tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post7215456044930177232..comments2024-03-09T15:46:44.638+01:00Comments on For what they were... we are: Minor issue with commentsMajuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-17209345009598856702016-01-01T23:41:31.114+01:002016-01-01T23:41:31.114+01:00Maybe but we are all humans and therefore suscepti...Maybe but we are all humans and therefore susceptible to error. There are two things I believe I know about academic people (doctors and such):<br /><br />1. They have access to resources I don't, so I'm borrowing from their work (which we usually pay one way or another but anyhow, it's them who do the actual field work). <br /><br />2. To have a degree often does not mean much, just (in most cases) that one is mildly intelligent, disciplined and does not cause much trouble (respects the hierarchy, etc.) The last two aspects are usually more important than being bright in order to get your degree and further advance in the academic bureaucratic hierarchy. So in the end, much as in other facets of socio-economic life, the system tends to favor obedient mediocrity rather than rebellious brightness. Of course you can still be obedient and bright but that's statistically less common and anyhow, for as long as obedience, discipline and being part of a hierarchy is important, challenging the tenets of your field faces an extra layer of obstacles. That's why academy tends to scholasticism: because flattery will get you where confrontation usually won't. <br /><br />You may have a successful career in the security and monetary aspects but it's much less likely that you will make a breakthrough that way. And that's why often science advances against scholasticism, be it religious as in the times of Copernicus, or secular, as happens now. <br /><br />3. The degree of freedom allowed by not being part of the academic establishment is the right to bear the flaming sword of criticism and the telescope of Galileo to look beyond what is "allowed". Luckily they usually don't burn us at the stake these days, we have progressed so much. Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-1169566664818835742016-01-01T19:50:35.325+01:002016-01-01T19:50:35.325+01:00@Maju
"There are no absolutes in autosomal g...@Maju<br /><br />"There are no absolutes in autosomal genetics: it all depends on what you compare with. I'm all the time keeping CW and Yamna as IE reference, not some Caucasus hunter-gatherers whose relation with them is a best very oblique."<br /><br />and<br /><br />"There's no such thing: those autosomal "components" are just statistical aggregates. Even for whatever they may have of "real" they are too slippery: they aggregate and disaggregate as time passes because people do fuck and bear children"<br /><br />:)<br /><br />Luis, somehow these obvious realities have escaped many in the population genetics community, the reviewers at Nature and PNAS, and many supposedly highly experienced scientific journalists.<br />Marniehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10850856778953207810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-74208333779155370232016-01-01T11:18:29.663+01:002016-01-01T11:18:29.663+01:00Nirjhar said: "I think the real teal is yet t...Nirjhar said: "I think the real teal is yet to be found"<br /><br />There's no such thing: those autosomal "components" are just statistical aggregates. Even for whatever they may have of "real" they are too slippery: they aggregate and disaggregate as time passes because people do fuck and bear children, at least some do, and that breaches the useless (actually harmful) "racial purity" of clonation. The cummulative effect of sexual reproduction through centuries and millennia is of course brutal, so no wonder that the farther back in time we go, the blurrier it all gets in terms autosomal. <br /><br />This does not happen with haploid genetics. You can dive back to even beyond the edges of the genus Homo with them. So I request a bit more respect for haploid genetics and a bit less of blind faith on the capacity of statistically inferred autosomal "components" to answer all questions. Thank you. Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-19690236414584041132016-01-01T11:10:17.642+01:002016-01-01T11:10:17.642+01:00I'm interested in the teal or anything else th...I'm interested in the teal or anything else that may identify Corded Ware people and such, Caucasus people and components are accessory here: tools for pattern identification. <br /><br />"Now that we have DNA from the actual Teal people(CHG) Basque do score in Teal/CHG". <br /><br />CHG are also high on other "ingredients", notably the so-called Basal Eurasia, and are therefore somewhat related to EEF, so it seems to me that you're confusing the marker of Indoeuropeans (the "teal" in Corded Ware) and the marker of Vasconics (the EEF affinity in CHG). There are no absolutes in autosomal genetics: it all depends on what you compare with. I'm all the time keeping CW and Yamna as IE reference, not some Caucasus hunter-gatherers whose relation with them is a best very oblique.