I'm shocked at this information I've found. Everything I thought I knew about my ancestors has been turned upside down.
Here's what I did-
I decided to research my ancestors and see what their culture, religion, and language was like thousands of years ago. So I set off looking for information on my ancestors who came from two places; 1) The British Isles and 2) Southern Germany.
Here's what I found-
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1) Southern Germany was the heart of the Celtics until at least 275 BC-
The dark yellow is Celtic Tribes in the 6th Century BC and all the other colors are the Celtics in 275 BC.
( Read more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts )
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2) Germany had little influence by Germanic Tribes early on-
The picture shows in red the Germanic Tribes in 1,200BC.
The above picture shows the expansion of the Germanic tribes from 750 BC to 1AD.
( Read more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanics )
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3) The Celtics had MASSIVE influence-
This is absolutely incredible- and blew my mind. The Celtic tribes eventually spread from Southern Germany to most of...
- Spain ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtiberian_language)
- Austria and Slovenia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noric_language)
- France, Belgium, Western Germany and Switzerland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaulish_language)
- the entire British Isles
- small parts of Ukraine
-Northern Italy
- even parts of Turkey! ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatian_language )
Look back up at the first picture you can see the linguistic influence in each of those countries!
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After finding out all that I thought- well I'm sure I have many Germanic ancestors that migrated to the British Isles but then I found this...
4) How Germanic genetically is England-
Using DNA evidence, Sykes and Oppenheimer claim that even in the east of England, where there is the best evidence for migration, no more than 10% of paternal lines may be designated as coming from an "Anglo-Saxon" migration event.
(But then again I do recall reading that certain towns in Scotland have 50% Scandinavian paternal DNA lines. My opinion is, if only part of a country that speaks a Germanic Language is 10% genetically Germanic then I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same thing that happened to Southern Germany.)
This has turned everything I thought I knew about my ancestors upside down.
(I put this in the Germanic Heathery section because, Instead of just buying a book about Germanic mythology I also decided to grab one about Celtic mythology).
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