Are you REALLY Celtic?

[auld argonian]

Re Steve's examples as shown in the paintings that he posted...

...at what appears to be their greatest dispersion over Europe (c.500-200 BC), Celtic types were present in the North Eastern quarter of the Appenine Penninsula. (Basing this on "The Celts: A Very Short Introduction by Barry Cunliffe....boy...there's a Welsh name if I ever heard one, eh?) Anyway, they did manage to insinuate themselves in that corner of the world. I also seem to remember that William Manchester, in A World Lit Only By Fire, mentioned that one of the things that Catherine de Medici had going for her was, besides her reputed incredible intelligence and obvious family connections, her reddy-gold hair which apparently made her the ultimate dude-magnet of her day. I'd postulate that there was some of that ol' Celtic DNA at work there....hey...who else here remembers Luciana Paluzzi? Schwing!

So there were Celts roaming around and, presumably, procreating in what is now Italy in the pre-Roman Empire era...

So there's every possibility that those toes have legitimate Celtic origins!

...we will not, however, take any of the blame for Roberto Benigni!

But I certainly can't take the "Toe Theory" that seriously. It's interesting but certainly can't be considered definitive. Look, there's going to be another one of those shows on PBS soon where they do DNA screenings on prominent African Americans and give them the lowdown on their actual genetic roots. Last time they got Henry Louis Gates, probably the pre-eminent African American scholar of our time, to sit down and told him that according to his DNA he was something like 70 per cent Northern European. Everybody is a hodge podge of ethnicity and I say jolly good because that means that you can't have a bad attitude about anybody because they may very well be more closely related to you than you think.

And the Wiz is right on in talking about language groups. Burial customs and certain decorative motifs also seem to be elements used to define ethnicity as well. All in all, it's fascinating and I am being constantly surprised by all of the connections that keep being discovered.

And where else am I going to see discussions of this type but Xmarks?

Best

AA

[gilmore]

... Look, there's going to be another one of those shows on PBS soon where they do DNA screenings on prominent African Americans and give them the lowdown on their actual genetic roots. Last time they got Henry Louis Gates, probably the pre-eminent African American scholar of our time, to sit down and told him that according to his DNA he was something like 70 per cent Northern European. Everybody is a hodge podge of ethnicity and I say jolly good because that means that you can't have a bad attitude about anybody because they may very well be more closely related to you than you think....

Well, no, it told him that his was 50% European and 50% African. And that was by autosomal DNA testing, which is not at all very reliable as to percentages after 3-4 generations. At any rate, that fact was something that was not at all surprising to him, according to the way the program was edited anyhow, by the paper trail.

If you will go back and read the article in the first post in this thread, it was British doctors in WWII who defined Celtic for their big toe study purposes as soldiers who were Welsh, Scots or Irish.

[Ruanaidh]

The modern name for the condition of having the second toe longer than the big toe is called "Morton's toe". In the classical world it was called the "Greek foot" in contrast to the "Egyptian foot" where the big toe was longer.