View Full Version : Ethnicities of peoples in different regions
AncientFanTR
11-22-2009, 00:34
Ok, bobbin and the other guys are starting to get miffed about us talking about the ethnicities of faces, regions etc. on the faces database thread. I have therefore taken it upon myself to take his advice and start a thread about who lived where in Classical times and how the genetic makeup of Europe/the middleeast has changed over the last 2000 years.
https://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g177/0404625/map.jpg
I have reposted the map from that thread so that we can see which regions it is most relevant to talk about.
antisocialmunky
11-22-2009, 05:19
Germanic people pushed most of the Celtic peoples into smaller corners.
AncientFanTR
11-22-2009, 10:42
Germanic people pushed most of the Celtic peoples into smaller corners.
Did the germanic people come from Caucasus like celts or from steppe like iranian nomads and slavs?
Phalanx300
11-22-2009, 12:21
I think the Steppes as we came from around Iran. :inquisitive:
AncientFanTR
11-22-2009, 13:54
I think the Steppes as we came from around Iran. :inquisitive:
It's very interesting that the word "brother" in german is "bruder" and in persian it is "birader" a bit close to be a coincidence, no?
Phalanx300
11-22-2009, 14:30
Yes the Germanic languages are a bit similar to the Persian ones. When I listened to this Iranian song it did sound a bit familiar.
ziegenpeter
11-22-2009, 14:54
It's very interesting that the word "brother" in german is "bruder" and in persian it is "birader" a bit close to be a coincidence, no?
Well it isn't because these are all indo-european languages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_people
Germanic people pushed most of the Celtic peoples into smaller corners.
Except that they actually didn't. The franks where only a minority at best in france, a ruling class with no significant genetic impression on the common people, and from what I've read this was mostly the case in Britain too. altough the saxons immigrated in greater numbers, most british people are still of celtic origin, they just speak a germanic language. It's all about cultural assimilation
:book:
antisocialmunky
11-22-2009, 15:43
Germanic culture pushed most of the Celtic peoples into smaller corners.
Fixed. Yes they are cousin peoples because everyone besides Fins and Vasques(maybe the Greeks, I forget) decend from the Aryan steppe warriors that conquered Europe, India, and Iran. However this begs the question. How much genetic contribution is there from the pre-Aryan peoples? Or did this conquest flood the genetic pool or erase the indigenous European people?
This also begs the question of what did pre-Aryan Europeans actually look like since Discovery network likes to show pre-Aryan people looking like modern day Europeans.
afaik at least Dorian Greeks were indo-Europeans. don't know about the others tho.
"Pre Aryan" europeans would have looked the same a europeans today, people need to understand that just because most of europe speaks indoeuropean languages doesn't mean most of europe is decended from the orginal speakers. In most cases europeans are decended from the original settlers that recolonised the area after the last ice age.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Early_Holocene.png
The question shouldn't be how much is left of the orignal inhabitants but by how much did any invasion/migration affect the indigenous inhabitants, which in most cases in not much at all.
Very good explination of european genetics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Europe)
antisocialmunky
11-22-2009, 16:41
Cool.
A Very Super Market
11-22-2009, 18:11
Err, the celts didn't come from the Caucasus. "Caucasian" is simply a term thought up by a scientist enamoured with the region's women.
kaptainplanet
11-22-2009, 19:28
why cyprus and pontus are not included in the greek area?
AncientFanTR
11-22-2009, 19:43
Err, the celts didn't come from the Caucasus. "Caucasian" is simply a term thought up by a scientist enamoured with the region's women.
AFAIK Celts were actually caucasian and were descended from indo-aryans, hence celtic being an indo-european language and a number of thousands of years ago, they were expelled from the caucasus region by the early Scythians and went to europe, assimilating the "indigenous" "original Celts" who were known by greeks as "keltikoi" and the change apparently went on without the greeks knowledge and so the original Celts were replaced by the Celts we have known for the last 3000 years.
(btw I am not sure if this is 100% correct, please be merciful!:no::whip:)
AFAIK Celts were actually caucasian and were descended from indo-aryans, hence celtic being an indo-european language and a number of thousands of years ago, they were expelled from the caucasus region by the early Scythians and went to europe, assimilating the "indigenous" "original Celts" who were known by greeks as "keltikoi" and the change apparently went on without the greeks knowledge and so the original Celts were replaced by the Celts we have known for the last 3000 years.
