Irish and Scottish roots in Galicia/ North Western Spain

[dfmacliam]

'Black Irish' is a traditional (or racist, depending on who you ask) term commonly used in Irish American communities, to describe dark brown/black hair appearing in people of Irish descent, as opposed to the light brown, blond, or red hair colors stereotypically perceived as typical Irish folks.

Because the Irish were stereotyped for so long as redheaded backward isolated barbarians, the Spanish Armada theory was often used to explain the darker haired Irish.

In truth the Irish were pretty well developed as seafairing traders, and got around quite a bit. And while they do enjoy a higher percentage of pale skinned light or red haired types than most nations, most are darker haired. No doubt generations of "cultural relations" with folks from the Iberian peninsula impacted that.

I have heard this explaination many times, but I am not so sure its a complete truth. My family have always considred themselves "Black Irish", and they are from the Island.. I came to the States as a child, and we are the first to come here, on my mother's side.

It was explained to me,before, that the term black or dhub also means foreign or foreigner... meaning someone whose roots are from another country... yes, usually it was Spanish roots, but others were present, too.. If I am not mistaken, my family has some Huguenot blood in it.. and they were French Protestants (Calvinists) who fled France and religious persecution.

[LANCER1562]

When I was in high school my best friend called himself "Black Irish" because he had black hair and brown eyes like his father who was Filipino instead of red hair and blue or green eyes like his mother who traced her family liniage to County Cork and Belfast Ireland. Although his older sister had blonde hair, blue eyes and very fair skin.

[O'Callaghan]

Interesting that the Basque are mentioned...

Any of our linguists want to compare forms of Gaelic to the Basque language? I've always heard that Basque was totally unrelated in any way to any of the other language groups surrounding the area. Maybe they were looking in the wrong place for languages that have similarities...

Greg Beloitpiper? Sound like a job for the Gaelic speaking archaeologist!

Best

AA

AFAIK the only similarities ever found to Basque occur in Native American languages, and given the Basque seafaring tradition this may only open an even earlier claim to have got to the new world first, i.e. before Brendan, the Vikings and that Johnny-come-lately, Mr. Columbus.

[castledangerous]

The Spanish Armada tales have been known to be bunk for a long time.

[BoldHighlander]

More than once I've heard the elders say that amongst the Cherokee & some other Southern tribes that "Black Irish" was used to satisfy the legal authorities regarding a mixed marriage (white/Native Ame.) back in the day when such things were frowned upon (illegal). I know this doesn't explain its usage elsewhere, just relating it from the prespective of some Cherokee elders.

I'm reminded of a story I heard more than once about when the actor Gregory Peck went to Ireland & visited where his ancestors came from, that he was surprised because all the men looked like him (tall & dark haired).

[Rob]

The 2004 study by Dr Bradley is rather dated now. His conclusions concerning Scots and Irish being descendents of early migrants from Northern Iberia have since been verified in later more detailed studies by Professor Bryan Sykes and Professor Stephen Oppenheimer (both of Oxford University). However, both Sykes and Oppenheimer have concluded that it does not only apply to the Scots and the Irish, but to most of the people of Britain and Ireland, and that the migrations began soon after the ice receded at the end of the last Ice Age between 12,000 and 15,000 years ago.

The more extensive genetic survey by Sykes (over 10,000 samples) reveals that overall, 72.9% of Scotsmen share an ancient Northern Iberian ancestry (ranging from 59.9% in Orkney and Shetland to 83.5% in the Grampian region).

In England the overall figure is 64% sharing ancient Northern Iberian ancestry (ranging from 51.2% in East Anglia to 78.2% in the Southwest, i.e. Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset).

In Wales the overall figure is 83.2% sharing ancient Northern Iberian ancestry (ranging from 78.5% in North Wales to 86.4% in Mid Wales).

When these early migrations occurred, the Celtic languages (Brythonic and Goidelic) did not exist, so the early post-Ice Age migrants may have spoken an early non-Indo-European language similar to the Basque language at that time. However, after a few thousand years a Celtic language established itself in Iberia (Celtiberian), and it is thought that Celtic speech spread to Britain and Ireland either through later smaller-scale migrations from Iberia or from trading links.

One myth that these studies clearly destroy is the one that the English are predominantly of Anglo-Saxon ancestry, and therefore fundamentally different from the Scots, Irish and Welsh. It would seem from the genetic surveys that most English have the same ancient ancestry as the Scots, Irish and Welsh. Therefore the name “England” (meaning ‘land of the Angles’) could be construed as being inappropriate. Similarly the name “Wales” (meaning ‘land of the foreigners’ in Old English) is also inappropriate. Even the name “Scotland” is derived from the name of a minority invading Irish tribe “Scotti” (or ‘Dalriada’), so perhaps a more appropriate name would have been the old one of “Caledonia”.

How does "X Marks the Caledonian" sound?

[Rob]

Even the term "Celtic" when applied to the Gaelic and Brythonic languages of Ireland, Scotland and Wales is somewhat of a misnomer. There is no evidence that the ancient Celts were the originators of that branch of the Indo-European language group that would go on to evolve into the Goidelic and Brythonic languages that we call "Celtic" today. The original Celts, a tribe known as the Celtici, were located in what is today western Spain and were originally a distinct people from the Gaels/Gauls/Galicians according to the earliest accounts given by ancient Greek and Roman scholars who were familiar with both peoples. Writing in the first century B.C.E. Diodorus Siculus spoke of how the Celts and Gauls were originally two distinct people, but had become merged, saying:

"It is useful now to point out a distinction unknown by most. Those tribes that live inland from Massalia (Marseilles) as well as those around the Alps and on the eastern side of the Pyrenees are called Celts. But those tribes in the northern area near the ocean, those near the Hercynian mountain (probably in today’s Czech republic) and those beyond as far as Scythia are called Galatae. The Romans, however, group all these tribes together as Galatae."

