The Atlantic zone of Western Europe

I won't be there and it's a pity, because I'd love to. From the 9th to the 11th of June the Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique (University of Brest) organizes a conference about the possible connections across the Atlantic fringe of western Europe. There are contributions from a variety of sciences: archaeology, linguistics, population genetics, and some of the participants are scientists that I have already talked about in this blog, in some cases extensively: Mario Alinei, Stephen Oppenheimer, Marcel Otte, Xaverio Ballester, John Koch, Francesco Benozzo, and some others whose research I would be very interested to know about. It is clear that some of the participants share views that are connected with the Continuity paradigm, something that can be seen very clearly just taking a look at the programme of the conference, with titles like Les Indo-Européens sont venus avec Cro-Magnon (Marcel Otte) or The Atlantic Celts: cumulative evidence from Paleolithic (Alinei- Benozzo).

As I said, I'd really would love to be there, but I can't. Unfortunately, there is no post as 'official blogger of the event' that I could apply for! It's not just the conference, it's also the chance of going to Brittany. In any case, however, I'm planning a trip there in August, so I'll get a chance to visit places like Carnac (see picture) or the Armorican coast.

On the edges of the earth: Atlantis, Celts, Ovid

Some years ago I made an unforgettable trip to Rome and its region, Lazio. One day I visited the Alban Hills, in an area nowadays called Castelli Romani. My journey there, first by underground and then by bus, was like a journey into the most archaic history of the Latins. My first stop was Albano Laziale, near lake Albano; the legendary city of Alba Longa stood by the shores of this lake, possibly near the location of today's Castel Gandolfo. The beautiful scenery is dominated by Mount Albano (nowadays called Monte Cavo in Italian), a place that was sacred for the old Latins (picture on the right); it was there that the Feriae Latinae, an annual celebration of the Latin league, took place. The next stop in my journey was the beautiful town of Genzano di Roma, famous for the Infiorata, when the main street of the town is covered with flowers (see picture below). That street leads you to the upper part of Genzano, with beautiful views of Lake Nemi, a small, round lake in the centre of what used to be a volcanic crater. Anyone who has read James Frazer's The Golden Bough will be familiar with the antiquities of the area, including the famous Temple of Diana, now disappeared, and the vicissitudes of the Rex Nemorensis.

Definitely, travelling around the Castelli Romani is like going back to the remote past of Rome and the Latins. I didn't have time to visit all the interesting places in the area, including the remains of Tusculum, the walk to Mount Albano along an old Roman path or a visit to places like Grottaferrata, Velletri or Aricia. In Aricia, for example, there's a curious Roman building. It used to be a guesthouse in classical times, and it continued to be so in later centuries. I read about it somewhere, but now I can't find the information about it, even using the whole apparatus of Internet. According to tradition, the Roman poet Ovid (43BC-17AD) stayed in this guesthouse some days on his way to exile. Maybe this story is just an invention to attract visitors, as Ovid is one of the most famous Roman poets and the story of his exile to the remote lands of Tomis, at the shores of the Black Sea, which he dramatically narrated in his books Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, soon became literary classics. In these books, Ovid complained bitterly about the conditions he had to live in and the back luck he had had to end his days in such a remote and apparently uncivilised corner of the world. Now, was it really so bad? Was he really sent so far away?

In a recent book published in Spanish (Gálatas, Getas y Atlantes, 2010), Xaverio Ballester analyses Ovid's texts in full detail and reaches the conclusion that they're full of inconsistencies. It seems that for the geographic and cultural aspects the Roman poet relied on the general erudition of the time, rather than on first hand experience. According to Ballester, the location of Ovid's exile was a lot closer to Rome. Ovid wrote about Tomis basically because he was supposed to be there!

Ballester's book is a compilation of three essays, including the one about Ovid (El geta de Ovidio). The book is really pleasurable to read, an excellent mixture of scientific rigour and the finest sense of humour.

