):
The map below shows the distribution of "Oisin"
R1b (Welsh flag Red) and "Sigurd" R1a (Pink) as
a proportion of the population (Black is for other Y-haplogroups):
Labels for peoples with high R1b frequencies on the above
map: GE Georgia and Armenia,
GM Germany, IB
Iberian peninsula,IS
Iceland, IT Italy,NW Norwegians,
SC Scotland, TU Turks,
UG Uygurs (also note
the R1b "trace" through the Middle East, Iran,
Russia, the Urals, Western Siberia and Kazakhstan)
Latest research published on the R1b Wiki dispels the notion
of a pre-Celtic Basque stratum so it would appear we started
off as Celts as Professor Sykes maintains. This also corresponds
to reaction from Basques I recieved on soc.culture.basque
(before they abandoned this newsgroup) to suggestions that
they were related to Celts when the idea was first floated
- they actively discussed it among themselves in Euskara
and denied it as a possiblility. To quote from the R1b Wiki:
'However, linguistic-historical studies performed by paleo-Hispanists,
and also some genetic research[6], the latter focusing on
the lower R1b1b2 (R1b1c) diversity among Basques, disputed
either their assumed remote Hispanic origins or their position
as the group who has best conserved their Paleolithic European
genetic ancestry, and deny Basque territory represents a
major focus of expansion:
"Contrary to previous suggestions, we do not observe any
particular link between Basques and Celtic populations beyond
that provided by the Paleolithic ancestry common to European
populations, nor we find evidence supporting Basques as
the focus of major population expansions"'
[NOTE: Basques are therefore not
our ancestors/predecessors thus busting the academic myth
that Celts were overlords that conquered a Basque predecessor
population in Britain. The Basques are thus best considered
as "brothers and sisters" to us Indo-European
Celts rather than as our "parents". When we discuss
the linguistic origins of Indo-European language family
that includes us Celts, later in this article, this relationship
will become obvious.]
The Wiki map below shows the spread of R1b west-northwestwards
(Celtic spread), north-northeastwards (North Caucasus-Ural
spread) and east-northeastwards ("Yuezhi (Tocharian)
part of the Uyghur" spread) from the eastern Anatolian
region:
R1b is now typical of people of Atlantic Europe (Welsh 89%,
Basque 88%, Irish 81%, Northern Portuguese 81% Portugal,
Catalan 79%, Scottish 77%, English 75%, Dutch 70%, etc.),
but also the Bashkirs of Perm 75%, the Bagavalins of North-East
Caucasus 67.9% and the Uyghur descendants of the Yuezhi
"Tocharians" in Xinjiang, North-West China.
Latest 2010 Wiki map below shows European R1b distribution
much more accurately::
In an article in TimeOnline on January 9, 2009 titled
"Radiocarbon dates indicate early Irish were just visiting"
we get confirmation of the idea that we Celts are a composite
of fishermen and hunters who adopted herding of cattle and
farmers and sheep and goat herders and grain farmers sailing
up from the south.
DNA
Trail of domesticated animals and plants such as goats and
wheat brought from Anatolia to the Atlantic Celtic shores
by early Celtic speakers: On the map
you can see the rapid (10-20 km per year) sea-borne trail
westard by cwch/curragh toward the Atlantic Ocean along
the northern coast of the Mediterranean Sea taken by the
agricultural/pastoral early Celtic speech/speakers (shown
in various shades of gray) that Dr. Oppenheimer mentions.
