The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[Quadratus]

This is from Keith J Fitzpatrick-Matthews from the BritArch list:

The final problem, as I see it, is that the idea that languages are somehow linked to genes has long been discredited. So what if we have long-term DNA continuity among the population in lowland Britain? So what if the ancestors of this population can be hypothesised as arriving via the (then dry) North Sea basin during the Mesolithic?

Keith J Fitzpatrick-Matthews

Although I have not read the whole work in context, Fitzpatrick-Matthews, above, seems to imply by his "so what"s that it is of no great significance whether the population of lowland Britain arrived across the North Sea basin or not. At the risk of stating the obvious, this may be the case when discussing language, but it is of great significance when trying to understand the subsequent history of the Britain (in its broadest sense), and particularly the arrival or otherwise of the Angles, Saxons and all their kin.

On the language side, there is no reason whatever why someone whose ancestors came from Northern Europe shouldn't speak a Celtic language, or vice versa. Similarly there is a danger of assuming monoglot homogeneity; perhaps some groups spoke a Germanic language and some spoke a Celtic one. Perhaps being multilingual was commonplace, as it is many parts of the world today (great respect to RAT members for whom English is not their mother tongue). Perhaps…well, I think you get the point. So, although genetic makeup must still be considered to be one of a complex basket of markers to indicate probable cultural and linguistic behaviours, I'll accept the 'so what' in the linguistic context.

However, on the genetics side the picture is different. If the population of lowland Britain was essentially 'celtic' and homogenous both within itself and with the equally 'celtic' highland population then the invasion, migration and genocide scenario's take front stage. If, on the other hand, the lowland brits were already indistinguishable genetically from the people on the other side of the North Sea, while invasion theories are not ruled out, the possibility emerges of a very different set of less violent scenarios, which have the advantage of fitting both the emerging dirt archaeology and (most of the) more recent genetic studies far better.

So what? So a very great deal!

Alan