Taranis
Elite member
Sorry, I was not precise enough. I was just wondering why the proto-Celts did not leave more traces between the Maykop and Hallstatt-LaTéne regions. The Balkans just jumped to my mind as a region in-between. I should have said Ukraine and northern Balkans.
I think you're making too much of a stretch of an assumption there, namely that there was already a distinct "Proto-Celtic" language by the time that (presumably) they left the Maykop area (I'm not wholly convinced of the Maykop hypothesis, but I'm perfectly willing to go with it for the sake of this discussion): so, there's two reasons why wouldn't see such a thing. The first is because by the early date of the Maykop culture (late 4th / early 3rd millennium BC), we can be safely assume that a distinct Proto-Celtic language didn't exist yet. The further you go back, the more similar languages are. It's more likely that the Celtic languages (along with the Italic languages, hence "Italo-Celtic" and a few other, poorly attested languages such as Venetic and Lusitanian), sprung from a common "western" IE spectrum. Secondly, all written sources are thousands of years later, with a lot of ethnic movements occuring in the meantime. It should be no surprise that we don't see anything, either way.
Very much agree, the language and genetics rarely do corellate (for instance romance speaking amerindians, germanic/english peaking indians). It's just that we already used to link R1b to Italo-Celts, and the new "gedrosia" component is yet another third attribute that correlates nicely to both inside Europe.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still preferring the theory of an eastern origin of Indo-Europeans. The latest admixture analysis just adds a tiny question mark to the Caspian-Steppe/Maykop origin of the Q-Celts. And for the same reason I question a bit the Hallstatt-LaTéne region as likely source for those island celts. The admixture suggests a possible Iberian origin of at least some celts, because british celts have relatively more in common with the Basques than with Germans, Austrians, and Ötzi or Sardinians in particular. The Atlantic_Med and Northern_euro components are not significant in my opinion because they are ubiquitous in europe.
If my speculation about gedrosian-centum relation is wrong, than the peculiar gedrosia component on the Atlantic shores must be older than bronze age, or just did not leave traces of the migration.
Well, the crucial question, regardless of all details, should be this: how much genetic impact (read: population replacement) is necessary to impose a language onto a population. How possible was this in ancient times without significantly exterminating the old population?