Could y-DNA haplogroup R1b possibly be described as "Celtic"?

[Cyningablod]

Yes, yes, I know that the mutation events that define haplogroup R1b arose 20K years before the Celts were the “Celts”. And yes, I know that for many, many reasons, a DNA haplogroup is not synonymous with nor reducible to any ethnic or national group. Still, when I read things like…

R1b is the most common haplogroup in Western Europe, reaching over 80% of the population in Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, western Wales, the Atlantic fringe of France and the Basque country.

source: http://www.eupedia.com/europe/origins_haplogroups_europe.shtml

…I notice that those areas of highest R1b population density are also the areas of strongest Celtic linguistic heritage: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Bretagne, and northern Spain!

Further, lending more at least initial plausibility to the R1b=“Celtic” hypothesis on historico-geographical-linguistic grounds, historical linguist Ruth Sanders writes in her book German: Biography of a Language, that…

Recent work in population genetics has has shown that large-scale population replacement of indigenous people by invaders is unlikely ever to have been the engine for language and cultural change in Europe […] For example, DNA studies on the English population suggest that Celtic bloodlines predominate today in most of Britain. […] These Germanic invasions, then, the Scandinavian and the Anglo-Saxon, did not wipe out the preexisting peoples of the British Isles, and the Germanic language that prevailed and became English did so through social rather than genetic means. (Sanders 2010: 59-60.)

In other words, the genetic population of Britain now is largely what it was during the Celtic era; the Angles, Jutes, Vikings, and Normans didn’t wipe out the existing Celtic populations.

So, based on 1) geographic distribution similarities and 2) these genetic studies cited above, might it be likely that there is some dovetailing between R1b populations of the past 3,000 years, and the Celts?

I’m intrigued. And puzzled. What say you?

[hibernicus]

The thing is, the Celts did not wipe out the pre-existing populations of the British Isles either. And as you know, the Basques are not Celts.

My information may not be bang up-to-date, but my (possibly imperfect) understanding is that there was no great migration of Celts that displaced the peoples of Britain and Ireland, but that the Celtic languages and culture spread through the existing populations. If this is correct, the haplogroup that you refer to would predate the arrival of Celtic language and cuture in these regions, and be characteristic of the pre-Celtic inhabitants of the western parts of Europe.

[Dr.Drake]

You can’t look for Celticity in genetics, because as Celtic is defined it’s either linguistic or cultural or archaeological or some combination, not biology.

I do think that a similar phenomenon is the root of both the persistence of this genetic marker and the Celtic languages, which is their position at the periphery of a continent. So in that sense there might be some overlap. If you have this marker, you’re likely descended from the peoples who were at the edges of Western Europe, who were Celtic speakers for a significant chunk of time. However, since Celtic speakers were also found in Italy and Turkey and other places, I can’t see the argument that this marker was somehow coterminous with the Celtic culture area in ancient times.

[septimus]

@Cyningablod

… I know that the mutation events that define haplogroup R1b arose 20K years before the Celts were the “Celts”…
So … might it be likely that there is some dovetailing between R1b populations of the past 3,000 years, and the Celts?

I’m intrigued. And puzzled. What say you?

I am also intrigued and puzzled. Though lacking any relevant expertise, I’ve read some of the papers and discusssions; I find the subject area fascinating.

Some comments:

(1) Some date R1b to 16k BC, “only” 14 or 15k years before “the Celts were the Celts.”
(2) That’s for R1b. The haplogroup that dominates Western Europe is specifically R1b1b2 (M269), which incorporates 11 SNP’s beyond those of R1b. This means it’s much more recent. There seems to be a growing consensus to date R1b expansion in Europe to the Copper Age, later than the arrival of agriculture and much later than the Paleolithic repopulation of 10k BC to which this haplogroup was once dated. The Isogg site states “R1b1b2 is estimated to have arisen approximately 4,000 to 8,000 years ago in southwest Asia and to have spread into Europe from there.”
(3) Since, as others state, there’s no evidence of major population replacement, and since R1b1b2 is particularly strong among the Basques, it does seem bizarre that the pure-male line of Western Europe could have been almost completely replaced so recently; yet that is what experts believe the Y-chromosome studies suggest. Associating it directly with Celtic may be an over-simplification, but the Y-chromosome expansion in Western Europe does appear to be roughly contemporaneous with that of the Indo-European languages.

As I suggest, I find this all counter-intuitive and tend to be sceptical. One specific piece of evidence that may reduce one’s skepticism is that the two LBK skeletons (dated 5k BC) whose Y-dna is known were not in haplogroup R, but rather G and F*, both rarish in today’s Europe.