The Irish are Not Celts

[lobf]

Not at all, there arent a "Basque people" differenced. The ancient basques were sheperds of the Pyrinnees who obtained celtic lands from the romans (they were their allies) so they were mixed with the defeated celts (by the romans) as the called "nervii" of NE Spain. They adopted the celt culture but only maintained their language. Nowadays there arent almost any difference between basques and other spaniards.

As a one-time resident of the Basque country, I can tell you they wouldn't appreciate that one bit. :P

[Berg-i-dum]

As a one-time resident of the Basque country, I can tell you they wouldn't appreciate that one bit. :P

Yeah I know, I am spaniard he he. There are a lot of romanticism there. But this is the truth.

I am galician, the "celtic" land of Spain and there are some of this topics here too.

[gamerdude873]

They should probably be looking at the Y chromosome.

Forgive me if i'm wrong, but as i understand it, this would be very difficult/nigh impossible. The y chromosome has very little actual " understand that the Y is fairly generic. I'm fresh from high school bio, and i did very well in it. One of the things my teacher taught was why men get screwed when it comes to genetic disease. Women, in order to have a recessive genetic disease, need to have both of their X chromosomes to have that disease. Men only have one X, so all it takes for a man to have a recessive genetic disease is for that X to be defective. The point of this is, many fewer genes exist on the Y than X, so like I said, the Y has very fewer features to track. Besides, there are many other chromosomes and genes that one could track much more easily, I think.

For all those that care or don't understand:
Mitochondrial DNA is also extranuclear, meaning outside the nucleus. It is located with mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. The mitochondria are all inheirited from the mother, because the sperm contains only DNA, and could not possibly donate mitochondria paternally.

Unless my teacher and book are asses, i think this is pretty accurate. Just my 2 cents anyways

[desert]

Actually, the sperm contains a lot of mitochondria. You didn't think it got all of its energy magically, did you?

In fact, paternal mtDNA can get into the egg, albeit very rarely. It usually doesn't because all the mitochondria are located in the part of the sperm that falls off when it reaches the egg, though I can't for the life of me remember what exactly that part is.

EDIT: Yeah, so only the top/head goes into the egg, and the mitochondria are in the midpiece, so they're screwed.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Forgive me if i'm wrong, but as i understand it, this would be very difficult/nigh impossible. The y chromosome has very little actual " understand that the Y is fairly generic. I'm fresh from high school bio, and i did very well in it. One of the things my teacher taught was why men get screwed when it comes to genetic disease. Women, in order to have a recessive genetic disease, need to have both of their X chromosomes to have that disease. Men only have one X, so all it takes for a man to have a recessive genetic disease is for that X to be defective. The point of this is, many fewer genes exist on the Y than X, so like I said, the Y has very fewer features to track. Besides, there are many other chromosomes and genes that one could track much more easily, I think.

For all those that care or don't understand:
Mitochondrial DNA is also extranuclear, meaning outside the nucleus. It is located with mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. The mitochondria are all inheirited from the mother, because the sperm contains only DNA, and could not possibly donate mitochondria paternally.

Unless my teacher and book are asses, i think this is pretty accurate. Just my 2 cents anyways

It's accurate but incomplete. The Y Chromosome doesn't chage (accept through mutation) that's why it's so paltry these days. The point is, you have your Dad's Y, the same one, and he has his Dads, also the same.

You can track that back a fair way and it is a good indicator of paternal ancestry.

[Riastradh]

This thread has gotten off the topic and instead is now on genetic testing. My point in posting that article was to give you some scientific evidence to back what I was trying to get across. Regardless of this, I am going to post a link to an article I think most of you would like to read, whether you be hear for the talk on Irish origin/classification or genetics specifically. Enjoy.

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/a...ls.php?id=7817

[Sir Edward]

Forgive me if i'm wrong, but as i understand it, this would be very difficult/nigh impossible. The y chromosome has very little actual " understand that the Y is fairly generic. I'm fresh from high school bio, and i did very well in it. One of the things my teacher taught was why men get screwed when it comes to genetic disease. Women, in order to have a recessive genetic disease, need to have both of their X chromosomes to have that disease. Men only have one X, so all it takes for a man to have a recessive genetic disease is for that X to be defective. The point of this is, many fewer genes exist on the Y than X, so like I said, the Y has very fewer features to track. Besides, there are many other chromosomes and genes that one could track much more easily, I think.

For all those that care or don't understand:
Mitochondrial DNA is also extranuclear, meaning outside the nucleus. It is located with mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. The mitochondria are all inheirited from the mother, because the sperm contains only DNA, and could not possibly donate mitochondria paternally.

Unless my teacher and book are asses, i think this is pretty accurate. Just my 2 cents anyways

Well I'll clear up some mistakes here. By 'recessive genetic disease' I take it you implicitly meant an X linked recessive trait like color blindness and hemophilia A. While it is true there are very few functional genes, only 86, are found on the Y chromosome (compare this to ~2000 on the X chromosome) there is still plenty of genetic material present or features as you put it, over 58 million base pairs (153 Mbp for X chromosome).

