 Wel, dyna dwi'n meddwl i'r gwahanol iawn, mae'n ddim yn ystod y maesol am ddanyl o'r ffordd a'r ffordd. Mae'n ddysgu'n eich ffordd oedd y fanolwyr atlantig. A'r ddechrau fiforol y ffordd o'r ddysgwyr yng Nghymru. A dyna dwi'n meddwl i'r ffordd i'w ceisio. Dwi'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'r speciall about the distribution or the origins of the distribution of the Celtic languages. In this paper I'd like to explore alternative models for the distribution of the P-Celtic or Bretonic languages. These languages comprise Welsh, Cumbric in Cumbria, Cornish, Conoac and Breton and are known to have been spoken in the historic and modern periods in Wales, Cumbria, Cornwall and Brittany. The P-Celtic or Bretonic languages are related but different to the Q-Celtic or Goedellic languages spoken in Ireland and Western Scotland. So this was the fairly recent distribution of those and we have basically the P-Celtic and Q-Celtic groups. I'm just going to be talking about that lower oval, the Welsh Cornish and Breton. The prevailing view is to the origin of these languages is that they were brought to southern Britain by Celtic invaders in the 1st millennium BC and that these Celts were swept aside to the west by Anglo-Saxon invaders in the post-Roman period. In fact many Celts still celebrate the fact that they were the original settlers of Britain and it was these nasty Anglo-Saxons who arrived and pushed them to one side and they arrived to Cornwall, to Wales and south to Brittany and many scholars still believe that in Brittany that they originally came from Britain. As I outlined in my previous paper the evidence from place names suggests that eastern Britain was already populated by speakers of a British Germanic language as I call it, British Germanic in the 1st millennium BC and probably much earlier in fact I think it's before 2,500 BC and possibly late Paleolithic. The idea of Celts living in Britain first proposed in the 16th century by Buchanan, Llywod and others, so that's the origin by Edward Llywod and others, has already been discredited by recent authors such as Collis and James. No ancient texts ever referred to Celts in Britain. I shall avoid the use of the word Celts in this presentation except when discussing linguistics where this group of languages has been known as Celtics since Edward Llywod named it so in 1607. So how else can we explain the distribution of the Britonic or Peaceltic languages? Can we suggest an origin in Wales and a migration at some point to Cornwall and then Brittany? Or an origin in Cornwall and migration north to Wales and south to Brittany? Or an origin in Brittany and a movement to Cornwall and Wales? And how did they get to this Atlantic region in the 1st place having split from other Indo-European speaking groups? Conlyff and Koch have sought an origin in the early Bronze Age for speakers of Celtic languages moving north from Iberia into Ireland and Britain. Their hypothesis accords with the Corgan hypothesis and is based largely on the evidence of material culture, namely the Belbika tradition, but also some DNA support. In their view the Celtic languages probably evolved from Indo-European in Atlantic Europe during the Bronze Age. I'd like to offer an alternative view based on the historic geography of the Peaceltic languages. On the record of sea level change revealed by recent research and on suggestions that the Indo-European languages have much earlier origins in the Upper Paleolithic. Sorry that's Conlyff and Koch. At the last glacial maximum between 23,000 and 19,000 years ago Britain was part of the European continental landmass and sea level was up to 100 metres lower than it is today. The Rhine was Europe's largest river turning south in the Netherlands, joined by the Thames, Sen, Tema and other rivers and issuing into the Atlantic to the south of Ireland. We know this as the Channel River although I think it's technically the Rhine but there you go. At this time the river was too cold for most likes so I understand but that may not be true. But as its waters met the Atlantic and the warm waters of the Gulf Stream its mineral nutrients, chiefly iron, phosphorus and nitrogen from half of Europe's catchments would have created an extraordinary bloom of marine life, microalgae or phytoplankton which would have prospered within its estuary and surrounding sea waters. Phytoplankton are at the base of the marine food chain and play a major role in sustaining ocean ecosystems. They thrive at high altitudes and in spring and summer in strong sunlight and calm seas and can create large blooms which are visible from space. They tend to occur where rivers issue nutrients to the sea or where ocean currents meet the continental shelf and nutrients are brought to the surface by a process known as upwelling. Here where the Channel River met the Atlantic Ocean the nutrient rich waters will have collided with the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. This would have been one of the richest areas for marine life in Europe and may well have been exploited by paleolithic groups. While that landscape might still be the tundra that we would expect in the early glacial period we can expect an extraordinary marine and coastal fauna. The typical fauna arising from the rich plankton bloom would include cod, seals, dolphin and whale. With the literal fauna would include a variety of