This early Celtic culture is called the Impressa-Cardium
culture because of their characteristic pottery impressed
with cockle (Cardium) shell imprints as decoration. It must
be emphasised that this same route is an ancient fisherfolk
trading route pre-dating agriculture connecting the ice-age
refugium peoples of the Atlantic with those of the Mediteranean
during the Epi-Mesolithic era where fishing people typically
lived in caves near the sea or rivers. The DNA evidence
shows the goats carried on the boats originated in the south-east
Anatolia region (Byblos culture). From that same region
wheat was first cultivated on the slopes of the Karaca shield
volcano just 20 miles fromthe
world's the oldest Megalithic structure at Göbekli
Tepe. There is also a trail of early Celtic
speech/speakers into Greece, the southern Balkans and lower
Danube which acted as a new centre of spread (after Anatolia)
westwards. It has been found that the Italic
languages developed from this Celtic base as the
Wiki article explains:
"The Italic speakers were not native to Italy, but migrated
into the Italian Peninsula in the course of the 2nd millennium
BC and were apparently related to the Celtic tribes that
roamed over a large part of Western Europe at the time.
Archaeologically, the Apennine culture (inhumations) enters
the Italian Peninsula from ca. 1350 BC, east to west.".
A similar picture is emerging for the Germanic languages
as explained in the same Wiki article:
"The ancient Venetic language, as revealed by its inscriptions
(including complete sentences), was also closely related
to the Italic languages and is sometimes even classified
as Italic. However, since it also shares similarities with
other Western Indo-European branches (particularly Germanic),
some linguists prefer to consider it an independent Indo-European
language."
Archaeological Trail of the early Celtic speaking Impressa-Cardium
pottery people and earliest Megalith builders.
You guessed it - look for the Red and Green colours from
the Welsh flag for our origins on these 2 maps following.
Moving
on, the following map from the Wikipedia shows the cultures
in Europe at between 4.500-4,000 BC. The "proto-Celtic"
colonies cultures are shown in the mid-green Printed Cardium
Pottery area, the red-brownn Andalusian area and the Atlantic
western red areas (Byblos culture is shown in dark green
in the Near East incuding Cyprus).
Moving
on further, the following map from the Wikipedia shows the
cultures in Europe at between 4.000-3,500 BC. The "proto-Celtic"
colonies are shown as having expanded enormoulsy.
Place Names, Family Names and Traditions and Language
Inscriptions along the trading route from Anatolia-Greece
to Britain via Iberia:
a) Place and Family Names and Traditions:
There are a number of well-recognised Celtic place and family
name elements that are found along the trading route as
follows:
gal,gel,kal,cel,gyl
- these relate to the name for us Celts,
Gaels
or Gauls
and are cognate with the names we are known by. alb,alp,elb,olb,ap,ab [+-an,en]
- these relate to mountains with white on them
(snow). genoa,genau - this relates
to our word for mouth (as applied to a river). mor,mar,maw - this relates
to our word for big, great, high or grand.
In relation to our Cymraeg word mawr (Gaelic mor), the Mari
family of Nice (part of ancient Liguria) as in the Deputy
Mayor of Nice Jean-Claude Mari identify themselves as Celtic
in origin and trace their family's ultimate origins to the
now ruined ancient city of Mari near modern Tell Hariri,
Syria. Jean-Claude has an active interest in Celtic culture
particularly Scottish culture and in the French-Italian
regional Ligurian culture. (Isabelle Palmer nee Mari, pers
comm - Isabelle is Jean-Claude's daughter and her sister
is a typical Celtic redhead).
Trail of Celtic Place Names (apologies - this will take
some time to read off my maps - here follows a start):
Area of Linguistic Origin (Eastern Turkey, Syria, Caucasus):
Syria: Mari, Al
Bab
Eastern Turkey: Elbistan,
Kelkit, Mor
Dagi, Maras. Abkhazia itself (Abkhaz
is a NW Caucasian Language): Gali
Kabardino-Balkaria republic
itself and Karachay-Cherkessia republic (Kabardian and Cherkes
are NW Caucasion languages): Mount Elbrus
Western sea and river spread of Celtic branch:
Other Turkey: Kalkan,
Gallipoli (Gelibolu)
- "City of the Gauls", Celtik,
Gala
Golu. Also, Angora (Ankara) from the much later settlement
of the Volcae Galatians.
