A jumble of classifications of Celtic

**Zarakas** · 10-10-2012, 08:44

The attached may be of interest and add to debate.
Celts Origin.pdf

**Fisherking** · 10-10-2012, 12:15

I think you misunderstood my assertion. I referred to some of the problems I have with the work but given the terms of their argument I was wondering why they believe the Celts of Iberia carried Basque genetic markers to the British Isles when it is perfectly feasible that those peoples were able to do it themselves.

There was a long succession of Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures springing form the exact area of the modern Basque and Gascon peoples. These peoples are of a Non Indo-European language group. There are two other Non Indo-European languages that were present within known history, the Turdetani and the Iberians. Iberian shows strong signs of being a related language to the Basque language.

DNA studies show the most similarities between the Basques and the population of the British Isles.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

When one examines the “G Y-DNA a slightly different picture emerges.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Why are the Welsh and Cornish different? Could this mean that they came from Spain and brought their language with them? Well except that they were P-Celtic speakers rather than Q-Celtic speakers. Celts of Iberia spoke Q-Celtic. According to the authors, however there were only Germans where P-Celtic was supposed to be spoken.

Kotch theorizes that Celts arrive from Iberia 1200 to 700 BC. Genetic links say the people arrived about 4000 years ago, linking them to the Urnfelds culture of Central Europe because of the metal working of these people in the archeological record. This is also compatible with the Y-DNA evidence.

I do not doubt contact between Iberia and the British Isles, marine or otherwise but the early arrival time and the language spoken do not support this theory.

The other interesting thing I noticed is that Koch acknowledges the existence of the other Celtic languages but then goes to great lengths to deny that the inscriptions and testimony are valid and only Proto Indo-European or German. Doesn’t anyone find this curious?

**Fisherking** · 10-11-2012, 16:27

And now back to the Celts.

It might help if we knew just where the other Celtic languages were spoken.

Koch in his earlier books and in his translations attests to their existence.

Saying that the peoples of Central Europe were all Germanic or Raetic have larger problems.

Proto Germanic contained a large number of Celtic loan words but at least a third of the language was of Non Indo-European origins. Germanic languages also have different sounds not common to other Indo-European languages. The commonalities between Veneti and Germanic are not very strong. It is a poorly documented language and only the words and cases for one’s self are akin to German but just as akin to Latin. Since inscriptions and coins have a lot to do with kings and rulers these would be readily noticeable in inscriptions. You may cite Gothic for king but before you do, that was a Celtic loan in its form.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Raetic was also a Non Indo-European language, kin to Etruscan but it showed very strong influences from Illyrian and Celtic, more from Celtic. At one point it was thought to be a bridge language between the two.

For languages to contain enough loan words to produce confusion it must also show that they were in contact with people who spoke the language it was barrowed from. It must mean that all these people were in close contact with Celtic speaking peoples.

I hope that Koch and others did not bring up the Pan-Illyrian theory. That was long ago disproved. Also Illyrian names show a strong influence from the Celts. A clear majority of names left in inscriptions derive from Celtic with lesser numbers deriving from Thracian and Greek.

Now we have someone speaking a language and leaving inscriptions that are looking very Celtic. This language is influencing people on all sides, far and near. We have dynamic cultures in the same area. We have people recording these people as Celts and Gauls. But now we are supposed to believe that the only Celts are parking their rear ends in Spain or have sailed on to Ireland and Britain.

Just how did all those people in Central Europe end up with those loanwords? Not PIE because that is just too coincidental, especially for the Germans who may have had very good Non Indo-European alternatives, some of which showed up in other variants of their language.

Who knows, maybe German would have been completely Non Indo-European with out the Celtic influence.

Now the issue of Germanics as the Hallstatt and La Téne cultures. I will not go into everything invented by these cultures but they were revolutionary in many areas. The one thing I will focus on is the use of metal plows. They made them. At least one was found in bronze and the remains of some in iron have been found in Central Europe and southern Scotland. Roman laws in Gaul and Britain effectively prevented there use. Until they were discovered it was thought that the metal plow was invented in China circa 450 AD.

Much of Classical Civilization was lost after the German migrations and the fall of Rome. If it had been the Germans who built and nourished these two cultures is it not safe to assume that they would have continued to practice the culture?

After these events we have no La Téne art, we have no iron plows, all construction including fortifications are done in timber. If the Germans were the founders of these cultures then why such a great leap backwards?

I do not find it so very unlikely that Celts reached the British Isles from Spain. There is more than enough evidence of Irish contact with Spain for me to say that. What I do find unacceptable is the notion that it was the origin of the language and that there is any lack of evidence in Hallstatt and La Téne being Celtic cultures.

**Gaius Sempronius Gracchus** · 10-13-2012, 13:51

Originally Posted by Fisherking

And now back to the Celts.

