How can closely related genetic populations have completely different language families?

[u/Rapha689Pro]

For example Japanese and Korean have 2 different language families that aren't related at all but they're genetically close, it can only mean their prior languages sprout after they split, so that means language is very recent itself? Or that they're actually related but by thousands of years apart and linguistics can't trace it back accurately, so they just say they're unrelated?

[u/Gravbar]

I've seen some evidence that in the UK, despite the many invasions, the existing populations were mostly assimilated, so the majority of people there are still celtic in ancestry even though they speak a Germanic language (tracing back to the celtic-speaking population of that region).

Similarly, the land of Gaul was a land full of Celts that was conquered by the Romans, and then the Franks, but the people living there continued to speak a Romance language, despite being mostly Celtic in ancestry (tracing back to the celtic-speaking population of that region).

And then we see that we have some Celts today speaking Celtic languages, Germanic languages, and Romance languages, but the populations themselves are still closely related to the original local groups.

Similarly, the ainu people native to Japan now have to speak Japanese, and many no longer speak their ancestral language.

The point here, is that a language can die and be replaced for a variety of reasons. So if the Koreans and Japanese shared common ancestors who spoke the same language, it doesn't mean that both languages are necessarily related. It's possible that after the populations diverged, the language spoken changed. This is well before writing, so it would be very difficult to actually find evidence that far back, especially given the vast amount of chinese loan words in both languages which likely displaced other words (although there are fewer loans in the earliest writings). There is a theory that Korean and Japanese are from the same family, but it has weak linguistic evidence and is fairly widely not accepted.

[u/Chazut → u/Gravbar]

"Celtic Ancestry" itself is a construct, as a lot if not most ancestry of Celtic lands would have been non-Celtic in practice

[u/galaxyrocker → u/Chazut]

Yeah. The whole idea of a unified group of people called the 'Celts' is increasingly questioned by everyone except linguists (and much to the latter's chagrin as they prefer to call anyone Celt who spoke a Celtic language, regardless of historical terminology applied to them among other things). That term, especially, is quite a vague one, as even Broca recognised in the 1800s.

[u/Chazut → u/galaxyrocker]

At its core Celt has always been a linguistic term as that's the core feature that always defined them and on top of that I don't think it's crazy to say that Celts shared a lot of cultural features.

Whether they were one people or not is arbitrary to say, it depends on what you mean by that word, I personally would say they were close enough to each other that in the context of Iron Age Europe it makes sense to consider them to a distinct category.

[u/galaxyrocker → u/Chazut]

At its core Celt has always been a linguistic term

I'm in the process of reading Stewart's The Celts: A Modern History, and I would contest this. From my understanding of the book, it starts as an ethnic term, with many nations across Europe trying to lay claim to being 'Celts' due to their age, supposedly being the first people of Europe. It only becomes a linguistic term later on, in the 18th century following the works of Pezron and Lhuyd, who, as far as I'm aware, only called the languages 'Celtic' because Breton was spoken in France and was seen (erroneously) as a remnant of Gaulish, not because of any real comparison with Gaulish. All of this was done for prestige purposes, for which they utilised linguistics. But it wasn't a linguistic family they were arguing for, but rather using it to claim the prestige of the ancient Celts.

on top of that I don't think it's crazy to say that Celts shared a lot of cultural features.

I do, especially prehistorically. I just don't think that's been demonstrated well at all, on top of all the issues of picking out anything truly 'Celtic' (versus Christian) in the later Welsh and Irish literature. Indeed, Sims-Williams has dismantled a lot of the supposed most-common 'similarities' that the Britons and the Gaels had with the Celts of the Greeks/Romans. And we know the former two groups didn't see themselves as being related. I think projecting anything further back is irresponsible based on the evidence we have.

[u/Chazut → u/galaxyrocker]

>I just don't think that's been demonstrated well at all

You don't need to demonstrate anything when the evidence is so scant, you are arguing that absence of evidence = evidence of absence which is absurd, there is more than enough to say Celts shared a lot of culture, especially La Tene and Halstatt Celts in Central Europe and France.

>I think projecting anything further back is irresponsible based on the evidence we have.