The Y chromosome has some unique quality that makes it a nice target for population genetics. For one because all males (there are some rare exceptions) have only 1 Y chromosome there is no homologous recombination. Meaning the Y chromosome a person inherits is the same one their father had, and their paternal grandfather and so on and so forth. This genetic material passed exclusively from father to son allows for a paternal line to be created. If a mutation occurs in the Y chromosome of a germline cell, this mutation will be inherited in ALL male descendents. The accumulation of these unique mutation events in each line give geneticist a tool to determine how close two populations are.

Also I think you have a misconception about what geneticist look at when they are comparing DNA sequences. Forgive me if I am reading you wrong but your statement sounds like they look at the genes in the Y chromosome when really it is the opposite. You don’t want to look at mutations with in a functional gene because these mutations often have an effect negative/positive on the health of an organism. This change in fitness puts evolutionary pressure on the mutation, and can change the rate it appears in the population. When genetic genealogists do research on the Y chromosome they look at non coding DNA, commonly called by the misnomer Junk DNA (specifically they count short tandem repeat (STR) & look for single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)). They look here because in non-coding DNA these mutations are neutral and have no impact on the health of the organism*.

To show my point that the Y chromosome is indeed useful for studying this issue of the inhabitants of ancient Britain take a look at this NYT article that highlights arguments from both camps.A United Kingdom? Maybe

*(Disclaimer non-coding DNA can effect gene expression in complex ways)

[Sumskilz]

At the risk of overdoing the Latin America analogy here is a link that explains how a genetic admixture study is done:

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/19/7234.full?ck=nck

Latin America is much easier to study than prehistoric Ireland for the obvious fact that the genetic evidence can be referenced against the historical record.

[gamerdude873]

Geez, its always whats most obvious that i overlook. DUH. Thanks for fixing my mistakes. I completely forgot about all the EXTRA DNA thats in there too, even if there is a lot less. Don't listen to me. They all know alot more!

[cmacq]

At the risk of overdoing the Latin America analogy here is a link that explains how a genetic admixture study is done:

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/19/7234.full?ck=nck

Latin America is much easier to study than prehistoric Ireland for the obvious fact that the genetic evidence can be referenced against the historical record.

Actually, in Mexico the Spanish colonial authorities kept meticulous census records. Think head count and income. I’ve used copies of several examples to make correlations between residential architecture and demography, then applied this to prehistoric settlements in the southwest US. Also the Spanish didn’t directly kill millions of potentially loyal and income producing Mexica, Mixtec, Maya, Tlaxcalan, Zapotec, Tlaxcalans, and of course Tarascan subjects. For the most part it was Variola vera that did the lion's share of the killing.


CmacQ



CmacQ

[oudysseos]

Riastradh, I guess I'm a little confused by what you are trying to say, although I appreciate that your intentions and tone are good. Let me put this to you in the form of questions,

1.How precisely do you think that 'Gael' is different than 'Celt'. Bearing in mind that that the Gaelic languages are considered to be branches of the insular Celtic languages. Do you disagree with that?

2.

The Irish warfare system, while sharing some similarities with mainland Celtic tribes, was also quite different in a lot of respects.

What do you have to back up this position? I sincerely hope it's more than the Tain.

I don't dispute the early genetic origin of the population of the British Isles, but that statement is a very limited one, really. Oppenheimer, Sykes et al never ever say that Ireland was not a Celtic culture, but rather that it didn't acquire said culture through massive genocidal invasions. It's a question of alternate origin, not of a whole different identity.

You are making some huge statements about an era for which there is not much evidence of any kind. It doesn't help that terms like 'Celt' and 'Gael' are broadly and poorly defined (by everyone, not just you). I am not saying that you are necessarily wrong just because you're from Kerry, just that you have made some assertions, and that the sources you have cited don't support them.

P.S. Sorry, couldn't resist.
http://www.fionasplace.net/irishjoke...ymanjokes.html

[Sumskilz]

CmacQ,

Just to clarify, I was saying that it is easy to correlate genetic evidence with historic records in Latin America precisely for the reasons you state. That of course is in contrast to ancient Ireland where we have so very little to go on. I've also read estimates stating that as high as 90% of Native Americans were wiped out by disease which is something that has no (as far as I know) parallel in Ireland. As far as how many Native Americans were outright killed by the Spanish you get a different story depending on which primary source you read, Las Casas verses Bernal Diaz for example, but I suppose that’s getting off topic.


Riastradh,

I question your conclusions, however that’s not to say that you didn’t bring up an interesting topic that no doubt requires further investigation. I think one issue lies in the fact the term Celt is so vaguely defined. How many of the people that we feel comfortable calling Celts would have called themselves Celts, or Gauls, or Germans for that matter. The categorizations are convenient for modern scholarship but don’t reflect the ancients’ self-identities.


IrishHitman,

I agree, so should Irish culture then be compared to Breton, Cornish, or Welsh culture? How can all the various cross-cultural influences be sorted out? I don’t think modern cultural comparisons are very useful in this case? We probably are served best by archeology and the earliest primary sources.