It might help if we knew just where the other Celtic languages were spoken.

Koch in his earlier books and in his translations attests to their existence.

Saying that the peoples of Central Europe were all Germanic or Raetic have larger problems.

Proto Germanic contained a large number of Celtic loan words but at least a third of the language was of Non Indo-European origins. Germanic languages also have different sounds not common to other Indo-European languages. The commonalities between Veneti and Germanic are not very strong. It is a poorly documented language and only the words and cases for one’s self are akin to German but just as akin to Latin. Since inscriptions and coins have a lot to do with kings and rulers these would be readily noticeable in inscriptions. You may cite Gothic for king but before you do, that was a Celtic loan in its form.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

The thing is, why would it be a Celtic loan-word when the root riks is seen throughout the Germanic language. It is where Reich and rich from. It is, again, a forced etymology which has a perfectly consistent internal counterpart and needs no Celtic loan. This is exactly the kind of wooly thinking that has 'shown' a Celtic substrata within other languages.

Raetic was also a Non Indo-European language, kin to Etruscan but it showed very strong influences from Illyrian and Celtic, more from Celtic. At one point it was thought to be a bridge language between the two.

This positive attestation of Rhaetic, given the attestation, is too strongly held. It is with reference to these poorly attested languages that Celtic has been given such a falsely prominent position within the wider European, and PIE, languages. It is not known whether Raetic is PIE or not. In terms of the early languages of this area more generally you might be interested in this http://www.academia.edu/1841703/Etru...pdate_08.07.12

For languages to contain enough loan words to produce confusion it must also show that they were in contact with people who spoke the language it was barrowed from. It must mean that all these people were in close contact with Celtic speaking peoples.

I hope that Koch and others did not bring up the Pan-Illyrian theory. That was long ago disproved. Also Illyrian names show a strong influence from the Celts. A clear majority of names left in inscriptions derive from Celtic with lesser numbers deriving from Thracian and Greek.

Just how did all those people in Central Europe end up with those loanwords? Not PIE because that is just too coincidental, especially for the Germans who may have had very good Non Indo-European alternatives, some of which showed up in other variants of their language.

What do you mean by "Not PIE because that is just too coincidental"? Is Celltic not PIE? And are these supposed Celtic roots found within, for example, Western celtic languages.

I'm not going to address point after point (some of which are a little confused - there are no laws that I know of banning the use of metal ploughs, and the real push forward in agriculture is in terms of heavy ploughs - and some of the oldest terms for heavy ploughs are found in Slavic languages. As for Classicakl civilisation..... that was Greek and Roman, so I don't know where Celltic comes into the equation.

I will state the case again to see if you can understand how deeply this problem runs. The Danube/Celtic proposition was not a linguistic argument, but over the course of the last 200 years or so has become a linguistic a-priori. There are problems within Celtic that are well-known. Many of the phonological and morphological changes are known to be shared with other language groups, particularly Italic and Germanic. Others are euphemistically known as "problematic" - what this means is that sound changes are neither language wide, nor are they geographically consistent. These attributes of the language group ought to have been ringing alarm bells for linguists, but the idea is so ingrained that arguing against it is nigh impossible.

I'll give you an example of how messed up this is. Lepontic is stated as a Celtic language. When you actually look at the basis for this you start to see the cracks. First alarm bell; the letters used must be being used for different sound values within different inscriptions, and diifferently from other Italic scripts, in order for it to be read as Celtic. Even then the language shows signs of having similarities with Italic (and, with reference to the link above, with Etruscan). 2; the inscriptions cover a wide time period. 3; the language seems to have little affiliation even with its neighbouring 'Celtic' language Cisalpine Gaulish.

So, first we have Herodotus telling us the Celtici live beyond the pillars of Heracles, dubiously linked with a prior sentence talking of the source of the Danube (which, even if he meant the Pyrennes - rather than some now unknown village - is nowhere near the pillars of Heracles). What we also have is, from the mid-first century BC, Diodorus of Sicily writing about the end of the First Punic Wars. Presumably he was using contemporary sources. He talks of the Gauls and the Celts as separate identities. He writes about the Celts and the Gauls uniting, and then he tells us who these Celts are. They are the mercenaries of the un-warlike Tartessians.

The Romans came to use 'Gaul' as a geographical term, as they did Germania. Caesar is clear in telling us in his Gallic Wars that only one part of this geographical area is populated by people who call themselves Keltoi.

I would bet that if you re-assess these language groups without the baggage of the Halstatt/Celtic link (which was from the beginning a false link) then many of the problems of the current, sprawling, Celtic language group will begin to dissolve. Let's assess the Western Celtic languages as a group on their own, for example - starting with the Q-Celtic branches. Let's then assess what inscriptions we have in Central Europe/North Italy/Asia Minor without reference to those Western Celtic languages. What I would bet you would find would be a far different relationship between the language groups.

