Celts were haplogroup I?

[PDHOTLEN]

IE = language group

Indo-Europeans refers to the language group, and entered western Europe around 5,000 years ago or so. The "aboriginal" Europeans had been there since repopulating the region north of the Alps after the LGM, and spoke various non-IE languages (now extinct). The main academic arguments seem to concern whether or not Neolithic agriculture arrived with the Indo-Europeans or arrived earlier. But don't ask me for sources, since I don't keep track.

R1a1a & U5b2

[derinos]

The Aboriginal Europeans?

Of course there was the Paviland Prince, 24000 ybp, in South Wales. He did not stage his own ceremonial burial, Mammoth skull included alone but his tribe did it.. Google "Paviland" for a nice tale!
And, romantically,......


"A Name for the First People.

The recent DNA evidence for Connaught/Welsh/Basque ancient family relationships was very illuminating. The time of that first post-glacial ethnic link, over 10,000 years ago, in the Paleolithic-Neolithic transitional cultural period; was well before the Celtic migrations, but those smallboned but potent ancient people are always being lumped in as "Celtic" ..
For a long time I have looked for a name for these people. They deserve one. They brought fire and farming, trod out the long Green Roads, and built Stonehenge, Newgrange, Carnac, and so many intricate and imposing megalithic structures. The clearest picture of their everyday identity was recently carried to us by Otzi, the 5000 year old Tyrolean glacier corpse, mugged and frozen, going home from trading bows.
Calling them "Neolithic" is like calling our own kind " Automotive" ! Hardly enough to describe our libraries and orchestras, art and architecture. For the first people, to be lumped in with those tall blond, bronze-bladed, hero-charioteer Celts, speaking their poetic Sanscrit language, crowds out those smallboned, socially cohesive, brilliantly astronomic, civil engineers .
They must have had a language , too, also begging a name. Hard to place THAT, now that its traces, if any are left, melded into Gaelic and Welsh and Breton, Basque and Portuguese, maybe Tyrolean too..
But wait. Take the words for water. The Gaelic "uisce" is older than the Sanscrit derivatives like Welsh "ydwr", Greek "hyder", Low-Germanic "watter". So I think "uisce" must be a word from the Paleolithics. It hangs on as a placename on rivers all over the pre-Saxon landscape of the British Isles, and as an alternative "wysg" in Welsh also. There must be a few other word-fossils like that. What about "tir" or "tyr", the word for land?
And what did they call themselves? Is there a survivng word that would fit? What can we call these first people after the last Ice Age?
Irish folklore names the three arrivals that make up the root-races of Irish people- the Tuath De Danaan, the Fomor, and the Fir-Bolg. The Fir-Bolg are likely the last Celts to arrive. In Britain the Romans listed them as Belgae, a near enough name.
The Fomor could well be the "cowboys" who drove their herds and ox-wagons from Iran, (not quite the name Eirann, but so close) over about two thousand years, mutated to be able to live on milk products.
That leaves the Danaans.
I like that noble, magical name for our great and pathfinding First People we call the Paleolithics, sacramentally planting and joyfully harvesting; or sitting storytelling in their smoky winter bothies. In their season great silent stones spoke clear to them , and millenia later, hint the mystery to us.


Stonehenge- The Danaans.

A noble magic name ! No less will do
For those that first began to plant and reap
And build them giant rings of stone to wed
The Mother of the earth to tribe and hearth.
First Farmers, little folk, the buried bones tell now,
With thoughts that spanned the circle of the sun.
Setting in grace huge stones that mark his run,
Gateways that only giants could have moved,
Stones that sang clear to them of seasons' flow.
Millenian messengers that mystify today.
They must have had a language, one that sang
Of what their lives were made of, and which sprang
From reassuring springtime and the round
Of growth and harvest, and the winter tales
Of the long past when ice reigned king ,
In the great Circles, praising earth and sun,
And the Great Mother that makes all things One. "

[spruithean]

All this ridiculous talk of associating DNA with culture treads on very shaky ground. It cracks me up to read posts about Haplogroup I and Mr Nordvedt's beloved Viking DNA.

*poof* you're a Viking! Here's your spear and and here's your longship, now go plunder and pillage. Ancestors could have very well been slaves for all we know.

I agree. But rather than Viking what about Nordic as in Northern European?

[Zaru]

I agree. But rather than Viking what about Nordic as in Northern European?

But isn't this one of the main reasons for FAMILY TREE DNA? To figure out the anthropology of our ancestors? The cultural implications I believe are of a philosophical nature but rest assured many if not most of us are here to figure out which parade we can march in!

[Deirwha]

Interesting supposition

I don't think I am looking for a parade. I like the National Genographic Projects description- a journey. The question is not who am I, but along which route does the journey stretch. I am interested in cultural antecedents also, but there the analogy is to Joseph's multi colored robes. I am interested in teasing out the many threads that time wove together in the cultural robes I wear, often unconsciously. But I am not interested in choosing one moment in time along that journey or one thread I have teased out of the fabric and call them "me." Nor am I looking for others who have worn the same weave as they stopped for a time in their journey in the same place at the same time as did those who traveled before me, specifically. I think that the quest for this last embodies the danger inherent in what we do while the former embodies the possibilities.

[spruithean]

I took the test to find my relatives and the location of my families origin in Britain. I'm not looking for a parade. I agree with Deirwha.