L21 on the Iberian Peninsula

[buckley612]

I misused the term "P-Celtic" to refer to the language spoken by the Gauls and Alpine Celts. I think that the P-Celtic spoken in Britain was largely derived from Q-Celtic, but I believe that the Gallic language (neither P or Q) also influenced the P-Celtic there due to a Belgic/Northern Gallic incursion. My main problem with the theory of an East to West expansion is that I don't think it will be able to explain the huge linguistic differences between the Alpine and Atlantic Celts. It was said that the Gauls could understand Latin, that and other things seem to point to a language close to Italo-Celtic being spoken in Gaul and the Alpine area. As far as I know no Italo-Celtic type language could have been entirely derived from a Q-Celtic language. Another problem (this is unclear to me) is the genetic difference between the two, why are M167 and M153 so rare in the British Isles and Central Europe if the Beaker folk are responsible for the spread of the Celtic languages? My only explanation for this is that they are more recent mutations than R-21, which would mean that R-L21 is much older than researchers have concluded.

 

[rms2]

I misused the term "P-Celtic" to refer to the language spoken by the Gauls and Alpine Celts. I think that the P-Celtic spoken in Britain was largely derived from Q-Celtic, but I believe that the Gallic language (neither P or Q) also influenced the P-Celtic there due to a Belgic/Northern Gallic incursion. My main problem with the theory of an East to West expansion is that I don't think it will be able to explain the huge linguistic differences between the Alpine and Atlantic Celts. It was said that the Gauls could understand Latin, that and other things seem to point to a language close to Italo-Celtic being spoken in Gaul and the Alpine area. As far as I know no Italo-Celtic type language could have been entirely derived from a Q-Celtic language. Another problem (this is unclear to me) is the genetic difference between the two, why are M167 and M153 so rare in the British Isles and Central Europe if the Beaker folk are responsible for the spread of the Celtic languages? My only explanation for this is that they are more recent mutations than R-21, which would mean that R-L21 is much older than researchers have concluded.

First off, there is no evidence that the Beaker Folk had any M167 or M153. The former is found most frequently in the old non-Celtic, Iberian zones, and the latter is mostly a Basque marker. Secondly, Gaulish Celtic was P-Celtic, although there is some evidence (certain words from the Coligny Calendar, for example) that Q-Celtic was spoken among them at one time.

I don't think there were "huge linguistic differences between the Alpine and Atlantic Celts". And I have never heard that the Gauls could understand Latin (without some study). Do you have a source for that?

 

[rms2]

A few days ago I stumbled on what I believe is a mainly Spanish R-L21 haplotype cluster with the following characteristic marker values:

385a=12

439=11

459a=10

447=24

449=31-32

464a=14

456=15

607=16

438=11

Take a look at the following link in Ysearch, using "Research Tools" (just enter the Captcha codes at the bottom and click on "Show comparative y-dna results").

[URL="http://tinyurl.com/2g7bjej"]http://tinyurl.com/2g7bjej[/URL]

Garcia, Ysearch ZQ6P9, went L21+ sometime yesterday evening. He is squarely in this cluster.

You can see the haplotype in the Spain category on the Y-DNA Results page of the R-L21 Plus Project, too.

 

[buckley612]

I don't think there were "huge linguistic differences between the Alpine and Atlantic Celts". And I have never heard that the Gauls could understand Latin (without some study). Do you have a source for that?

It was some from research I had done several years ago, back when the Italo-Celtic theory actually had some ground among linguists. I checked the college research engines I used to spend my time on, but the article was nowhere to be found. I still think that there is not enough linguistic evidence to prove what branch of Celtic the Gauls and other "extinct" Celts spoke, what is your source for a P-Celtic explanation?

 

[rms2]

It was some from research I had done several years ago, back when the Italo-Celtic theory actually had some ground among linguists. I checked the college research engines I used to spend my time on, but the article was nowhere to be found. I still think that there is not enough linguistic evidence to prove what branch of Celtic the Gauls and other "extinct" Celts spoke, what is your source for a P-Celtic explanation?

