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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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Historian have taken the reference to the Ister (Danube) as placing the Keltoi in Central Europe despite the fact the Herodotus had no idea WHERE the Danube had its source. He ASSUMED it rose in the Pyrenees Mountains and flowed North then East dividing Europe. And if we look at his other reference in the same text it is clear that the Ister reference is misguided.
The Keltoi lived near the Pyrenees = Atlantic Europe
They lived BEYOND the Pillars of Heracles = Atlantic Europe
Their neighbours (Kunetoi -- Cynessians) the westernmost people in Europe = Atlantic Europe. |
Nice deduction. I have argued much the same elsewhere and guess what? You have the support of geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer who argues precisely the same in his book 'The Origins of the British'. The Celts are an essentially southwest European people who immigrated to Britain along the Atlantic seaboard from Iberia.
Once we accept this we can place the Celts in Britain at a far earlier date than those swallowing the Hallstatt/La Tene = Celts hypothesis.
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TelMiles
In: London
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Saw a programme on Discovery or something the other day advocating this very point. The programme was quite old I think, mid 90's, but this one historian said there was no evidence of a westward expansion of the "celts". He said that if the same culture appears in Britain and central Europe, why couldn't it have come from Britain and headed east?
_________________
Against all Gods.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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| Nice deduction. I have argued much the same elsewhere and guess what? You have the support of geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer who argues precisely the same in his book 'The Origins of the British'. The Celts are an essentially southwest European people who immigrated to Britain along the Atlantic seaboard from Iberia. |
Well thank you Duncan but don't start clapping yet. Everyone got to Britain along the Atlantic seaboard and across the Celtic Shelf -- including those with northern European genes (If we are assuming like Sykes et al have about the immediate post Ice Age period).
Hang about, he says what about the Dogger Bank? Didn't it run all the way to Denmark?
Well, yes, it did but it was impassable. There was a dirty great river running across the middle of it. You didn't know that! Where the hell do you think all that glacial meltwater from the Alps and lowland Britain was going? It didn't just evaporate into thin air. The Thames and the Rhine flowed into one great river that crossed the Dogger lowlands. And if the distance between England and France at the Dover Strait is anything to go by it was a bloody big river back in them thar days.
The Low Countries were impenetrable marshes and bogs. The Rhine Delta was pretty much all of Holland. The Rhine flood plain was miles wide, vastly different to today's five minute trip in a row boat. The Thames valley was a massive flood plain as well. To the east was the Danube fed by the Alps and to the south was the Rhone fed by the Alps. The Pyrenees were also glaciated. So anyone wanting to get to Britain had no choice but to travel along the Atlantic coast from the South. Anyone living north of the Alps, assuming that anyone wanted to given the extent of the glaciations in Northern Europe, would have had to cross the Rhine or the Alps. The former was a raging torrent, the latter mountains of unstable glacial ice.
The genetic trail forms two distinct settlement events, one pre-agricultural and the other agricultural. My guess is the former constituted what we now call the Celtic group and the latter would be the English group.
The reasoning is simple: just ask yourself where is all the rich pastoral and agricultural land in Britain? Where do crops and livestock thrive? Not in Ireland which was formerly oak forest and is now peatland. Not in the Scottish highlands, it's barren with poor soil. Not in Wales either it's predominantly mountains with little arable land. That leaves only England which has an abundance of all the things those agri/pastoralists needed to flourish.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| There are Hittite sources for the Battle too. They claim their forces were victorious on the day and continued Hittite occupation of Kadesh would suggest they are correct. |
Now you are grasping the scale of the problem, Dunc. The Hittites give a date for the battle, as do the Egyptians. Unfortunately those dates are Mussarawa Year IV and Rameses Year VII respectively (or whatever). They are only of any use to us if they can be converted into Years BC.