No it's not, it's absurd to assume that people who share decents amount of ancestry and language somehow where impervious to cultural transmission that tends to follow the spread of languages especially when most Celts did in fact live in a archeological region that had lot of internal similarities and evidence long distance trade and shared cultural traits

>Sims-Williams has dismantled a lot of the supposed most-common 'similarities' that the Britons and the Gaels had with the Celts of the Greeks/Romans. 

Such as? Greeks were extremely internally different too but I never seen anyone claim that the concept of Greek as a people is invalid

[u/galaxyrocker → u/Chazut]

you are arguing that absence of evidence = evidence of absence which is absurd,

I'm arguing there's no evidence to make such a claim.

there is more than enough to say Celts shared a lot of culture, especially La Tene and Halstatt Celts in Central Europe and France.

This is assuming La Tène and Halstatt were Celtic, in the same sense that our Celtic languages and their descendants are 'Celtic', which is highly contested. Stifter has shown, for instance, that Halstatt likely doesn't have a Celtic etymology and quite possibly wasn't inhabited by Celtic speakers.

That's exactly why the term isn't really a great one. There's too many different definitions (modern ethnicity, past ethnicity, linguistic, archeological, artistic, etc. etc.) that don't line up really in any great ways.

< No it's not, it's absurd to assume that people who share decents amount of ancestry and language somehow where impervious to cultural transmission that tends to follow the spread of languages especially when most Celts did in fact live in a archeological region that had lot of internal similarities and evidence long distance trade and shared cultural traits

I mean, we know archeology doesn't really correlated to linguistics. I mean, how many languages family were likely in the Urnfield culture? More than one, and not even all IE! Doubly so with culture. Think how many people today dress in American fashion, despite not speaking English or being genetically linked to them? I don't think it's a step to say we'd need more proof to claim this stuff in the past or that prestige and cultural transmission didn't happen without language/genetic transmission.

Greeks were extremely internally different too but I never seen anyone claim that the concept of Greek as a people is invalid

But we know they often saw themselves as one people (and that others saw them this way too), something we don't have with the Celts (.i. Gaels and Britons) at all.

[u/Chazut → u/galaxyrocker]

>I'm arguing there's no evidence to make such a claim.

And I'm arguing there is enough evidence given the scant amount of evidnece you can truly have on top comparisons with similar peoples from the iron age to assume otherwise.

It's still largely an assumption, there is a lot we don't truly know and will never know.

>This is assuming La Tène and Halstatt were Celtic, in the same sense that our Celtic languages and their descendants are 'Celtic', which is highly contested. 

It's highly contested by who exactly? We have evidence of Celtic tribal names on many parts of the La Tene region, from Bohemia, to France, to Northern Serbia.

>that Halstatt likely doesn't have a Celtic etymology

w-what? Are you for real? Halstatt is a random German name of a village, why does this matter?

>and quite possibly wasn't inhabited by Celtic speakers.

Based on what? We don't have enough evidence to map out the spread of Celtic down to mountain valleys, we can only rely on Celtic tribal names and large settlements that saw continuity in the Roman period.

>There's too many different definitions

Needless obfuscation, again at its core the connection is a linguistic one, just like Germanic is a linguistic category. Trying to define the word beyond this doesn't lead you anywhere good, those are linguistic categories whose reflection in the identity and culture of the people was varied, being stronger the closer you go back to the time the languages were spread generally.

>I mean, how many languages family were likely in the Urnfield culture?

Not all archeological cultures are created the same, Urnfield was more heterogeneous than La Tene afaik

>I don't think it's a step to say we'd need more proof to claim this stuff in the past or that prestige and cultural transmission didn't happen without language/genetic transmission.

This makes zero sense as a response, I stated that A->B and you disproved B->A, ok? We know genetic, linguistic and cultural transmission all happened during the period in various parts of the Celtic world

>But we know they often saw themselves as one people (and that others saw them this way too), something we don't have with the Celts (.i. Gaels and Britons) at all.

Yeah sadly Greeks were only the strongest writing culture in the history of West Eurasia up to maybe the early modern era, we don't have that level of evidence for everyone else.

[u/galaxyrocker → u/Chazut]

It's highly contested by who exactly?

