Comments on: The Irish – more Spanish than Celtic?

By: Quahog King

Quahog King — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 06:42:36 +0000

Proto-Celts became, or were Basques. Basques were all over the place, a pan-European substrate. Various minority aristocracies came, much later, to dominate the substrate. This differentiation created the different Indo-European races, which, because of their identical substrate, weren’t much different at all, but THOUGHT they were, because their aristocratic families brought about individualized languages and cultures. The Basque/Celtic substrate, commoners, were consumed with the doings of the rich and powerful of their tribe, and time passed, making even commoners forget their commonality. Onto the proto-Celtic/Basque substrate comes some surviving aristocratic families that meld very ancient ‘Celtic’ culture with modern, Iron Age culture. What have you got? Galls, Goidels, Gaels, Galicians. Celts. The problem with religious competition is failing to acknowledge the Universality of the creative deity. The problem with recognizing the Celtic blood in nominally Celtic lands is in failing to see the ubiquitous nature of the Celtic race. They were the seed stock of all Europe, and perhaps India too. Call them Basques, if you want to. A rose by any other name, is still a Celt. Ireland isn’t marginally Celtic. It is exhaustively Celtic.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 23:25:16 +0000

There`s one thing that should be taken in consideration, the fact that in Minho (north Portugal) there are many persons with blue eyes and with blond hair. My mother came from a small village in the interior of Minho where they had great earth and water to cultivate and they kept isolated from the main roads and there everybody is blond and everybody has blue eyes. This only could exist by a very long time origin.

By: Steve Nowe

Steve Nowe — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:53:12 +0000

For history conscious people. Seriously look into the matter that Amorica (Brittany), in northwest France is named after Moor (north Africans) in their heyday of trade links in the ancient past to the Middle Age. The Moors (Cufic Arabs) from north Africa sailed across the Atlantic to reach the unknown land (New World) in 650 CE and that place came to be called America after the Moor. Barry Fell, in his “Saga America” (1980, page 190) noted that there were Cufic Arabic inscriptions in Nevada and elswhere of modern USA that has been carbo-dated to 650 AD. An Arab explorer Sad ibn abi Waqqas reached America in 650 CE after sailing across the Atlantic, after sailing further east, Sad ibn abi Waqqas reached China in 651 CE with 14 other companions (sailors).

By: Timbo

Timbo — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 15:48:28 +0000

My email is: tocharian_trekker@yahoo.com

By: Timbo

Timbo — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 15:45:43 +0000

This is a very interesting topic, but I think that whatever people say, it throws up more questions than answers, certainly at this time anyway. Many Irish, Scottish and Welsh people tend to see themselves as Celtic, and ethnically different from their English neighbours. People always want simplistic answers, that fit cosily into simplistic notions and ideas of race and nationality, and so on, but the truth, as ever, seems more complicated.

According to some researchers, perhaps Irish people, and maybe this goes for Welsh and Scottish people too, are not necessarily purely Celtic, whatever that term really means anyway. When people talk about ‘Celtic’ races, for some reason people get all misty-eyed and romantic, and have this myth of a unified race of people playing bagpipes, drinking whisky (whiskey even!), having red hair and green or blue eyes. This seems to me, at best, a kind of folk myth that may, or may not, hold water; but who can say?

Are we ever going to find the truth, without biased interpretation, or interpretations from people who don’t want their cosy notions challenged, for one reason or another? Just who were, or are, the Celts, and were can their descendants be found?

Please check out this website (not mine) for an interesting overview of all things Celtic (or supposedly) in Europe.
http://www.celticattic.com/contact_us/the_celts/celtic_nations/the_7_celtic_nations.htm

Anyone who wants to contact me about this (even though I am by no means an expert on this) feel free to do so.

