Comments by "Iain Mc" (@iainmc9859) on "Celtic History Decoded" channel.

  1. Hang on, go back to the pink map near the end ... there's R1b's in northern Russia and central Africa. I'd love to know why? Not relative to this video but I recently learnt that small parts of mitochondrial dna can be passed down theough the male line and is reseponsible for some genetic abnormalities.
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  2. The majority of Scots say Ji, unless they're trying to sound posh. I'm with you on ancestry testing companies, they talk a lot of rubbish culled from various sources so generally don't waste your money; unless you're prepared to do your own in depth scientific research as to where the haplogroups have drifted from. There's also a lot of genetic 'rinsing' that goes on, where genes just don't pass on. The science of DNA analysis is still in its early days. There's also the risk of putting your DNA on the database of a profit making company, that may also have politic pressure put on them to divulge that info to state agencies - that all sound very conspiracy theorist, which I'm not; but data harvesting does happen without asking our permission.
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  3. I'm with you about not giving your DNA to corporations with no guarantee that that information will not be sold on the open market at some point.
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  4.  @johnbrereton5229  Sorry Pal, Ah canne understand yer accent, waurs it frae ?
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  5. Aye, he'd be right out there giving the neds a kick in the nads, right after he'd taken £100 aff yer for the privilege. @jamesbailey9140 
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  6.  @veronicalogotheti1162  Thank you for your succinct but historically limited comment. Huns were used as Roman Foederati Auxiliaries. It was the policy of the Roman Empire to recruit troops from not just the lands they conquered but also the borders of the empire and use them as auxiliaries in different areas of the Empire. Roman troops did not all come from Italy, most came from elsewhere, as latterly did their Emperors. By default, they were a mixture of peoples and cultures and would not have all been R1ab, however they still left very little genetic legacy in Britain after they withdrew in 410 AD.
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  7.  @veronicalogotheti1162  Let me just copy and paste from Wikipedia. 'The term foederati had its usage and meaning extended by the Romans' practice of subsidising entire barbarian tribes such as the Franks, Vandals, Alans, Huns and the Visigoths, the last being the best known, in exchange for providing warriors to fight in the Roman armies.' BTW the Roman Empire did not fall in 400 CE. I think you need to do some basic research first before making definitive statements.
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  8. Humza Yousaf was born in Rutherglen, you Muppet ! The people (in Scotland) haven't voted for the last five UK Prime Ministers ... if it hadn't escaped your notice, but we're still lumbered with them.
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  9. And then they have the bloody cheek to put average speed cameras on it, as if anybody's going to get past two caravans and a tractor.
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  10.  @fyrdman2185  Fyrdman, considering that Cromwell was offered the crown and refused it I think that negates your monarchist accusation. Cromwell actively removed MPs from Parliament that would have been against the execution, so he was not forced. He was in a position of absolute power at the time and his will was effectively law. Was he the head of the military, yes. Was he to become Lord Protector, yes. However, and it was a big HOWEVER Britain had nothing resembling democracy before and a solid hand was needed at the tiller to steer some sort of course. I'm not an apologist for Cromwell. He executed Levellers and persecuted Diggers and Ranters. He also increased the taxes even more than Charles I; which had been the spark to the revolt of the up and coming merchant classes in the first place. Effectively he lost the support of the richest, the poorest, the middle classes as well as never having the support of religious 'extremes' Presbyterian and Catholic. Would you like to discuss it further ???
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  11. Muirs are quite disparate places, bushes, trees, ditches, bog, rocks and burns. Its really just uncultivated land. The National Trust for Scotland have control over part of the battlefield site, which is also a Conservation Area. Thankfully the NTfS have managed to resist attempts for planning permission for holiday parks on the site of the battlefield outwith the land they maintain. There's also the problem of controlling public access so that the site isn't damaged by visitor numbers. They'll always be a compromise between, nature, history, safe public access and the local population. Personally I'm not a great fan of Visitor's Centers and consider them a blot on the landscape ( Including the Bannockburn and Callanish ones in that) but I'm probably in the minority on that issue, I guess coach loads of barely informed tourists need toilet stops and gift shops.
