Quote Originally Posted by Fisherking View Post
Are you really proposing that the people named Celts by the Greeks were a different ethnicity?

Definition: An ethnic group is a group of people whose members are identified through a common trait. This can, but does not have to, include an idea of common heritage, a common culture, a shared language or dialect. The group's ethos or ideology may also stress common ancestry and religion, as opposed to an ethnic minority group which refers to race. The process that results in the emergence of an ethnicity is called ethnogenesis. Some ethnic groups are marked by little more than a common name.


These people came from a core area. They migrated to Italy from over the Alps. They supposedly also went to Greece from roughly the same start point. They spoke a Celtic or Gallish language. That was where it was named and identified for the first time.

If there was some mistake then it would have been in calling the insular peoples by the same general name. Since those in the east would be the original Celts, what do you propose to call the insular and or Atlantic grouping?

Is this a real argument or just a troll?
Truly? You are really going to use this line? As I have asked you to do (and you clearly have not) you should check these ancient sources for yourself. I have provided examples. The Greeks did not refer to the invaders into their lands from the North as Celts, they referred to them as 'Gala'. It is only a later invention that leads to any alleged synonym between the two. I have provided you with two very clear sources which show that the Greeks understood the 'Celts' to be of Iberian origin. Please provide an ancient Greek source describing the invading people of the North as Celts. The tribe of the Celtici are to be found in.... South-West Iberia. Check the sources for yourself. The error was an un-attested agglomeration of two separate, distinct descriptions into one. The Greeks and Romans do not use the terms inter-changeably.

Do you know haw small the population shift was in the Neolithic? When it arrived in Ireland it was estimated at a 4% to 6% influx of new peoples. There is no massive movement anywhere.
I'd be interested to see the source for that, as it seems a very certain figure, one which I would like to know how it has been calculated. I think the general view is that it is very difficult to know what sort of population change took place during this time; so to give a percentage figure is remarkable. Could you cite the source for this please?

Do you have a theory where 94 to 96% of a population decide to speak a new language? The Neolithic peoples arriving were farmers and herders, not a warrior elite.
So you are arguing that PIE was already in existence prior to the Neolithic....? And you think Koch, Cunliffe et al are 'fringe'?

You ask me for evidence of a Celtic language in the east and say when I look at evidence I may see something else.

Well, what evidence of Celtic language do you have that it was spoken in the British Isles 2500 years ago? I am to look at your material, and I have, yet you seem to have missed quite a lot of what I presented.
In case you missed it, I'm not convinced that a Celtic language was spoken in the British Isles 2,500 years ago - certainly not in all of the British Isles, though I am prepared to accept that parts were Celtic in language.

The archaeological record shows a slow spread of ideas, crops, and domesticated animals with perhaps in places population shifts of up to 10% but more often less than half that. We show a slow shift from hunter-gathering to farming.
This is the basis of the PIE Migration theory. The idea of language spread by Hallstatt and La Téne are no more challenged than the PIE theory.
As I say, I'm interested in the source for these migration figures. Language is not spread by material culture, full stop. I would love to see the argument that can have a material edifice pass on the power of language (other than a book, of course).

Am I to take it that since the people who showed up in the Balkans and migrated to Turkey and said to have come from the region of the source of the Danube (France, Switzerland, and South Germany) were not the same as those who stayed behind?
No, and I don't see how you could come to that conclusion, given that I was talking of the similarities of the languages of the Galatians and the Treveri; and that the writer was specific about that link and did not say like the language of Gaul. The question is whether Gaulish was the same as that language.

Do you argue that the Gauls didn’t speak a Celtic tongue?
Which 'Gauls' are you referring to? Do you mean the wide-ranging Northern invaders who the Greeks called Gala, or those living in what the Romans came to call (as a geographical area) Gala? Is there a difference? Almost certainly.

It would be a bit difficult to prove that Gaulish is not a Celtic language.
As it happens its a bit difficult to prove that it is a Celtic language, in fact it was difficult to say very much about it until it was propped up by external sources which were presumed to be the same language. Much of the lexical basis of Gaulish is drawn from Galatian; there is a great deal of circular argumkent that has gone on here.


Most of the argument is circular and contradictory. It needs a clearer more concise explanation.
Quite the opposite. I will say it once again. Check the ancient sources for yourself. They do not refer to the Celts and Gauls as being one and the same. They clearly place the Celts in the Iberian peninsula. Tartessian is the earliest written Celtic language. That simply does not fit with the alleged spread of this group of languages from a central European, Danubian, base. The circular logic is entirely in the realms of the 'Celtic from central Europe' proposition. It was an un-evidenced link from the start and has taken on a life of its own, which lacks any real cogency. In an argument about the origins and spread of a language you have described a peoples, you have extrapolated a language 6000 years old with one 2,500 years old, consistently inter-changed the terms Gaul and Celt and demanded (without checking the sources) that this is how the Greeks and Romans told it. That isn't surprising because that is the extent of the 'argument' - it is a muddled hotch-potch of distracting and incoherent hubris. If you can't even be bothered to check this stuff out for yourself then please refrain from accusing others of potentially trolling.