Linguistically, the Italo-Celtic hypothesis isn't very popular anymore.
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Linguistically, the Italo-Celtic hypothesis isn't very popular anymore.
Yeah, save some who understand genetic terms like us, they can't understand all the importance of genetic coding... :clown:Quote:
Originally Posted by Aelius Maximus
I´ve been talking with some geneticist friend of mine and presented them these data. They said to me that for what it seems the Romans were indeed close related to alpine celts as is much of Italy. Also that Celts are the key for European genetics (Especially continental Europe but also Great Britain).
Celts were everywhere and had a massive... blob of maniless, for lack of a better phrase, spanning most of Europe and parts of Asia so its not that surprising that they have a lot of genetic legacy lying around.
Celts, i believe, are one of the reasons why geneticists agree that Europe is the most homogeneous continent. Especially since, today we know that Celts, Germanic and Italic ppl has a common ancestry.
The relatively homogenous nature of Europeans has nothing to do with the "Celts" or any other ancient group what so ever, its caused by a population bottleneck some time in the past.
The currently accepted story is the during the last glacial maximum most of the human population of Europe was pushed out by the worsening climate and advancing ice sheets, the remainder were able to survive in various refuges situated in Iberia, the Balkans and the North Black Sea Coast. Thousands of years later when the ice started to retreat these small populations repopulated the rest of Europe resulting in the obsereved genetic homogeneity we see today.
The above quote from the article seems odd to me. The Suebi spoke a Germanic language and were from the Jastorf culture (M.Carroll), that doesn't equal Celt.Quote:
This also explains why the Romans called the Suebi and other Celts of modern south-west Germany the "Germani".
While I think the idea of using DNA for such questions fascinating and exciting, there does seem to be some problems.
This article seems to be saying that the Cimbri of Italy and those of Denmark are of the same ancestry because they have the same HFE gene mutation. They specifically call the Cimbri of old "Celtic" because the same HFE gene mutation is found in multiple places including Denmark and also that the Cimbri in Asiago Italy. Historically speaking there were "Celts" in northern Italy since the 600's B.C. and there are many theories as to the origins of the Italian Cimbri.(2001)Quote:
Originally Posted by Cute Wolf
On the other side we have this study:
http://vetinari.sitesled.com/cimbri.pdf
In the conclusion they specifically state that the Cimbri of Asiago Italy are significantly differentiated from both the Himmerland Cimbri and the Danes. According to the above article the Danes and the Himmerland Cimbri are very similar. (2007)
Furthermore there is this which was put forth by Eupedia (Maciamo used this article):
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/origin...rope.shtml#R1b
The above talking of the U106 shows that there is still allot of guess work going on, but nevertheless it is interesting. There is map of interest on this web site for S21: http://www.ethnoancestry.com/R1b.html#R1bessentialQuote:
Alpine Celts of Hallstatt are associated with the S28 (a.k.a. U152) mutation, although not exclusively. The Italic branch (also S28/U152) is thought to have entered Italy by 1200 BCE, but there were certainly several succesive waves, as attested by the later arrival of the Cisalpine Celts. The Belgae were another S28/U152 branch, an extension of the La Tène culture northward, following the Rhine, Moselle and Meuse rivers.
R1b-S21 (a.k.a. U106) is found at high concentrations in the Netherlands and northern Germany. Its presence in other parts of Europe can be attributed to the 5th- and 6th-century Germanic migrations. The Frisians and Saxons spread this haplogroup to the British Isles, the Franks to Belgium and France, and the Lombards to Austria and northern Italy. The high concentration of S21/U106 around Austria hints that it could have originated there in the Hallstatt period, or originated around the Black Sea and moved there during the Hallstatt period. In fact, southern Germany and Austria taken together have the highest diversity of R1b in Europe. Besides S21, the three major first level subclades of R1b1b2a1b (L21, S28, M167) are found in this area at reasonable frequencies to envisage a spread from the Unetice to Hallstatt homeland to the rest of western Europe.
This gonna to be interesting, especially considering the lower mutation probability on that section, means that they are gonna to be a close relatives.....
The problem with all this is that genetics, when used in an application such as this, is meaningless. There is no Celt gene and no Roman gene, and even if there were, the Romans and Celts had no way of knowing this. Cultural identity, as the vast majority of both modern historians and anthropologists will tell you, is not some primordial thing dictated by our blood or genes. It's a man-made construct. Being Roman meant certain things, it meant being a part of Roman society. It meant acting like a Roman, talking like a Roman, and viewing all those who didn't (such as the Celts) as different.
