The mysterious language of the Picts

To Brennus,

"and their descendents still live there although they are considered Scottish today. "

I cannot believe you! and they've got eskimo surnames or they mixed with the local population?

"It is believed that a large part of Europe was occupied by peoples related to the Basques and the Lapps (Saami) before the Indo-European invasions from further east and north began c. 2000 B.C. A few ethnologists have suggested that some of the earliest modern inhabitants of the British islands were related to Arctic peoples like the Eskimo but certainly more research needs to be done".

That's very interesting. Have you more information? Where did you read that? So the Basques (or proto-Basques) were occupying the southern part of Europe whereas the Sami were in the northern part. That could explain the physical differences between southern European and northern Europeans.
mmmm...I'm afraid I'm doing some science-fiction archaelogy. Any professional archaelog or ethno-archaelog on Antimoon?

Re: Any professional archaelog or ethno-archaelog on Antimoon?

I have a hunch they don't talk on internet forums.

However, there was an article in the N.Y. Times four years ago by two American geneticists who did a study of genes in the Wales, Ireland and Scotland and found that there were indeed some Norse and Basque-like genes in the populations there as well as Celtic.

Luca Cavalli-Sforza says that genes of Lapplanders (Saami) most closely resemble the Greeks and Sardinians elsewhere in Europe. So, the dividing line in prehistoric Europe between Beaker (Basque, Iberian, Aquitanian, Etruscan etc) peoples and Lapp-(Saami-)like populations was probably more of an east-west division rather than a north-south one. Still, as I said before, more research needs to be done and I think it will be done too. Over the next 25 years, we will probably acquire at least as much knowledge about the human genome as we have over the past 25.

Hmmm maybe there is a connection between the Basques and the Neanderthals....since the Picts are related to the Basques, and the Basques are very unique in their makeup...maybe they are the descendants of neanderthals.

Marlboro,

Some anthropologists have speculated on Neanderthal descendants and Neanderthal genes in modern human populations right down to this day. However, I tend to doubt it myself believing that Neanderthals and early Homo Sapiens (c. 50,000 to 200,000 years ago) were already too far removed from each other to interbreed.

Even Carlton S. Coon, one of the most independent minded and least popular anthropologists ever to live doubted the existence of Neanderthal ancestry in any of the modern human populations. However, he did cite the Riffs in Northern Morocco as an example of a people a few scientists in the early 2Oth century thought were Neanderthal descendants. While this notion is balderdash in my view there is no doubt that the Riffs were some of the fiercest fighters in history as the Spanish Army found out during their colonial war against them in the 1920's.

there are two main theories:
-the neandethals were extermined by the homo sapiens
-they mixed with the homo sapiens, 5 or 6 years ago archaelogues found in Portugal a skeleton (of a child) who had both facial characteristics, as if he was a kind of "mestizo"