Greetings Robert,
Very interesting stuff, indeed. As it turns out, my mother's maternal Santelices and paternal Onate sides are both Basque. Santelices being Basque was a recent discovery, whereas Onate is well known. About 20 years ago I visited Onate in the Basque region of Spain and was blown away as to the total separation they feel with Spain. They don't claim to be Spanish, they told my mother and myself on various occasions that we were not Spanish, but of the "pais Vasco". In the town of Onate, all public signs, announcements, TV, and radio are in Basque. Basque is totally different and not at all understandable from Spanish. Many words were extremely long and appeared like German! Though all the Basque spoke Spanish, they chose not to speak it amongst themselves, but were kind enough to converse with us in Spanish. The occasional Spanish words used in their conversation were those referring to the government or products from central Spain. I keep a Basque radio station on my c
omputer to listen to from time to time. Really unique! It was a terrific trip I'll never forget. Alice BB

--- gandalf3.1@netzero.com wrote:

From: El Peregrino
To: announce@lists.nuestrosranchos.org
Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] DNA Celtic and Spain
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:13:42 -0700 (PDT)

Good stuff Maureen, the Irish \ Iberian connection goes back even farther than that. Have you ever heard of the "Irish Book of Invasions" ? In it , the decendants of a mythical figure named "Mil Espanie" ( the Spanish Soldier) conquer and settle Ireland by way of Spain, they were the Gaels. Even the ancient names of the countries are similar "Iberia" and "Hibernia" . The Scots also have a similar myth in which their ancestors "dwelt among savage tribes in Spain" before coming to Scotland. Genetic evidence bears some of this out as the western Irish and some Spaniards \ Basques are identical in DNA. The connections have been going on for eons, as well as the connection between Wales and Cornwall and Spain. The Roman historian Tacitus said that the Silures, a tribe in what is now Wales, had " swarthy skin and dark curly hair" like the native Spaniards. Funny thing is that the ancient Irish, British and Welsh never referred to them selves as "Celts" in antiquity, not did the Ro
mans call them Celts, that was reserved for the Gauls and Galatians. The term Celt is a product of the 17th century when the people of the British Isles sought to differentiate them selves from one another. Early on it was a derogatory term used by Anglo\ Saxon peoples to seprate who they were from the Irish and Welsh. Barry Cunliffe wrote a wonderful book called " Facing the Ocean: the Atalantic and It's Peoples" where he delves into who the Celts actually were and who were not, but had what would be called a "Celtic Culture" in terms of liguistics and tools. I know the ancient Romans said that there was a Celtic presence in Spain, but even then there was so many different ethnic groups it's hard to say who really was Celtic. The Cantabrianss were thought to be Ligurians, then we have the shadowy Iberians in the south and east, we have the Lusitani in the far west who had a celtic culture, but were probably a mixture of Ibrians and early Indo Europeans, then the Basques w
ho no one can figure out, add to all that Phoenicians, Greeks, Celts, North Africans, Romans and we haven't even gotten to the Germanic tribes and all those the Moors brought along with them (Slavs,Persians,Syrians, Sub Saharan Africans).....what a melting pot !