As Dioderus Siculus did not have access to modern population genetics analysis techniques, there is no way that he could have known for certain who the ancient ancestors of the Gaels/Gauls/Galicians were. Many writers of that era make assumptions, which are later assumed to be accurate. For instance, Herodotus wrote in the 6th century BC:-
“The Nile starts at a distance from its mouth equal to that of the Ister [Danube]; for the river Ister begins from the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Heracles and border upon the Kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those who have their dwelling in Europe).”

It is quite clear from this that Herodotus is saying that the Keltoi lived in Iberia, but he has mistakenly believed that the source of the Danube was in the Pyrenees, and not in Germany as we now know. Unfortunately, later writers (such as Diodorus Siculus) took Herodotus’s word for it that the Keltoi lived at the source of the Danube, which they then knew to be in what is now Germany.

In fact, it was not until 1707 that the Gaelic and Brythonic speaking inhabitants of the British Isles and their cousins in Brittany and Galacia on the European continent came to be identified as "Celts" by the 17th century antiquarian Edward Lhuyd, who first hypothesised that the Irish, Scots, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Bretons represented the descendants of the ancient tribes referred to as the "Keltoi" by the Greeks and the "Celtae" by the Romans, who learned of these people through the writings of early Classical explorers.

It is indeed correct that the Britons were not referred to as ‘Celts’ until 1707 when Lhuyd (and others) identified Brythonic and Goidelic languages as belonging to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language tree.

In fact, the Gaels/Gauls/Galacians as well as the Cymry are said in ancient records to have come to the British Isles from a region once known as Scythia, which covered a vast territory in Eastern Europe located roughly in the area of the present-day Ukraine, very near the original homeland of the ancient Aryan or Indo-European root language.

It is now known from extensive genetic surveys that the Gaels and the Cymry did not originate from Scythia, but from Northern Iberia after the last Ice Age, at a time long before the Celtic languages were spoken.

If we look at genetics through DNA research, we find that the majority of the people living in countries like Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall are predominately of the R1b genetic haplogroup. The R1b haplotype is in fact the predominant haplogroup in Western Europe and occurs among a majority of the population in the same areas where the ancient megalithic monuments (dolmens, cromlechs, menhirs, and barrows like Newgrange, Callanish, Maes Howe, Avebury, Stonehenge, and Carnac) are found - which suggests that the majority of the people who we identify as "Celtic" are in fact descended from an aboriginal population that was native to Western Europe all the way back to the Stone Age.

The reason that the R1b Y-chromosome haplogroup is so common in Western Europe is because they are almost all descendents of the post-Ice Age migration north along the Atlantic coastal regions from the Northern Iberian Ice-Age refuge. However only the Gauls and the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland later acquired Celtic speech, replacing earlier non-Indo-European languages.

Another interesting thing to consider is that Indo-European languages like Gaelic and Cymraeg would not have evolved among these people, but would have been introduced from Eastern Europe - the Aryan/Indo-European homeland, where the predominate haplotype is R1a - a fact which perfectly fits the old histories that record the Gaels as having originated in Scythia (present day Ukraine). So the Gaels/Gauls/Galacians who we think of today as being "Celtic" would not originally have been, as the real "Celts" - the prehistoric R1b haplotype megalithic culture would have spoken a non-Indo European language probably very closely related to Basque.

It was the proto-Indo-European language that started out in Eastern Europe and gradually spread west, not the Celtic branch. The language gradually evolved into its various branches (including the Celtic branch) as it moved west over a period of thousands of years, as shown in the following link:-

http://www.bio.unc.edu/Faculty/Hurlbert/lab/langtree.htm

There is no evidence (such as ancient place-names) that the Celtic branch languages were ever spoken in Eastern Europe. This branch appears to have been limited to the Atlantic coastal territories, i.e. Iberia (except the Basque lands), Gaul, Britain and Ireland. There is therefore no evidence that the Celtic language branch originated among the Y-haplogroup R1a population of Eastern Europe.

[Galician]

Interesting array of statistics and facts. Sorry, but they leave me confused as to what this all means in terms of the issue. Could someone make the picture a bit clearer for those of us whose eyes glaze over with tons of numbers?

[xman]

The Galician roots to Ireland and Scotland are a lot stronger than previously understood and even include England because it happened a LOT earlier than was expected. I think that's it.

[O'Callaghan]

It means that the Celts were the indigenous, aboriginal inhabitants of most of western Europe, including Spain, France, Britain and Ireland, and that most of the native population of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and much of England is genetically related to the Basque people, whose non-Indo European language evolved from the pre-Gallic language spoken by the Keltoi, and that the Celts were descended from the megalithic culture that was responsible for erecting the standing stone monuments found throughout Spain, France, Ireland and Britain.

Gaelic is Indo-European, though, even though Basque (Euskara) isn't. There are some basic words in Gaelige (Irish) that are obviously IE in origin. Not that I speak it properly, I'm just learning.

FWIW, I used to work with a Basque girl. Her first name was Kelly! I don't think that proves any Basque/Irish connection, though. Perhaps only her father was Basque. She could speak Euskara, and she was short and dark complexioned, as you might expect. Actually, she was very short.