The Irish are Not Celts

[cmacq]

This same theory was proposed for GB.

I see three huge red flags;

1) part-funded by the National Millennium Committee
2) The American Journal of Human Genetics
3) “The primary genetic legacy of Ireland seems to have come from people from Spain and Portugal after the last ice age,” said McEvoy. “They seem to have come up along the coast through western Europe and arrived in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It’s not due to something that happened 2,500 years ago with Celts. “We have a very old genetic legacy.”

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First, the National Millennium Committee is the haunt of those, similar to others which inhabit National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers or NCSHPO in the US, that have a very narrow agenda.

Second, although the study of human genetics uses basic archaeological background information to support theories, in the strictest sense, genetic studies can only provide reliable information about relatively modern populations.

Third, using genetic data McEvoy’s statement is totally speculative; the assumption here is that the composition of Europe’s population in the past was as it is today. Also using McEvoy’s logic western France, Normandy, and England should be the same as well? Now from what I understand, this has been proposed for GB, which is strange because of McEvoy’s further statement about the similarities of the Irish and Scot populations?

For example how could this study discern between the DNA of what may be called continental Celts of the 3rd century BC (that were also present in northern Spain and Portugal, form the extremely ill-defined populations the occupied the extremes of western Europe seven thousand years ago??? It is extremely easy to drown a host of relatively discrete populations into a huge mass of gobblety gook that may appear similar to one glob and different to another. I’ve seen this done with dentition studies. Established relationships depend on the qualifiers and the type of analysis used to sort the data.

With this said, I personally have never viewed the multi-faceted Irish, Scot, Welsh, Briton, nor Breton populations as being Kelt in the strictest use of the term. I view the use of Celt as a modern invention with very little evidence to support it. Its sort of like the tail wagging the dog. For example the term was used by the Greeks and Latins to specifically identify a continental ethnicity associated with the Gallic Culture within a well defined time frame. Of this Gallic Culture we know it was initially centered in southeastern France, Switzerland, southern Germany, and Austria, yet have very little actual evidence of their language. In the modern use Ireland and GB only became Celt after it was discovered that the once dominant language were somewhat related to that used by the former Gallic Culture that was called Kelt.





CmacQ