Re: NWB

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:

>
> On Wikipedia I saw an article that claims that the
> Eastern Britons were Belgae who spoke languages
> closely related to Ango-Saxon, which accounts for the
> general lack of Celtic substrate in Old English. It
> claims that no Celtic inscriptions are found in E.
> Briton. My impression was that it saw Belgae as
> essentially a Celtic influenced form of Germanic and
> similar to Frankish.
> I'd like to hear from the rest of you regarding this

It's the recent theory of Stephen Oppenheimer (The Origins of the
British) He thinks that celtic people did not arrive from eastern
Europe through Germany but from the south-east of Europe. What seems
to be true is that genetic studies have shown that western celtic
people have a lot in common with the Basques for instance. So the
oldest human stock might be non-celtic people who adopted celtic
languages, in Ireland namely. About the Belgae it is difficult to
know if Oppenheimer is right or not. There are perhaps less celtic
toponyms east of the Rhine than west, but Germany has nevertheless
many celtic toponyms too.

Michel Morvan.

>
>
>

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