(btw I am not sure if this is 100% correct, please be merciful!:no::whip:)
To be more precise the speakers of the language that would go on to form the celtic languages (and possibly the italic ones too) orginated (it is theorised) in the pontic steppe and transferred their language through migration and cultural contact to the peoples of central europe who would become what we know as the celts, there was never a celtic people speaking a celtic language in that region of the world at that time, they didn't exist, only people who spoke some percursor language did. Think of it like this, you wouldn't expect germans from EBs timeframe to speak english even though english is a germanic language would you?
Again as I've said before just because a people derive their language, culture or even ethnicity from a group doesn't mean they are genetically related to that group. The Celts of EB were not direct decendants of the speakers of the original indoeuropean language just people who had adopted a decendant of that language.
why cyprus and pontus are not included in the greek area?
I just divided up the map into loose geographic regions, it's not meant to be particularly accurate (this is why i ask people to give the country of origin for a face when posted)
antisocialmunky
11-22-2009, 23:41
And then there are the Etruscans who are related to people from Asia Minor somehow...
and afterall were all africans and we all* speak Indo-european languages, seems were all brothers, let's hug!
* this is not an invitation for all you chinese** guys to say: not me!
** and neither for you other non-indo-europeans
AncientFanTR
11-22-2009, 23:57
and afterall were all africans and we all* speak Indo-european languages, seems were all brothers, let's hug!
Not me, I speak an altaic language: turkish!
* this is not an invitation for all you chinese** guys to say: not me!
** and neither for you other non-indo-europeans
Ohhh...:embarassed:
seienchin
11-23-2009, 00:05
Well, this is a really complex topic and I am still struggling to find really convincing theories after researches about the gen-pool proofed most things scientists would have never disputed a few years ago, totally wrong. Like the irish beeing celtic.:book:
Still there has never been a genetic research with too many people so lets dig out this thread in 10years again and see what scientists believe then, maybe the germans arent believed to be related to the germanic people anymore by then :laugh4:
Phalanx300
11-23-2009, 01:02
Well if you take southern Germany it probably has strong ties to the Celts who lived there. I'd say only the more middle and northern areas would be for the biggest part still Germanic.
SwissBarbar
11-23-2009, 10:08
It's very interesting that the word "brother" in german is "bruder" and in persian it is "birader" a bit close to be a coincidence, no?
Well it's not THAT coincidential, since english is a Germanic language
antisocialmunky
11-23-2009, 13:06
'Brother' comes from *bʰréh₂tēr. If you want to see how that relates to about 20 languages:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European_*b%CA%B0r%C3%A9h%E2%82%82t%C4%93r
Apázlinemjó
11-23-2009, 13:36
Not me, I speak an altaic language: turkish!
Ohhh...:embarassed:
Me neither, I speak an Uralic language. :inquisitive:
HunGeneral
11-23-2009, 13:44
Me neither, I speak an Uralic language. :inquisitive:
So do I:inquisitive:
(althoug I do speak some Indo-European languages quite well...)
AncientFanTR
11-23-2009, 18:52
Well it's not THAT coincidential, since english is a Germanic language
I meant the link between german and persian, obviously! :idea2:
*snipped thoughtful post and helpful links*
Great starting place that wiki link. Shows the British Isles have a strong fundamental connection to France and Iberia, sort of an "atlantic zone", perhaps even more than to the "North sea zone" of Germany and scandinavia.
My feeling is that people cluster around bodies of water (lajkes, seas and rivers) in pre modern cultures, and empires and nation states tend to have defensible borders on these very features, cutting across old culture clusters.
Islam and christendom cut the old Punic and Hellenic zones of the middle sea, Germany and France have carved the Frankish heartland in two, the Gaelic zone around the Irish sea straddles 5 polities, the germanic communities around the North sea are slowly reassmembling under the EU.
I guess our notion of ethnicities are often backprojected self justificatioons of modern nation states.
Horatius
11-26-2009, 06:14
Unless I am very much mistaken but the term Germanic and Celtic are not very descriptive.