Since Egyptologists are more senior in the academic pecking order than the Hittitologists they get to decide the 'true' chronology'. So they look up Rameses in their Manetho List and say, "Whoopee! It's 1274 BC (or whatever)." The Hittitologists now have a choice. They can either accept 1274 BC as the date of the Battle of Kadesh and accept their place in the pantheon of academe (chairs, adoring students, archeological grants etc) or they can reject 1274 BC and be cast out of academe and take their place amongst the crazies.
But remember, this chalice can only be tasted once. As soon as one generation of Hittitologists accept the date it is taught "as fact" to all further generations of Hittitologists (who therefore need not be told that the whole thing rests on Manetho interpretation). This 'fact' is then passed on to diligent non-specialists such as yourself. But if you really want to check whether it really is a fact I suggest you consult another textbook, and then another one, and then another one until you've got about a thousand...only then can you ask yourself, "In what branch of human activity do a thousand people all believe the exact same thing about a fairly obscure event?"
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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| Since Egyptologists are more senior in the academic pecking order than the Hittitologists they get to decide the 'true' chronology'. So they look up Rameses in their Manetho List and say, "Whoopee! It's 1274 BC (or whatever)." The Hittitologists now have a choice. |
All of this is very interesting BUT why 1274? If you want to truncate their lists by 500 or whatever number of years you're postulating, then where have all the Pharoahs gone? Are you telling me that they made them up to plug the chronological gaps OR extended the life of each Pharoah?
What you are saying to me is that our chronology is based upon the whim of the senior Egyptologist, then and now, and that everybody else accepts this?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| is based upon the whim of the senior Egyptologist |
Now you're beginning to get the hang of why academic subjects are called "disciplines". Once a senior Egyptologist -- which means for practical purposes the first generation of Egyptologists -- sketches out a preliminary chronology, this is taught to the next generation of students and within two generations is the chronology. Since you can't really have Egyptology without a chronology even a duff chronology is better than no chronology.
But already a whole bunch of things (like for instance the Battle of Kadesh) is going to be strung along that chronology. Very soon the whole of Egyptology looks as though it is confirming the chronology because internally it is all reasonably coherent.
So...at what stage is somebody going to have the temerity to say, "Hey, dudes, lets examine the chronology...after all it was only a preliminary one to start with." Outsiders might but insiders (including you in this context, Duncan) would scarcely know there was anything that needed re-examining, let alone challenging.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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Quite possibly the case for a while but you are characterising the workings of a religious cult not a discipline with any pretence to be scientific. Reputations are made by challenging any kind of 'nonsense' surely? The hierarchy doesn't have to believe it to be so because the guy in the tallest hat said so. I'm looking into the whole Indo-European problem at the moment and am stunned at how two such high profile figures as Mallory and Renfrew can disagree so vehemently on the location of the Indo-European homeland. I think you underestimate the role of competition and conflict within academia and this is the very process that drives new knowledge.
So, where did all the Pharoahs go, or who was granted a much longer life?
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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Komorokid wrote:
| Everyone got to Britain along the Atlantic seaboard and across the Celtic Shelf -- including those with northern European genes (If we are assuming like Sykes et al have about the immediate post Ice Age period). |
Not what the genetics shows. Those with non-Iberian genes: R1a, I1, J1 etc. came from northern Europe, according to the genetic contour maps. I would imagine that they skirted the coastline and crossed the rivers in their boats, just like their Anglo-Saxon, Danish and Norwegian descendents.