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  12. I take your point but can't help feeling that most people's view of a muir is a bleak open landscape, which muirs generally aren't, unless heavily grazed by sheep and cows. Its probably just keeping the sheep off it and the encroachment of more people keeping the deer away that's allowing birch to grow. I used to live just east of Culloden in Nairn, thirty years ago, and the area's changed over that short time, never mind 270 years ago. I doubt there's any 'political' decision making regarding obscuring history, in this case. @andrewheaney6858 
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  13. I've no doubt that some Dumnonians 'fled' to Brittany at the Saxon encroachments as there was always trade across that stretch of water, just as there has always been trade between the Isle of Man, Scotland and Ireland. The Brythonic form of Celtic unites the Breton's and Kernow just as Goidelic Celtic unites the Manx, Scots and Irish, although they are different in some grammar, spelling and syntax. I think my main point is that the Kernow were not moving to territory that did not have an already Brythonic speaking population. I'm sure many also found homes amongst their Cymric cousins as well.
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  14.  @thomaslacornette1282  Nobody doubts that anybody who had trade with Rome reflected some latin culture, this of course went both ways as Rome was greatly influenced by different cultures it came into contact with. Neither does anyone question the role of the Scandinavian genetic diaspora across northern Europe. To state that the Kernow that left Britain for the Breton peninsular were only Celtic by 'culture' is patently incorrect. The language was Brythonic Celtic and even today, after over a thousand years of being incorporated into England, there are specifically 'Celtic' associated genes in many areas of Cornwall. You can still draw a genetic marker line across England from Bristol to Hull were north west of which there are less Anglo-Saxon genetic markers, although they speak English and self-identify as being English, the fact is there are more Celtic British genes in these areas than Germanic even after 1500 years of integration.
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  15.  @thomaslacornette1282  I think we can agree that mass migration theories haven't been accepted for some time now, although the Yamnaya seem to give us reasons to look carefully at it again. So now we have to agree on what is 'Celtic' genetics. You appear to consider Hallstadt (Austria) is the definition of 'Celticness' genetically. I'm including, not just in terms of geography but also in terms of time, the descendants of Beaker people across North Western Europe, as well as including some that travelled southwards into the Balkans and eastwards into Anatolia. If you are holding to the Hallstadt only definition (Hallstadt D ending in 459 BCE approx) and thus excluding La Tene, then Roman Gaul wasn't Celtic either. Celtic isn't really defined purely by genetics, or purely by 'culture' or in terms of linguistics, or even timescale. I take your initial point that the people of Hallstadt (1200 - 459 BCE) do not share much of a genetic overlap with Brythonic or Goidelic speakers ... but I think your definition of 'Celtic' is much too narrow and most academics would describe Hallstadt as being proto-Celtic. The post-Roman people in Cornwall share many genetic overlaps with the people of Brittany as they had contact with their Brythonic cousins and some did travel there to avoid Saxon incursions into Dumnonia. If you don't accept them as being Celtic I respect your right to disagree.
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  16.  @brunol-p_g8800  Yeah, I'd agree with you, largely ... sort of. It again comes down to what 'Celtic' is, ... cultural, artistic, linguistic, genetic. Those factor's do not move as a monobloc. Barry Cunliffe has a 'Celtic from the West' theory that is worth looking into. I take a rather earlier viewpoint that neolithic culture came down from the north and mixed with bronze age agriculturalism, Urnfield and later Beaker. Add the Yamnaya to this and you've got a dynamic mixture as the Bronze Age transmutes into the Iron Age. I wonder where we'd be if only those pesty Roman's hadn't have interfered 😁
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  17.  @Ajemone  Or maybe our sense of independence, even from our own Celtic cousins, is why we are still here and the Roman Empire is just a bunch of crumbling ruins; occasionally burlesqued by organisations that have a fondness for fasces in their symbolism.