Gauls just weren't Britons, Britons weren't Ligurians, Ligurians weren't Venetii, Venetii weren't Galatians etc etc
With the German groups to, there were unless I'm much mistaken as many Sarmatians amongst the Vandals as "Germans".
Barbarian terms have been very distorted in the last few thousand years by nationalists, I would much rather talk about the different groups, what (little) we know about them, and their interactions with others, I highly doubt we will ever be able to prove they came from anywere considering even the idea of Celts coming from central Europe raises the question then what were the Illyrians?
In general,
I understand that this is being past off to the public, by some scientist, as reasonable fact. However, because the internal resolution is so great and the relative sample size so small, the conclusions from current genetic studies should be taken with much more than a grain of salt. In other words, it may seem that current interpretations of the flawed data might well be little more than rank speculation. Sorry to all concerned, yet much of this is pointless at best.
CmacQ
AncientFanTR
11-26-2009, 23:57
Unless I am very much mistaken but the term Germanic and Celtic are not very descriptive.
Gauls just weren't Britons, Britons weren't Ligurians, Ligurians weren't Venetii, Venetii weren't Galatians etc etc
With the German groups to, there were unless I'm much mistaken as many Sarmatians amongst the Vandals as "Germans".
Barbarian terms have been very distorted in the last few thousand years by nationalists, I would much rather talk about the different groups, what (little) we know about them, and their interactions with others, I highly doubt we will ever be able to prove they came from anywere considering even the idea of Celts coming from central Europe raises the question then what were the Illyrians?
Well, all the groups you have mentioned are indo-european language speaking peoples. Therefore, unless they were heavily influenced by previous peoples, all the celts, germans, scythians, sarmatians, greeks and romans would all have come from Persia or India! In this case you could claim that the Gauls were Britons, as well as Romans, Greeks, Germans and scythians!
However, being celtic groups, it is likely that the Ligurians, Britons, Gauls etc were related more closely than to other groups, and spoke much more similar languages. (I am not 100% sure but Ligurian must be more closely related to Gallic or Breton than to Latin or Greek)
As for the Illyrians, Albanians are thought to be the remnants of a continued Illyrian society as others were romanised (like romania) or slavicised (serbia) during occupations.
Some think them to be pre-indo-european, while general consensus among scholars says that they are also related to celts etc.
Well, all the groups you have mentioned are indo-european language speaking peoples. Therefore, unless they were heavily influenced by previous peoples, all the celts, germans, scythians, sarmatians, greeks and romans would all have come from Persia or India! In this case you could claim that the Gauls were Britons, as well as Romans, Greeks, Germans and scythians!
However, being celtic groups, it is likely that the Ligurians, Britons, Gauls etc were related more closely than to other groups, and spoke much more similar languages. (I am not 100% sure but Ligurian must be more closely related to Gallic or Breton than to Latin or Greek)
As for the Illyrians, Albanians are thought to be the remnants of a continued Illyrian society as others were romanised (like romania) or slavicised (serbia) during occupations.
Some think them to be pre-indo-european, while general consensus among scholars says that they are also related to celts etc.
you still dont seem to be getting the fact spread of languages and culture does NOT have to be linked to a mass migration of people.
European people who speak indo-european languages are very unlikely to have come from persia/india.
Horatius
11-28-2009, 00:49
Well, all the groups you have mentioned are indo-european language speaking peoples. Therefore, unless they were heavily influenced by previous peoples, all the celts, germans, scythians, sarmatians, greeks and romans would all have come from Persia or India! In this case you could claim that the Gauls were Britons, as well as Romans, Greeks, Germans and scythians!
However, being celtic groups, it is likely that the Ligurians, Britons, Gauls etc were related more closely than to other groups, and spoke much more similar languages. (I am not 100% sure but Ligurian must be more closely related to Gallic or Breton than to Latin or Greek)
As for the Illyrians, Albanians are thought to be the remnants of a continued Illyrian society as others were romanised (like romania) or slavicised (serbia) during occupations.
Some think them to be pre-indo-european, while general consensus among scholars says that they are also related to celts etc.
In some ways yes, but in others I would say no.
Celtic may have at one point (a very big maybe) been one group, but I really can't imagine a tribesman of the Icenii fitting into Mediolanum.