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Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
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| Not what the genetics shows. Those with non-Iberian genes: R1a, I1, J1 etc. came from northern Europe, according to the genetic contour maps. I would imagine that they skirted the coastline and crossed the rivers in their boats, just like their Anglo-Saxon, Danish and Norwegian descendents. |
The contour map show WHERE they came from not necessarily WHEN they came. The R1a, I1, J1 etc. that came from northern Europe could very well be the Anglo-Saxons, Danish and Norwegians.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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| The contour map show WHERE they came from not necessarily WHEN they came. The R1a, I1, J1 etc. that came from northern Europe could very well be the Anglo-Saxons, Danish and Norwegians. |
The latest genetic techniques clear up this problem by using STR gene types (Single Tandem sequence haplotypes). The technique is a refinement of the UEPs (unique event polymorphisms), which indicate the common mutational markers. The STR gene types mutate much more rapidly and therefore allow geneticists to track migrations over much shorter time periods. Oppenheimer used this technique to show that less than 5 percent of the British population arrived during the Anglo-Saxon invasion period whereas the bulk of the non-Iberian genes had arrived much earlier and in a series of waves dating back to the Mesolithic.
Until someone can show that Oppenheimer's methodology is flawed this puts a real spanner in the works for proponents of a large-scale A-S migration. It also shows that the British genetic connection to northern Europe is far older than current orthodoxy would have us believe.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Quite possibly the case for a while but you are characterising the workings of a religious cult not a discipline with any pretence to be scientific. |
That is the AE position, I'm afraid. First of all you must upgrade your opinion of "religious cults". They are led by very intelligent people, are very successful social organisations, are capable of making quite impressive advances and hold quite fluid beliefs. However, their weak spot is that there is a marked tendency for the 'elders' to teach neophytes in the basics using rote methods. Which of this doesn't apply to academic disciplines?
| Reputations are made by challenging any kind of 'nonsense' surely? |
You must be joking! What kind of reputation do you suppose somebody would have if they pointed out that all their colleagues fondly believed and had been teaching for years "nonsense"? Well, you've been reading some of the choicer epithets being hurled on Time Team but I can assure you the response would have been much worse if I had been a True Believer in the first place.
This is why it is is overwhelmingly the older, more established people who tend to kick over the traces. Young Turks do not survive long in the cosy world of academe.
| The hierarchy doesn't have to believe it to be so because the guy in the tallest hat said so. |
Yes they do, Dunc, that's precisely how academic subjects are structured. A member of the 'hierarchy' is by definition only an expert in a tiny field (they are the 'tallest hat' only in the area of their Ph D thesis) and is a generalist in all other areas. He is obliged to teach students the current orthodoxy ie what the tallest hats have collectively set down over the years. Though I suppose theoretically he could opt for the sack.
| I'm looking into the whole Indo-European problem at the moment and am stunned at how two such high profile figures as Mallory and Renfrew can disagree so vehemently on the location of the Indo-European homeland. |
This is exactly the kind of dispute that academia loves. The paradigm remains wherever they come from. Meanwhile the illusion is fostered that 'Indo-Europeanism' as a concept is under urgent debate.
| I think you underestimate the role of competition and conflict within academia and this is the very process that drives new knowledge. |
Pfooey. 'New knowledge' as you call it is just Student A asking Professor B what he should write his Ph D on. Academia is a wonderful engine for churning out 'data'. True competition and conflict (not the usual dreary backbiting) almost invariably comes from outside the discipline. You mentioned Hoyle and Hawkins, I think.
| So, where did all the Pharoahs go, or who was granted a much longer life? |
For long periods of time there was not a single Pharoah in Egypt. Manetho (it would seem, I'm no expert) tended to throw them all into the pot. But since it is a paradigm of Egyptologists that their beloved country was always a land of milk and honey and one pharoah, Manetho's pharoahs tend to get laid end to end.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. In my own discipline of Economics (though I only have an MSc. not a PhD.), as I've said to you before it's quite possible for Marxists to hold tenured positions alongside New Classicals. Believe-you-me, there's absolutely NO common ground there whatsoever.