<br /><br />This is obvious, K. You knew that before you wrote your misleading claim. Then why did you write that? Did you deceive yourself? You are not going to deceive me, you should know that by now. <br /><br />"This is why Sardinians usually come as closer to Neolithic and Copper age Basque than modern Basque do".<br /><br />I'm unaware of any ancient autosomal "Basque" sample of any kind. The Atapuerca and La Mina genomes (both from Castile) are clearly not good enough: they are LCT--, when some Basques of the period were LCT++, they are low mtDNA H when Basques were already at higher frequencies. Anyhow, K., we are not discussing Basques, are we?<br /><br />A sentence I hear a lot these days is "shut up and calculate", what was what apparently Bohr said to startup physicists. It applies here: less talking, more sampling. It's pointless to try to push theories when we are actually awaiting for the data. We should all shut up a bit, we can wait until hard data comes, as it will no doubt. <br /><br />"LCT and mtDNA are shaky evidence"...<br /><br />Less shaky than all you just said. They are important clues to consider and you do wrong disdaining them. "Shut up and calculate"...<br /><br />"Those two lines of evidence aren't as strong as autosomal evidence"...<br /><br />Autosomal data is the most slippery one to analyze in fact: each time a new paper appears the previous results change (a bit or a lot) and not because of new data but because different strategies to statistical analysis of massive datasets. So there's no reason to be too arrogant based only on autosomal DNA: it's the less clear of all references in fact. Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-8682841210606732492016-01-01T10:44:19.807+01:002016-01-01T10:44:19.807+01:00@Nirhar: I'll pass on Seneca, Herodote, etc. W...@Nirhar: I'll pass on Seneca, Herodote, etc. What they say surely refers to lesser coastal colonies, whatever the believed. Archaeology comes first, ancient posh opinions later. Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-69923588169974744192016-01-01T04:27:01.550+01:002016-01-01T04:27:01.550+01:00This kind of argumentation is pathetic and facile....<i> This kind of argumentation is pathetic and facile.</i><br />I think the real teal is yet to be found, Teal is perhaps a part of the CHG but CHG is not equal to Teal. So, i quite agree with you Marnie.<br /><b>Happy and Prosperous 2016</b>. <br />Nirjhar007https://www.blogger.com/profile/12880827026479135118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-4881434046100572382016-01-01T02:27:48.523+01:002016-01-01T02:27:48.523+01:00@Krefter
"Now that we have DNA from the actu...@Krefter<br /><br />"Now that we have DNA from the actual Teal people(CHG) Basque do score in Teal/CHG."<br /><br />This kind of argumentation is pathetic and facile.Marniehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10850856778953207810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-57804805892951098622016-01-01T02:24:51.101+01:002016-01-01T02:24:51.101+01:00Happy New Year, Luis.Happy New Year, Luis.Marniehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10850856778953207810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-68392125283658730202016-01-01T00:38:32.346+01:002016-01-01T00:38:32.346+01:00I'd suggest to you that this structure is the ...I'd suggest to you that this structure is the mark of several bottlenecks related to crossing from the Danube basin to the Rhine basin and the Rhone basin.Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07906194112935320590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-36719510939896201322015-12-31T17:13:56.157+01:002015-12-31T17:13:56.157+01:00@Maju,
"Well, actually, Basques lack the tell...@Maju,<br />"Well, actually, Basques lack the tell-tale IE "teal" or Caucasus component (or, when it shows up in some individuals, it's tiny)"<br /><br />Now that we have DNA from the actual Teal people(CHG) Basque do score in Teal/CHG. <br /><br />"So, the real situation in the autosomal genetic aspect is not at all as you imagine it. Basques may have some EHG (or "ANE") element but without the IE-specific Caucasus element, it must be telling us some other story, not the IE one via Central Europe: you can't mix one and the other happily. " <br /><br />Basque have Eastern ancestry that didn't exist in their region in 2800 BC, this much we know. This is why Sardinians usually come as closer to Neolithic and Copper age Basque than modern Basque do. It is hard to believe Basque's Eastern ancestry can be unrelated to the people from the East who were moving into West Europe after 2800 BC. <br /><br />"Finally, I'd like to underline the "pro-Western" weight of the mtDNA pool (first "modern" ones in Paternabidea and Gurgy) and the LCT allele pool (oldest TT one among Basques again)."