The Atlantic Connection 1

The Celtic Diaspora [1]

The above map of the Romano-British Celtic diaspora reflects 6th. century history according to Gildas [2] 

 My question would be :- "How far are these migratory routes a reflection of trade routes and past immigration routes?" If the links were already there, the Romano-Britons were neither "invaders" nor "invited mercenaries": two alternatives proposed by Young [3].


According to recent research (2012)  "Human populations, along with those of many other species, are thought to have contracted into a number of refuge areas at the height of the last Ice Age. European populations are believed to be, to a large extent, the descendants of the inhabitants of these refugia, and some extant mtDNA lineages can be traced to refugia in Franco-Cantabria (haplogroups H1, H3, V, and U5b1), the Italian Peninsula (U5b3), and the East European Plain (U4 and U5a). Parts of the Near East, such as the Levant, were also continuously inhabited throughout the Last Glacial Maximum, but unlike western and eastern Europe, no archaeological or genetic evidence for Late Glacial expansions into Europe from the Near East has hitherto been discovered. Here we report, on the basis of an enlarged whole-genome mitochondrial database, that a substantial, perhaps predominant, signal from mitochondrial haplogroups J and T, previously thought to have spread primarily from the Near East into Europe with the Neolithic population, may in fact reflect dispersals during the Late Glacial period, ∼19-12 thousand years (ka) ago".[4]

The link between the "Franco-Cantabria" refuge after the last Ice Age and the western areas of the British Isles may date back 19 - 12 thousand years! Oppenheimer and others suggest that these early settlers that he calls "Atlantic coastal beachcombers" spread round the Atlantic coastal fringe from the Basque refuge around 16,500 years ago. [5]

If this were the case, what was happening in the "Anglo - Saxon" areas, and how far back can we date the genetic and cultural difference between the Eastern (Northern European) population of the United Kingdom and the Western (Celtic?) peoples?
 The answer to this question may give us a clue as to when and why the Celtic - British influence took place in northern Iberia.  




[1] Map from Wikipedia Commons

[2] Gildas
[3] Young, Simon, Britonia: Caminos Nuevos, Editorial Toxosoutos, Serie Keltia 2004. pp. 105-107
[4] Pala,M et al, Mitochondrial DNA signals of late glacial recolonization of Europe from near eastern refugia.  http://www.cell.com/ajhg/abstract/S0002-9297%2812%2900204-2
[5] Oppenheimer, Stephen, Origins of the British, Constable 2006

Introduction 1

This is Chysauster, Cornwall, but it could equally be a Castro in Galicia or Asturias in the Northwest of Spain

Wikipedia has the following entry:-
"Britonia is the historical name of a settlement established in Gallaecia, northwestern Hispania, in the late 5th and early 6th centuries AD by Romano-Britons escaping the Anglo-Saxons, who were conquering Britain. Britonia is therefore similar to Brittany in Gaul in that it was settled by expatriate Britons at roughly the same time."

I have a number of questions regarding this bald statement:-

"What links were there between Britain and the North -West of Spain before the 5th Century Romano-British diaspora ?"

"Who were the Romano-Britons escaping from the Anglo-Saxons ?".

"What reasons had they for so doing?"

"What traces, if any, are there today of the Romano-British settlements in Spain?"

Legend and Language
Legend (and history according to  Gildas [1]) has the British Isles inhabited by a Celtic speaking peoples at the end of the Roman period. The "fierce and impious Saxons" are invited in as soldiers by king Vortigern to counter the invasions of the Picts and Scots. Gildas then goes on to describe  a genocide leading to the ethnic cleansing of the 'Celts' from England; remnants remaining in the mountain fastnesses of Wales and Cornwall. This version of the history of Britain is perpetuated in the book "Britonia: Camino nuevos" by Simon Young [2].
However, as we shall see later, there is little evidence apart from that of Gildas, for a destruction on the scale that he propounded.

Early Links along the Atlantic Fringe of Europe and the British Isles
Barry Cunliffe [3] suggests that the Celtic language developed along the Atlantic fringe some 4,400 years ago. This coincided with the movement of early metal prospectors at the beginning of the Bronze Age. The linguist Peter Forster[4] speculates that the fragmentation of the Celtic languages from their most recent common ancestor was in the Neolithic. Somewhat earlier than Cuncliffe's dating.

Until recently the Celtic homeland was held to be in central Europe - "near the source of the Danube". Herodotus, writing in the sixth century B.C. is the main origin of this theory. However, careful reading of his Histories [5] shows that his "source of the Ister (Danube)" was given as being in the Pyrenees and not in central Europe. This mis-information by Herodotus led to a school of thought which placed the "Keltoi" at the source of the Danube in central Europe and not on the borders of France and Spain.
again we will return to this discussion at a later point.




[1] Gildas, De excidio Britanniae (Various translations)
[2] Young, Simon (2004), Britonia: Caminos Nuevos ( Serie Keltia)
[3] Cunliffe, Barry (2004) Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples (Oxford University Press)
[4] Forster, Peter and Toth, Alfred (2003), "Toward a phylogenetic chronology of ancient Gaulish, Celtic, and Indo-European" Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 100:9079-84
[5] Herodotus, Histories (440 - 430 B.C): Macaulay's translation is available on Project Gutenberg, etext 2131