MaC
Moderator
Today is a sore day, so it's (thankfully) a stay at peace day, don't make anything sorer day. I get bored though, and the internet is available.
I was looking for of all things a definition of skin tones....I'm playing with making rag dolls to go with teh wee quilts I make for Linus....and I ended up on Quora.
Not quite sure what to make of Quora, but I laughed at some of the questions and assumptions that folks elsewhere in the world make about Scots.
I like the answers from the natives
Like this one....
Question.
"What percent of Scotland's population is ethnically Scottish?"
Answer
Ok, so it's time for a brief lesson in Scottish.
This begins millennia before the Romans showed up and introduced the concept of recording history down south, a game we didn't join in with for centuries thereafter. I'm talking probably about seven to ten thousand years ago: a bunch of neolithic hunter-gatherer types followed the retreating ice sheet north into what's now Scotland.
Shortly thereafter some other bunch of neolithic hunter-gatherer types moved in next door and started trying to chat up the first lot's sisters. Another lot introduced this neat new idea called farming. Some absolute nutter from what's now Orkney invented stone circles; someone else worked out how to set a fire hot enough to make rock run like wax; some other nutter presumably also from up north decided to find out how tall it is possible for a drystone wall to be, with a result called a broch.
Rinse and repeat continuously for somewhere between seven and ten thousand years complete with the intermittent outbreaks of mad science, change which bunch is in charge half a dozen times in the process, add barking mad Vikings and weapons-grade music, and you get Scotland.
We've been doing that melting pot thing since the very moment there was anything here but ice, we never stopped, we're very very good via millenia of experience at getting people to want to integrate, and any attempt to attach an ethnicity to a bunch of complete and utter mongrels like us lot is a total waste of time.
Scottish is not a set of genetics; ‘generic northern european mutt' doesn't make the grade and ffs I've met approximately Chinese folks who speak English with a pronounced Gaelic-influence accent and have never been south of Drumochter and by extension have a better claim to Scottish than every Yank ever to declare themselves SKAWTCH put together; Scottish is where you're born and a specific form of mad.
I was looking for of all things a definition of skin tones....I'm playing with making rag dolls to go with teh wee quilts I make for Linus....and I ended up on Quora.
Not quite sure what to make of Quora, but I laughed at some of the questions and assumptions that folks elsewhere in the world make about Scots.
I like the answers from the natives
Like this one....
Question.
"What percent of Scotland's population is ethnically Scottish?"
Answer
Ok, so it's time for a brief lesson in Scottish.
This begins millennia before the Romans showed up and introduced the concept of recording history down south, a game we didn't join in with for centuries thereafter. I'm talking probably about seven to ten thousand years ago: a bunch of neolithic hunter-gatherer types followed the retreating ice sheet north into what's now Scotland.
Shortly thereafter some other bunch of neolithic hunter-gatherer types moved in next door and started trying to chat up the first lot's sisters. Another lot introduced this neat new idea called farming. Some absolute nutter from what's now Orkney invented stone circles; someone else worked out how to set a fire hot enough to make rock run like wax; some other nutter presumably also from up north decided to find out how tall it is possible for a drystone wall to be, with a result called a broch.
Rinse and repeat continuously for somewhere between seven and ten thousand years complete with the intermittent outbreaks of mad science, change which bunch is in charge half a dozen times in the process, add barking mad Vikings and weapons-grade music, and you get Scotland.
We've been doing that melting pot thing since the very moment there was anything here but ice, we never stopped, we're very very good via millenia of experience at getting people to want to integrate, and any attempt to attach an ethnicity to a bunch of complete and utter mongrels like us lot is a total waste of time.
Scottish is not a set of genetics; ‘generic northern european mutt' doesn't make the grade and ffs I've met approximately Chinese folks who speak English with a pronounced Gaelic-influence accent and have never been south of Drumochter and by extension have a better claim to Scottish than every Yank ever to declare themselves SKAWTCH put together; Scottish is where you're born and a specific form of mad.
Nice Burns reference