In the third essay (La Atlántida... si creemos a Platón), Ballester tackles one of the most intriguing topics in Greco-Roman antiquity: the possible location of Atlantis, the legendary territory whose dramatic fall was narrated by the Greek philosopher Plato in two of his dialogues. Is Atlantis just a myth, or is there any truth in this story? If so, what was the location of the 'lost continent'? For centuries, all types of people, including scholars, have asked themselves these questions and come up with the most varied proposals. One of the main points to bear in mind is that Plato offered a precise location for his Atlantis: off the Columns of Hercules, i.e. the Strait of Gibraltar. According to Ballester, however, this location must not be taken at its face value. In many cases old myths are adapted and re-elaborated to the new circumstances. The original material originated at a very early time, in the context of the eastern Mediterranean. The lands further west were basically unknown, or unheard of. Later on, with the expansion into new, and therefore exotic lands, the myths were embellished with new locations further west, as happened, for example, to the Herculean cycle. Ballester puts forward an interesting hypothesis about the Atlantis myth, linking it with the Dardaneles and the Black Sea. The myth would be linked with a geological process that took place at about 5,600 BC: the rise of the sea level and the flooding of the Black Sea area (until then just a small lake) with water from the Mediterranean.

In the first essay (Más allá de gálatas o celtas), Ballester deals with the Celts, particularly with their ethnonym. The study of ethnonyms is traditionally full of absurd proposals, as Ballester funnily shows at the beginning of the chapter. They are explained in linguistic terms, with little or no connection to reality or common sense. We find an example of this in the various explanations for the word 'Celtae', 'Galli' or 'Gallaeci' that have been traditionally proposed. Ballester offers a completely new reading of the terms, which he connects to the geographic notion of 'people who live on the fringe', or 'at a remote area in the west', with the association of 'the west' with the notions of 'death' or 'the end of the world'. It is difficult to prove the validity of this proposal but at least it is coherent with the geographic and (pre)historic contexts.

Celtic from the West

How old are the Celtic languages once spoken in the Iberian Peninsula? Where did the 'Celts' come from? Were they from central-eastern Europe, as tradittionally assumed, or did they originate in the west? The debate about these issues is quite lively, with new proposals being made as the research in this field continues its development. The identification of some ancient languages of western Iberia as 'Celtic' is one of the most relevant developments.

A series of specialists, e.g. José Antonio Correa and Jürgen Untermann, have argued for the possible celticity of some words in Tartessian, a language of southwest Iberia. The Tartessian inscriptions are remarkably old (in some cases as early as the 7th c. BC), which makes them particularly relevant for celtologists. A similar case is Lepontic, in northern Italy, a Celtic language attested in very early inscriptions. Prof. John T. Koch has provided some further evidence to prove that Tartessian was a Celtic language, or at least that there was a significant percentage of Celtic elements in it (Koch's article is available here). If we add to this other proposals about the celticity of Gallaecian and Lusitanian (vid. Ballester 2004, "Hablas indoeuropeas y anindoeuropeas en la Hispania prerromana". Elea 6, 107-138), one has the impression that the chronological horizons of Celtic elements in Iberia must be much earlier than previously, or traditionally, assumed. This, of course, has far-reaching implications for our global understanding of the Celtic language group, or about the origins of the 'Celts' themselves. And there are of course some scholars already following these new lines of research.

In 2008 the University of Wales launched a research project called Ancient Britain and the Atlantic Zone, also known as ABrAZo. The project is coordinated by Prof. Koch, and its aims are explained in this web-page. Obviously, the abbreviation used for the project (ABrAZo) is also the Spanish word for 'hug' or 'embrace', exactly the same as in Galician (abrazo) and very similar to the Portuguese one (abraço). The name is actually quite appropriate, as the project aims to find common elements in the archaeology, languages and genetic components of these Atlantic areas (western Iberia, Armorica, Ireland, western Britain) as a single archaeological entity. I guess the inspiration for the project comes from the work of archaeologist Barry Cunliffe and his theories about the peoples of the Atlantic Façade, which he outlined in his book The Ancient Celts (1997) and developed in his influential Facing the Ocean. The Atlantic and its Peoples (2001). In fact, Cunliffe is co-editor (with John Koch) of the first volume emanated from the ABrAZo project: Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives from Archaeology, Genetics, Language and Literature (2010), Oxbow Books, and has also contributed with an article. Another author in this volume is Stephen Oppenheimer, whose theories have already been discussed in this blog (see here).