Koch, Cunliffe at al have to be very circumspect in their proposals. What they argue is that Celtic is a much deeper, older stratum within European languages. Reading between the lines of that one the proposal is(must be seen as) that the language groupings we have held to be Celtic are linked in a much broader, pre-Celtic, post PIE relationship. The other European groups (Italic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic) are later languages. In other words Italic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic languages are derived from this pre-Celtic, post PIE language group and the Western Celtic languages are, likewise, a separate branch. Hence the seemingly wide range of Celtic 'loanwords', the shared phonological/morphological changes, the "problematic" changes.

So, in summary. What we have is a Pre-Celtic, post PIE substrata introduced during the 5th and 4th millenia BC across Europe during the Neolithic migrations which has, through isolations, contacts (with other of these substrata and with pre-existing non-PIE groups) evolved into the Italic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic and Celtic groups from which our current languages derive.

The confusion is in the attribution of this pre-Celtic superstrata as being intrinsically tied to the 'modern' Celtic group; it is in the mis-attestation of a European branch of PIE (the pre-Celtic stratum) as being synonymous with the separate, later branch of Celtic languages (Celto-Iberian, Irish, Brythonnic) - ie the language group as distinct from Italic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic.

EDIT: It is worth pointing out that Proto-languages are not languages that would have been spoken anywhere, the most that we can hope for from proto-languages is to ascribe language cognates that would have been spoken within particular groups - usually we can see a geographical link, not surprisingly, but languages diversify pretty quickly to a point of non-intelligibility (for example, it seems that Latin, Umbrian and Oscan languages, despite being closely related, were not mutually intelligible). What we have then are sprachbunds, language areas which diversify with geographical distance (dialects) - so, the further one travels from one's home, the less related the language grouping becomes until you reach a point of non-intelligibility. With time these changes become so great that we can label the languages as being of a separate branch of the root proto-language. I say this to highlight how incongruent the idea of a European-wide language grouping surviving from the 4th millenium BC to the 1st millenium BC is. Italic is believed to have diversified from it's root around about 1200BC, yet already by the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC there are distinct un-intelligible groups - within a pretty small geographical area.

**Fisherking** · 10-16-2012, 11:12

There is some food for thought in this work but the arguments they make are just as flawed as the earlier ones.

I don’t think that the hypotheses answers anything and only adds to the amount of questions that can be asked.

We have irrefutable proof of Central European contacts in the British Isles at early dates just as we have artifacts from Spain. Irish settlement patterns hearken back to the Neolithic but those in Britain proper would seem to be more developed.

If we take the Maritime Bell Beaker culture it points genetically to Wales and Southwestern England as a possible landing site. But it does not cover the whole of the isles. It also points to a different body type for the individuals after this time, but anthropologists discount it as proof of migration.

We can speculate on languages and differences for ever and still reach no conclusion. What we know is historically Celtic languages are or were spoken in the British Isles and reputed to have been spoken over a large area of the rest of Europe.

Culturally all these areas are seemingly linked to the Hallstatt and or La Téne cultures. Earlier cultural links go back to the Beaker culture. The areas are also tied together with the Megalithic cultures of Europe and may be tied to Magdalenian culture.

If we talk about a unifying Celtic culture we can not divorce it from bronze age Urnfelds culture regardless of the language spoken. If we speak of Celtic as only a language with no unifying culture we are left with only what we know historically. All the rest is conjecture. We are left with less to go on than before. We may as well rename the field Atlantic Fringe studies and linguistics can become a large subfield. Forget about most of France, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Czechia , Slovakia, Poland, All of the Balkans, Turkey, and the colony in Egypt as all obviously German want-a-bes.

I suppose I just can’t understand the wish to narrow the field to such an extent. Basing any argument on what Herodotus wrote and supposing that that instance was accurate and not one of his wilder claims just seems one of convince. Most other works by other authors and scholars are ignored. We can’t possibly take their word for it, but Herodotus is to be believed (in this instance) while all the others such as Posidonius and Caesar with first had experience must obviously be mistaken.

We are asked to forget what we know and take the teams assumptions without question. We are to assume that Iberian trade objects mean Celtic language while culture is meaningless in giving us a link. We must accept that German tribes occupied vast territory long before any evidence of their leaving their homelands. We must assume that what Roman and Greek writers recorded was tripe. They couldn’t tell a Celt from a German and the Germans were lying and saying they were Celts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...-en.svg&page=1

Rather than invent a hypotheses which seeks to cancel so much of what archeologists, linguists, and anthropologists have found, to include Celtic inscriptions through wide areas of Europe, it may have been wiser to have gone from the standpoint of the Paleolithic Continuity Theory.

http://www.continuitas.org/intro.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoli...tinuity_Theory

In this theory the Celts colonized from west to east. Something less problematic than changing everyone to Germans.

