From: ian@mcclure.net   
      
   Alasdair wrote:   
   > On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:18:58 +0100, Féachadóir  wrote:   
   >   
   >> I suppose theoretically one could construct a theoretical pre-P/Q   
   >> split Celtic language, but what would be the point?   
   >   
   > Have you any idea when/why the split occurred?  Has any research been   
   > done on pre-split Celtic?   
   >   
   According to the modern "evolutionary" dating method using the rate of   
   changes in the language to find out how long ago they diverged, it has   
   been worked out that the ancestor of the Insular Celtic languages (that   
   is, all surviving ones) arrived/evolved in Ireland and Britain around   
   3,200 BC +/- 1,500 years (that is, between 4,700 BC to 1,700 BC or   
   between 6,700 to 3,700 years ago). Interestingly this approximate date   
   agrees nicely with the arrival of a sea-borne people from a cultural   
   complex of Atlantic fisherfolk/agriculturalists/graziers/traders of   
   Spain/Portugal/Brittany who build passage graves and complex stone   
   astronomical observatories/temples. Genetic evidence shows that this   
   group are by far dominant even today in Ireland and Britain (even in   
   Essex in England they are by far the dominant group).   
      
   To go with this evidence, the only example of a proto-Celtic language   
   that has been actually recorded in the historical record (that is,   
   written down on inscriptions) is Lusitanian in Portugal and Western   
   Spain. The Tartessian language of south-western Spain is also thought to   
   be proto-Celtic. It is thought that these proto-Celtic languages may   
   have been used also in north-west to northern Spain in the Gaelician   
   area. Due to the extremely close links demonstrated between Brittany and   
   this area of the Iberian peninsula at the Celtic-evolution time, it is   
   very possible that a proto-Celtic language was used in Brittany too. One   
   theory gaining credence on the back of all this evidence is that Celtic   
   evolved from the proto-Celtic introduced by the Atlantic   
   Epi-Mesolithic/Neolithic/Megalithic sea-farers in Ireland and spread to   
   Britain and then on to western continental Europe. There is abundant   
   evidence now for Basque influence and an Afro-Asiatic syntax in the   
   Celtic languages (and on to post-Norman conquest English via the rise of   
   the "commoners" English speech once the Anglo-Saxon ruling elite was   
   wiped out) which are now very difficult to refute given the excellent   
   and thorough "coal-face" research work and which makes other theories of   
   origin rather difficult to believe since they would involve rather   
   impossible distances of cultural influence.   
      
   All this also ties in nicely with the written down origin-myth oral   
   tradition of the Celtic peoples as embdodied in Irish and Welsh mythology.   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)