There are many more things to say about this issue (Celtic, Lusitanian, Tartessians), and I'll be publishing more posts about it in the future. Un abrazo!

Language continuity in Europe (III): Ireland

Who brought Celtic languages to Ireland? And when? - It seems that there is no easy answer to these questions.

In general, islands are a good place to study population and language evolution, because they offer a more limited range of variation and better chances for establishing the chronology of events than in continental land. The British Isles are not an exception. In fact, there’s a detail that makes this area even more interesting for the researcher: due to their location in the northern Atlantic, the British Isles have been greatly affected by major climatic changes, especially glaciations. It is supposed, for example, that by the time of the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM), i.e. the coldest period of the last ice age (about 22,000 to 17,000 years BP), the British Island became a frozen desert, with no possibilities for human life. The re-population of the British Isles started from zero when the ice started to recede.

In the comments to a recent post in this blog we had an interesting discussion about the Celts. One of the commentators, Ian, suggested a book about this topic: Stephen Oppenheimer’s The Origins of the British (see below for full bibliographic details). I had never heard about this book before, and I found it interesting so I ordered it on the Internet and a week later I had it in my hands. Reading it was just a matter of days. No doubt about it, this is the ‘21st-century’ at work! Speed and availability. Ideal for inquiring minds.

In his book, Stephen Oppenheimer offers a detailed analysis of the history of human populations in the British Isles. Being a geneticist, he focuses primarily on the genetic material of these populations, combining it with other sorts of evidence, e.g. from archaeology or history texts. His research is quite comprehensive: he analyses and discusses the results obtained by previous authors, e.g. Sykes and Richards, and offers new, generally more accurate explanations for the history of British gene clusters. I had never seen such a complete and detailed account of western European genetic history, and, not having yet read any review of this book by other geneticists, I am not in a position to say if all the details of Oppenheimer’s theory are acceptable or not. In any case, I have the impression that the overall picture offered in this book is coherent and logical, and is bound to become a reference point in any future study of western European prehistory. Now, what is this ‘overall picture’? It is difficult to summarize Oppenheimer’s book in just one post, and I suppose I’ll be talking about it in future occasions. There is an article by Oppenheimer (published in Prospect), where you can find some of the main points in his theory.

The re-colonization of the British Isles took several steps, starting about 16,000 years ago after the LGM. The first colonizers came from the Franco-Spanish refuge, an area in northern Iberia and southwestern France where human life had not been interrupted by the ice. This Iberian gene flow is by far the most important element in the genetic components of the populations in the British Isles, especially in Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and other western areas. At about 12,300 BP there was another glacial period, called Younger Dryas, which also had an impact on this area. It is thought, however, that human population did not disappear from the British Isles in the Younger Dryas, even though there was a significant demographic drop. The Younger Dryas was much shorter than the LGM: by 11,000 BP the climate started to become much milder, like the one we have today. This period, known as Mesolithic, saw a new process of colonization from the continent, which two main lines: from Iberia and from northwestern Europe. This double migration path is actually a recurrent pattern in the prehistory of the British Isles, which is repeated in later times (Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age). According to Oppenheimer, this pattern of migration set the basis for the separation between Celtic and Germanic areas in the British Isles. In other words, the boundaries between these two areas are not the consequence of recent historical events, like the Anglo-Saxon invasion, but were established in a process that started in the Late Upper Paleolithic, after the LGM. Basically speaking, what we have here is a pattern of continuity of human populations. The genetic input from the earlier times (Paleolithic or Mesolithic) is the most relevant component in the genetic material found in populations of that area today. The contribution of later migrations, e.g. in the Neolithic, is considerably lower, which means that the expansion of agriculture and metallurgy was not the consequence of massive migration, but a local development. This is especially true in the case of Ireland, as we will see.