Not just one source, many. Nearly every text I have ever read on the subject mentions that most of the continental Celts, with the exception of those in Iberia, spoke P-Celtic languages.

One example, that I just pulled from my shelf, is T.G.E. Powell's The Celts. Here is a brief excerpt, from p. 56:

. . . Q-Celtic, which retained certain more archaic features than did the P-Celtic branch, to which Gaulish and British belonged . . .

As I said, that is just one example among many. I have also seen innumerable maps illustrating many such books, which use shading to distinguish between the Q-Celtic of Iberia and Ireland and the P-Celtic of the rest of the Celtic world.

I'll give you some more examples when I get the chance.

 

[Maciamo]

They aren't saying the Bronze Age or bronze metallurgy began in the Atlantic facade. They are theorizing that Celtic languages may have begun there. And I think they believe they have archaeological evidence; I mean that is what Dr. Barry Cunliffe does, after all, and he is one of the central players in the idea.

I seriously doubt that Celtic languages would have begun in the Atlantic façade. All the leading theories on the origin of Indo-European languages place Proto-IE near the Black Sea, and Proto-Italo-Celtic in Central Europe. Italic languages being restricted to Italy, it is hard to deny that they developed in the Italian peninsula. As the archaeology shows that Bronze technology and Celtic arts moved from Central Europe (Halstatt area) towards the Atlantic fringe, I don't see why Celtic languages would not have developed in Central Europe too.

The Atlantic façade is too remote from the point of origin of Proto-Italo-Celtic, too Western for an easy diffusion of the language as far as the Danube valley and Anatolia. Furthermore the area from Portugal to Scotland is too vast as a point of origin. If it originated in, say, southern Portugal, how could it have spread so quickly all the way to Scotland and Austria ? Central Europe is the ideal starting point because the area where Celtic languages were spoken at their greatest extend seem to radiate from the Alps and follow the path of dispersion of Bronze metallurgy all the way to Iberia and the British Isles.

The only thing I could agree on is that Q-Celtic languages developed from archaic Celtic in the Atlantic façade (or Q-Celtic survived in the West as the archaic form, while P-Celtic was a evolution from Q-Celtic that happened after the Bronze Age dispersal, perhaps during the early Iron Age).

 

[rms2]

Those are all good points you bring up, Maciamo. I just want to see what Koch, Cunliffe and the rest come up with. If Ligurian represents undifferentiated Italo-Celtic, as the French linguist Jullian thought, it is possible that Italo-Celtic (Ligurian) was planted in southern France and NW Italy and spread from there. If that is the case, then it could have become Celtic in the Atlantic zone and Italic in Italy.

There is also the possibility that archaic Indo-European spread to the western Mediterranean by sea (as was mentioned before in connection with the Stelae People), and that Celtic developed there and spread east. That could also explain the presence of Ligurian in southern Gaul and NW Italy and how it could have been the catalyst for both Italic in Italy and Celtic in the Atlantic facade.

 

[rms2]

Regarding the earlier posts about whether Gaulish was a P-Celtic language, here are a few more references.

Cunliffe discusses it in his book, The Ancient Celts, in the section on Celtic languages, beginning on page 21. There is a nice little chart on page 23 showing both Gallic and Brythonic on the same branch, which is labeled "Gallo Brithonic". The Q-Celtic languages are represented on the same chart by three separate, older branches labeled "Hispano Celtic", "Lepontic", and "Goidelic".

On page 25, Cunliffe says:

. . . [T]he overriding view being that beneath a variety of dialects Gaulish is broadly Brythonic, though some doubt has been placed on the classificatory value of the term.

He also mentions that Gaulish is known from inscriptions and from place and proper names.

The French linguist and archaeologist Henri Hubert discusses the Celtic languages in his book, The History of the Celtic People (originally in two volumes). He likewise groups Gaulish with Brythonic as P-Celtic.

