# most common eye color among n american caucasians **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 23, 2005, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150 "2005-05-23T20:05:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/41 "2005-05-25T06:45:15Z")
Um, I meant to link this [article](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3227339.stm) about the mummy as well. My point being that they do have proof that there was travel across the Alps at different points, both in time and place. Here is the [site](http://www.archaeologiemuseum.it/index_f.html) about it, for those who are interested in such things. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/42 "2005-05-25T07:16:53Z")
> [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > I’m unable to find the exact article I’d read on this subject, but I did find quite a few others. This Wikipedia [article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_language) isn’t nearly as in depth as what I’d read, but it shows how the linguists found the Germanic roots(way back) in the “Scots” language. (I’d understood that they had found similar links in Welsh, but may have misremembered) Scots is assuredly Germanic. You would know that if you heard it, however, as its closest linguistic relative is English. It is sometimes classified as just a dialect of English, though I personally consider it a separate language. While it is a language spoken by Celts, it’s definitely not a Celtic language. Languages form family trees, albeit rough (and with a certain fuzziness when you get to the tips of the branches - it’s hard to classify closely related languages/dialects with respect to each other.) There are not secret hidden roots to any language in the Indo-European family. The Celtic language that’s spoken in Scotland, Scottish Gaelic (or just Gaelic, at least to the Scottish) is part of a well-illustrated family tree of Celtic languages. While questions _do_ exist and alternate theories are out there, you don’t just some how dig into a language and reconstruct a long history for it. It’s a stepwise process, and you couldn’t discover some long-forgotten history to one of the languages in the Celtic branch without having to revise the history of the entire branch. Minor changes can and will occur with our classifications, but a major one like discovering one particular language (say Welsh to use your example) comes not from Proto-Celtic but from Proto-Germanic is simply not going to happen. Welsh exists as part of a set of languages whose interrelations have been fleshed out, with prior forms reconstructed, and so on. But once again - Scots is not a Celtic language. It evolved from the Northumbrian dialect of Old English - meaning the split from English was only roughly a thousand years back. > [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > [Some](http://www.american.edu/TED/iceman.htm) believe this mummy is evidence that people had trade routes across the Alps over five thousand years ago. (Which is about how far back they placed the proto-Germanic roots.) Not the most recent article on this mummy btw, [here](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1458198.stm) is another. Why would anyone doubt that people ever crossed the Alps? They’re a big mountain range. They’d be in the way if you were journeying across Europe. > [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > [This](http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8319/Gaelic.html), is what I was thinking of when I stated the Celtic language has “Germanic” roots, I mistook there, it’s proto-Germanic I believe. I’m not sure what you mean. I can only find two references to “Germanic” in the article, and neither describes the Germanic languages as being related in any way to the Celtic languages (beyond what’s already known - they are of course both branches off the Indo-European tree.) It’s not inconceivable that there is some affiliation between two old branches in the family, but it’s something that has been well-studied for the most part, and to my knowledge there’s not any significant speculation of a link between them. In contrast, the Celtic-Italic hypothesis (since disproved) that I mentioned a few posts back arose because of similarities between those two branches _as opposed_ to the Germanic branch, which seemed significant simply because they are populations thought to have occupied similar areas. There are striking differences between the Germanic languages and the other nearby branches that suggest it is more separate from PIE than most of the others, and thus particularly _un_like the Celtic languages. There’s a huge number of words shared across the Germanic languages whose origin is unknown - they seem to be completely absent in the other IE languages (though recent evidence shows that “wife” may be related to a Tocharian word, which would prove an Indo-European origin for the word. This is actually exciting and new, although it sheds disturbing light on ancient peoples’ conceptions of women. The Tocharian term meant “vulva” and apparently had negative connotations - my guess from reading between the lines of articles about it is that it probably was the Tocharian word for “cunt”. I don’t wish to speculate on the possible implications of the etymology.) The existence of a non-IE substrate in Germanic is not proven, but there’s a lot of evidence to suggest it. At any rate, this large number of words that can’t be found in other IE languages suggests at least that Germanic may be a more distinct branch. > [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > **Excalibre** , my comments about the Picts and “Dark Irish” were seperate, twofold. The Picts were described as short, with dark hair and dark eyes, and today there is what is called the “dark Irish” or “dark Celt”, which means dark hair at the least, if not also dark eyes. Ok, I’m sorry, I was confused there. The “Dark Irish” or “Dark Celt” is just a phrase in reference to Celtic people with dark hair and pale skin, correct? Anyway, again, to my knowledge the ancestry of the Picts is not well-proven. They may not have been Celts and they may not be a significant portion of the ancestry of modern Celtic people. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Cat\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Jones)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/43 "2005-05-25T08:15:28Z")
