Romans and Alpine Celtic

[Macilrille]

The author is a Celtophile obviously, the subject itself hints at that and so does the way it is built and formulated (unless the OP has rewritten it in English with less knowledge of sophisticted and academic versions of it- no slight intended, your English is fine, but the article is not written in the sort of language in which you publish research).

I suspect it all comes down to what Watchman says (though I daresay the Finns/Lapps giving name to your own country seem unrelated to the rest of us) and that someone (read "one of the numerous Celtophiles who seem to be everywhere these days propagating the greatness of Celts") has overinterpreted this common similarity. I need to see much more evidence before I am convinced.

[tarem]

hey Celts were/are a very interesting culture however we must consider what the Romans them selves identified with. i mean, you can try and classify them through their genetic bloodline or through their culture which was greatly influenced by the Etruscans first, and later on by the Greeks. and as pointed out before the genetic makup of Europe (even the Mediteranean) has remained largely intact even untill today, so at one point we all probably originated from a handfull of tribes

[Cambyses]

Surely common genetics only proves that at some point in the past there was shared ancestry. It cannot by itself be taken to mean any cultural or societal similarity - beyond the obvious point of continuous close contact having an influence one upon the other. The similarity of the languages seems a far more interesting point to me, and if true would certainly indicate a stronger bond (more recent and relevant) between the peoples. The Romans were extremely successful at exploiting their geograpical position by taking the best ideas from their various neighbours and adding it to their own identity. A notable failing in some other civilizations. But the side effect of this is that we should not read too much into the presence of later "foreign" cultural influences in the origins of Rome.

However, if such a strong relationship had been true, surely knowledge of it would have survived in the form of myth/religion etc. Yet the Romans almost constantly distanced themselves from the Celts in terms of identity both at the time of their battles and thereafter. They constantly remarked on the differences between the two cultures (if we briefly allow the celts to be considered as one culture) including a focus on the differences in physical size and appearance which would seem extremely relevant in this situation.

[Watchman]

I suspect it all comes down to what Watchman says (though I daresay the Finns/Lapps giving name to your own country seem unrelated to the rest of us)

What.
You know you kinda lost me there, also in how that relates to anything.

Anyway, the article quoted in the OP seems to be excessively hung up on some genetic connections that one suspects are as much the product of the Migrations as any prehistoric population drifts, and goes on to draw some rather far-fetched culture-related conclusions from them which is AFAIK pretty much gross bullshit by default.

He(?) also rather cuts corners in apparently lumping the Urnfeld and Hallstatt cultures together, which is kinda dodgy, and seems to assume the connections northern Italy had with the Danubian corridor (and the Hallstatt centers there) somehow automagically results in some kind of close kinship between the later, highly warlike, La Tene phase of Celtic culture and the by that point heavily Mediterranean-influenced Romans...

[seienchin]

Wow... Romans and celts derived from the same source?
Would be cool if it would be true, but honestly I doubt it. They never shared too much culture, technology and mythology.

[Cute Wolf]

What.
You know you kinda lost me there, also in how that relates to anything.

Anyway, the article quoted in the OP seems to be excessively hung up on some genetic connections that one suspects are as much the product of the Migrations as any prehistoric population drifts, and goes on to draw some rather far-fetched culture-related conclusions from them which is AFAIK pretty much gross bullshit by default.

He(?) also rather cuts corners in apparently lumping the Urnfeld and Hallstatt cultures together, which is kinda dodgy, and seems to assume the connections northern Italy had with the Danubian corridor (and the Hallstatt centers there) somehow automagically results in some kind of close kinship between the later, highly warlike, La Tene phase of Celtic culture and the by that point heavily Mediterranean-influenced Romans...

minor correction, the downstream of R1b in genetic biochemistry point was a subclad in DNA sequence that indicating a single male ancestor which first had this "presistent mutation". I'm rather not sure if it was really a minor nucleic N-base CYS coding that was envolved spontaneously in one person, or a previous signature gene of a certain proto Celt tribes that was only sightly altered. But the strain of S25-S29 was a recent occurence in human history (from the time arround warming trend of climate, 4000 y ago), so they maybe more cloesely related by genetics, than related by culture. This can't be caused just by some Keltoi guy marrying the Romaioi girls and their offspring incorporated into Romaioi society, rather than Keltoi society, but this must be indicating that *Almost* all Romaioi has share a single Celtic male ancestor (Y inherited), if we count their relatively high frequency that we've found even today.

Note : I'm not a native english speaker myself, but maybe this article was a translation, but the genetic coding is genuine result of a genetic research, not just a mere article by some Keltophiles. and here's a link that I've found :
http://hemocromatosis.iespana.es/200...20ancestry.pdf
EDIT: this paper's result is somewhat ambigous though, if we said that today' s Italian aren't roman at all...

[seienchin]

Besides the cultural thing.
Most of the population of italy werent romans, but greeks, etrurians and samnites etc.
I dont know about the samnites and other tribes but the etrurians had a different language than the romans and different habits.
Does your theory have anything else than genetical researches? (Which are really vague due to testing only small percentages of the population).
And is there a possibility that this is in fact not a celtic genetical structure, but just an italian one which spread over europe in roman empire times? Would make more sense to me.

[Cute Wolf]

Besides the cultural thing.
Most of the population of italy werent romans, but greeks, etrurians and samnites etc.
I dont know about the samnites and other tribes but the etrurians had a different language than the romans and different habits.
Does your theory have anything else than genetical researches? (Which are really vague due to testing only small percentages of the population).
And is there a possibility that this is in fact not a celtic genetical structure, but just an italian one which spread over europe in roman empire times? Would make more sense to me.

This was the second possibility

[KARTLOS]

isnt this failing to take into account that the population of italy has massively changed since roman times. YOu have massive depopulation combined with large scale germanic migration.

genetic studies looking at data from modern samples can always be questioned on this basis. To get a true picture it is necessary to extract DNA from bone samples.

[bobbin]

To be honest after the advent of farming most migrations had little effect on the genetic makeup of a region due to the existing sedentury population being significantly larger than the migrant groups.
In the case of Italy even after depopulation there would be millions of people living in the region while the invading germanic peoples would number a few hundred thousand at most and would be arriving over a long period of time.

Concerning the OP I would be very hesitant to link culture and genetics in such a way (the Irish and Basques are genetically very close but in terms of culture miles apart) and to attribute things such as armour styles to it is plain wrong.

[Rahwana]

This was the second possibility

I think not, the migration genetic intrusion will made their haploid strain no different compared to almost all europeans, but the Italians still exhibit significant difference in their S25-S29 sections. And only some confirmed celts (not germanic gene) has this similarities.