By: Fintan

Fintan — Sun, 15 May 2011 14:10:08 +0000

All of western and north western Europe was repoupulated from Iberia after the last ice age. The Irish are most closely related to, British, Northern French, Belgic and Dutch, and the Germans on the west bank of the Rhine, in that order. Geneticaly the Irish cluster further away from Iberia than the the others. This obeys a simple rule, the further away two populations are geographically, the greater the difference in their autosomnal dna.
The confusion regarding an intimate connection between Ireland and Iberia arose in the early days of the Y chromosome haplogroup surveys, 1998- 2004. At that time it was noticed that Ireland and western Britain were heavily ,80-90%, haplogroup R1B, qually high levels of R1B were found in northern Iberia. Today we have much higher resolution testing of subclades of haplogroups, and as a result the intimate connection between Ireland and Iberia is broken. Subclades of R1B are different in Ireland and Iberia, the most frequent subclade found in Ireland R1B L21, also has high frequencies among the British, including the English, Northern French , and southern Dutch, and to a lesser extent among the Fresians , Danish and North Germans, it is only found at a vanishing low rate among Iberians. If the Irish are looking for a point of origin, then the present genetic maps point to the mid Rhineland with an expansion into northern France and the lowlands and finally into Britain and Ireland.

By: Galician

Galician — Sun, 08 May 2011 06:56:56 +0000

There seems to be a general confusion about Spain. I’m a Galician: dark hair, green/hazel eyes, a standard Galician. There are a few blonds around, for sure, probably from the Suevians or the Buri the 4th century Germanic tribes that move here and are part (small part) of a genetic makeup. But Spain has little in common with North Africa. The strait has been a genetic barrier. In any genetic map I’ve seen, the Spanish cluster with the Southern French, the Swiss and the rest of the Europeans, all of the them far from the Finnish for example. In some aspects the Spaniards are similar to the inhabitants of the British Islands. Our Arab (7th century) blood is around 6%, 10% in the South, our Germanic blood (4th, 5th ) goes from 10% to 25% percent depending where you go. Most Germans have dark hair by the way. Our darker color reflects our latitude as it should be. We tan during summer and look paler during winter, like everybody else. When I’ve been to Britain I realized how many English people could pass for Spaniards, if you take away their funny accents and their customs and the general lack of sunny days.

Before the Romans came 2 thirds of the Iberian peninsula spoke Celtic languages – we still have jewels and a few stone inscriptions in those language – 2000 years is not that much. Around a couple of dozen of towns and villages in the Iberian peninsula still show their Celtic names: Segovia (Segobriga), Coimbra (Conimbriga), from briga, town, being the most famous. But we are not genetically Celts, neither are the Irish or the Scottish or the French. If the Celtic tribes ever were a genetic group they didn’t affect much our genetic make-up, neither they did in the British Islands. We are mostly R1b (from 65% to 95%, depending where you go), not different from the British. We also have, besides the Germanic blood, Northern African and Middle Eastern blood, but not from recent invasions but probably from thousands of years ago, the same blood that also shows in the Western Atlantic European facade in less percentage.

My advice: get your facts straight, educate yourself, and get rid of your childish prejudices. We live too close to be THAT different.

The comments about the Spanish Armada ever affecting the genetic makeup in Ireland is pure rubbish. Most of the armada made it back to Spain and if any of those sailors ever remained in Ireland had to reproduce like crazy rabbit to even affect the smallest villages in Ireland. If the Irish and the British and many other Western Europeans have Spanish features is probably because 13.000 years ago nobody was leaving on the Ices of Northern Europe and after that blood move north not south and because Spain is not that far from Ireland or England and it has been for centuries a general contact between those countries, similar stone-age monuments, etc.

As for the bagpipes being Celtic… How do you prove that?

By: Sierra

Sierra — Wed, 04 May 2011 23:27:00 +0000

My family all claim Irish heritage, However, we have strong ties to both Greek and Spanish family. My hair is shiny jet black, quite curly ringletty type, and I have blue eyes. In summer my skin tans to olive. When I go to Spain I get mistaken for a native.

By: Goatee

Goatee — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:36:54 +0000

Subject: Spencer Wells on the subject of R1b.

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQHX_MwhN80&feature=youtube_gdata_player

By: Goatee

Goatee — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:25:43 +0000

The Y-Chromosone haplogroup is called R1 b, that DNA is found in the genes of the Spanish and Portuguese men, in which the Irish, Welch and Scottish men inherited from.