IMHO Koch and his team are focusing on his linking of a previously unclassified language and trying to draw conclusions linking it to the British Isles. The arguments over language and culture are leave us in a murky darkness. The framework of the PCT are just the reverse. PCT is not perfect. Its model may be too static but it is far clearer than the Western Celts theories put forward by Koch and his team.

The PIE invasion is its self a theory without definitive proof. The unmaking of Eastern Celtic languages is a misguided endeavor seeking to undo recorded history with a weak argument.

Not having read the book I am unsure exactly where these elements come from. Seemingly Cunliffe’s ideas on Celtic being a trade language is within bounds of believability. The Celtic areas of Europe have long been held as a vast trade network. It also would explain why languages would not diverge to unintelligibility and would exert a stronger influence on other languages with which it was in contact

During the time frame of the research Greek had undergone a change where many diverse dialects and branches of the language had disappeared and it had become an almost universal language from Italy to the Indus valley. This came about through a short lived conquest but remained because it facilitated trade. Is there any reason to doubt, in the face of numerous accounts, that it was other than a Celtic language being spoken? Spelling varieties should not be held as proof of nonintelligibility. We have enough to go on from our own English before spelling became a convention to account for a wide range of spellings of the same word.

ADDIDENDEM:

I am having a bit of difficulty here as I have not read the book but the theory is of interest.

I am not sure if it is the theory or your summation that I have the trouble with.
I don’t mean to be disrespectful to either the Koch team or to you.

My difficulties are with the changing of Hallstatt and La Téne as Germanic cultures and telling us that the Romans had no idea of who they were dealing with.

http://www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi/b...garstki09.html

Also, separation of Celtic from Gaul I find problematic. Caesar tells us that these people call themselves Celts but the Romans name them Gauls. The Irish refer to themselves as Gaels. The Welsh don’t call themselves Celts either.

This could be because of language shifts, or not. Q-Celtic could be said to be the older form of the language at large but that also shows a degree of separation from the main body of speakers. Example: American and Australian English vs. British English. Those reflect the language as it was spoken at earlier times. American English did not go through the shift of the early 1820s and Australian dose not reflect the end of that same shift.

Further, the number of Celtic dialects or languages in Iberia could reflect successive migrations or colonization. It may reflect an older spoken form but does not mean that it was the founding area of the language.

We have Lepontic being absorbed into Gaulish in the 4th century BC. This only demonstrates closer ties with a core area of the language and an influx of speakers.

We can assuredly assume eastern expansion of the Celts. We see them moving south and east from Central Europe in Roman times.

There are models which would say that, for a time, Hallstatt became the new core area of the cultural area. La Téne too could have been a backwater area that developed new ideas that brought about continued expansion. These are patterns of human development. They should not be seen as the cradle of Celtic genesis.

Iberian Celts show Hallstatt influences. Marine Bell Beaker may show the closest to a unifying culture as we get at a later point but genetic links only point to Wales and the South of England. There are also differences in Ireland that would show it was not gotten direct from the source. This still leaves us wondering how the Irish acquired their language.

That just brings us back to this: http://www.continuitas.org/intro.html

Stephen Oppenheimer’s The Origins of the British goes into this area and it does tie in with Cunliffe. It is more a matter of how far back in time you think they may have originated.

**Gaius Sempronius Gracchus** · 10-16-2012, 21:04

Originally Posted by Fisherking

There is some food for thought in this work but the arguments they make are just as flawed as the earlier ones.

I don’t think that the hypotheses answers anything and only adds to the amount of questions that can be asked.

Therein lies the problem of raising such an issue, why it faces such hostility; people like narratives, and more so people like to believe they have a congruent narrative and dislike that being brought into question. However if one is looking for a level of truth in the narrative then one has to re-assess it based upon evidence. I'll explain more as I go along but, though at first it may seem to raise more questions than it answers ultimately it may help to bring a little more clarity into a wide area of subjects and may free up some new areas of investigation.

We have irrefutable proof of Central European contacts in the British Isles at early dates just as we have artifacts from Spain. Irish settlement patterns hearken back to the Neolithic but those in Britain proper would seem to be more developed.

If we take the Maritime Bell Beaker culture it points genetically to Wales and Southwestern England as a possible landing site. But it does not cover the whole of the isles. It also points to a different body type for the individuals after this time, but anthropologists discount it as proof of migration.

We can speculate on languages and differences for ever and still reach no conclusion. What we know is historically Celtic languages are or were spoken in the British Isles and reputed to have been spoken over a large area of the rest of Europe.