Here is a brief excerpt from page 131:

. . . two groups of peoples, whose languages became different as has been explained above - that is, the Goidelic, or Irish, group, and the Brythonic group, which includes the Gauls.

The Q-Celtic/P-Celtic division is also discussed in various places in The Celtic Realms, by Myles Dillon and Nora Chadwick. Here is a brief excerpt, from page 18:

The oldest branch of these languages, referred to by modern scholars as Goidelic (or Q-Celtic), survives today in the Highlands and the Western Islands (Hebrides) of Scotland, and in Ireland and the Isle of Man; the later branch, commonly called Brythonic, to which Gaulish originally belonged, survives in Wales and Brittany.

In the next paragraph, Dillon and Chadwick specifically identify Gaulish as P-Celtic.

Those are just a few references of the many that could be produced to show that the overwhelming consensus among scholars is that Gaulish was a P-Celtic language.

 

[buckley612]

I'm not in a position intellectually to agree or disagree with any professional research, but I am always skeptical when such a decisive conclusion is reached. If I remember correctly, the "Ice Age Refugee" theory for the origin of R1b also received an overwhelming consensus among researchers. For a year or so, it was the only theory with an extensive amount of available information. My own experiences also tend to point me away from any theory which allows little room for alteration. Before I took a deep-clade test, I believed myself to belong to R-U152 given that my available DYS values were a perfect match with many tested R-U152 members. I did extensive research and was disappointed to find that the only "real" work done on the subject was botched to say the least (courtesy of Dr. Faux). Still, his research seems to be widely accepted in the field of genetic study. All of this goes to say that I have trouble accepting broad statements like "Gaulish was entirely P-Celtic". I have always thought that Gaul was something of a melting pot of very different Celtic tribes and cultures, in turn it only makes sense to me that the language(s)/branches of Celtic spoken in Gaul must have been diverse as well.

 

[rms2]

There is a great deal of difference between the "Iberian Ice Age Refuge" theory for R1b1b2, for which there never was any good evidence, and the notion that Gaulish was a P-Celtic langauge. There is plenty of evidence for the latter in inscriptions and place and personal names. It's not like linguists have to guess or speculate. It's there for them to see.

 

[rms2]

There is a new Portuguese R-L21 this morning: Dos Reis, Ysearch GHU77. He is in the Portugal category on the y-DNA Results page of the R-L21 Plus Project. Dos Reis' most distant y-dna ancestor came from the island of Madeira.

His closest match (33/37) is Marino-Ramirez, Ysearch NR3T9, whose ancestors came from Spain and settled in Colombia. It seems a fair bet that Marino-Ramirez is also L21+.

 

[rms2]

There is another new Spanish R-L21 this morning: Calvo, Ysearch GYFHF.

He belongs to that Iberian L21+ cluster with 19=15, 459=9-9, and YCAII=19-19.

Calvo's most distant y-dna ancestor came from Cumbres Mayores in northern Andalucia, Spain.

I have added him to the R-L21 European Continent Map (Placemark 133).

 

[rms2]

There is another new Spanish R-L21 this morning: Calvo, Ysearch GYFHF.

He belongs to that Iberian L21+ cluster with 19=15, 459=9-9, and YCAII=19-19.

Calvo's most distant y-dna ancestor came from Cumbres Mayores in northern Andalucia, Spain.

I have added him to the R-L21 European Continent Map (Placemark 133).

Near Mr. Calvo's ancestral home of Cumbres Mayores is the old Celtic hillfort of Nortobriga.

Also yesterday evening yet another man of Spanish ancestry went L21+: Davila, Ysearch 3SZYY.

 

[Taranis]

The only thing I could agree on is that Q-Celtic languages developed from archaic Celtic in the Atlantic façade (or Q-Celtic survived in the West as the archaic form, while P-Celtic was a evolution from Q-Celtic that happened after the Bronze Age dispersal, perhaps during the early Iron Age).

