{"id":998,"date":"2008-03-23T17:35:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-23T17:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=998"},"modified":"2008-03-23T17:35:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-23T17:35:00","slug":"dna-the-celts-and-roman-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=998","title":{"rendered":"DNA, the Celts, and Roman Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have started reading Stephen Oppenheimer&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1845294823?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=chascli-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1845294823\">The Origins of the British<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1845294823\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important; display: none;\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" \/>, which I referenced earlier in my series of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chasclifton.com\/2006\/10\/whos-celt-now-7.html\">&#8220;Who&#8217;s a Celt Now?&#8221; posts<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>From a genetic analysis &#8212; his main tool &#8212; buttressed by linguistic studies and ancient written sources, he appears to be making these points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The people of Ireland, Wales, western Scotland, western England, and the Atlantic coast of France came north from Iberia and southwestern France after the ice melted. These people spoke Celtic languages.<\/li>\n<li>Conversely, they did not come from central Europe and are not connected to the so-called <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hallstatt_culture\">Hallstatt<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/La_T%C3%A8ne_culture\">La Tene<\/a> cultures.<\/li>\n<li>After the ice melted, eastern England did receive settlers from the Continent&#8211;but remember that back then, people could walk from what is now France to England, until the sea levels rose.<\/li>\n<li>During the 400 years of Roman colonization, many (or most) inhabitants of the province of Britannia were probably speaking a Germanic language (related to Dutch or Frisian), not a Celtic language. If true, that is the biggest revelation for me.<\/li>\n<li>The subsequent Anglo-Saxon invasion was not a genocidal &#8220;wipe-out,&#8221; but was more like the Norman Conquest of 1066. One ruling class replaced another, but life for Jane and Joe Commoner went on as before.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I will post again after finishing the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have started reading Stephen Oppenheimer&#8217;s The Origins of the British, which I referenced earlier in my series of &#8220;Who&#8217;s a Celt Now?&#8221; posts. From a genetic analysis &#8212; his main tool &#8212; buttressed by linguistic studies and ancient written sources, he appears to be making these points: The people of Ireland, Wales, western Scotland, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[20,38,21],"class_list":["post-998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-archaeology","tag-celts","tag-england"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-g6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":741,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=741","url_meta":{"origin":998,"position":0},"title":"Who&#8217;s a Celt now? &#8211; 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The word \"Celt\" first appears in English in 1706, but it referred then usually to the people of ancient Gaul (modern France), says the OED. There are some earlier uses of \"Celtic,\" again referring to the Gauls, from the late 17th century.\"Celts\" begame fashionable as Noble Savages after Scotland, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":752,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=752","url_meta":{"origin":998,"position":1},"title":"Who&#8217;s a Celt now? &#8211; 6","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1, Part 2, Part 3,Part 4, Part 5Everything that we thought we knew about Celtic culture is probably wrong.But there is still language, right? If \"Celtic\" is not a genetic code, and it's not a spirituality, at least there are Celtic languages: Gaulish, Cornish, British-leading-to-Welsh, Irish and Scots Gaelic,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":740,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=740","url_meta":{"origin":998,"position":2},"title":"Who&#8217;s a Celt now?-1","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"When I blogged the recent local Celtic music festival, I promised more on the tangled web of Celticity. This foggy, rainy, sleeting night seems a perfect time to begin.Take the assertion of Stephen Oppenheimer, an anthropologist who has published on the ancient populations of the British Isles:\"Celt\" is now a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":654,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=654","url_meta":{"origin":998,"position":3},"title":"Celts, Wine, and the Northern League","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Northern Italy's wine industry may owe its origin to the Celts. Let's remember, though, that \"Celtic\" most accurately describes a group of languages, not an ethnic group.But this bit caught my eye:Interest in all things Celtic -- from music to mystical rites -- took off in northern Italy in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1043,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1043","url_meta":{"origin":998,"position":4},"title":"Knee Deep in the Bloody Ford of History","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Sometime around age 15 I took home Vol. 49 of the Harvard Classics from the Fort Collins (Colo.) public library and read for the first time Beowulf and The Destruction of D\u00e1 Derga's Hostel. (The Ring saga is in there too, but I had already encountered it.)Beowulf is an understandable\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3483,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3483","url_meta":{"origin":998,"position":5},"title":"Another &#8220;Celtic&#8221; Illusion Shattered","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This may come as a shock to some, but the Asterix the Gaul comics do not present an accurate view of the ancient Gaulish people, according to a new museum exhibit in Paris. No dolmen-moving, etc. Next thing, they will be telling us that Vikings did not wear horned helmets\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}