Ethnicities of peoples in different regions

[AncientFanTR]

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.

I have reposted the map from that thread so that we can see which regions it is most relevant to talk about.

[antisocialmunky]

Germanic people pushed most of the Celtic peoples into smaller corners.

[AncientFanTR]

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]

I think the Steppes as we came from around Iran.

[AncientFanTR]

I think the Steppes as we came from around Iran.

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]

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.

[SwissBarbar]

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

[Smeel]

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

[antisocialmunky]

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.

[Ca Putt]

afaik at least Dorian Greeks were indo-Europeans. don't know about the others tho.

[bobbin]

"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.

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.

[antisocialmunky]

Cool.

[A Very Super Market]

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.

[Cyclops]

*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]

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?