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  18.  @Ajemone  I'm glad your relatives and region did not agree with fascist ideologies; although I didn't imply they did. My point is, and remains, that those with dreams of Empire intend to 'unify' people under their sway; something that Celts have never been known for. It is our very refusal to be unified that has for the past two and a half thousand years allowed us to be a vibrant and living culture, a mixture of language, art, music, genetics and geography; not merely a fallen Empire for the history books.
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  19. Oh God, we're back to the bloody Scythians !!! As much as I love the Declaration of Independence it can hardly be used as a credible source for what happened multiple millennia before it was written. Can't we leave that to the Ancient Aliens crew ?
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  20. @chrisnewbury3793  Yes I realised the typo after posting. However it does amount to a declaration of independence from English suzerainty. Where's your evidence that Scots specifically descended from Scythians, the D of A and Bede are not evidence, they're national myth making. If it's that Scythians had some red hair and Celts have some red hair that's correlation not causation. the same thing happens in non-Celtic countries. Next you'll be saying it was a ship with an Egyptian princess in it because some Celts are dark skinned, or maybe it was wrecked Spanish Armada sailors.
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  21.  @antivari100  Which of course stretches from western Europe to the Indian sub-continent, quite a diverse mix.
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  22.  @antivari100  😊
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  23. Someday, I hope we'll find a 'Rosetta Stone' for Pictish symbols, with old Erse on one side and Pictish symbols on the other. There was such an interplay between Gael and Pict, or even Pict and Briton that something, even an early manuscript, must turn up ... eventually. Until then 'the Wee Dark Men (and women)' will seem almost myth like, despite all the physical evidence we have for their culture. Maybe even the Romans may come to our rescue on this one.
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  24.  @celtichistorydecoded  Higher levels of Vitamin A in offal and fish, neither of which were rationed during WWII. I suspect it was the sugar hit from carrots that did have a 'feel good' effect, as sugar from the colonies had effectively ceased. I'm sure they knew of sugar beet but it's an energy wasteful process to mash it (like beer) ... and stinks; as anyone driving past Bury St Edmunds will tell you, might explain why East Anglian beer tastes like dishwater. Probably more efficient to feed livestock on it. The history of rationing is fascinating.
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  25.  @JP-vj7fp  I wouldn't describe Barry Cunliffe as a clerical scholar of the medieval period. Try reading his book 'Facing the Ocean's before dismissing Atlantic trans-migration.
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  26. @jaco_9223  Genetically there's only really markers for Belgae people in southern England and Yorkshire from the 'Celtic' period. I suspect the dark-skinnedness has a great connection to Beaker people or before.
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  27.  @celtichistorydecoded  Its on YouTube. 'The Eagle' movie was also partially shot in Finnich Glen 'The Devils Pulpit'.
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  28. Aye, we all have our cross to bear; you can tell a Yorkshireman .... you just can't tell him much. I've spent many a happy hour wandering the Yorkshire Moors on various holidays, miles and miles of bugger all😉 . @Kevin-mx1vi 
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  29. Three things to point out - 1, The Romans did NOT say that the Scoti came from Hibernia. 2, We have NO evidence of what language the Picts spoke. 3, We do NOT know from where or when the Gaelic language originated in the British Isles (if you believe it originated in the British Isles). To clarify I am not doubting the genetics here but there is a long trail of historical assumptions made at least since the Victorian period that has led to us presuming that something is undeniable. You repeat something enough times people believe it ... still used by powerful people in the present day to convince you of things there's no evidence for.
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  30. @XavierY828  French isn't a Gaulish tongue, it's Germanic, with some Romanche as it's basis, which explains the connection to Anglo-Saxon 'Wales'.