What we know is that Celtic languages were (and are) spoken in parts of the British Isles, the assumption (and I have so often seen it written as a statement of fact) that the whole of the British Isles spoke some form of Celtic has simply been assumed, or rather inferred from the initial, falsely attributable, narrative - which was not a linguistic proposition. As for the speculation of languages spoken; for so long it has been an accepted axiom that it was Celtic, and so entrenched is that narrative, that speculation as to other, possibly now extinct, language groups - some of which may help explain the origins of, for example, the Germanic languages, the Balto-Slavic languages and also the differences within branches of those languages. Re-addressing the sprawling and troublesome Celtic group (particularly in terms of Continental Celtic, most specifically the P-Celtic groups, but also pertaining to Welsh) may bring some clarity in terms of the 'problematic' changes and those shared with other groups.

Culturally all these areas are seemingly linked to the Hallstatt and or La Téne cultures. Earlier cultural links go back to the Beaker culture. The areas are also tied together with the Megalithic cultures of Europe and may be tied to Magdalenian culture.

There are cultural links, but the archaeological evidence does not support any major migration at this time, particularly into the Iberian peninsula or the British Isles. That is why I said earlier that any link between material culture and population change/language change are a little more nuanced than simply found shared material = population/language shift. I think it is reasonable to see, for example, the Neolithic expansion into Central Europe as a PIE migration - there was likely little in the way of Mesolithic communities in this area. As Neolithic cultures develop we can see certain zones which appear to follow similar religious practices/beliefs. In both the central European zone and the Western (Atlantic) zone we can see these as being, perhaps, Neolithic/PIE culturally (because of the shift in emphasis away from earlier Mesolithic practices). There are distinct differences between these zones and it can be argued that the Western Atlantic zone tends to at least give a nod, as it were, to earlier Mesolithic norms. In the North, along the Scandinavian coasts, there seems to be more of a continuation with older Mesolithic forms. Also, that in the North farming was much more 'equal' with a continuation of hunter-gatherer existence. (For a really good read on this I would recommend "Europe Between the Oceans" by Barry Cunliffe.

Now, linguistically, what this could mean (in a broad over-view) is that PIE languages were deeply entrenched within the central European zone (and the Mediteranean), that PIE was more heavily influenced on the Western Coast by indigenous languages - and possibly by other migrants into the area, there are some suggestions that there may be an Afro-Asiatic intrusion into Western Celtic languages - and that on the Scandinavian coast PIE might have been pretty much submerged within the older Mesolithic languages. Now that would help explain why there is a seemingly strong non-PIE strand within the Germanic branch of languages.

If we talk about a unifying Celtic culture we can not divorce it from bronze age Urnfelds culture regardless of the language spoken. If we speak of Celtic as only a language with no unifying culture we are left with only what we know historically. All the rest is conjecture. We are left with less to go on than before. We may as well rename the field Atlantic Fringe studies and linguistics can become a large subfield. Forget about most of France, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Czechia , Slovakia, Poland, All of the Balkans, Turkey, and the colony in Egypt as all obviously German want-a-bes.

But if we are talking about bronze age urnfield culture as the basis for Celtic then you are arguing exactly what is suggested. THAT 'Celtic' language is a much deeper stratum within European PIE languages than the languages, developed in the forms that we know them much later, that we find on the west coast of Europe. That these languages, from a pretty early point, follow separate paths surely quantifies them as different language groups. THAT 'Celtic' language would have to be a pre-cursor to at least the Germanic languages, as well as the Balto-Slavic, and quite possibly Italic as well (and hence the shared changes with those groups). It would also, almost certainly, be the pre-cursor of other, now extinct, PIE language groups which may have left traces within modern languages that we have simply attributed to this notional pan-European 'Celtic' (and in doing so misunderstanding the changes that have occured within areas that may be present within modern languages, and may help explain - and would certainly help to broaden investigation into - many linguistic puzzles.

I suppose I just can’t understand the wish to narrow the field to such an extent. Basing any argument on what Herodotus wrote and supposing that that instance was accurate and not one of his wilder claims just seems one of convince. Most other works by other authors and scholars are ignored. We can’t possibly take their word for it, but Herodotus is to be believed (in this instance) while all the others such as Posidonius and Caesar with first had experience must obviously be mistaken.

