Geneticists can indeed identify several distinct European lineages and determine which one an individual "mostly" belongs to. This includes several separate Germanic ones and more than one apiece that are considered primarily Italic, Helenic, Celtic, and such. But they're based on groups of multiple signature genes apiece, so it's possible to possess more than one such gene or group of genes, or at least fragments of more than one. Generally, when you test people from the same village, you find that they mostly have common ancestry with each other and perhaps with certain other nearby villages but not with another village a hundred miles away... although they will have some common ancestry with the village a hundred miles away, it won't be as much, and genes that are primarily identified with one of them will be less common in the other.

So, yes, the big language divisions do correspond to separate populations of people, but no, those groups' separateness was not 100% complete. That doesn't make a "Celtic people" as defined by ancestry a "myth". It just means that the Celts have mixed with others to some extent since the original separation. So today, even people whose ancestry is mostly Celtic probably also have some non-Celtic ancestors as well... which doesn't change the fact that most of their genes came from actual genetic Celts.

BTW, in some cultures, the definition of what group you belong to is cultural rather than ancestral anyway; if you were born in Germany but acted Roman, then you were a Roman; if you had Shawnee parents but somehow ended up living among the Sioux as the Sioux lived, then you were a Sioux. And if you reproduced among your adopted people, your genes would then contribute a small amount of "outside" genes into that population's gene pool, which is a phenomenon called "introgression". But it still doesn't mean that there aren't and weren't ever any genetic or ancestral distinctions between Germans and Romans or between Shawnee and Sioux at all; it just means they diverged but then spilled over their borders a bit. It's not a choice of all or nothing.

I have difficulty believing people instituted calendars in order to know when to start farming.

How long had humans been farming before the first calendars?

I don't think stonehenge had anything to do with agriculture originally, nor do I think it originated as a "royal cemetary."

IIRC, most known "henges" are simply observatories, focused on the precession of equinoxes, or "Age of..."

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Calendars are important for many reasons, so it might not just be "when to plant".

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Stone circles, etc, are actually pretty rare in henges. A henge is just a roughly round or oval flat area enclosed within an earthwork - usually a bank and/or ditch.

Ritual? Almost certainly. Observatories? Not neccessarily.

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Right, calendars for the most part are utilized for religious observances. The earliest calendars were tied in to the worship of this or that particular deitiy, or "god."

The Nippur calendar is an example which remains extant today as the Jewish calendar.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

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From my reading it seems almost certain most henges were ritualistically tied to astronomical observances.

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Even the ones which, for example, contain a single chambered cairn? Or post holes suggestive of containing one or more roundhouses? Or, in fact, apparently containing nothing at all?

Edit - by "single chambered cairn" I mean one example of a chambered cairn, not a cairn with only one chamber.

Edit again - see, for example, this henge, which I revisited last week.

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Exactly what can you observe from Stonehenge that you couldn't observe without the rocks?

Other than any alignments with the rocks, or the appearance of the Sun/Moon between pairs of stones, etc - nothing. I'm not saying that's what it's for, just that by the nature of their very presence, the stones must be significant in some way. There's a lot of man-hours invested in that construction!

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Having an alignment in a stone circle does not imply it was an observatory. Certainly, observations would have been made before the circle was erected, in order to acheive the alignment(s). Once erected, we don't know what activities went on.

But it seems that very early in Stonehenge's history, they started burying people there; this doesn't mean that the circle was built as a cemetery.

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I don't know if either of those points is directed at me or not, but you certainly don't have to tell me either of those things. I've spent years studying sites like that, and years arguing against the significance of any alignments.

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I was really trying to address A DIM's comments, about the use of stone circles as observatories. The idea of an observatory is as valid as any other, but all we have evidence for is the existence of the alignment(s) themselves, and the existence of the cemetery. We don't know what use the circles were intended for, and we don't know how they were used, except now it appears they were used for inhumations at least part of the time.

Speculation on the meanings and use of ancient structures is interesting, but the evidence itself is much more important than the speculations.

Interesting to see Sheffield archaeologists involved in this work; I used to know lots of people from that department, and married one. But I'm talking about thirty years ago now; practically the Stone age.

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what if the builders just got a good deal on the stone, and wanted to use it for something.. so they decided to align it with the winter solstice or whatever just to get stone age hippies to travel from far and wide to spend their money there?
you know- a stone age tourist trap- similar to the Black Hills of South Dakota, with a series of other things to see while in the area. Stone Henge would have been the equivalent to Mt Rushmore.

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And exactly what are those? I thought I saw a short list of them once, but then later one I saw a TV show about Stonehenge which gave just one and then said that, contrary to popular myth, that was the ONLY confirmed celestial alignment in the thing. But that was at least a decade ago and more likely two to two and a half, and I've never since then heard anyone specify what alignments exist or claim that they don't. People seem to have just quit talking about it except to just vaguely say that there are some, without a list of them or even how many there are.

I couldn't say for sure, no.
I should've refrained from using "almost certain" in my statement.

I agree such sites as you point out were probably just ritualistic in some way since they don't appear to be defensive structures.
Astronomy and ritual are suggested as the original purposes for these henges (though there are different classes) as burials are found in or near but a few, and apparently only after the fact as a "reuse."

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

I'm interested to know your take on scholars like Sir Norman Lockyer, Sir Fred Hoyle, Cecil Newham, Gerald Hawkins whose works on Stonehenge seem to establish meaning and relevance to the various alignments.

What do you make of the rearrangements and apparent realignment of its axis from Stonehenge I to Stonehenge III?

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I posted. It is not here. I am confused. I will repost.

Well, of course! That would be a "single-chambered cairn."

Second, and not directed at you, didn't the Egyptian calendar pretty much just have three seasons, all tied to the flooding of the Nile and therefore vital to agriculture? And hasn't the calendar-making of most cultures of the last few thousand years spent most of its time aligning itself to the seasons? Yes, rituals were part of it, but I hazard they were less important than planting times.

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I don't really need a calender. When the days grow longer, I plant. When it's really hot I harvest and prepare to plant again for when the days grow shorter.

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