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  31. @XavierY828  Only to the extent that Gaulish and French are part of the same Indo-European language group, I've no doubt there are a few Gaulish remnants in French, but as French only became the national language under Napoleon, as he suppressed the other regional languages of France (as an attempt at unification/centralisation) it is making a big leap in time between French and Gaulish. This discussion is drifting away from my original point that 'Wales' is a Germanic exonym and doesn't fit a hypothesis that wal/val/gal denotes a population of Celtic origin - which may have some larger merit to some degree but the word 'Wales' doesn't fit it specifically due to it's Anglo-Saxon origin . As soon as hypotheses start making large jumps in time, geography, culture and linguistics to make things 'fit' they become tenuous is the overall point I was heading towards. (I realise it wasn't your hypothesis I made my original reply to).
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  32. @mikakev1  Sorry, I'm struggling to get a clear understanding of your meaning. I'm not saying French isn't an old language but it's not Gaulish. It is Frankish, with Romanche, and some Latin. I'm not saying there aren't descendents in France from the Gaulish people's. Other languages in France (Occitans, Basque, Savoyard, Alsatian etc) were repressed during the Revolutionary Years in an attempt to centralise society in France. The same way that Welsh, Cornish, Manx, Scottish and Irish Gaelic were in Britain by the English speaking state. I am not telling anyone that they have to be one thing or the other but we cannot deny history to fit our own hypotheses.
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  33. @ashton1952  Thanks for agreeing but I'm finding the whole thing more ridiculous. To make the hypothesis fit we are now including bits of Celtic self-naming (Gaels), a probably Latin exonym (Gauls) and a probably Iberian exonym Gales, which might come through a Latin root. I'm going to muddy the water even further by saying that the Gaelic word for foreigners is Gall. Then chuck in all the Val's and Wals ... it's a Mulligans Stew of if, buts and maybies. Unless somebody does a well researched linguistics tree of the 'possibilities' rather than a simplistic joint the dots hypothesis I'm going to leave this idea aside ...
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  34. It's not a paint box. It's either more melanin or less melanin, depending on your most recent ancestors, with the odd recessive gene turning up in the mix and even less frequently mutation and UV levels. The balance of percentages is that it's going to be a version of brown because there's more brown eyed people. ​ @NoctLightCloud 
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  35. Thanks for this well researched video; that states clearly that research is ongoing (because that's what academia does). Unfortunately in the comments there's still so many science, linguistics and cultural history deniers with such a poor basic grasp of how societies change. I'm not an expert, but I tend to trust experts in their field above the outdated opinions of the 'We're (special) different' brigade.
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  36.  @100percentnonofyourbiz  The Dutch gh is pronounced as ch as in loch. The g at the beginning is a glottal h, thus Houch; much closer to hook than goff.
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  37.  @100percentnonofyourbiz  I'm just trying to explain to people how to pronounce Van Gogh as I've learnt it, as I've heard it pronounced by Dutch people and how it is exampled by the YouTube Dutch language channel I've quoted. If you choose to pronounce it differently, that's up to you. Unless you can show an example on video that is publicly accessible of an alternate pronunciation I'll leave it at that, tot ziens.
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  38.  @100percentnonofyourbiz  Which is the same as the Youtube example I gave you ... closest phonetic English pronunciation in writing I can come up with is 'Houch'. Apologies for missing your previous link. I think we are arguing the same point here mijn vriend.
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  39.  @100percentnonofyourbiz  I think we can both agree CHD didn't get the pronunciation right. All the best Pal😉
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  40. ​ @vmcg1265 Some people are so literal ... it was a joke !
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  41.  @MAKDavid-1  Interesting hypothesis as well. Unfortunately we can't make direct comparisons between different cultures across different periods of time. Anything we put forwards in the present time can only be at best 'educated' guesswork. Our best hope is that a Roman text ,as yet undiscovered, sheds some light on Pictish symbolism.
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  42.  @MAKDavid-1  1 - Essentially you are saying there was genetic movement east and west, no doubt there was; as well as north to south, or from any other point of the compass. Gauls settled in Anatolia (St Paul's Letter to the Galatians) and were used as mercenaries across Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. 2 - Taking from that that Pictish symbol stones and specifically a broken arrow symbol are related directly to Hunnic/Scythian tribal symbolism is at best tenuous and anthropologically unproven. 3 - My point about the Romans is that they did have contact with the early Picts and as the Picts did not have a phonetic writing system that we know of the best we can hope for is an as yet undiscovered ancient latin text giving some insight as to what Pictish symbols meant. BTW - your link was blocked by Google Chrome.