But that's simply a misrepresentation of the works of authors. Celtic and Gaul were not interchangeable ethnicities until much later. The term Gaul came (over time) to be used as a geographical area. Even then Caesar does not refer to those who lived in Gaul as Celtic (only a portion who called themselves thus). Diodorus of Sicily, as I said, re-iterates the difference between the ethnic/cultural identity of Celts and Gauls and links the Celts with the Tartessians. There is no linking between Gaul and Celt until much later in the day. I have seen the argument made that Galatians spoke a Celltic language because they spoke the same language as in Gaul. Well that isn't what was said by our ancient writer. He specifies the Treveri language, not a more general Gaulish, and the Treveri describe themselves as 'Germanic' (though not German). We talk of a Celtic language being spoken throughout the British Isles as a given, yet we have an ancient writer describing the speech of the Britons as being like that of the Aesti, a tribe in Eastern Germanic/Baltic lands. Which ancient writers is it we have to ignore? The Gaul/Celt synonym is a later invention, it is not to be found within the work of the ancient authors.

We are asked to forget what we know and take the teams assumptions without question.

No, we are asked to look at the evidence and re-assess pre-conceived ideas on the basis of it. That seems eminently reasonable and, indeed, should be the guiding principle, not an optional extra, in terms of reaching answers.

We are to assume that Iberian trade objects mean Celtic language while culture is meaningless in giving us a link.

You mean as opposed to seeing shared material artefacts (which show regional variation - British 'Celtic' art is distinct from that of the Danube area, for example) and - despite there being no archaeological evidence of any significant migration - believe that simply contact with these objects altered a persons speech?

We must accept that German tribes occupied vast territory long before any evidence of their leaving their homelands. We must assume that what Roman and Greek writers recorded was tripe. They couldn’t tell a Celt from a German and the Germans were lying and saying they were Celts.

Firstly, I think I have said something which has confused the issue. Germanic was one language group that arose from this deeper stratum (as were Italic, VBalto-Slavic and possibly/probably other, now extinct, language groups). What can besaid is these central European languages will be more related to those groups than to the Western Celtic languages. They weren't all Germans.

As for the tribes that were supposedly telling us they were Celtic, who were they exactly? Were they the Belgic tribes, or the Galatians, or the Danubian peoples; or even the Aedui or Arverni. Where are the self-proclaimed Celts that we are to call liars?

IMHO Koch and his team are focusing on his linking of a previously unclassified language and trying to draw conclusions linking it to the British Isles. The arguments over language and culture are leave us in a murky darkness. The framework of the PCT are just the reverse. PCT is not perfect. Its model may be too static but it is far clearer than the Western Celts theories put forward by Koch and his team.

But you have made the very argument that they are making. That the 'Celtic' language is to be associated with the Urnfield culture - ie it is a much deeper rooted structure qwithin European languages. It also follows that, in terms of evidence which would support any sort of migration into the British Isles or the Iberian peninsula (as examples) during or since that period that the Western languages we know as Celtic have followed a separate evolution. It cannot be argued that they are one and the same thing.

The PIE invasion is its self a theory without definitive proof. The unmaking of Eastern Celtic languages is a misguided endeavor seeking to undo recorded history with a weak argument.

Actually its not un-making anything except a rather forced conjunct between two language groups which have a)followed separate evolutions and b) are 3 millenia apart in basis.

Not having read the book I am unsure exactly where these elements come from. Seemingly Cunliffe’s ideas on Celtic being a trade language is within bounds of believability. The Celtic areas of Europe have long been held as a vast trade network. It also would explain why languages would not diverge to unintelligibility and would exert a stronger influence on other languages with which it was in contact

Trading languages are pretty rare, and they are usually second languages; so 'celtic' being a trading language would not answer anything about what languages were being spoken in Europe, except in a formalised aspect of trade. More often trade involves multi-linguism. the only force that ca be seen to hold a language together over large areas is...literacy. I don't think there is much argument that literacy was widespread in central Europe.

During the time frame of the research Greek had undergone a change where many diverse dialects and branches of the language had disappeared and it had become an almost universal language from Italy to the Indus valley. This came about through a short lived conquest but remained because it facilitated trade.

It came about, as later Latin did (and all of our most prominent modern languages) through literacy, education and - at the heart of that - accepted norms of grammatical and spelling norms. There is a reason that threatened languages fight for their survival through the right to teach them and through formalisms of them.

ADDIDENDEM:

I am having a bit of difficulty here as I have not read the book but the theory is of interest.

I am not sure if it is the theory or your summation that I have the trouble with.
I don’t mean to be disrespectful to either the Koch team or to you.

My difficulties are with the changing of Hallstatt and La Téne as Germanic cultures and telling us that the Romans had no idea of who they were dealing with.

As I say this may be due to something I said earlier. The argument is not that the La Tene cultures are germanic.

Also, separation of Celtic from Gaul I find problematic. Caesar tells us that these people call themselves Celts but the Romans name them Gauls. The Irish refer to themselves as Gaels. The Welsh don’t call themselves Celts either.

Caesar tells us that only some of the inhabitants of Gaul call themselves Keltoi. he says little about the languages spoken.