Cyprus (north-east Turkish peninsula facing SE Turkey):
Galatia, Galinoporni.
Greece: Galatista (Central
Macedonia near Vardar-Axos River), Galatini
(Western Macedonia), Galatas
(Peleponnesus)
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Galiste,
Galicnik. Also, Bogomila
and Bogdanci. There is a Balkan-Croation tradition that
the people of the Bogomila area are remnants of the ancient
Celts of the area (Frank Matic, pers comm) Albania itself Apulia (Italy) itself:
Gallipoli,Galatina,Galatone
Sicily (Italy): Capo Gallo
Liguria (France-Italy): Genoa,
Golfo di Genova, I.
Gallinara
Other Italy: Appennini
mountain range
Switzerland - Geneva
Portugal itself:
Mora
Spain: Galicia,
Galera, Gallur,
Puntu Del Galato, Gergal,
Gurrea Del Gallego,
Galisteo, Embalse De
Gabriel - Y Galan,
Alba De Tormes, Albala Gaul
(France) itself:
Cymru (Wales): Dolbenmaen,
Garndolbenmaen, Cefn
Mawr
Ireland: Galway Alba (Scotland) itself:
Galloway, Galashiels,
Argyle
Eastern irrigator spread of "Yuezhi (Tocharian) part
of Uyghur" branch:
b) Language inscriptions and other written recordings:
There are a chain of language inscriptions in languages
that show early Celtic affinities along the trading route
from Anatolia westwards to the Iberian Peninsula. The Eastern
Michigan University "The Linguist" publication
has a very interesting article on these and others at "Ancient
and Extinct languages in the ISO 639-3 Standard".
I will outline the evidence of their early Celtic afiliations
below. Please note that in reading the Wiki links that linguistic
affinities based just on names is palpably wrong given the
ample evidence that names are often adopted by one linguistic
group from another influential unrelated ligusitic group,
e.g. our widespread adoption of Jewish Biblical names. This
contrasts with the stronger evidence outlined that these
languages are either Proto-Celtic
("Early Celtic" in my text) or have Celtic affinities.
To quote from the Proto-Celtic
Wiki on its possible antiquity as I have
outlined already under point 5 above:
"The date when Proto-Celtic became a separate language is
controversial. In the past an association with particular
archaeological cultures had been assumed, then the method
of glottochronology was used. Both are not satisfactory
for many reasons. In the last decade or so a number of groups
have addressed this question using modern computational
methods, with differing results. Gray and Atkinson estimated
a date of 6100 BP (4100 BCE) while Forster and Toth suggest
a date of 8100 BP (6100 BCE)... Both these dates are subject
to considerable estimating uncertainty, perhaps +/-1500
years. In the Paleolithic
Continuity Theory Celtic is proposed to have
emerged from the Iberian refuge after the Last Glacial Maximum...
Proto-Celtic may have been spoken to as late as 800 BCE,
see Celtic
languages."
An excellent article presenting the logic of the Palaeolithic
Continuity Theory titled "The
Palaeolithic Indo-Europeans" states the following
regarding Celtic origins and the ancient Lusitanian language
of Portugal, Galicia and North-West Spain:
"However, even if the Celts did spread eastward from
Ireland and western Britain, those areas could only have
been only a secondary staging point. The original Celtic
homeland has to have been located in the west of the Iberian
peninsula, the source of those seafarers who settled Ireland
at the tail end of the Ice Age. Irish DNA gives powerful
testimony to this -- it is almost identical to that of the
Basques, who would have been their immediate neighbors before
the northward migration. There is linguistic evidence for
this migration as well, in the form of an obscure but apparently
Indo-European language called Lusitanian, which the Romans
encountered when they colonized western Iberia. The handful
of surviving inscriptions in this language suggest that
it had distant Celtic affinities, and yet it was not at
all similar to the Celtiberian languages of central Spain,
which had arrived from France as part of the recent Celtic
expansion. It seems quite possible that Lusitanian was a
survivor of the proto-Celtic spoken in the late Ice Age.