Celt and German are very wide sweeping but somewhat obsolete terms, while nationalists ran the Universities they where brought up to the height of their meaning, but the fact that it doesn't define a single ethnicity (there is no way any of them avoided massive amounts of mixing), Culture, or People really does lower it.
Blood just wasn't important to the ancient. It was important to romantic era people, but barbarian groupings didn't share a culture.
Galatians were more related to Ligurians then Romans, but they would have felt as isolated and out of place in Northern as they would in Central Italy, and even if you bring in Blood as a justification to group them together they probably were more related to the local peoples near Galatia then anyone in Italy, or Gaul.
while nationalists ran the Universities...
They still do, however many don't understand that they are nationalists, because they fancy themselves to be internationalists. In fact its like the song says, 'meet the new boss, just like the old boss.' Nonetheless, it can be said, that things have indeed improved to some degree.
CmacQ
AncientFanTR
11-30-2009, 20:46
In some ways yes, but in others I would say no.
Celtic may have at one point (a very big maybe) been one group, but I really can't imagine a tribesman of the Icenii fitting into Mediolanum.
Celt and German are very wide sweeping but somewhat obsolete terms, while nationalists ran the Universities they where brought up to the height of their meaning, but the fact that it doesn't define a single ethnicity (there is no way any of them avoided massive amounts of mixing), Culture, or People really does lower it.
Blood just wasn't important to the ancient. It was important to romantic era people, but barbarian groupings didn't share a culture.
Galatians were more related to Ligurians then Romans, but they would have felt as isolated and out of place in Northern as they would in Central Italy, and even if you bring in Blood as a justification to group them together they probably were more related to the local peoples near Galatia then anyone in Italy, or Gaul.
The Galatians were celts who invaded and lived in anatolia from around 280BC-60AD, right? they didn't last very long, so it is unlikely that they, european, fair-skinned celts from the north, just went down south and just turned brown and became hittites/babylonians. Of course sub-cultures evolve in different places (all the different celt groups for example) but Galatians probably would not have been as out of place in Liguria/Britain (apart maybe from climate) as they would have been in Rome or even their surrounding Greco-Persian lands.
Actually the Galatians would have been related to east, noric, or volcae celts. These should not be confused with the west or Gaulish Celts. We have the Belgic Celts which were often called 'those of Germania.' Then there were the more westward types that dwelt near the world’s end who more or less used a Celt-like language, but indeed were not Gauls, Belgae, nor Volcae. And lastly, those who didn't use a Germanic nor a Celtic tongue, were indeed not Celts but lived within greater Germania, and yet for some unknown reason are still called Celts or even Germans; using a recent concept?
In fact if one must use the word Celt for anything other than the Gauls or Volcae, and one should not, then one would need more than a wee pinch of salt. Nonetheless, compared to Celtyness, using recent constructs, defining what is or is not German is much more complex.
CmacQ
athanaric
12-01-2009, 03:11
And lastly, those who didn't use a Germanic nor a Celtic tongue, were indeed not Celts but lived within greater Germania, and yet for some unknown reason are still called Celts?
What were these guys, actually? Were they even Indo-European?
What were these guys, actually? Were they even Indo-European?
We should not mix and match. In this case Indo-European refers to a linguistic concept. The spread of language as with culture requires only contact.
However...
if one might seek the ratio of IndoEs to non-IndoEs maybe one could look to the animal kingdom and the percentage of predator to prey?
CmacQ
kaptainplanet
12-02-2009, 12:56
I wonder why pontus and cyprus are not inside the boarders of the greek world, in the map...
Apázlinemjó
12-02-2009, 18:02
What were these guys, actually? Were they even Indo-European?
Maybe Finn-Ugor tribes?
if one might seek the ratio of IndoEs to non-IndoEs maybe one could look to the animal kingdom and the percentage of predator to prey?
Not sure what your getting at there...
I'm also curious to know what the group you were refering to was, as far as I'm aware the closest non-germanic or celtic speakers to germany were either the finno-ugric speaking tribes, the aquitanians or the protoslavs.
I wonder why pontus and cyprus are not inside the boarders of the greek world, in the map...