> [@](#): > > I always thought that the Celtic languages were rather close to Latin, although I’d be interested in more information. I apologise for continuing the hijack but I’d just like to add to what has already been said by **Cerowyn** and **Excalibre** - the Welsh had much closer contact with the Romans than either the Scots or the Irish and there are words in Welsh which have a clear Latin root - but these were adopted _ **into** _ an already exsisting language to describe ‘new’ ideas or technology in the same way that ‘English’ words are used in many languages today. church - eglwys (same root as the French église and English ecclesiastical) book - llyfr (French livre, Italian libro) dangerous - peryglus (Italian perigloso) a plough (plow) - aradr (Italian - aratro) sad - trist (French triste, Italian triste) window - ffenest (French fenêtre, Italian finestra) I can imagine that at some point in the 18th or 19th centuries someone might have pointed to this as evidence that Welsh was a Latin language but that would be like saying that French is descended from English because they use words like ‘le weekend’ ‘sur l’internet’ or ‘Il m’a forwardé le mail’. ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/44 "2005-05-25T12:06:38Z")
**Excalibre** the ancient Scandinavian language is considered Germanic, isn’t it? That page points out that Ireland was settled by people who came from Scandinavia through England. Some of the languages spoken in Celtic lands had, if not proto Germanic origins, at least influences, what is termed “roots” when speaking of how the word came about. The whole point I was making, back in post number 18, is that what is known as the Celtic peoples had a great deal of intermingling, both by trade routes, and by intermarriage, so saying “the Celts have blond or red hair and blue eyes” isn’t accurate, especially if you count the Picts as being Celtic. (I don’t know if they are thought of as such by scholars or not, it’s something I’m going to look up later on my own.) At points, the Celts were [spread out](http://www.celticgrounds.com/chapters/appendix/celtic_tribes.htm) to France, and even Germany. They also had tribes in [Switzerland](http://www.unrv.com/fall-republic/helvetii.php) and [Turkey](http://www.ancienttimes.net/cgi-ancienttimes/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=47&topic=4). My point being that those we know as “Celts” were widely influenced throughout their history, and intermingled freely with the people they met while influencing them at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/45 "2005-05-25T12:42:46Z")
> [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > **Excalibre** the ancient Scandinavian language is considered Germanic, isn’t it? I guess that would depend on which ancient Scandinavian language you’re talking about. Archaeology’s not my strong point, and I don’t know anything about successive waves of migration through that region. > [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > That page points out that Ireland was settled by people who came from Scandinavia through England. Some of the languages spoken in Celtic lands had, if not proto Germanic origins, at least influences, what is termed “roots” when speaking of how the word came about. I’m not arguing that there was no contact between various Celtic and Germanic tribes back in the day, just that there’s no evidence that I’ve ever heard of any Germanic imprint upon the Celtic languages. Like I said, if anything the Germanic languages are remarkably _un_like the other western IE languages, including the Celtic languages. If Celts came to Britain and Ireland through Scandinavia, though, they were Celts and speaking the Celtic languages that their descendents still speak (as a linguistic minority) today. Their languages are very distinct from Germanic ones - consonant mutation and inflecting of prepositions are not traits shared by the Germanic languages. Interestingly, though, modern French (in France at least) lacks words for seventy, eighty, and ninety, even though they existed in older forms of French and in Latin. French uses, instead, “sixty-ten”, “four-twenties”, and “four-twenties-ten”, which are thought to have very likely developed from the typical Celtic trait of counting by twenties - a survival (along with a good number of French words) of the pre-Roman Celtic inhabitants of France. The Latin-derived words still exist elsewhere in the French-speaking world. > [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > The whole point I was making, back in post number 18, is that what is known as the Celtic peoples had a great deal of intermingling, both by trade routes, and by intermarriage, so saying “the Celts have blond or red hair and blue eyes” isn’t accurate, especially if you count the Picts as being Celtic. (I don’t know if they are thought