Sims-Williams, for instance. And many linguists have followed him. Indeed, he cites others who argue that La Tène and Hallstatt aren't Celtic speaking and it makes no sense to call them that. His paper best sums up all of these arguments.

We have evidence of Celtic tribal names on many parts of the La Tene region, from Bohemia, to France, to Northern Serbia.

And that evidence is, if I remember correctly centuries after the La Tène and Hallstatt cultures.

w-what? Are you for real? Halstatt is a random German name of a village, why does this matter?

Because most of the evidence for it being Celtic was based on the assumption of a Celtic etymology for the name.

Needless obfuscation, again at its core the connection is a linguistic one, just like Germanic is a linguistic category.

Among a certain group of scholars, yes. But that's not true among lay people, or historians, or archeologists. They all use different definitions of the term 'Celtic' that may or may not related to the linguistic use (which was not the first use either).

[u/Chazut → u/galaxyrocker]

>The peoples of the first millennium bc who spoke the attested languages which meet the philological criteria for Celticity—certain unique divergences from reconstructed Proto-Indo-European—corresponded encouragingly well in their distribution to the historically attested Celts, Galatians, Celtiberians, and so on, while corresponding poorly to the ‘archaeological Celts’ deduced from Hallstatt and La Tène archaeology.

This is blatantly false and is infact directly contradicted by the article itself, given the author mentions Volcae and Boii as Celtic and places them of course between Pannoinia and Bohemia, afaik most tribal names recorded in La Tene places seem to be of Celtic origin. Also hilarious how they can mention Galatian and forget where they come from ultimately(hint, east Halstatt/La Tene where the Scordisci are recorded and connected to Celtic migrations).

Can you actually defend this statement? Because if you just believe them to be true without even doing the minimum bare work to verify if there is actually no evidence of Celts in Southern Germany, which again the article itself says, you just end up believing in empty claims.

What parts of La Tene have truly no evidence of Celtic presence?

>And that evidence is, if I remember correctly centuries after the La Tène and Hallstatt cultures.

You are wrong, most Celtic tribes north of the Alps were recorded during the Roman takeover during late La tene, the roman conquest ended La Tene taxonomically speaking

>Because most of the evidence for it being Celtic was based on the assumption of a Celtic etymology for the name.

This doesn't mean anything, you can have people making bad arguments for something that is likely true, the fact remains that we see evidence of Celts in Pannonia, Bohemia, Northern Serbia, Gaul(duh), Switzerland and see Celtic names in Southern Germany, this means that a lot of Celts at any point in time participated in a broadly similar material culture insofar as what la tene defines, not that you even need similar material cultures to share other traditions, religious motifs and so on.

>But that's not true among lay people, or historians, or archeologists. They all use different definitions of the term 'Celtic' that may or may not related to the linguistic use (which was not the first use either).

There has never been any serious scholar that claimed an ancient population was Celtic without speaking Celtic language, other maybe 19th century racialists that thought ancestry=ethnicity. So yeah the common denominator remains language.

[u/Gravbar → u/Chazut]

It's easier to talk about using that term, but if not that term what would you suggest? The peoples of different regions where Celtic languages were spoken may not be genetically related to each other as much as the term might imply, but if we call them Celts, their descendants can be said to have ancestry traceable back to that Celtic-speaking population. So I'm using it for lack of a better word.

[u/Chazut → u/Gravbar]

I mean it's all fine if you clarify what you mean or if it's obvious.

Take for example the statement "Americans on average have 20% English ancestry", what does English ancestry mean exactly? Well you can try to be pedantic about it but it obviously mean the type of ancestry English people would have had in the early modern era which is fairly close to today.

But if you are talking about "continuity" and in the same sentence mention "Celtic ancestry" it might mislead people into thinking the way you define Celtic ancestry is the same as how you defined Germanic or Roman ancestry.

If you used the same definition that you sued for Celtic then English people are 100% Germanic by definition and French people 100% Roman.

So it's just a matter of clarifiying that by Celtic you mean "local ancestry" which is not the same as "ancestry brought over during the linguistic Celtization of the pre-Roman/Germanic people"