I just divided up the map into loose geographic regions, it's not meant to be particularly accurate (this is why i ask people to give the country of origin for a face when posted)
Why did you ask the same question twice?
Horatius
12-02-2009, 23:24
They still do, however many don't understand that they are nationalists, because they fancy themselves to be internationalists. In fact its like the song says, 'meet the new boss, just like the old boss.' Nonetheless, it can be said, that things have indeed improved to some degree.
CmacQ
True but I think your forgetting how much more extreme this boss was, in good times it is very easy to forget how things used to be, Lucius Malfoy is, scary enough based on how some college professors used to think back in "romantic" times.
Back on the Galatians not only where they a different ethnicity, but even if they were the same as the Ligurians (which they weren't) a Galatian would have been as out of place in Northern as Central Italy because of culture, and because over at most they would have looked somewhat differently then the locals for maybe 75 years if that?
I find it very interesting that so many Turks could very easily pose as native French (provided they don't speak because of accent) or English or German etc etc.
AncientFanTR
12-02-2009, 23:41
I find it very interesting that so many Turks could very easily pose as native French (provided they don't speak because of accent) or English or German etc etc.
Are you serious? It is very rare that you see a northern-european looking Turk! Most of them are either dark from kurdish/arab/persian influences or (also rare now, a bit like my family) have more central-asian features and look more like huns/tatars/mongols than celts! There has also been greek and slavic influences on the population in the west and north coasts of turkey, but I would say, maybe some rural people in southern france and Turkey may look slightly similar, but I would say that that has more to do with the mediterranean climate and diet rather that genetics and ancestry. Even if there were celtic genes in miniscule parts of the population from 2000 years ago, it is very unlikely that any signs of it would be seen today in a given individual!
edit: by the way, what do you mean by native French? Celtic, germanic, neanderthals?
Cambyses
12-03-2009, 02:17
Surely the point of all this is to identify who was in the armies within EB's timeframe. It does not follow that a more common genetic stamp from a region would necessarily also be there among the military. There are countless societies where the elites would have been racially different to the majority population.
Also, I have to say IMO this indo-greek argument is a little circular. Yes, virtually every historically dominant people in europe came from far to the east. But 1. Many of them came west a long long time ago. So long in fact to make that origin only slightly more relevant than the common African one. 2. Stand 10 people from each European country in a line today and you could very probably identify (or get very close to in the case of eg the Balkans) what that country was.
ie, there may be elements of a common ancestry if we go back enough hundreds of generations, but in terms of facial identity distinct ethnic groups have clearly emerged.
Horatius
12-03-2009, 07:07
The Galatians were celts who invaded and lived in anatolia from around 280BC-60AD, right? they didn't last very long, so it is unlikely that they, european, fair-skinned celts from the north, just went down south and just turned brown and became hittites/babylonians. Of course sub-cultures evolve in different places (all the different celt groups for example) but Galatians probably would not have been as out of place in Liguria/Britain (apart maybe from climate) as they would have been in Rome or even their surrounding Greco-Persian lands.
That is certainly news to me, I have met a lot of Turks, and almost all of them have fair skin, here I will even link you this
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_01/SarkozyWifeBIG_468x500.jpg
http://www.pjvoice.com/v19/photos/assad.jpg
Pictures can sometimes say a thousand words, people who don't care about blood inevitably will mix on a massive scale, it's natural.
Meneldil
12-03-2009, 14:16
Who's turk on these pictures? :dizzy2:
athanaric
12-03-2009, 16:14
Pictures can sometimes say a thousand words, people who don't care about blood inevitably will mix on a massive scale, it's natural.
The second picture shows a Syrian, not a Turk. Bashar al-Assad is the President of Syria...
As for me, I have never seen a Turk with Northern European features. Some look Slavic (Yugoslavian) though, with the occasional blonde hair (most famous example being Atatürk).
No of them, one is the president of Syria, the other the president of France
Sarkozy has a vauge turkish connection in that his grandfather was a Sephardic Jew from Greece born during the Ottoman period, thats a bit weak to base saying he's Turkish on.
The point still stands though, many people from the middle east could pass for europeans and vice versa.
Not sure what your getting at there...
