Ancient Celts (Fair Use)
Ancient Celts, British-Israelism and Me
By Scout the Gael
I am a conundrum for British-Israelism. I recently got a result from a genetic testing service indicating my haplogroup down to the subclade. Like most people in Western Europe, I am R1b-M269 but that is a summary label. My ancestry follows a certain branch of the R1b tree. So, my full label or haplogroup is R1b1a2a1a2c1f2c1a. Judging from how little history there is about this haplogroup, it must not be very common. Or its members are unspectacular. But the testing service did mention this. A 4,000-year-old burial was excavated in Longniddry, East Lothian, Scotland of a man with this same haplogroup. To geneticists he is known as Gen Scot 22. And he lived back in Bronze Age Britain.
This was, of course, a long time ago. But I feel a connection to him because my haplogroup is a little uncommon. The testing service stated only 1 in 259 people they have evaluated has this haplogroup. And I like Scotland, I have visited there, and by family tradition my father’s family is Scottish. So, nothing disturbing there. And I could actually fit into the crowd shown in the picture above – but with short hair and a ball-cap. But it is significant that my Celtic ancestors were well-established in Scotland at the time of Abraham. And who knows when that haplogroup came into existence. It could have been thousands of years earlier than Gen Scot 22. These mutations are infrequent.
I read somewhere and now cannot find it that the ancient Jews knew about the Celts and did not like them. The Jews mentioned nothing about them being descendants of Israel. They just felt that they were disgusting. This was because the Ancient Celts had no institution of marriage. They copulated freely and the children born of these random unions were raised by the whole tribe. This is a genealogist’s nightmare, if genealogy could reach back that far. No marriage records. No birth records. And the Jews regarded this whole Haight-Ashbury lifestyle degenerate and disgraceful. How does that fit into Riverdance?
I am not sure being a Celt is such a good deal. I connected with a Ph.D. in genetics at a New Zealand University some years back. I wanted to know if my haplogroup was at the center of the Celtic Nation or at the periphery. A little vain, really. He said I was at the nucleus of the Celtic Nation but found the question odd. He stated that most people don’t want to be known as Celtic. It made me feel like White trash or a soccer rioter. But I think he was an English guy or as we Gaels say, a Sassenach (Saxon). For Celts to be labeled the Chosen People could give them a lift although that would be cruelly teasing someone with false hope.
The question is not how did Tea Tephi get to Ireland, the answer to which was always a little too facile for anyone to believe, but how could Scout’s “Israelite” ancestors be in Scotland before any migrations out of the ancient Israel might have happened. That observation can generate a lot of dissonance but you know how the dissonance reducers operate. They would say that the dating system is invalid. Or, these were descendants of other pre-Abrahamic Hebrews. Or I am lying about my results. Conspiracy always finds a way among those who love it. Or as Jesus said, “But wisdom is justified of all her children.”
I enjoy being an incarnate conundrum for British-Israelism. Before Abraham, my people were. So how could we be his descendants? My ancestors were totally Gentile but are now regarded by a few off-beat White Nationalists and religious denominations as Israelites. It’s time for the off-beat types to get a life.
Scout
/ lanisafrederick
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