GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

From: Alan R <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] The rather less than close Basque- Celtic fringeconnection
Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2007 12:01:03 +0100 (BST)
In-Reply-To: <012a01c7ec46$b86856a0$6401a8c0@Richard>

I only mean that the broad western refugia in north
Spain/SW France is well known and the Basques still
live in part of it. That is undeniable. That is not
to say that it is proven that the modern Basques have
continuously lived there since that period or
represent the ice age inhabitants. I don't think
archaeology has been able to prove or disprove that
and to be honest archaeology is not very good at that.
It can be hard to separate cultural changes from
population movements although there are often hints.
I think the archaeology of the Basque area is not very
well known in several critical periods.

Despite lack of conclusive evidence, many would feel
that the unique language, the fact the Basques live in
the old refugia and their apparent sharing of very
high R1b with other historically very isolated areas
is too much of a coincidence for them not to be
indigenous to that area. It is also very difficult to
point to a later post-hunter gathering period source
for the R1b or any movement that could led to near
total replacement of a hypothetical I or other non-R1b
populations in very isolated areas such as the Basque
country and rhe Celtic fringe while at the same time
not doing the same to much less isolated populations.
If it is just anoddity causeed by bottlenecks, why is
it consitent that the most isolated western population
groups ALL became R1b. There is a good case in far
western Europe that R1b correlates very well with
raised levels of population, cultural and linguistic
isolation.

I will unapologetically say that I still generally
accept that as the Occam's Razor answer. I will not
be convinced by the ancient DNA work until a lot more
is done. There are many ifs and buts. For example,
the Basques seem to have originally been located a
little south of their present position and only later
expanded to the coast. Was that taken into account in
the ancient DNA work?

I think the Basque-Celtic fringe link has been
horribly misrepresented in newspapers etc as some sort
of direct arrival of Spanish fishermen on boats. I
think all the two areas really have in common is that
the two areas have populations ultimately derived from
the western ice age refugia and the two areas have not
received as much further dilution from later waves of
settlers as most other parts of Europe. The dilution
aspect has to be taken into account and simple
counting of haplotype percentages and then correlating
two areas with similar modern percentages is very
dubious, especially for those areas in the path of
major later migrations such as the area stretching
from eastern England/NE France to the Baltic.

In contrast to the Basques, the Celtic fringe peoples
moved far from the western refugia. Archaeology all
but rules out any direct hunter gatherer movement
between the western refugia and the British Isles on
boats. Where it has been possible to suggest the
immediate point/direction of European departure at the
end of the ice age into the British Isles, they
generally point to the area between northern France
and Denmark. They may well be ultimately from the
western refugia but there was a long long trek of 100
generations+ between the refugia and Britain.

The only continental origin that is unfortunately
unclear is the narrow blade Mesolithic that is very
predominant in Scotland and Ireland but as I have
explained in previous posts the earliest date is from
eastern Scotland and I suspect a northern doggerland
group was involved but recovery of this is all but
beyond recovery now at the bottom of the north sea.

Possibly a good way of recovering the route between
the western refugia and the Celtic fringe is to look
at the mt DNA they got from the wives they picked up
en-route. There are comparison plots of the Celtic
fringe peoples against other Europeans in terms of
mtDNA and autosomal DNA and these firmly places the
Celtic fringers in the northern European group centred
around the fringes of where Doggerland had been.

That is why I posted about the odd non-correlation
between Y and mt DNA possibly being at least partly to
do with patrilocal western refugia-derived hunting
bands always marrying out as they moved north and east
across Europe. Basically, the hunting bands that
eventually ended up in the British Isles may have kept
there original western Y-DNA signatures but have
picked up much of their mt DNA from their entire
journey north over many many generations. The mt DNA
may have been gained in north-central Europe when they
married in with woman from different origins and
possible coming from different regugia. In this way
the mt and autosomal DNA may give a good clue to/ act
as a proxy for the route taken from the western
refugia. The Basques may have stayed put and married
in only with relatively local woman but the ones who
left the Refugia would have married in a broad swath
from the western regugia to the north sea and
doggerland en-route to their final destinations in the
British Isles. Hence the Basque and Celtic y-DNA is
similar but the mtDNA is different.

There are plenty of other explanations and factors but
I just want to throw this into the mix. My
description of marriage habits of patrilocal/
patrilineal hunting bands is exactly what I was taught
about the behaviour of small bands in low density
groups when I was at uni. They did not and could not
marry in. They had to marry out. The pattern
observed in the Y-DNA and mtDNA at least superfically
sounds exactly like what you would expect from a male
lineage band travelling over 1000s of years from SW to
northern Europe taking local wives as they went.

I realise I am basically accepting as a starting point
the conventional interpretation of an R1b western
refugia but I am sticking by that until convinced
otherwise and at present I cannot see any other
explanation for its present distribution that makes an
sense from an archaeological and historical point of
view at all (unless some selective process is
involved). If R1b1c is not from the western regugia
then what later (i.e Neolithic or post-Neolithic)
movement could possibly have led to total population
replacement in the far west (but not elsewhere). I am
at a total loss to see even a hint of such a movement
and, put simply, that is why I am sticking to the
conventional view.

Alan

This thread:

• Re: [DNA] The rather less than close Basque- Celtic fringeconnection by Alan R <>

  • Re: [DNA] The rather less than close Basque- Celtic fringeconnection by "R. Stevens" <>