I'm also curious to know what the group you were refering to was, as far as I'm aware the closest non-germanic or celtic speakers to germany were either the finno-ugric speaking tribes, the aquitanians or the protoslavs.
Protoslavs??? By this I assume you mean 'speakers of,' right? If so, indeed no. I view proto-Slavic as a rather late development from some more senior IndoE language group; a foster-child, if you will. I also view Germanic much the same, however not developing directly from one dominant IndoE parent. Both minor players until numbers permitted and opportunity presented, they emerged wide-spread upon a world-stage, and where history was absent, claimed to have always been there, so much predominant and supernatural, yet for some unknown reason unnoticed. Contrary to the more nationalistic and popular view; not all IndoE languages were created equal. Nor were all IndoE inspired ethnos. Not to draw too fine a point, but timing is everything and the course of human endeavor always has its ebbs and flows.
CmacQ
AncientFanTR
12-03-2009, 19:08
That is certainly news to me, I have met a lot of Turks, and almost all of them have fair skin, here I will even link you this
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_01/SarkozyWifeBIG_468x500.jpg
http://www.pjvoice.com/v19/photos/assad.jpg
Pictures can sometimes say a thousand words, people who don't care about blood inevitably will mix on a massive scale, it's natural.
I have to say, being a Turk who spends 2 months a year in Turkey that it depends on the climate: rural people will probably have more dark skin/middle-eastern influence, while some will look more east asian and fairer (my father's side), blonde turks are rather rare, and probably have slavic/greek influence (like my mother's side). I would definitely be able to tell apart a frenchman from a turk, anyday! I appreciate that southern Frenchies on the Med coast are darker as well, but they certainly don't look middle-eastern. Just check out my face on the face database, under "brown hair, turkey". I don't look arab, or french, or slav! Most turk cypriots I know are definitely darker, but that's from their ancestors having lived for 500 years on an island in the middle of the med, farming under the sun, and mixing with the greeks/arabs living there already.
Horatius
12-03-2009, 19:39
The pictures I selected where random, the point I was making through them was just that it really isn't uncommon to have Middle Easterners looking like Europeans.
I haven't ever been to the Turkish Countrside so can't comment on it, but the Turks I have met I thought where European untill I starting hearing them speak (accent sticks out like a sore thumb, no offense).
I also have noted that on Turkish/Greek Nationalist hate fests against each other Greeks select pictures of Turks who look as eastern as possible, while Turks often refute those pictures with one of European looking Turks, while disgraceful picture warfare does not represent anything it is a notable monument to how much the ancients disregarded blood that the type of picture warfare you could find from said groups is possible.
I would link but I only looked at those hate sights as part of an assignment, and don't reccomend anyone visiting slime places when they don't have to.
AncientFanTR
12-03-2009, 20:54
The pictures I selected where random, the point I was making through them was just that it really isn't uncommon to have Middle Easterners looking like Europeans.
I haven't ever been to the Turkish Countrside so can't comment on it, but the Turks I have met I thought where European untill I starting hearing them speak (accent sticks out like a sore thumb, no offense).
I also have noted that on Turkish/Greek Nationalist hate fests against each other Greeks select pictures of Turks who look as eastern as possible, while Turks often refute those pictures with one of European looking Turks, while disgraceful picture warfare does not represent anything it is a notable monument to how much the ancients disregarded blood that the type of picture warfare you could find from said groups is possible.
I would link but I only looked at those hate sites as part of an assignment, and don't reccomend anyone visiting slime places when they don't have to.
Yeah I hate those sites. Of course, living for more than a millenium around Greeks, Kurds and Arabs means that (and these are official figures): around 1/5 of the population of Turkey has strong Eastern "original" turk genes, another 1/5 has Kurdish/persian, 1/5 arab, 1/5 Slav, 1/5 greek, with small groups of Jews, Caucasians and other foreign people. As you can see, this means that Turkey is a hotch-potch of many different peoples, though less so after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and loss of arabia, expulsion of Armenians and Greeks, Jews leaving to found Israel etc.
Tollheit
12-03-2009, 22:52
Well if you take southern Germany it probably has strong ties to the Celts who lived there.
Meh. We have "strong ties" to every single ethnic group of Europe, since the Thirty Years' War.
seienchin
12-06-2009, 12:19
Meh. We have "strong ties" to every single ethnic group of Europe, since the Thirty Years' War.