<br /><br />LCT and mtDNA are shaky evidence of West>East gene flow. I say shaky because LCT can rise in frequency without a lot of gene flow and unless we have high coverage mtDNA we can't be very confident of anything. <br /><br />Those two lines of evidence aren't as strong as autosomal evidence for East>West gene flow. We aren't yet able to distinguish Middle Neolithic Hungarians from Spanish. We'd need 1,000s of genomes to do that. So, with autosomal DNA it is impossible to confirm West>East gene flow in the Neolithic. That's not evidence against West>East but it's not evidence for it either.Krefterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01055804913528477710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-50335468536540307822015-12-31T15:56:58.816+01:002015-12-31T15:56:58.816+01:00Hi again,
Keeping the discussion alive, some words...Hi again,<br />Keeping the discussion alive, some words appear to be Celtic, like the name of the capital Genua. On the other hand, there are the -asco toponyms (and names) which recall Basque words. An Italian wiki says that the pre-IE thesis is still the most accepted, and that also<br />genetics has confirmed the peculiarity of people of Liguria and South Piemonte and their kinship with Basque and Welsh... However, they were in the middle of Celtic people and so had strong influences from them,<br />according to Villar there are 5 linguistic strata in Liguria: Latin, Gallic, Lepontic, ancient European (IE) and pre-IE. <br />If we see the Eupedia map of U152, it shows actually that it is stronger in Tuscany and Lombardy than Liguria,<br />so it is not especially associated with Ligures. About Corsica, I start with this quotation from Seneca, the great<br />Spanish-Roman philosopher of the 1st century CE: <br /><br />"this very island [Corsica] has often changed its inhabitants. Not to mention more ancient events, which have become obscure from their antiquity, the Greeks who inhabit Marseilles at the present day, when they left Phocaea, first settled here, and it is doubtful what drove them hence, whether it was the rigour of the climate, the sight of the more powerful land of Italy, or the want of harbours on the coast: for the fact of their having placed themselves in the midst of what were then the most savage and uncouth tribes of Gaul proves that they were not driven hence by the ferocity of the natives. Subsequently the Ligurians came over into this same island, and also the Spaniards, which is proved by the resemblance of their customs: for they wear the same head-coverings and the same sort of shoes as the Cantabrians, and some of their words are the same: for by association with Greeks and Ligurians they have entirely lost their native speech. Hither since then have been brought two Roman colonies, one by Marius, the other by Sulla: so often has the population of this barren and thorny rock been changed. In fine, you will scarcely find any land which is still in the hands of its original inhabitants: all peoples have become confused and intermingled: one has come after another: one has wished for what another scorned: some have been driven out of the land which they took from another." <br /><br />So, Ligures apparently lived there, and there are also toponyms with -asco. Actually, Corsica was also under Genua in recent times, but earlier under Pisa, that colonized it strongly, so that the Corsican language is a form of Tuscan with<br />some phonetical peculiarities like retroflex d, according to someone because of the Southern Italian origin of Roman colonists, a scholar suspects a Neolithic substrate. <br />Anyway, it seems that U152 is connected there with the Roman/Tuscan people, according to a theorist of Italian genetics U152 is the Roman SNP. I think it is also Celtic, because of the concentration in NW Italy, France and Switzerland, in the core Hallstatt territory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts#/media/File:Celts_in_Europe.png).<br />Maybe also its presence in Turkey is due to Celtic Galatians...