Late Ice Age migrationsWith the relocation of the Celtic
homeland to the Atlantic fringe, the linguistic map of western
Europe falls neatly into place... Proto-Celtic was the language
of the Iberian seafarers who set out for the north about
10,000 BP. "
Note there is ample noted evidence for a Mediterranean to
Atlantic
Fringe trading network from the Palaeolithic/Mesolithic
onwards possibly with some associated linguistic exchange,
but as Dr. Oppenheimer has found the Neolithic agricultural/pastoral
expansion and prestige from a region of Indo-European origin
in Anatolia is now the likely explanation for Proto-Celtic
genesis.
The chain of Early Celtic languages listed from East to
West from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic is as follows
(note that there are no such examples of Early Celtic from
north of the Alps in Europe thus busting the myth that our
origin lies there from a much later warlike incursion from
the steppes of north of the Black Sea):
Tokharian
A and B- the Tocharian
language of the Yuezhi
(Tocharians)
in Xinjiang in North-Western China which has been shown
by Gray and Atkinson to be a direct branch with early Celtic
from the original Anatolian Indo-European with their high
percentage of R1b haplogroup, O blood group, blonde or reddish
hair, blue or green eyes and showing these traits also in
Buddhist frescoes and the famous Tarim
mummies back in antiquity:
NOTE: INDO-EUROPEAN will suffice at the end of the above
movie - Diolch !
"Based on the similarities
between Tocharian and the Italic and Celtic branches,
especially the mediopassive in -r and the subjunctive in
-a ... In the present tense, the mediopassive ending is
-r, thought to be "a phenomenon of survival of an archaic
feature once shared by the entire Indo-European group,"
a feature which was only retained
in Celtic, Italic, and Tocharian. Thus, for example,
A klyostär 'is heard'..For example, prior to the discovery
of Tocharian, the occurrence of -r as a marker of the mediopassive
form of the verb was only substantiated
in the Celtic and Italic branches of the IE language
family. The fact that these two groups are relatively geographically
close to each other helped to explain how this could have
come about. However, Tocharian, lying far to the east, also
has this feature...An even more significant implication
of the discovery of Tocharian was the effect it had on the
centum-satem division
that linguists had devised by observing the reflexes of
the PIE velars. Before the evidence of Tocharian came to
light, the IE languages could be neatly divided into two
groups: those in the west which had velar reflexes (centum
languages) and those in the east which had sibilant reflexes
(satem languages). However, Tocharian threw that distinction
out since, although it lay further
to the east than any other IE language, it was centum, the
word for 100 being känt in A and kante in B.
'Thus, the overall impact of Tocharian has been essentially
negative in that it has provided evidence against hypotheses
concerning Proto-Indo-European made before its discovery."
Lane points out that this has resulted in the need for "our
'late 19th century' conception of the IE parent language...
to be radically changed in several aspects, and nowhere
more radically than in the instance of the verb.
LEXICON...
