paradigm-overturning celtic DNA discovery

[s1m0n]

4000 year old, pre-iron age skeletons found on Rathlin Island (off northern Ireland on the short route to the Mull of Kintyre & Scotland) have been discovered to contain DNA most like that of the present day inhabitants of the area, thoroughly upsetting the current standard model of the celts, which was that they had arrived during the iron age, 1500+ years later, from the La Tene culture of central Europe.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... ness_pop_b

This heat map shows how the DNA taken from the 4,000-year-old bones discovered in Northern Ireland relates to DNA of modern European populations. The red coloring over the British Isles indicates that the bones are most like the modern populations there. (From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.)

Ironically or not, the bones were found under a pub.

[irishmuse]

""Ironically or not, the bones were found under a pub."
Definitely ironically. They also had the allele for haemochromatosis which they passed on to me, my entire family and half the Celtic populations of Ireland and Scotland. As we say Down Under (often ironically) "Thanks for that lads".
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shot ... bronze-age

[Tor]

The article seems to simply back up what was argued by a scientist in an article in American Scientist (IIRC) - that the Celts were not an ethnic group, it was simply a Europe-spanning culture with common trade, more or less common language, and much more. And technology. The Romans inherited / incorporated some of that, including better wheeled chariots.

[s1m0n]

The distinction between ethnicity, language, genetics, and material culture is immense, and not often determined by standard archeology. Here`s an example in which the local facts upset the dominant theory, Hurrah!