It is not clear if Ireland was re-colonized by humans immediately after the LGM, but there are some indications pointing in this direction. There is clear evidence, however, of human migration into Ireland during the Mesolithic, mainly from Iberia. On the left you can see a map from Oppenheimer’s web-page, with the distribution of one of the gene clusters from Iberia, following a typical pattern. The impact of later migrations into Ireland is generally considered low, in comparison with eastern Britain, which was under the influence of migrations from northwestern Europe. According to Oppenheimer, intrusive lines in the Neolithic account for 6-9 % of all Irish genes. This doesn’t mean that Ireland was isolated from the rest of the world in prehistory; in fact there were strong links between Ireland and other Atlantic European areas, as shown by Cunliffe and other authors who talk about the ‘Atlantic Façade’. But it is clear that the Neolithic and other later prehistoric periods did not involve a relevant population input in Ireland. Now, let’s go back to the initial question of this blog: Who brought Celtic languages to Ireland? And when? – There are several possibilities: in the Mesolithic, as the Continuity Theory proposes; in the Neolithic (Colin Renfrew’s theory); or in the Iron Age, as some people still think. - At this point, Oppenheimer asks a couple of interesting questions (p. 246): “how could a new language arrive during the Neolithic without people? (...) Was 6% invasion enough to change culture and language?” For him, the possibility of a Paleolithic or Mesolithic origin of Celtic languages in Ireland is “unlikely” (p. 222), but not impossible. It is clear that the door is open for new research on the languages and populations of the British Isles, and of Ireland in particular, with new perspectives and new tools that were not available just a few decades ago. And it is also becoming quite obvious that the Central-European theory of Celtic origins, which puts them in connection with the Halstatt or the La Tène Iron-Age cultures of the first millennium BC, is quite unacceptable.

References:
- Oppenheimer, Stephen (2007). Origins of the British. London: Constable and Robinson [first edition, hardcover: 2006, London: Constable and Robinson].

Origins of the Celts

There is no doubt that the Celts occupy a central position in the history and prehistory of Europe. They spread through an extensive territory and their language and traditions have survived until today. Now, who were the Celts? Where did they come from? Several theories have been put forward to answer these questions. I will focus on two of them: the ‘traditional’ ones (e.g. Marija Gimbutas’ theory), and the recent proposals made by Mario Alinei and the Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT).

- It has traditionally been thought that the Celts emerged as a differentiated IE group in Central Europein the Late Bronze Age, i.e. at around 1,000 BC. Later, in connection with the expansion of the Iron Age Hallstatt and La Tène cultures, the Celts reached other European areas, where they settled.

- In the context of the PCT, the original territory of the Celts basically coincides with the areas where Celtic groups and languages were present at the beginning oh history, and in some cases even today: the British Isles, Belgium, and the Atlantic areas of France and Iberia (Portugal, Galicia, Cantabrian regions). Celtic languages were spoken in these areas from the Late Paleolithic or Mesolithic, and there was no relevant discontinuity until the times of the Romans. The expansion of Celtic elements, associated with metallurgy and other technical developments, took a west-east direction, and was carried out by intrusive elites rather than through massive migration.

What theory do I prefer? The answer is clear: I prefer the one proposed by the PCT. This will come as no surprise to the readers who are already familiar with this blog, as I have very often talked about the PCT in its various aspects and proposals. If you are new in Language Continuity, I think it’s a good idea to take a look at the posts under the “Continuity Theory” Label on the right, because this way you can have a better view on this. I won’t go into the details of the theory now, but at least I’ll try to give some reasons why I think its proposals about the Celts are reasonable.