<br /><br />On DF27 and Iberia, I don't want to say that Iberia is insignificant or small, but the others similar SNP are not so confined, and if it was there in the Bell Beaker period, it is strange that it is absent in Italy where Bell Beakers arrived. <br />So, I think it should be post-Bell-Beaker!.Nirjhar007https://www.blogger.com/profile/12880827026479135118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-42114216641954378892015-12-31T11:39:36.000+01:002015-12-31T11:39:36.000+01:00Ah, OK. The problem with Myres 2010, which is stil...Ah, OK. The problem with Myres 2010, which is still a key referential study on this matter, is that she did not study DF27, therefore inflating the S116* in Iberia a lot, now known to be in essence just DF27 (Valverde is very clear here). But there is still a remnant S116*, which seems to be most common among Basques and Irish but could also be quite important in France, maybe Britain as well (not yet properly studied AFAIK). <br /><br />The parent of both S116 and "Nordic" U106 are M412 and L11 (or its equivalent, not sure if L11 is still considered a major marker) and they seem to point (Myres) to either the southern reaches of Central Europe, Italy or Iberia, judging on basal paragroup presence. In any case, these are just "thin trails", the really expanding lineages were S116 ad U106, all the rest is just minor and rather noisy stuff. <br /><br />For a most simple reconstruction (just doing it right now), I'd place the S116 "centroid" in Aquitaine, the U106 one in the Netherlands and then it depends what you do with the upstream M412* remnants: I'd place a dot in SE Iberia and another in Slovakia (my best hunch). The resulting overall centroid goes to the Upper Rhone (not too far from Gurgy incidentally) but it's anyhow very approximative. If we only consider U106 and S116, then the centroid goes to Normandy instead. So somewhere in France again, although seems to tend towards the North rather than the South when we include all M412. <br /><br />But in any case, this is a most thin trail. In fact the precursors of U106 and S116 may well have arrived to their respective expansion centers by two different routes in the context of, for example, a much more Y-DNA-diverse Neolithic expansion. <br /><br />Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-11305195664168540792015-12-31T11:22:06.311+01:002015-12-31T11:22:06.311+01:00In this comment, Krefter, you don't seem to un...In this comment, Krefter, you don't seem to understand my thought: Y-DNA genetics must be considered on its own merits. Autosomal DNA, mtDNA, LCT and Rh are other markers: complementary viewpoints for the overall population history but not the same thing. You guys just jump from one to the other at caprice and, well, let's be serious.<br /><br />"Basque have Steppe ancestry"...<br /><br />Well, actually, Basques lack the tell-tale IE "teal" or Caucasus component (or, when it shows up in some individuals, it's tiny), so I'd say that Basques lack the most clear signature of steppe ancestry in fact. Also this signature is probably clinal in Europe, with negative peak among Basques particularly (Sardinians even do have some, although in this case it should probably be attributed to separate Mediterranean flows or affinities, most notable in Sicily). <br /><br />So, the real situation in the autosomal genetic aspect is not at all as you imagine it. Basques may have some EHG (or "ANE") element but without the IE-specific Caucasus element, it must be telling us some other story, not the IE one via Central Europe: you can't mix one and the other happily. <br /><br />Finally, I'd like to underline the "pro-Western" weight of the mtDNA pool (first "modern" ones in Paternabidea and Gurgy) and the LCT allele pool (oldest TT one among Basques again). So all markers point West, except that EHG autosomal thingy, that may include some Caucasus component also in the case of Irish and such. It's that aspect the one that falls off the overall Westernizing tendency and may just imply, for example, absorption of IE or Uralic type blood in the context of Bell Beaker expansion (from the Southwest again), but in any case without any apparent major impact in the Y-DNA, mtDNA or LCT marker histories. Some extra mtDNA J and HV0 (some loss of U5 also) is the only thing I can detect in <a href="http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/2013/09/basque-and-other-european-origins.html" rel="nofollow">the Basque mtDNA history</a>, so maybe that stuff should be attributed to matrilineal admixture? Can't say until we have more data. Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-13142454405240540002015-12-31T11:19:12.996+01:002015-12-31T11:19:12.996+01:00Yah, as I mentioned above, I meant S116`s parent, ...Yah, as I mentioned above, I meant S116`s parent, not S116. Oops.<br /><br />I`m going by Myers 2010 when I say Iberia, but I guess he didn't go into as much detail as later studies. I think there's a pretty clear path of R1b moving from the Black Sea, up the Danube, with a final expansion of S116 from the Atlantic coast.Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07906194112935320590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-48103546055909293442015-12-31T11:03:05.601+01:002015-12-31T11:03:05.601+01:00"S116* peaks in frequency in Iberia"...