of as such by scholars or not, it’s something I’m going to look up later on my own.) At points, the Celts were [spread out](http://www.celticgrounds.com/chapters/appendix/celtic_tribes.htm) to France, and even Germany. They also had tribes in [Switzerland](http://www.unrv.com/fall-republic/helvetii.php) and [Turkey](http://www.ancienttimes.net/cgi-ancienttimes/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=47&topic=4). My point being that those we know as “Celts” were widely influenced throughout their history, and intermingled freely with the people they met while influencing them at the same time. Indeed the Celts were widespread and no doubt genetically heterogeneous. It’s always seemed strange to me that places like Ireland and Scotland are thought of as particularly Celtic when in actuality, they were the backwater of Celtic culture, and it’s only survived there because few other groups have since settled and erased their cultural markings the way they have in most of the rest of Europe. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/46 "2005-05-25T16:32:19Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Interestingly, though, modern French (in France at least) lacks words for seventy, eighty, and ninety, even though they existed in older forms of French and in Latin. French uses, instead, “sixty-ten”, “four-twenties”, and “four-twenties-ten”, which are thought to have very likely developed from the typical Celtic trait of counting by twenties - a survival (along with a good number of French words) of the pre-Roman Celtic inhabitants of France. The Latin-derived words still exist elsewhere in the French-speaking world Strange synchronity - I posted in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=317927) a few hours ago that remnants of base-20 exist in English ---
**Author:** ![mark\_tween](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@mark\_tween](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mark_tween)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/47 "2005-05-26T18:00:44Z")
> [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > **Excalibre** the ancient Scandinavian language is considered Germanic, isn’t it? That page points out that Ireland was settled by people who came from Scandinavia through England. Some of the languages spoken in Celtic lands had, if not proto Germanic origins, at least influences, what is termed “roots” when speaking of how the word came about. The whole point I was making, back in post number 18, is that what is known as the Celtic peoples had a great deal of intermingling, both by trade routes, and by intermarriage, so saying “the Celts have blond or red hair and blue eyes” isn’t accurate, especially if you count the Picts as being Celtic. (I don’t know if they are thought of as such by scholars or not, it’s something I’m going to look up later on my own.) At points, the Celts were [spread out](http://www.celticgrounds.com/chapters/appendix/celtic_tribes.htm) to France, and even Germany. They also had tribes in [Switzerland](http://www.unrv.com/fall-republic/helvetii.php) and [Turkey](http://www.ancienttimes.net/cgi-ancienttimes/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=47&topic=4). My point being that those we know as “Celts” were widely influenced throughout their history, and intermingled freely with the people they met while influencing them at the same time. Yeah, but at that particular point in time, they were mostly redheads. Now i’ve heard it was one of their rivals, the saxons, that had either blond or dark hair, suggesting they had intermingled. Also, I did a little rehashing on celts, and they weren’t an ‘empire’ in the same sense of the roman empire was, under one rurler. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/48 "2005-05-26T18:59:38Z")
> [@mark tween](#): > > Hmmm…interesting. I’m surprised that germans are the largest. I’ve heard that germans have asian genes and even share some physical features. Possibly harbored in their genome from the major invasions of southern Germany by tribes from Asia such as the Huns and Mongol hordes which invaded Europe at various times during the period of 1600-700 years ago. The Huns and the Mongol hordes were not ethnically uniform. They included Slavs and Turks. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/49 "2005-05-26T19:04:47Z")
> [@mark tween](#): > > interesting, I remember it was because of the romans and the and other rival barbarian invaders. It could be that ‘Gaul’ was probably just a reference to all lands not within the roman empire., and it just lumped celts and other groups together as ‘gauls.’ Some degree of confusion is caused by the differences between the terms “Gaul/Celt” and “German” as used today and as used by the Romans. To the Romans, anyone east of the Rhine was a Celt and anyone to the west was a German. Today, we define those terms by language groups rather than by geography. People the Romans would have called Gauls or Germans today might be considered the other. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2005, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/50 "2005-05-26T19:07:07Z")
> [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > but it shows how the linguists found the Germanic roots(way back) in the “Scots” language. This might be a source of confusion. “Scots” is not a Celtic language. It is a Germanic language akin to English. Some consider it a dialect of English. Robert Burns wrote in Scots (also called “Lallans”). The Celtic language spoken in Scotland is Scottish Gaelic or Erse. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150.md?page=2)