Question: is there any evidence for a genetic link (specific subclade?) between Ireland and Iberia (which would kind of suggest some migration event)?

 

[callaeca]

In opposition to Maciano I adduce:

1) The character of the celtic languages of western Iberia is previous to the formation of Celtiberian. The Celtiberian language is a consequence of the evolution of the western celtic language in Center Iberia (Of Bernardo Stempel, 2004).

2) The conservation of the sound P in initial and intermediate position in the occidental Hispanic Celtic language, opposite to other Celtic dialects (as dialectal anomaly of the Indo-European language), obeys that there was no initial contact with not Indo-European populations who were lacking this sound. The Iberian language lacks the sound P, then it is logical that the Celtiberian language does not contain this phoneme. This fact can spread to other Celtic dialects, where the anomaly of the loss of /p/ is a consequence of the previous substrate. The occidental Hispanic-Celtic is practically Indo-European. This linguistic observation belongs similar to the Armenian language that loss the sound /p/ to contact with caucasic languages (Celiakov, 2007).

3) It is known that the diffusion of the Celtic language could originate with the commercial diffusion of the bell-beakers phenomenon from the center of Portugal (where we can register an archaic Indo-European peninsular dialect, language that presents features genetically near the celtic language, but also features that we find in italic). It is very probable that this initial protoceltic language had to be a "lingua franca", with ancient examples as the egyptian, ionic or latin.

4) The commercial Atlantic decadence opposite to the commercial summit of Center Europe, with the cultural adoption of Unetice models, gives place to a more predominant position for the classic populations called Celts, beside opening direct commercial relations with Greece and Anatolia. Both populations, Atlantic and Center European, can be recognized now like different culturally: handcrafted products, architecture, language, etc.

Atlantic culture is a mixture between models of social change derived from theory of "World Economic Systems" and of the settlement Archaeology: a.-proper evolution of diverse local communities close to relations to long distance, and b.-to come together in creation of a relative "koiné" and a "related diversity". Without this model there would no be Atlantic continuity of phenomena as form of predominant production.

5) The word "celtic" must be understood as atlantic native. The inscriptions of Tartessos in a celtic language, related specially to the dialect of the peninsular NW, are dated on the centuries VIII-V b. C., being, therefore, impossible that it was interfering for populations of Hallstatt not for "urnenfelders" (of that we do not have vestiges)

 

[Taranis]

Callaeca, I would like to re-post here what I did post in another thread regarding the Celtic hypothesis for Tartessian:

I am not a linguist (but I talked with one ), but as far I understand it, there's a number of problems associated with Koch's work. The main issue is that his primary set of data are personal names.

This goes deeper, because personal name etymologies often will tell you more about the individual making them than the name itself, since they almost never come with glosses, so, finding an etymology becomes a game where you essentially seaching for words in your language that sound alike. Given a sufficiently large dictionary and a willingness to play fast and freely between sounds, it's very easy to do this. In some case you have purported "Celtic" origins for words for which it is not even sure if they even have demonstrated Indo-European derivations.

Secondly, even if the names indeed have Celtic etymologies doesn't mean that Tartessian actually was a Celtic language. We know that there were Celts in Iberia, but we cannot automatically assume that everybody with a Celtic-sounding name really spoke Celtic. This is why most linguists stick away from personal name etymologies.

Thirdly, and as far as I understand it, this is something of a "cardinal sin" in terms of linguistics, is that Koch makes no effort to demonstrate how the sounds of Tartessian are supposed to correspond to sounds in Celtiberian. This is pretty futile, because you run under the assumption that any sound can correspond to any other sound, which is not how languages work. And, as far as I understand, this is something that linguists haven't been practicing since the days of Jacob Grimm.

The bottom line is, it is possible that Koch is right, but he hasn't actually proven anything other than the words he has taken out of context from two languages that sometimes sound somewhat alike.

So yes, I guess we will have to wait for more papers on the issue.