..."S116* peaks in frequency in Iberia"...<br /><br />In the Basque Country and Ireland as far as we know to this day, Ryan. It might be just one shared Basque-Irish haplogroup or two (one Basque, another Irish) or more but, in any case, it reinforces the general pattern described by the three major subhaplogroups of S116/P312, which points to Southern France as shared origin, or rather it pulls it even further to the West. Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-84345034262835717782015-12-31T10:58:28.056+01:002015-12-31T10:58:28.056+01:00Notice that S116* (i.e. S116(xDF27,M529,U152) is a...Notice that S116* (i.e. S116(xDF27,M529,U152) is also very important in Ireland. So far no other substantial pool of S116* is known, certainly not in Central Europe. It may be just one or two subhaplogroups but, even in that case, they add up to the Western or Atlantic basal diversity of R1b-S116 and not to the Central or Eastern European one, which seems quite limited (basically some U152, again check Valverde's study). Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-41407727777103201922015-12-31T10:49:57.194+01:002015-12-31T10:49:57.194+01:00Krefter understood me better: S116 = P312, so all ...Krefter understood me better: S116 = P312, so all what I just said or in synthesis using the synonym term for the marker and haplogroup: this lineage seems to have originated in France, rather towards the south: one branch went South (DF27), another to the Northwest (M529 = L21) and another to the East (U152). That's what you get if you "join the dots" on the map and seems confirmed by all that S116* that might exist in the Massif Central (unconfirmed but heard of it) but also in the Basque Country and Pyrenean region (confirmed) by <a href="http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.com/2015/06/some-improved-knowledge-of-major-r1b.html" rel="nofollow">Valverde et al.</a><br /><br />That's the apparent internal structure of R1b-S116/P312 and I've seen nothing yet that counters this model. The appearance of some M529 in Ireland in BB chronology is just consisten with it, as is the appearance of some S116* in Germany in the same period. <br /><br />What may not be so consistent (??) is the "teal" element but that's not Y chromosome genetics.Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-48586725294423579752015-12-31T06:51:13.866+01:002015-12-31T06:51:13.866+01:00"There's nothing to support an origin in ..."There's nothing to support an origin in West Europe. You need to let go of ethnocentric theories, and I mean no offense."<br /><br />S116* peaks in frequency in Iberia for one. And sorry, when I said P312 before, I mean L-11.Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07906194112935320590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-34632213442087541782015-12-30T22:11:12.552+01:002015-12-30T22:11:12.552+01:00"Basically it seems that R1b-S116 originated ..."Basically it seems that R1b-S116 originated in Southern France and that it had three sub-expansions"<br /><br />There's nothing to support an origin in West Europe. You need to let go of ethnocentric theories, and I mean no offense. Essentially everyone who cares about this, from academics to amateurs, thinks it came from the East. <br /><br />I guess you're probably afraid this means Basque have Steppe ancestry and R1b, which has been seen as the original marker of West Europe, isn't from West Europe. Maybe you're also afraid Basque language was brought from the East. <br /><br />The whole idea of Basque being a isolate happened only after linguistics discovered they spoke a language unlike any in the world. Then early genetic work, before ancient DNA, made theories they're Paleolithic isolates. The concept is purely from modern academics. <br /><br />Before that Basque were just one of many ethnic groups and no one knew anything about ancient history. There's no force stopping them from being mixed. I know Basque are isolates in historical times, but still no one thought "They speak a non-Indo European language" in AD 1600. <br /><br />No one in 2300 BC knew anything about the past, if they wanted to have sex with someone from another tribe nothing would stop them. Latin America is an extreme