[A = Tocharian A, B = Tocharian B, E = English, C = Cymraeg,
Bz = Brezhoneg, Gl = Gaeilge, Gd = Gaidhlig]
A tre, B trai, E three, C tri, Bz tri, Gl tri, Gd tri (pronounced
"tree")
A stwar, B stwer, E four, C pedwar, Bz pevar, Gl ceathair
/ ceathrar, Gd ceithir
A päñ, B pis, E five, C pump / pum, Bz pemp,
A okät, B okt, E eight,
AB ñu, E nine
A känt, B kante, E hundred / century
AB tu, E you / thou
A säm, B sana, E woman
A pacar, B pacer, E father
A macar, B macer, E mother
A pracar, B procer, E brother
A ckacar, B tkacer, E daughter
A ak, B ek, E eye
A wak, B wek, E voice
A ko, B keu, E ox / cow
A yuk, B yakwe, E horse
AB ku, E dog / hound
A pält, B pilta, E leaf
A kukäl, B kokale, E wagon / chariot
A por, B puwar, E fire
A rtär, B ratre, E red
AB käm-, E come
AB päk-, E cook / ripen"
Messapic
(Illyrian) - Apulia (and Eastern Adriatic):
Messapic is the only Illyrian
language with any material traces yet these are enough to
illustrate an Early Celtic affinitiy:
"Few if any Messapic inscriptions have been definitely
deciphered. From the Vaste inscription (Corpus Inscriptionum
Messapicarum 149): klohi zis
thotoria marta pido vastei basta veinan aran in daranthoa
vasti staboos xohedonas daxtassi vaanetos inthi trigonoxo
a staboos xohetthihi dazimaihi beiliihi inthi rexxorixoa
kazareihi xohetthihi toeihithi dazohonnihi inthi vastima
daxtas kratheheihi inthi ardannoa poxxonnihi a imarnaihi
For this other Messapic inscription (Grotta della Poesia,
Melendugno, Lecce), a translation is given from Cornell
University: klauhiZis Dekias Artahias
Thautouri andirahho daus apistathi vinaihi Hear Zeus, Dekias
Artahias to the infernal Thaotor set up (the rest untranslated)
Here, klauhi probably
means "hear" (PIE *kleu-, "to hear");
Zis has been interpreted
as the Messapic Zeus; Dekias is a first name (compare Latin
Decius); Artahias is a patronym or nomen gentile with the
Messapic genitive -as suffix;
Thautori is inferred to be an infernal god because of its
placement next to what appears to be an adjective, andirahho
(perhaps from PIE *ndher-, "under"). Another Messapic inscription
from Galatina is dated
to the 2nd century BC: klohi
zis anthos thotorridas ana aprodita apa ogrebis The separation
of the last two elements is uncertain (apa, ogrebis, as
shown here). Klohi (as
klauhi in the preceding
inscription) probably means "listen, hear". Zis
may be the Messapic Zeus, as in the preceding inscription.
Aprodita is a loanword from Greek Aphrodite. Anthos Thotorridas
is a Messapic anthroponym, showing a personal name plus
patronymic or nomen gentile in the genitive
(-as)."
[Let us concentrate on the known
and repeated phrase "klohi zis" and the singular genitive
ending "-as" which can be readily identified as Celtic as
follows: "klo" (Messapic-Illyrian for "hear") = "clyw" (Cymraeg
for "hearing") = "clos" (Gaeilge for "hear"); "hi" (Messapic-Illyrian
for "me or her") = "i" or "hi" (Cymraeg for "me" or "her")
= "mi" (Gaidhlig for "me") = "cloisim" (Gaeilge for "I hear");
with "Zis" being the later Greek derived substitute
for Lugh/Lleu/Llew this is readily translated to "Hear
me/her Masterful God" or more likely "I hear you
Masterful God". The genitive singular "-as"
in Messapic equates to the same in Gaeilge except shortened
to just "-a". Note that the Celtic VSO word order
is also evident here: klo (hear - Verb) hi (I - Subject)
Zis (Masterful God - Object). The actual instance shown
hear is much stronger evidence than any theoretical reconstructed
language thus busting the myth that this is just generic
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) words - this is really Early Celtic
no matter how the theorists want to explain in away by "absorbing"
it into an amorphous construction (just another myth actually).]
"An ancient language of the Siculi, who lived in Sicily
and parts of southern Italy. Indo-European, but unclassified,
though there are enough similarities between Sicel and Messapic
to open the possibility that they are related. The best
known inscription is the Centuripa Vase, from the 5th century
BC, and there are four inscriptions of the 3rd century BC
and coins of the 6th and 5th centuries BC."