Regardless of that, I personally have a serious problem with the idea of Celtic suddenly "popping up" in Iberia some time in the Bronze Age (or earlier?). I would think, even if Celtic languages spread quickly, the origins of the Celtic language must be sought somewhere in affinity to the Corded Ware culture (as the Indo-European languages probably came into Europe with them).

Also, a Iberian origin for the Celtic languages totally screws up with the phylogeny of the Indo-European languages.

 

[rms2]

Taranis,

You are criticizing Koch's work on Tartessian without any actual evidence that he is in fact doing what you say he is doing. You talked with a linguist? Who?

Koch is perhaps the foremost Celticist in the world. Do you really think he is calling Tartessian Celtic merely because of a few personal names?

Here is what this site says about Koch's work with Tartessian:

Professor John T. Koch’s recent research on the Tartessian language of the Early Iron Age in southern Portugal and south-western Spain has now suggested similar preliminary conclusions. In its abundance, diversity, archaism, antiquity, and geographic and cultural remoteness from Hallstatt and La Tène, the Hispano-Celtic linguistic evidence sits more comfortably with a theory of Atlantic Bronze Age Celtic origins than with the established central-European model.

"Abundance, diversity, archaism" all merely from some personal names?

Some of Koch's work is based on proper names, but there is much else, as well, as can be seen from this 2009 paper.

The Corded Ware culture is usually connected with Proto-Germanic, not Celtic. David Anthony, in his The Horse the Wheel and Language, speculates that Italo-Celtic may have arisen from contact between Beaker Folk and elements of the Yamnaya culture on the Hungarian Plain (p. 367).

In Koch's 2009 paper that I linked above, he mentions "the iconography of the ‘warrior stelae’ " shared by Iberia, Armorica (Bretagne), and Britain (p. 1). As I mentioned before, it is possible that Indo-European was spread by sea by the "Stelae People" from the Pontic Caspian region. Anthony mentions their anthropomorphic stelae in his The Horse the Wheel and Language and their spread to western Europe by sea (pp. 336-339).

 

[Taranis]

Taranis,

You are criticizing Koch's work on Tartessian without any actual evidence that he is in fact doing what you say he is doing. You talked with a linguist? Who?

Koch is perhaps the foremost Celticist in the world. Do you really think he is calling Tartessian Celtic merely because of a few personal names?

Here is what this site says about Koch's work with Tartessian:

"Abundance, diversity, archaism" all merely from some personal names?

Some of Koch's work is based on proper names, but there is much else, as well, as can be seen from this 2009 paper.

I was explicitly refering to exactly that 2009 paper. I did read the paper, linked to it and asked said linguist for his opinion, and I subsequently found his criticism of the paper to be a valid point (as posted above), especially in terms of poor methodology by Koch.

Besides, even if Koch is right about the 'archaisms', just because archaic variants of Celtic were spoken in Iberia and/or the Atlantic fringe doesn't automatically mean they originated there. It just means that they were spared of the later linguistic innovations which occured in the Alpine region.

The Corded Ware culture is usually connected with Proto-Germanic, not Celtic. David Anthony, in his The Horse the Wheel and Language, speculates that Italo-Celtic may have arisen from contact between Beaker Folk and elements of the Yamnaya culture on the Hungarian Plain (p. 367).

In Koch's 2009 paper that I linked above, he mentions "the iconography of the ‘warrior stelae’ " shared by Iberia, Armorica (Bretagne), and Britain (p. 1). As I mentioned before, it is possible that Indo-European was spread by sea by the "Stelae People" from the Pontic Caspian region. Anthony mentions their anthropomorphic stelae in his The Horse the Wheel and Language and their spread to western Europe by sea (pp. 336-339).