example, and most did know about the past(That Spanish were invaders, etc.). New people came into Western Europe from the East, and they mixed with the natives. After several hundred years no one knew who was native or who wasn't. <br /><br />Ancient DNA has essentially proven R1b-P312 came with the new people from the East. IMO, it expanded mostly before 2000 BC. We already have U152 near the Alps and L21 in Ireland dating to circa 2000 BC.Krefterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01055804913528477710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-80958645060384162032015-12-30T21:12:04.985+01:002015-12-30T21:12:04.985+01:00Re: the Ligurians - obviously we don't have a ...Re: the Ligurians - obviously we don't have a lot to go on linguistically, but simple geography dictates that they would have at least been under very heavy Celtic influence. If the defining feature of Celtic is Indoeuropean with a strong Vasconic substrate though, it would be tough to separate the two.Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07906194112935320590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-9472101705910445152015-12-30T17:03:53.120+01:002015-12-30T17:03:53.120+01:00Today Gallo-Romance seems to include only French a...Today Gallo-Romance seems to include only French and Franco-Provençal (spoken around Savoy but moribund in most areas). Dalby again proposes the following Romance sub-classification:<br /><br />· Ibero-Romance: Portuguese and Galician, Mirandese and Asturian-Leonese, Spanish, Aragonese;<br />· Occitano-Romance: Catalan, Occitan;<br />· Gallo-Romance: Langues d'oïl (including French), Franco-Provençal;<br />· Rhaeto-Romance: Romansh, Ladin, Friulian;<br />· Gallo-Italic languages;<br />· Venetian;<br />· Italo-Romance: Corsican, Italian, Neapolitan-Sicilian;<br />· Sardinian;<br />· Dalmatian (extinct);<br />· Romanian: Daco-Romanian, Istro-Romanian, Aromanian, and Megleno-Romanian.<br /><br />Makes some sense but I'd seriously consider the -u, -o and -e/-ø endings as a key layering issue. Languages with the -u ending (more similar to Lat. -us) are only found in remote isolated areas: Asturias, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balcans, they probably reflect one way or another a primitive Vulgar Latin root, still attached to Latin proper. Those with the -o ending are the most common ones: most Iberian and Italian lects, as well as Venetian and Dalmatian, the -o ending is attested in c. 3rd century scattered Vulgar Latin inscriptions, so it probably represents a second stage of this proto-Romance evolution. The loss of the ending sound (-ø, as in Occitan-Catalan, or unspoken -e, as in French) is probably Germanic influence. French however is clearly much more influenced by Germanic (Middle German especially) with sounds like /ü/ or gutturalization of "r", sounding almost as /g/, which make it probably the most distinctive of all Romances. I don't think that Celts played much of a role in the evolution of Romances, on the other hand Vasconics did have an influence in vocabulary and in some cases pronunciation (/v/ → /b/, loss of initial "f", persistence of the 5-vowel system... all these evident in Castilian/Spanish). Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-26551428501689321212015-12-30T16:41:46.929+01:002015-12-30T16:41:46.929+01:00Also interesting in the Italo-Dalmatian entry: &qu...Also interesting in the Italo-Dalmatian entry: "Based on mutual intelligibility, Dalby lists four languages: Corsican, Italian (Tuscan–Central), Neapolitan–Sicilian, and Dalmatian".<br /><br />This, if correct, would make Corsican a distinct branch of the Italo-Dalmatian Romance sub-family, regardless of Tuscan influence. Basically it means that it's difficult for Tuscans (or Italians) and Corsicans to understand each other, much as I (Spanish speaker with only some very shallow knowledge of Italian) can understand an Italian (Tuscan) speaker but definitely not a Sicilian speaker (I can tell you from experience, man, that language is terribly obscure, harder than French!)Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-28565525427501183832015-12-30T16:36:59.261+01:002015-12-30T16:36:59.261+01:00"Corsican is a sort of Tuscan".