In the end we are all humans. You go back far enough and everyone descends from a very small group of people. But that has no bearing on how we define our cultures. The whole genetic thing may be useful for studying peoples way back in the murk of prehistoric times, but it is completely useless for understanding Roman, Celtic, or any other culture. Thus, to refute the thesis of that article, the Roman conquest of Gaul was not some unification. It was cultural domination. It was one culture that, whatever was happening on their nucleotides, defined themselves as radically different and had come to impose their culture on a group of people they saw as different (not to mention inferior). The Celts were not their brothers or cousins, but their enemies and later their subjects (until, in the end, the Gallic Celts largely adopted Roman culture).
I think that since the discovery of DNA is relatively new to us, a lot of people want to try to use if for all sorts of applications. It's part of the excitement of having a new and innovative tool. But I also think people will come to realize that there are some things that DNA can't be used for, like determining who is a Celt, who is a Roman, or even who is an Italian or who is a Frenchman. There is so much more to the human condition that genetics just can't get at.
I'm very thankful for your post, Uticensis. It describes exactly what I feel. While I appreciate the information of the genetic inconnections of people, I think the whole conclusions from it are often utter crap.
Maybe even the temperature with which babies are confronted on their 3rd to 10th day after birth may explain better why a culture became this or that. Only in old Rome there was this 21,2337 degree celsius, essential to becoming a superpower, a small variation in the clima which the neighboring Celtic-Italic-Greek + Etruscan-influenced cities of same genetic material in Latium lacked totally. Perhaps it was such easy.
While I agree that genetics has nothing to do with culture, these cultures were forged by those who did have particular genes in common, at least to begin with. No there was no Roman gene or 'Celt' gene, but these cultures began with people who possessed particular genes. The Romans began with the Italic tribes who possessed genes that were different then the people who possessed genes that were associated with the 'Celtic' culture. Of course these peoples spread and/or absorbed other peoples in which the gene pool enlarged/changed, but nonetheless there is a genetic connection within the genesis of these cultures.
There is something to be said for the way the genetics research tends to match up with historical/anthropological writings and findings. At this point in the genetic realm I'm not sure how much can be associated with these particular cultures, as I don't believe enough research or interpretation of said research has reached a refined enough level to come up with a solid basis.
Do you think there is a combination of genes that points people to specific cultural and political directions? The first thing that you would have to prove were wether genetic differences meant more than brighter/darker skin, different hair colours or lactose intolerance for some or the other. Do you really think that the genes of the Romans were such different from that of the other inhabitants of Latium that it could explain something?
I wouldn't go that far. I have read modern books on the fall of Rome which still argue that it was an invasion, and I agree with them.Yes, the barbarians were getting pushed out of their homelands, but that doesn't make the fall of Rome any less violent, as some historians have tried (foolishly, imo) to argue. Rome didn't fall exclusively because of the barbarians, there were many other economic and political factors as well, but to try to completely take out the invasion-component is rewriting history.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucio Domicio Aureliano
With regard to the Italic-Celtic theory being described, I can agree that perhaps there is some celtic genetic stock, but we should avoid lumping Romans in with the rest of the Italian tribes, because Latin is very different linguistically from the other local Itallic languages. This suggests to me that roughly half their cultural heritage (and thus, their gene pool) was from elsewhere. The people who say culture and genes are not the same thing are right, but ethnic groups often do bear the same genetics, and thus it's fair to bring culture into the conversation. I'm not saying that Vergil, Sallust et al. who argue that they're Trojans are right, just that we should take them seriously when they say they came from a different place than the rest of the Itallic tribes. -M
As i far as i know the barbarian invasions are nowadays widely discredit by academics or at the very least used with a lot of restraint especially the so called mass imigration which never took place.
Depends on what you mean by barbarian invasion. Was there a coalition of germanic/eastern races hell-bent on destroying the Roman Empire? Hell no. Were there a series of tribes with no particular loyalty to each other who felt the need to carve out a space for themselves within the Roman provinces due to their expulsion from their homelands? I would argue yes. Did this lead to the destruction of the Roman Empire? Not on its own, for there were many other social, economic and political forces at work, but it was a considerable factor. -M
He means barbarian invasion in the terms of a mass migration of people taking control of an area and completely replacing the previous inhabitants as opposed to the common view today of the movement of displaced elites with their subordinates and hangers on into an area and taking over.
Also how is Latin very different from other Italic languages? from what I've read it shared much in common with Oscan, Umbrian and in particular Faliscan.
It's difference is the Romans conquered and in the end prevailed. I really don't know of much difference either, but I would be very surprised if there was not massive amounts of mixing between Italics and "Barbarians" considering the amount of contact.