Wrong. Corded ware was definitely not just connected with Proto-Germanic (Proto-Germanic originated only at the periphery of Corded Ware), but at least also with the common ancestor for the Baltic and Slavic languages. In addition we have the Italic languages (which is commonly thought to be closely tied with Celtic, by the way), as well as Dacian, Thracian and Illyrian. In my opinion, it's far more conceivable that the language spoken by the Corded Warers was the ancestor of all European branches of Indo-European, including Celtic. It's therfore far more logical to assume that Celtic originated in Central Europe (especially if you assume a Proto-Italo-Celtic stage), in proximity to the former Corded Ware area, rather than suddenly 'popping up' in the Atlantic region.

The idea about the stelae people reaching the Atlantic region by sea is interesting, but I personally find it too far-fetched at this point. Of course, I should add, the concept of Celtic originating in the Atlantic region is a paradigm change, and in all of science, people are naturally awkward with paradigm changes. However, until I see genuinely convincing evidence, I for one am going to stick with the traditional concept.

 

[rms2]

. . .


Wrong. Corded ware was definitely not just connected with Proto-Germanic (Proto-Germanic originated only at the periphery of Corded Ware), but at least also with the common ancestor for the Baltic and Slavic languages. In addition we have the Italic languages (which is commonly thought to be closely tied with Celtic, by the way), as well as Dacian, Thracian and Illyrian. In my opinion, it's far more conceivable that the language spoken by the Corded Warers was the ancestor of all European branches of Indo-European, including Celtic. It's therfore far more logical to assume that Celtic originated in Central Europe (especially if you assume a Proto-Italo-Celtic stage), in proximity to the former Corded Ware area, rather than suddenly 'popping up' in the Atlantic region . . .

I did not say that Corded Ware was connected only to Proto-Germanic. I said it is usually connected to Proto-Germanic. I am aware of the connection to early Baltic and Slavic, as well, but, since we were discussing a western IE subgroup (Celtic), I limited myself to a western manifestation of Corded Ware and provided a reference (Anthony's The Horse the Wheel and Language).

As I said in my last post, Anthony derives Italo-Celtic from contacts between the Beaker Folk and the Yamnaya culture. I don't know of any connection between Corded Ware and early Celtic or of anyone who attempts to make such a connection (aside from you).

I also have a different take on Koch's 2009 paper than you do. It seems to me it contains plenty of translations of apparently Celtic Tartessian inscriptions that are not personal names.

I guess time will tell if Koch is right. I don't know if Celtic actually originated on the Iberian peninsula, but I definitely believe it is much older than both Hallstatt and La Tene.

Personally, I suspect the Celtic question will come down to a final decision on where the Beaker Folk originated. Arguments seem to sway back and forth. Currently, the thought is that the oldest Beaker sites are in the Iberian peninsula, and the radiocarbon dating supports that, or seems to, at least for now.

 

[Cambrius (The Red)]

I did not say that Corded Ware was connected only to Proto-Germanic. I said it is usually connected to Proto-Germanic. I am aware of the connection to early Baltic and Slavic, as well, but, since we were discussing a western IE subgroup (Celtic), I limited myself to a western manifestation of Corded Ware and provided a reference (Anthony's The Horse the Wheel and Language).

As I said in my last post, Anthony derives Italo-Celtic from contacts between the Beaker Folk and the Yamnaya culture. I don't know of any connection between Corded Ware and early Celtic or of anyone who attempts to make such a connection (aside from you).

I also have a different take on Koch's 2009 paper than you do. It seems to me it contains plenty of translations of apparently Celtic Tartessian inscriptions that are not personal names.

I guess time will tell if Koch is right. I don't know if Celtic actually originated on the Iberian peninsula, but I definitely believe it is much older than both Hallstatt and La Tene.

Personally, I suspect the Celtic question will come down to a final decision on where the Beaker Folk originated. Arguments seem to sway back and forth. Currently, the thought is that the oldest Beaker sites are in the Iberian peninsula, and the radiocarbon dating supports that, or seems to, at least for now.

The oldest Beaker sites, according to everything I've researched, have been confirmed as existing in Southern Portugal.