Ligurian
- Gulf of Genoa and French Riviera coast (Liguria): This
language is related to Gaulish Celtic but "different"
(perhaps more archaic). The Celtic affiliation is supported
by family traditions and archaeology shows that this area
was one of the linchpins of the Early Celtic (see earlier
under points 9 and 10):
"The Ligurian language was spoken in pre-Roman times
and into the Roman era by an ancient people of north-western
Italy and south-eastern France known as the Ligures. Very
little is known about this language (mainly place names
and personal names remain) which is generally believed to
have been Indo-European; it appears to have shared many
features with other Indo-European languages, primarily Celtic
(Gaulish) ... Xavier Delamarre argues that Ligurian was
a Celtic language, similar to but not the same as Gaulish.
His argument hinges on two points: firstly, the Ligurian
place-name Genua (modern Genoa, located near a river mouth)
is claimed by Delamarre to derive from PIE *genu-, "chin(bone)".
Many Indo-European languages use 'mouth' to mean the part
of a river which meets the sea or a lake, but it is only
in Celtic that reflexes of PIE *genu- mean 'mouth'. Besides
Genua, which is considered Ligurian (Delamarre 2003, p.
177), this is found also in Genava (modern Geneva), which
may be Gaulish... Delamarre's second point is Plutarch's
mention (Marius 10, 5-6) that during the Battle of Aquae
Sextiae in 102 BC, the Ambrones (who may have been a Celtic
tribe) began to shout "Ambrones!" as their battle-cry; the
Ligurian troops fighting for the Romans, on hearing this
cry, found that it was identical to an ancient name in their
country which the Ligurians often used when speaking of
their descent (outôs kata genos onomazousi Ligues), so they
returned the shout, "Ambrones!". Delamarre points out a
risk of circular logic - if it is believed that the Ligurians
are non-Celtic, and if many place names and tribal names
that classical authors state are Ligurian seem to be Celtic,
it is incorrect to discard all the Celtic ones when collecting
Ligurian words and to use this edited corpus to demonstrate
that Ligurian is non-Celtic or non-Indo-European. Strabo
on the other hand states "As for the Alps... Many tribes
(éthnê) occupy these mountains, all Celtic (Keltikà) ...but
while these Ligurians belong to a different people (hetero-ethneis),
still they are similar to the Celts in their modes of life
(bíois)."
Lepontic
- Lakes region of Northern Italy inland from Liguria:
"While the language is named after the tribe of the
Lepontii, which occupied portions of ancient Rhaetia, specifically
an Alpine area straddling modern Switzerland and Italy and
bordering Cisalpine Gaul, the term is currently used by
many Celticists to apply to all Celtic dialects of ancient
Italy. This usage is disputed by those who continue to view
the Lepontii as one of several indigenous pre-Roman tribes
of the Alps, quite distinct from the Gauls who invaded the
plains of Northern Italy in historical times. The older
Lepontic inscriptions date back to before the 5th century
BC, the item from Castelletto Ticino being dated at the
6th century BC and that from Sesto Calende possibly being
from the 7th century BC (Prosdocimi, 1991). The people who
made these inscriptions are nowadays identified with the
Golasecca culture, which has been ascribed a Celtic identity
(De Marinis, 1991). The extinction date for Lepontic is
only inferred by the absence of later inscriptions."
"An ancient language of Northern Italy. The written
data is rather sparse, and it has sometimes been seen as
a "Celticized" version of a close relative of Ligurian,
but modern opinion now sees it as simply a Celtic language.
c. 600 BC - 1 BC."
Language of the Stele di Novilara
at Pesaro on the Adriatic in northern Italy
"Professor John Koch suggests the Welsh can trace their
ancestry back to Portugal and Spain, debunking the century-old
received wisdom that our forebears came from Iron Age Germany
and Austria. ... Professor Koch, of the University of Wales
Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies, in Aberystwyth,
says archaeological inscriptions on stones show we came
from southern Portugal and south-west Spain.