First of all, and most importantly, I think that it is a question of common sense. According to the traditional view, the Celts emerged somewhere in Central Europe and then expanded from there to other areas, with the incredible result that they actually disappeared from their original homeland! This is really unheard of, or at least highly unusual. Following the traditional explanation, an area like Ireland, which is so clearly and deeply ‘Celtic’, is just a later settlement of those Celts who originated in Central Europe, where they had gathered a great amount of strength to start their European expansion. How is it possible that this ‘powerful’ Celtic core in Central Europe just vanished from history, whereas the Celtic element remained vigourously in the supposed ‘new’ areas? Does it make any sense to propose a framework where prehistoric peoples move from one place to another at incredible speed, or where entire populations decide to abandon their language and adopt a new one for reasons that are hard to believe, as if the supposed pre-IE populations were just dreaming of becoming IE? Obviously, this explanation is constrained by the traditional chronology of IE, which sees the origin of PIE (proto-Indo-European) at about 4,000 BC. This leaves a very short stretch of time to offer a plausible explanation of the Celtic ‘mystery’, and fosters the invention of unrealistic stories like the ones mentioned above. The PCT, with its new chronology for PIE, is not limited by such constraints.

Apart from these general considerations, there are also significant data, from a variety of sources, pointing in the direction of a continuity of Celtic elements in the Atlantic ‘façade’ of Europe. If we analyse the evidence from archaeology or population genetics, there is nothing suggesting any kind of relevant discontinuity caused by the arrival of exogenous elements. A very clear exposition of this theory can be found in a recent article by Mario Alinei and Francesco Benozzo (2008): Megalithism as a manifestation of an Atlantic Celtic primacy in Meso-Neolithic Europe (you can also find it in Italian, here, and in Portuguese, here). In this article, which I strongly recommend, the authors offer an innovative analysis of megalithism in the framework of the Continuity Theory. The oldest megaliths (5th millennium BC) were erected in Brittany, on the French Atlantic coast, and in the following centuries they spread to other Atlantic areas, especially those connected with the Celts, and later to other areas, e.g. in the Mediterranean. Menhirs and dolmens can be found in the Isle of Man, in Galicia and in any other corner of the Celtic world; they all seem to echo the maritime context which gave birth to the Celts in prehistory. It is curious, for example, that the higher distribution of megaliths in Britain corresponds to the Celtic speaking areas of the north and west, especially in Wales and Scotland, whereas in central and eastern parts of England megaliths are much less common. On the other hand, the magico-religious and linguistic elements associated with megaliths suggest an uninterrupted continuity which has even reached modern times.

Maybe some of the details of the theory need to be discussed or refined, but I think there is evidence to suggest that the people who built the first megaliths in western Europe were speakers of Celtic languages.

NOTE: the pictures have been taken from the Alinei-Benozzo article mentioned above.
- First picture: Dolmen at Forkhill, County Armagh, Ireland.
- Second picture: A megalith at Ysbyty Cynfyn, Wales.

Francesco Benozzo. La Tradizione Smarrita.

I have just read an excellent book, written by Francesco Benozzo, an Italian scholar of Celtic studies. Its title is La Tradizione Smarrita (Roma: Viella, 2007), which could be translated as The Lost Tradition. In this book the author analyses the earliest forms of literature in Western Romance languages (Occitan troubadour poetry, chansons de geste, etc.), linking them with an oral tradition which goes back to the times of the Celts, well before the Roman conquest. According to the author, there are many formal and thematic parallelisms between these two traditions. On the other hand, the medieval “troubadour”, and also some imagery which is found in early Romance literature, can be seen as the remnants of a much earlier period, when the poet-sorcerers, or shamans, and their ritual, played an important role in Western European society. The book offers a great amount of evidence to support the author’s thesis: text and linguistic analysis, anthropological data, historical sources. All in all, La Tradizione Smarrita is recommendable for anyone interested in the history of Western European literature and the origins of Celtic mythology.

Francesco Benozzo is a member of the Continuity Theory (CT) workgroup, and he has applied the CT approach to his research on compared literature, anthropology and Celtic studies, as can be seen in his book La Tradizione Smarrita, and also in other writings (you can find some of his articles here). He has also translated a series of old Celtic texts into Italian and edited some modern literary works, apart from creating his own. But this is not all. When I entered his web-page for the first time I discovered yet another interesting thing about Benozzo: he is a musician, an expert in the Celtic harp. He regularly gives concerts, where he plays the harp and sings in old Welsh and other languages, and has also recorded several albums (you can take a look at his web-page for some samples of his music and further information about his discography).