What? :laugh4::laugh4:
Tollheit
12-06-2009, 17:41
What? :laugh4::laugh4:
Most people in southern Germany were killed or died from the plague, while the survivors were raped by Germans, Poles, Italians, Scotsmen, Flemings, Croatians, Cossacks, Greek, Turks, French, Spaniards and Swedes.
Most? More like 15-30% which is still an extremely high figure. Although I have read somewhere that Württemberg was particularly hard hit I dont remember the figure though.
Tollheit
12-06-2009, 19:36
For southern Germany it is 30% who survived, not 30% who died.
The population of Württemberg was reduced by 75% in 5 years alone. Many settlements simply ceased to exist.
CMAQ makes a good point about mixing being an ongoing process: history is a blender factory and scooping out cupfuls from different smoothie machines 1000 years apart and saying "its the same thing!" makes me want to quote Heraclius like crazy.
@Tolheit those are some grim figures about Southern Germany. I hope the depopulation was due to some migration as well as massacre but i'm not being realistic, am I?
I recall studying the figures for the famines of 1846-8 (in Ireland thats the potatoe famine), and while the millions of deaths were shocking, those proportional losses were not unique: there was a famine in 1721 that cause close to a 40% mortality (lower for the rest of Europe IIRC), as opposed to the 33% or so in 1846-8: with emigration both were nudging 50% depopulation though.
Wars famines and plagues scraped the tablet almost clean time and again: so many lineages must've been scrubbed from the dna map that modern samples can't hope to indicate past distributions fairly.
At least they are having a shot at it: also one of the trends I see is the degree of mixing in everybody, its a real slap for the racial purists. Sort of a modern day Book of Ruth.
On the other hand, I do see certain faces in certain places: I guess its trained in me to do it. I saw very very Italian and Greek faces in Istanbul, and there are lots of "Irish" looking ones here in Australia. My Greek mate (who looks Persian) and I play a gham,e with our greek friends as to which period of Greek history they are from : "King" John is Byzantine, little John is Hellenic, Spiro looks Helladic, and Dmitri is a Persian deserter.
Horatius
12-10-2009, 23:27
Yeah I hate those sites. Of course, living for more than a millenium around Greeks, Kurds and Arabs means that (and these are official figures): around 1/5 of the population of Turkey has strong Eastern "original" turk genes, another 1/5 has Kurdish/persian, 1/5 arab, 1/5 Slav, 1/5 greek, with small groups of Jews, Caucasians and other foreign people. As you can see, this means that Turkey is a hotch-potch of many different peoples, though less so after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and loss of arabia, expulsion of Armenians and Greeks, Jews leaving to found Israel etc.
I to hate those websites, and that strongly supports my point.
The fact that so many people in Turkey and the Middle East today, and there is no reason to doubt the same was much more true at that time, in an age before the racialization of slavery, and Romantic Era Blood Purity theories.
If Roman Law is any indication inter-racial marriages were very common, Jewish Law forbids inter-religious marriages but has no problem with other types, the only Greek City State that could be said to forbid mixing was Athens, and even they didn't ban the marriages but only bastardized the children.
Theres no indication from Caesar that the Gauls had any problems in mixing with his men, and today in the random pictures I produced the Middle Easterner looked more European then the current President of France.
At most it would have taken the Galatians 50 years after establishing their kingdom to become very much integrated both culturally and ethnically to the local population, at least in my opinion, since mortality meant shorter lives then, so the original generation would have died out faster then in modern times.
I to hate those websites, and that strongly supports my point.
The fact that so many people in Turkey and the Middle East today, and there is no reason to doubt the same was much more true at that time, in an age before the racialization of slavery, and Romantic Era Blood Purity theories.
If Roman Law is any indication inter-racial marriages were very common, Jewish Law forbids inter-religious marriages but has no problem with other types, the only Greek City State that could be said to forbid mixing was Athens, and even they didn't ban the marriages but only bastardized the children.
Theres no indication from Caesar that the Gauls had any problems in mixing with his men, and today in the random pictures I produced the Middle Easterner looked more European then the current President of France.