He said: “Celts are said to come from west central
Europe – Austria, southern Germany, eastern France
and that part of the world.
“That’s been the theory that everybody has
grown up with for at least 100 years.
“There is evidence that the Celtic languages were
spoken there because of place names and people’s
names.
“But the assumption was that was where they came
from. I think they got there later.
“There is evidence in Spain and Portugal indicating
they were there 500 or more years before.”
Professor Koch says there are Celtic texts in Portugal
and Spain way before they started springing up in central
Europe during Roman times.
One key piece of evidence is the earliest written language
of western Europe – Tartessian, found on inscribed
stones in Portugal and Spain dating back to between 800BC
and 400BC. The professor maintains this language can be
deciphered as Celtic.
Expert on Welsh history and archaeology Dr Raimund Karl,
says there is also biological and genetic evidence to
support professor Koch’s theory.
He said: “In the last couple of years there have
been a number of genetic studies of human DNA indicating
that the population of much of the western part of the
British Isles is related to other communities along the
Atlantic seafront. These include Brittany, northern Spain,
Portugal and the French Atlantic coast. That’s their
genetic origin.”
More information on this momentous discovery at these
sites:
Lusitanian
(Portugal, Galicia and North-West Spain): This language
seems to be Celtic from before the initial "p"
was dropped and a very good candidate for a source Proto-Celtic
language:
"The filiation of the Lusitanian language is still
in debate. There are those who endorse that it is a Celtic
language. This Celtic theory is largely based upon the
historical fact that the only Indo-European tribes that
are known to have existed in Portugal at that time were
Celtic tribes. The apparent "Celticity" of most of the
lexicon — the anthroponyms and toponyms — may also support
a Celtic affiliation. There is a substantial problem in
the Celtic theory however: the preservation of initial
/p/, as can be seen in PORCOM. The Celtic languages had
lost that initial /p/ in their evolution: comparing with
athir / orc (Old Irish) and pater / porcum (Latin) meaning
"father" and "pig", respectively. However,
the presence of this /p/ does not necessarily preclude
the possibility of Lusitanian being Celtic: Lusitanian
could have split off from the other Celtic languages before
the loss of /p/, or when /p/ had become /Φ/ (before
shifting to /h/ and then being lost); the letter P could
be used to represent either sound."
"Inscriptions have been found in Arroyo de la Luz
(in Cáceres), Cabeço das Fragas (in Guarda) and in Moledo
(Viseu). Taking into account Lusitanian theonyms, anthroponyms
and toponyms, the Lusitanian sphere would include modern
northeastern Portugal and adjacent areas in Spain, with
the centre in Serra da Estrela. There are fundamental
suspicions that the area of the Gallaecian tribes (North
of Portugal and Galicia), Asturian and, probably, Vetonian;
that is, all the northwestern area of the Iberian peninsula,
spoke languages related with the Lusitanian..."
Historical accounts of origin of later phases of Celtic
culture in agreement.
Linguistics - evidence from Celtic language syntax and
grammar and relationships and parallels with other language
families.
Striking correspondences in Celtic Mythology as recorded
in ancient poems and manuscripts.
Possible Religious affinities between Druidism and early
Celtic Christianity and religious ideas from the Balkans
and Anatolia and possibly the Buddhism of the Yuezhi (Tocharians).
Also, possible affinities in between Celtic and Balkan (as
explored by Planxty) and Anatolian music, dance and art.
[I am currently exploring these and how ancient or recent
these could be].
to be continued...
Bob Jones
2009 May (Updated August, September and October) 2008, January
and June 2009. You are free to use any of the above
information with the following restrictions:
1. You must not use it as the basis for any discriminatory
comments or actions against any people or group.
2. You must use the material for the promotion of the interests
of the people or group and not for any other purpose whether
it be commercial or otherwise. Such use must not be against
the interests of other people or group.
3. Send Beth Nesaf an email with the link to the web page
or reference to the publication or document where such use
is made of the information.