Language continuity in Europe (II): Switzerland

If we were asked to think of a typical example of a multilingual country in Europe, Switzerland would probably be one of the first ones to come to mind. Let’s take a look at the map of the offical languages of this country:












(From Wikimedia Commons. Click here for a larger image and further details).


This linguistic complexity, however, can be simplified if we bear in mind that these languages belong to two different and clearly-defined groups: on the one hand, we have a Germanic dialect: Swiss German (Schwyzertütsch), spoken in the Centre and north of the country, and, on the other hand, a group of Romance dialects (Franco-Provençal, Gallo-Italic and Ladin), located in the west and south.

The traditional explanation for this language diversity derives from two historical facts: the Roman Conquest, which brought about Latin as the base of modern Romance dialects, and the Germanic migrations at the end of the Roman Empire, which are the origin of Swiss German. It is also supposed that, before these historical events, the people who lived in this area were basically speakers of Celtic dialects.

The Continuity Theory (CT), however, sees it quite differently. Switzerland is actually a good place to test this theory. During the last glaciation, this area was completely uninhabited. It was only at around 8000 BC, when the ice-cap started to recede, that human populations started to settle in this area again, which means that there is no continuity between these human groups and the ones that lived here before the glacial period. A similar situation can be seen, in general, in the northern territories of Europe and Asia. For example in the Scandinavian Peninsula (see this post for more details).

Mario Alinei (2000, pp. 334-353) analyzed the prehistoric cultures of Switzerland from the Mesolithic (i.e. from the end of the last Glacial Age) onwards and found out that there is a consistent and significant correspondence between the distribution of these cultures and the distribution of present-day dialects. For example, analyzing the cultures of the Early Neolithic Period, Alinei realized that the Liniendandkeramik (LBK) culture was present in the areas were Germanic languages are spoken today, whereas the Chassey, Lagozza and Cortaillaud cultures correspond, respectively, to the areas where French (oil), Gallo-Italic and Franco-Provençal dialects are spoken, all of them belonging to the Italic group. This correlation of prehistoric cultures and modern dialects continues in the Late Neolithic and Calcolithic periods, and also in the Bronze and Iron Ages. An important factor in the formation of these speech communities is the presence of Celtic elements, connected mainly with the Iron Age cultures of Hallstatt (750-450 BC) and La Tène (450-58 BC), but also to be found in some older cultures, already in the Neolithic. In any case, these Celtic elements cannot be seen as the result of a massive migration or invasion. In the words of the archaeologist Marc Sautier (1976, 153):

“The arrival of the Celts did not deeply alter the indigenous way of life, except probably in the social field, as the impression is given that the relatively few newcomers constituted a ruling class”.

The expansion of Celtic cultures (and also, in the east, of Balkan elements) is connected with technological developments, especially in metallurgy. In many cases, especially in the later periods, the Celts can be interpreted as an intruding elite that ruled over the original population.

As we have seen, the CT explains the linguistic situation of Switzerland in a completely new way. Germanic and Italic dialects were already spoken here in the Mesolithic, i.e. from around 8,000 BC, with a geographical distribution which is quite similar to the one we have today, 10,000 years later. An important factor in the formation of these dialects is the influence of external groups, especially the Celts.

What about the Romans then? It is obvious that their language, and also the dialects brought by the Germanic tribes that migrated from the north, are of great importance in the formation of modern Swiss dialects. However, their role in the geographic distribution of these dialects is basically irrelevant.

Bibliography:
- ALINEI, Mario. (2000). Origini delle Lingue d’Europa. II. Continuità dal Mesolitico all’Età del Ferro nelle Principali Aree Etnolinguistiche. Bologna, Il Mulino.
- SAUTER, Marc R. (1976). Switzerland from Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest. London, Thames and Hudson.