| For long periods of time there was not a single Pharoah in Egypt. Manetho (it would seem, I'm no expert) tended to throw them all into the pot. But since it is a paradigm of Egyptologists that their beloved country was always a land of milk and honey and one pharoah, Manetho's pharoahs tend to get laid end to end. |
Which Pharoah's were reigning together? If this is your basis for sweeping away the Dark Ages you'll need to help me on this one. I'm no expert either but to challenge any orthodox explanation I'm sure you'll accept that we need a better one. So, who, when and for how long?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| it's quite possible for Marxists to hold tenured positions alongside New Classicals. Believe-you-me, there's absolutely NO common ground there whatsoever. |
I don't believe you and I have most of a first degree taught Classically and half an MA taught by Marxists. How, just for instance, would they differ as to the Economic Cycle? AE-ists hold there is no such thing. Indeed, though this is still in its AE infancy, I doubt that AE-ists would accept there can be any such thing as an academic subject called 'Economics" because too much of its field of study is chaotic. But Ishmael might have more to say on this subject and perhaps it should form the basis of a different thread.
| If this is your basis for sweeping away the Dark Ages you'll need to help me on this one |
Well, I can't really. It's all in Velikovsky (and his adherents) and though reading him (and them) has convinced me of the essential soundness of his argument, I am in no position to explain it all second-hand.
Of course I would not expect you to embark on a study of Velikovsky just on my recommendation, nonetheless I would recommend his cycle starting with Ages in Chaos. (There is no need to immerse yourself in his more catastrophic epics - Worlds in Collision et al -- though these too repay perusal.) My guess is that your revisionist historical bent would lead you to enjoy them for their own sake, but you must be the judge. There is no question that Velikovsky was an AE-ist before its time.
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Duncan
In: Yorkshire
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| I don't believe you and I have most of a first degree taught Classically and half an MA taught by Marxists. |
You don't believe what? Ben Fine and Andy Murfin at UCL, for example, were preaching Marxist Economics the last time I checked. Are your degrees in Economics too? Not an MA surely?
| How, just for instance, would they differ as to the Economic Cycle? AE-ists hold there is no such thing. |
Then you share your perspective with the New Classicals. They don't believe it's endogenous either. Keynesians and Marxists do believe it's endogenous.
| Indeed, though this is still in its AE infancy, I doubt that AE-ists would accept there can be any such thing as an academic subject called 'Economics" because too much of its field of study is chaotic. |
Mmmmm. Economics has been an academic subject pretty much since the days of Adam Smith. It doesn't conform to your model of monolithic academic discipline but then again, neither do other social sciences like Psychology. It is also riven by internal feuding between different schools, for example the cognitive and humanistic schools to name but two.
I'm perfectly prepared to discuss any aspect of Economics, it is after all, what I do in my day job. We are, however, getting away from the real question of the Dark Ages and the missing five hundred years. I am prepared to read Velikovsky but as you once said to me in connection with Oppenheimer's genetics, I've not got a spare two weeks so why don't you give me the abridged, 'bitesized', version to whet my appetite. I'm still enjoying John Michell.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Good grief, of course I believe there are Marxists in Economics Departments...the newer universities are positively groaning with them. It was quite evident that my experience was in Economics and only someone mired in Economics (with a capital E) could possibly think that Marxists and Classicists don't agree vastly more than they disagree. The fact that, pace Smith et al, there was no such thing as academic Economics when Marx was writing, makes his latter day disciples easy prey for any passing mildly leftist theorist.
And don't come over all endogenous with me, they all believe in the reality of the Trade Cycle (as it used to be called when we were in trade, darling). I don't.
All this is ditto for all the social sciences. Their inmates naturally think of themselves as wildly diverse but that just reflects the fact that the actual amount of verifiable data (verifiable significant data) is so startlingly thin in any of them. In other words they shouldn't be academic subjects either.
My comments about your reading Velikovsky were made precisely in the light of my previous remarks about reading Oppenheimer. I am telling you there is a difference. Oppenheimer is not epochal for me (he might be for orthodoxy) but Velikovsky would be for you. That is my opinion. But more importantly, I wouldn't enjoy reading O (and nowadays I can't read anything I don't enjoy), whereas you might enjoy V. Not that he is a particularly accessible stylist but he is...quirkily readable..
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