This could be because of language shifts, or not. Q-Celtic could be said to be the older form of the language at large but that also shows a degree of separation from the main body of speakers. Example: American and Australian English vs. British English. Those reflect the language as it was spoken at earlier times. American English did not go through the shift of the early 1820s and Australian dose not reflect the end of that same shift.

It goes a bit deeper than that though. You argued that 'Celtic' must be linked with the Urnfield culture.

Further, the number of Celtic dialects or languages in Iberia could reflect successive migrations or colonization. It may reflect an older spoken form but does not mean that it was the founding area of the language.

Except that the archaeological evidence simply doesn't support that argument.

We have Lepontic being absorbed into Gaulish in the 4th century BC. This only demonstrates closer ties with a core area of the language and an influx of speakers.

What do you mean by 'absorbed'. There seems to be very little in common between Lepontic and Gaulish. Lepontic seems to have ceased to be.

We can assuredly assume eastern expansion of the Celts. We see them moving south and east from Central Europe in Roman times.

No, we see Central Europeans moving South and East, not Celts.

There are models which would say that, for a time, Hallstatt became the new core area of the cultural area. La Téne too could have been a backwater area that developed new ideas that brought about continued expansion. These are patterns of human development. They should not be seen as the cradle of Celtic genesis.

I agree, but that is exactly the initial narrative that has lead to the whole 'celtic' story that holds such power over modern thinking.

Iberian Celts show Hallstatt influences. Marine Bell Beaker may show the closest to a unifying culture as we get at a later point but genetic links only point to Wales and the South of England. There are also differences in Ireland that would show it was not gotten direct from the source. This still leaves us wondering how the Irish acquired their language.

The Etruscans show Greek influence. That no more makes them or their language Greek than Halstatt culture can say anything about the cultural conformity or language of the Iberian peninsula or the British Isles. I'm sorry but I don't understand your last point.

**Fisherking** · 10-18-2012, 13:28

Apparently, up to a point we are in agreement. The point at which we diverge seems to be in the eastward expansion of the peoples we are calling Celts and Germans.

Both of these terms have become embroiled in modern times in nationalistic interpretations.

The Romans seemingly called everything beyond the Rhine and Danube Germanic but never defined it beyond that point.

When we speak of the tribe Treveri the Romans tell us they speak a Gaulish language, practice the Gaulish culture, but claim a Germanic past.

The Belgae are described in much the same way. He noted that the Belgae, being farthest from the developed civilization of Rome and closest to Germania over the Rhine, were the bravest of the three groups, because "merchants least frequently resort to them, and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind".

Belgae are also placed in Britain and Ireland. Further, some scholars hypothesize the language differences in Belgae as being an overlaid with an older I-E language but not German. I am sure you would not find this far out of line, since we find the same with Lusitanian and possibly other languages.
With the possible exception of the Frisii, it has been stated that Germanic speakers were no nearer than the Elbe in Caesar‘s time but perhaps the Ems.

Let us look far into the past.

If we go to the end of the ice age Central Europe from the Alps north to the Danube was still glaciated for some time. If Indo-Europeans were around then wouldn‘t they be moving into new unpopulated areas? How unlikely is it that they may have happened to have been Celts or Pre-Celts? If they were Proto-Germanic what were the geographic boundaries that prevented the cultural spread from the area to the rest of the populations?

From the Paleolithic onward we find cultural expansion from Southwest France/Northeast Spain and often the Targus moving eastwards into Central Europe. For tens of thousands of years we have a cultural affinity with the same zone inhabited by the Celts as outlined with the later Iron age maps of Celtic areas in Central and Western Europe. Not until the Neolithic Revolution do we find cultural spread moving in the other direction.

In the Aurignacian culture we find a spread that could even be the founding of the PIE group. It is also the first culture wholly proven to be associated with modern humans.

The Solutren culture starts in the western Atlantic region, France and Spain. It was succeeded by the Magdalenian culture which roughly incorporated those regions known as Celtic in Roman times.

Tardenoisian culture and its near relations are the last of these united areas but mtDNA haplo group U5b1 gives a tie in to the Megalithic culture of the Neolithic. It mirrors most of the Continental Celtic distribution.

In the Neolithic such broad united cultures are hard to find. There is also evidence of some population shifts which could be migrations. European Megalithic culture shows it could have started in the Mesolithic from sites in the British Isles, France, and Scandinavia. The number of sites in Ireland, particularly the valley of the Boyne would point to it being the center if not the origin of it. It also includes the Germanic homelands of Denmark and southern Sweden.

Bell Beaker culture is the beginning of metallurgy. It is thought to have come from the Targus area of Iberia. It was contemporary with Megalithic culture and with the building of Stonehenge. It is interesting that the earliest metal smith in the British Isles was found there. The Amesbury Archer, linked to the Beaker culture, borne in the Alps of Central Europe, and with a descendant buried nearby of local birth.
Also, Marine Bell Beaker entered Ireland from South England, not directly from Iberia.