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  43.  @MAKDavid-1  Dear Mr Makai, as we say in Scotland - you are trying to weave a very big plaid from very few threads, jumping from the very broad (genetic diaspora) to a few possible linguistic Indo-European links. Of course there are linguistic and genetic connections between western Asia and Europe (eg. Afghanistan) that's why they are called INDO-European languages. Alexander the Great also had a whole Empire out there. There is no such phrase as Indo-Jewropean ! You seem to have the opinion that none of the 'Hunnic/Scythian/Magyar' peoples or 'Celtic' peoples had contact with the Ancient Classical world, which is nonsense. The Picts are north-west European Pastoral Agriculturalists, that interbred and supplanted with the north-west European Hunter Gatherers to a greater or lesser extent. Do not put too much trust in ethno-DNA analysis. It is in its very early days with statistically insignificant numerical samples to work from, as yet.
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  44. You make a good point about the naming on the wee graphic. However, you're not living in a Nation. You're living in a Province or Region with a non-functioning devolved government. @asanulsterman1025 
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  45. Northern French would have more Frankish Germanic blood in them, southern more Mediterranean blood ... plus the sun shines more in the south of France.​ @bonseraphin1119 
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  46. Vadoksam, I've got no gripe with anyone coming from any part of the world but I'm sure wherever you hail from you have traits of pronunciation (an accent).
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  47. Admixture is just the mixing of genetics from people of different geographical/ethic backgrounds. Ireland's been the target of multiple invasions/settlements, even though it is one of the furthest outposts of Europe. As you stated, Vikings, also Norman (often referred to as 'Old English' in Irish History), then the protestant plantations by Scots and English in the C16/17th are the major ones in the last two millennia. Scots and English are both more genetically diverse than Irish, just because they are closer to the European mainland. That 2% Norse in your DNA sounds about right for most Irish.  @Jinglylenny 
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  48. I never said it was more than a small percentage of genetics. Most Europeans carry R1b to a greater or lesser extent, the greater the further west you go. Basically that just means its a very old genetic grouping that has had less 'admixture' from other parts of the world. If you've really not come across Norse, Norman, Scots and English elements in Irish Culture and History I'd start with Wikipedia and work your way up; there's a lifetime of study ahead of you.  @Jinglylenny 
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  49. 'Overlay' as in veneer; not mostly, not mainly, not in the majority. The way you interpreted it is your opinion, not my intent or responsibility. Congratulations on being an Irish Citizen, being a British Citizen however does not make me an expert on the Empire. My knowledge of Irish and Celtic history only comes from having a B.A. Hons in it.  @Jinglylenny 
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  50.  @michaelchampion3056  It doesn't take much of an internet search to prove my point. Here's a large cut and paste from the first site I came across, talking about post 1068 ... ''Soon afterwards most of Cornwall was granted to a Count Brian of Brittany, but he is an elusive figure and little is known about him; he fought at Hastings/Senlac Ridge and took part in the 1068 campaign, but subsequently forfeited his lands after he took part in a baronial rebellion against the King [William 1st] in 1075. Soon after his lands in Cornwall and Devon were bestowed on a much more important figure, Robert, Count of Mortain. The great Domesday Survey of 1086 shows Robert to have been the holder of 277 Cornish manors, valued at £424, which virtually represented the whole of the county apart from a further 18 royal and 44 ecclesiastical estates.' As to specifically 'Cornish' DNA could you just reference your source and how this differs from southern Cymric DNA and or Breton DNA or DNA from any other Brythonic Celtic area. I'm all for regional patriotism, and I'd never dare to say you are not what you 'feel' to be but that must also be tempered by a realistic view of cultural, linguistic, genetic and political variance over time. You haven't answered who the 'Cornish' are that England would be giving Cornwall back to in 2024.
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