Ye Olde Antique Racisme

[rhys gethin]

This appears to be what the latest genetic evidence is saying-if Oppenheimer is correct.
And it does seem to be utterly at odds with the generally perceived history of the British isles.
I personally found his view on the origins of the English language fascinating-a prototype of a Germanic language was being spoken in Eastern Britain from well before Roman times-theres little historical or archeological evidence for this-but theres little for Celtic languages being spoken there either.
Linguists are notoriously shy about dating language age or splits-but English appears to be a lot older split from German than 1400 years -maybe a few 1000.

I've read the book through carefully now, and yes, the linguistic stuff is fascinating. He seems to me to speak, in general, with considerable authority, and I think I believe him - though it may be because I dislike standard linguistics so very much, and rather like the idea of being a Basque.

 

[Jonti]

Seems the Channel started forming around 6500BC. Up till that time, the human radiation from the Basque ice-age refuge would have been able to walk along the Atlantic coast into Cornwall and Ireland, and, following the ice-sheet as it retreated north, to Scotland. As the ice melted, the sea rose, eventually creating the Irish Sea.

Before the end of the Devensian glaciation (the most recent ice age) around 10,000 years ago, the British Isles were part of continental Europe. During this period the North Sea and almost all of the British Isles were covered with ice. The sea level was about 120 m lower than it is today, and the channel was an expanse of low-lying tundra, through which passed a river which drained the Rhine and Thames towards the Atlantic to the west. As the ice sheet melted, a large freshwater lake formed in the southern part of what is now the North Sea. As the meltwater could still not escape to the north (as the northern North Sea was still frozen) the outflow channel from the lake entered the Atlantic Ocean in the region of Dover and Calais.

At some point around 6500 BC, catastrophic erosion swept away the chalk to create the English Channel, leaving the iconic white cliffs of Dover. Wave action on the soft, chalk cliffs widened the Channel further, a process which continues today. source

Here's an interesting pic. The turquoise area, the shallowest sea, is was land when the ice cap was there. The arrow shows the breakout of the massive proglacial lake damned up against the ice-sheet.

I've read (somewhere!) the Channel was not navigable for millenia after it started to form, as it was far too turbulent, but there could still have been sea-traffic across the North Sea.

btw, the pic's from What If The Ice Ages Had Been A Little Less Icy?

 

[Belushi]

I'll have to get this book , sounds interesting; though a quick Google shows theres plenty of criticism of Openheimer. From what I've read on here he does seem to be attacking a straw man somewhat (no serious historian has ever claimed theres a celtic 'race' as such, its a cultural and linguistic category).

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Well, you say "ever" - I'd wonder if the term wasn't used in the nineteenth century...

 

[rhys gethin]

I'll have to get this book , sounds interesting; though a quick Google shows theres plenty of criticism of Openheimer. From what I've read on here he does seem to be attacking a straw man somewhat (no serious historian has ever claimed theres a celtic 'race' as such, its a cultural and linguistic category).

I don't think he's attacking anybody. He takes it for granted, like most sane people, I imagine, that there is no 'race' other than the human one, and merely traces particular genes which demonstrate the male and female lines of ancestry. They show that the ancestors of the majority of British people came up from Spain as the ice withdrew, though others, later, came from Scandinavia in the New Stone Age. The essential points are that the 'Anglo-Saxon' and 'Viking' invasions were very small beer, amounting to perhaps 5% and 3% of the ancestry of the English population. The interesting bits are where he says that 'Celtic' probably arrived via the Mediterranean, with farming, along well established trade routes, and that given its differences from the other German languages, English MUST have developed much earlier than the Fifth Century, and that the only logical place for it to have done that is in what is now Southern England. In other words, most of the history we were taught was drivel - which is, for other reasons, obvious anyway.

 

[Stigmata]

I was always under the impression that there were humans in Britain before the Celts- that Stonehenge wasn't built by Celtic forebears, for example.

 

[rhys gethin]

I was always under the impression that there were humans in Britain before the Celts- that Stonehenge wasn't built by Celtic forebears, for example.

But what are 'Celts'? None of our ancestors called themselves that until the Eighteenth Century. 'Celtic' is a linguistic term, and we are all just British, as we always were, mixed in differerent proportions, with the majority everywhere stemming from northern Spain. Or that's Oppenheimer's view, whatever, and mine too, I think.