From here we move to the Atlantic Bronze Age, in the west. This is the culture to which Professors Koch and Cunliffe attribute Celtic development and Celtic as the Atlantic lingua franca, later spreading into mainland Europe. But the Atlantic Bronze Age was not a single culture. It was five or more cultures linked by trade. Also linked by trade with all these same areas was the Urnfeld culture and its predecessors of Central Europe. Cultures that relied heavily on Irish metals, by the way. They shared many of the same practices, customs, and traits. The main difference was burial practices. Most of the other religious practices seem to be similar. Urnfeld also differed in the use of hill forts and the styles of fortified settlements that would later become known as oppida. Whether these developed from Urnfeld or the Castro culture is not clear but they seem to have begun in Central Europe.
Both culturally and genetically all of these areas were in close contact with one another for as far back as we have evidence of Homo Sapiens. If we assume that Celtic was spoken at this time by one area it is just as likely that it was spoken by the other.

Hallstatt culture, most would agree, was a Celtic culture springing from Central Europe. It extended from the headwaters of the Seine in the west, north to the upper Elbe and upper Oder, and east to perhaps near present day Budapest. Roughly half the area north of the Danube and east of the Rhine. All the same, it was part of the long standing area of cultural and genetic affinity that extended from the Atlantic to Central Europe and on most every map marked as Celtic at the time. This period lasted from circa 800 BCE to 500 BCE, thereafter it grew into the La Téne culture.

The idea that they become German overnight is more than just a stretch. What we know of the early German Tribes moving into the area came hundreds of years afterwards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ge...0BC-1AD%29.png

The Celts reached their maximum extent about 275 BCE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Celtic_expansion.PNG

Just around the time the Roman Republic was getting started.

The linguistics cited earlier are in no way proof of German tribes in the area and show more influence by Celts on Germans than the reverse. We only have Germans moving into the region at the time of the Roman Conquest of Gaul and were certainly not on the Danube until long after all Celtic migrations had ended.

This is a gap of about five centuries. How do you think it managed to escape everyone‘s attention for so long?
Surely, archeologically or culturally we should have had some evidence that they were there.

Is there any proof other than the cited linguistics?

**Gaius Sempronius Gracchus** · 10-13-2012, 12:44

Originally Posted by Fisherking

I think you misunderstood my assertion. I referred to some of the problems I have with the work but given the terms of their argument I was wondering why they believe the Celts of Iberia carried Basque genetic markers to the British Isles when it is perfectly feasible that those peoples were able to do it themselves.

I don't think that is the argument. The argument is, rather, that this really defines how old this separate European zone is. What is important is the continuing linkage of material cultures between these areas.

There was a long succession of Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures springing form the exact area of the modern Basque and Gascon peoples. These peoples are of a Non Indo-European language group. There are two other Non Indo-European languages that were present within known history, the Turdetani and the Iberians. Iberian shows strong signs of being a related language to the Basque language.

No argument with you there, but I'm not sure what relevance that has with the clear link between the PIE Celtic languages of the Iberian peninsula, Brittany and Ireland/Western Britain.

Why are the Welsh and Cornish different? Could this mean that they came from Spain and brought their language with them? Well except that they were P-Celtic speakers rather than Q-Celtic speakers. Celts of Iberia spoke Q-Celtic. According to the authors, however there were only Germans where P-Celtic was supposed to be spoken.

The question of Q-Celtic vs P-Celtic is, at best, a neutral question. If one looks at the question a little more then there seem to be two distinct branches. The Hispanic Celtic languages and the Irish languages are Q-Celtic. It has been argued that P-Celtic is a result of aerial contact with other PIE derived languages (Italic/Germanic/ Balto-Slavic). We know that the Brythonnic languages and Gaulish were in contact with other PIE langauges for a considerable length of time. Finding Q-Celtic substrata would be a clue to the efficacy of that. Of course the more Eastern 'Celtic' dialects derive only P-Celtic groups.

The P-Celtic/Q-Celtic dichotomy also highlights how confused the linguistic arguments are. Many of the P-Celtic changes are argued using Middle and Old Irish....which are Q-Celtic languages.

Kotch theorizes that Celts arrive from Iberia 1200 to 700 BC. Genetic links say the people arrived about 4000 years ago, linking them to the Urnfelds culture of Central Europe because of the metal working of these people in the archeological record. This is also compatible with the Y-DNA evidence.

I do not doubt contact between Iberia and the British Isles, marine or otherwise but the early arrival time and the language spoken do not support this theory.

But, conversely, you were recently arguing that Celtic should be associated with the Neolithic expansion into Europe during the fifth and fourth millenia BC.