shellfish and wildfowl. As the climate warmed during the Holocene and the Lake Glacier the sea level rose but the estuary of the Channel River remained a wildlife haven and a bountiful larder for the communities that would have lived there. By, I think, this is disputable, but by about 13,000 BP the sea level was still low enough for the Ars of Sili to be still part of the mainland. Sili became an island by 10,500 years ago. You will have already guessed what I'm going to propose. The speakers of Peaceltic were the early inhabitants of this refugium in the Upper Paleolithic and possibly soon after the late glacial maximum. But certainly before the time that sea level had risen sufficiently to separate the group into three communities, the Welsh, the Cornish and the Breton. You notice I use the word refugium. It is possible that there was a refugium of modern humans here before the last glacial maximum. We certainly have evidence for Upper Paleolithic groups of circa 25,000 BP living in South West Britain and in North West France and even in the Channel Islands. But we do not yet have clear evidence of human presence in Britain between 22 and 13 at the last glacial maximum. What is more likely, I think, is that this zone was occupied some time after the last glacial maximum either during the period 14.7 or 11.5,000 years ago, warming phases on either side of the Younger Dryas. Having talked to Pear just now, I'm rather inclined to go to that earlier phase before the Younger Dryas. We can't be certain. It's certainly around there somewhere. By 11.5,000 years ago, the Channel was sufficiently inundated for Sili to become an island and in the ensuing four millennia had separated into the archipelago we know today. There is some support for the idea of an Atlantic colonisation from an Iberian refugium after the glacial maximum in the studies of phylogenetics. As well as their linguistic affiliations, these groups on the Atlantic periphery share some genetic traits as identified by Peter Forster and his colleagues. Studies of the mitochondrial DNA of small mammals found that a number of them, having specific mitochondrial DNA lineages that colonise Britain after the last glacial maximum, have peripheral western northern distributions with striking similarities to that of people speaking Celtic languages. Basically, in that postglacial period, you've got two movements of flora and fauna into Britain. I'm suggesting that humans are following that. They actually populate Britain in, I often call it two stripes, but the Atlantic one is coming up from Spain, and the continental Europe one is coming across the Lles and across Dogaland and into Britain. This was actually an idea that was given to me some years ago by a geneticist who was studying Natojack Toes, Buffo Calamita, who said that actually a lot of flora and fauna in Britain actually follows that pattern, a western east distribution. Actually, it was back in the 1880s that John Beddo, a doctor, was looking at the phenotypes of humans across Britain and identified darker people in the western, lighter people in the east. He was the one that suggested actually, if we've got these human phenotypes in Britain, why shouldn't that be the same? There'd be the same cause for that as for the flora and fauna in two stripes. I'm inclined to think that the western one, the Celtic one, is arriving actually sooner. They aren't arriving at the same time. I think because of the particular nature of the Gulfstream and the nutrients and all of that, I think that it's somewhere around before or after the younger dryers that these Celtic speakers are arriving from Spain, living there for hundreds of years and eventually separated. Actually, I think the Germanic group are probably arriving a little later, perhaps as late as 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, but that's, don't quote me. So, how do we test this model? This is just speculation. Firstly, we need more evidence for the Breton languages present in Brittany in prehistory, probably through place name studies. My initial views of place names in Brittany is that they're very much separate from the Cornish ones. They're the same language, but they're different in character. And also for Cornwall and for Wales. To take one example, the profile of Breton place names is substantially different from that in Cornwall. For example, Caer predominates, and Treff and Bod names are rare in comparison, implying an early separation of the linguistic groups. Secondly, we need more studies that show how the Indo-European languages would have evolved in early prehistory, as has been shown by the papers from my colleagues in this session. The implications of an Atlantic refuge for P. Celtic in the postglacial are profound for the study of Indo-European languages. If the evolutionary linguistic path of Indo-European is to be believed that P. Celtic evolves from a higher up Indo-European group, then that group should be even earlier in origin. Should we be looking to identify glacial refugium at the last glacial maximum in southern Europe that spoke a proto-Celtic language, perhaps? Of course it would mean that the Indo-European languages would have an origin in the Upper Paleolithic. Perhaps as early as Marcel has suggested as 40,000 years ago, when Europe was first populated from Western Asia or Africa, if that is indeed where homo sapiens evolved. Thank you.