Who came before the Celts in the British Isles...

Who came before the Celts in the British Isles? Is it true that pre-Celtic Britons and Ireons were from the Basque Country?

The Celts aren't a genetic group and a discernibly 'Celtic' culture in Britain only really exists from 500BC-ish.
The makeup of Britain hadn't changed much since the Mesolithic, and yes, it's probable that these people were from the same groups that the modern Basques originated from. However, they were not from the Basque country.

No, they were from Portugal probably. Ultimately from Anatolia.

~99% genetic change since the mesolithic according to Olalde et al

Communist European farmers

> The Celts aren't a genetic group
This.

The Scots, Welsh, and Irish may like to think they are, but the 'Celts' were simply shared cultural and technological traits.

The genetic basis for their affinity is mostly older than the language shift to Celtic, dating back to the local Bell Beakers from Germany who massively displaced the earlier megalithic people.

Bell beaker were not a genetic united group

Iberians, German, Sardinians and Sicilians are very diverse

Well first you had the "western hunter gatherers" who came after the ice age about 10,000 years ago, they largely lived on fish and shellfish and travelled by boat.
After this came the "Bell Beaker" people about 5000 years ago who spread pottery and copper technology and long distance trading.
There is a debate over whether these people were travelling merchant types who spread the new technology or in fact killed and raped their way across Europe, and whether they spoke some kind of protoceltic languages.
After them about 3000 years ago came the Urnfield culture who were most likely Celtic.
In Ireland there is evidence they migrated in several waves over the span of a hundreds of years and the language and culture became dominant much like the Bell Beakers did before them, and there is a debate concerning if they replaced the previous people or just came to rule over them as elites.
The large stone monuments were built by the original hunter gatherers and fell into periods of disuse after the Bell Beaker phenomenon, and then later still were revived by the others.

Genetically speaking, it appears the original hunter gatherer males were killed and the new invading groups took their women, making the vast majority of people a mix of these two groups about 2000 years ago before new people came and settled in Britain during and after the Roman collapse.

As for the Basque connection, it is believed that many place names in Ireland show evidence of a pre-celtic language which may have been related to Basque, perhaps it was the language of the original hunter gathers and spead across Western Europe before the Indo Europeans came and took over.
We will never know the truth unless scientists can find more bodies and test them.

This is pretty much modern British/English nationalism intruding into the debate. Irish, Scots and Welsh share common ancestors and spoke related languages, and pretty much look the same.

Megalithic farmers came before Bell Beakers from Germany, probably in several waves.

>5000 years ago

They came there 2400 years before and they probably had copper by then

>There is a debate over whether these people were travelling merchant types who spread the new technology or in fact killed and raped their way across Europe

Neither, it wasn't a unified group or confederation, it was a way of making pottery that got popular in Western And South Western Europe

>This is pretty much modern British/English nationalism intruding into the debate
no it isn't. 'Celtic' as a descriptor for a very broad cultural group isn't really accurate and is a very Roman/Greek centric view.

The male hunter gathers were haplogroup G and most people in Britain and Ireland are haplogroup R1b now, so it had to come from somewhere. On the female side, almost nothing has changed in 10000 years.

> Irish, Scots and Welsh share common ancestors and spoke related languages, and pretty much look the same.
Not at all. The Irish, Scots, Welsh, and English are more genetically similar than different, including the Anglo-Saxon components.

This importing of 'Celtic' culture was a Victorian fiction to boost nationalism of the smaller nations. There was never, nor is, a 'Celtic nation'.

WHG had U5 maternal haplogroup and I2 paternal.

You can look at the frequencies and figure out what has changed since then.
I'll make it easy for you, everything.

You sure this is not some attempt at creating a British ethnicity?

>This importing of 'Celtic' culture was a Victorian fiction to boost nationalism of the smaller nations.
This is absolute nonsense. I think you're conflating Scottish Romanticism and the German Celticist revival

Also a reminder that in the 1800s differences between England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland would've been even more pronounced, as they would've been practicing their traditional culture, wearing traditional dress and speaking their native languages more than they do today.

There *is* a British identity: the mixture of Angle, Saxon, British, Roman, Norman-French, cultures.

Scotland has never spoken a 'traditional' language. Plaid, the kilt, the bagpipes, etc. are all *British*, not exclusively Scottish.

PS. I'm not 'conflating' anything: the Victorian revival of all things 'Celtic' is a fiction: no such culture every existed.

Pretty tired of this old horseshit being trotted out any time the C word is mentioned and shutting down the discussion with semantics and pedantics

>Britishness exists but Celticness does not

You want to tell me what that has to do with the pre-celtic people of Britain and Ireland?

The only right and proper answer to that is
> no one has any clue

That's why is has descended into semantics.

>Hungarian Bronze Age
>Poland
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