You kno..."Corsican is a sort of Tuscan".<br /><br />You know that Tuscan = modern standard Italian, right? IF Corsican derives from Tuscan it must have been a very primitive form of Tuscan, with conservative -u endings, now (and in the Renaissance already) totally lost. I'm a bit skeptic, although Tuscan late Medieval influence seems undeniable. <br /><br />Anyhow, the concept of Gallo-Romance has seemingly fallen out of fashion. It was used to group Italian and French groups but these two branches are very different from each other. Nowadays Italian dialects, also Corsican, are grouped in an Italo-Dalmatian category, which makes better sense (any Spanish or Italian would agree that their respective languages are more similar to each other than French is). IMO, to be overly simplistic, -u ending Romances (Romanian, Corsican) probably derive from an early phase of Vulgar Latin, -o ending ones (Italian, Spanish) from a later phase and -e ending ones (French notably) from the Dark Ages (very marked Germanic influence). Call me simple-minded but there's probably some truth to this, there's also some evidence for an -o ending Vulgar Latin in the 3rd century or so. <br /><br />Interestingly, reading on Corsican language: <br /><br />"Seneca the younger, reports that both coast and interior were occupied by natives whose language he did not understand"...<br /><br />He would have identified Celtic, no doubt.<br /><br />"There was probably a sub language that is still visible in the toponymy or in some words, for instance Gallurese zerru 'pig'".<br /><br />Ha! Compare Basque 'txerri' (← *zerri) and Spanish 'cerdo', meaning the same and obviously from the same Vasconic root, totally unrelated to Lat. 'porcus' and very possibly *zerri (the ending in -u, -o is clear Romance influence). So, Ligures or (most likely) not, Corsicans were also Vasconic speakers almost certainly. No surprises here.Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-52357348141725299472015-12-30T16:08:52.762+01:002015-12-30T16:08:52.762+01:00I know the issue of Ligurians and there's abso...I know the issue of Ligurians and there's absolutely no reason to imagine that they were Celts (although they were Celt-influenced after they were cut off from their Vasconic relatives in the 1300-550 BCE period, i.e. between Urnfield culture expansion and Marseilles-influenced Iberian reconquest). <br /><br />Corsica has no apparent relation with Ligures other that it might be tracked to the (late) Megalithic period (i.e. totally pre-Celtic). Most Romans obviously never stepped in Corsica at all (why would they unless they were bureaucrats, traders or soldiers?) <br /><br />Imagining everything as "Celtic" is just an Indoeuropeanist fashion that has no basis but is, or rather used to be, very popular among historians. Pre-IEs (excepted maybe some more civilized ones like Iberians) had no "prestige", so they were dissed out without any objetive reason and everything was forced into "Celticness", almost always without any single piece of evidence whatsoever. Today we know better... or we should. <br /><br />DF27 did not spread much? Wow! All Iberia is "not much" to you? It's the second largest peninsula of Europe after the Balcans, with 5% of the area of the subcontinent (of which 40% belongs to Russia) and by population (some 55 million: 10% of European Union's) is as important as the Balcans, France, Italy or Britain. I know that geopolitically doesn't weight so much but it still represents a very sizable fraction of Europe and approximately 1/3 of Western Europe (which can be divided in Iberia, Greater Gaul between the Rhine and Pyrenees, and Britain-Ireland, roughly of similar relevance each). <br /><br />So to my eyes the three sublineages have roughly similar patterns of distribution, neither is more significantly more important in terms of numbers or area. <br /><br />U106 has indeed a Germanic-like pattern but this is difficult to extrapolate that simplicity to Britain, where it's just too dense to be merely Germanic. Compare with the distribution of R1a for example. So IMO it's a North Sea clade that may have indeed re-expanded with Germanics in southward direction.Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3023805782808412230.post-40601161348786636472015-12-30T15:38:13.600+01:002015-12-30T15:38:13.600+01:00Thank you for the detailed information, Luis. I ha...Thank you for the detailed information, Luis. I have a remark about U152 and NW Italy and Corsica.<br />Ligures/Ligurians of Liguria and Piemonte and Corsica are considered Celtic or Italo-Celtic speakers,<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligurian_language_(ancient) and Corsica was inhabited by Ligures and<br />later Romans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory_of_Corsica<br />The present dialects of Liguria and Piemonte are Gallo-Italic, and Corsican is a sort of Tuscan. <br />U152 is quite strong also in Central Italy and Sicily, so it seems both Celtic and Italic.<br /><br />DF27 is clearly Iberian and Basque, but I suspect it is more recent than the others since it did not spread much?.<br />U106 is mainly Germanic, also in Italy it is associated with Langobards/Lombards.Nirjhar007https://www.blogger.com/profile/12880827026479135118noreply@blogger.com