Angela
Elite member
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- Ethnic group
- Italian
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The first steppe-related migrations up the Danube and down the Rhine probably introduced western (centum) IE languages to Europe. Perhaps by the time the migrants reached the upper Rhine they were already speaking proto-Italo-Celtic. That assumes that the branches leading eventually to proto-Hellenic and proto-Germanic had already branched off somewhere along the Danube.
I suggest that in the upper Rhine, perhaps in the Black Forest area, there was a geographical separation between two branches of proto-Italo-Celtic. A south-western branch became proto-Italic, perhaps migrating down the Rhone valley and eventually into the Italian peninsula. A north-western branch continued to migrate down the Rhine to the mouth, by which time they were proto-Q-Celtic speakers who then migrated to Britain and Ireland, in association with the R-L21 Y haplogroup.
I think proto-P-Celtic developed later, perhaps in association with the Urnfield expansion. With the subsequent Hallstatt and La Tene cultures, P-Celtic languages may have replaced Q-Celtic languages everywhere except Ireland, which was protected by its isolation from continental Europe. That fits with R-L21 remaining most predominant in the west of Ireland, where it was least diluted by subsequent westward migrations.
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