At most it would have taken the Galatians 50 years after establishing their kingdom to become very much integrated both culturally and ethnically to the local population, at least in my opinion, since mortality meant shorter lives then, so the original generation would have died out faster then in modern times.
i agree in general with what you are saying but you are surely wrong about the galatians.
They were an aggressive tribe who moved on mass into Asia minor (~30,000 initially with subsequent celtic immigration to supplement that number).
Given that they maintained their own language and culture for centuries, it would suggest that they stuck together, furthermore with such large numbers of their own people there would have been no pressure to interbreed with the local population, and i imagine initially at least it was fairly rare. a such i think they would have been a visibly distinct group for much more than 50 years! think centuries.
AncientFanTR
12-11-2009, 20:09
i agree in general with what you are saying but you are surely wrong about the galatians.
They were an aggressive tribe who moved on mass into Asia minor (~30,000 initially with subsequent celtic immigration to supplement that number).
Given that they maintained their own language and culture for centuries, it would suggest that they stuck together, furthermore with such large numbers of their own people there would have been no pressure to interbreed with the local population, and i imagine initially at least it was fairly rare. a such i think they would have been a visibly distinct group for much more than 50 years! think centuries.
And of course 30,000 celts 2000 years ago probably arent going to visibly affect the phenotype of many people in Anatolia today, especially if they only bred among themselves. Of course after subsequent invasions by hundreds of thousands of greeks after Alexander/Seleukos, and then the Turkomongols in their millions after c.8th Century CE, they would have been assimilated and the recessive blond genes would have been wiped out after a number of generations anyway, so perhaps there are a few thousand people in Turkey today who have celtic ancestors, but after thousands of years of warmer climates and breeding with different peoples, it is extreeeeemely unlikely that you could tell just from their phenotype.
Horatius
12-13-2009, 02:16
i agree in general with what you are saying but you are surely wrong about the galatians.
They were an aggressive tribe who moved on mass into Asia minor (~30,000 initially with subsequent celtic immigration to supplement that number).
There is no record of population expulsions however, and ancients were more then willing to mix with whoever was around. Even if they didn't have to it would happen. They didn't remove the original population, they replaced the rulling structure, and joined the natives, and where very agressive about increasing the size of their kingdom.
In theory they might have expelled all the natives (for lack of a better word) and theoretically they might have then stuck to the tribe, and theoretically if the great mortality of the ancient world didn't kill too many women it might have been possible for them to increase in numbers that way, I highly doubt that, this was a long time before the creation of racialist theories and the Greco-Persian locals would have had a lot to offer the incoming Celts.
Given that they maintained their own language and culture for centuries, it would suggest that they stuck together,
Other languages were kept through interbreeding, just ask anyone in Wales, it doesn't mean they stuck to themselves. Culture was very important to the ancients, blood however was not.
furthermore with such large numbers of their own people there would have been no pressure to interbreed with the local population, and i imagine initially at least it was fairly rare. a such i think they would have been a visibly distinct group for much more than 50 years! think centuries
Interbreeding didn't happen because it was neccessary to avoid inbreeding, it happened whenever it was possible, virtually all of Caesar's Legionaries got Gallic wives for themselves, and there certainly was no need for that.
moonburn
12-18-2009, 20:09
i actually suspect that alot of the turkish population as more celtic and greek ancestors that they would like to admit the fact that the pehnotype is no longer present doesn´t change their ancestors
and horatius trust me keeping young men since they are 17 until they are 42 without sex is a bad politic so there was no need for it, is a bit exarcebated socialogically speaking you don´t want your soldiers going crazy and start rapping your new subject daughters without taking responsability after so those marriages allowed for a cohesive and loyal army and a happyer general population
on the phenotype discussion i´m by no means an expert but the enviroment makes changes faster then one could expect and with a litle bit of mixing the acceleration of human change to better suit the enviroment and thus have a comptitive edge can surprise most
my example is portugal in the 15th century my home region was almost deserted of population so the nobles imported slaves from africa (in the 16th century) , in less then 150 years there where no more blacks
ofc there was alot of mixing and the slaves from africa included alot of arabs but except for the trained eye who spots the bigger lips and the darker tone of a percentage of the population nobady is considered black so 100 to 200 years = 8 maybe 9 generations to adapt
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