Celts and Their Asian Urheimat

Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson are two independent researchers

Highly recommend Joe Rogan Expierience Podcast
He has had both of them on multiple times!

It will add to the duscussion

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: tikbalang

A few things to be very careful of:

(2) Celtic, is a very broad term, coveirng a whole heap of peoples. Their cultures are similar, but not the same. Gauls and Gaels speak different branches of the language, and had some differences in culture (for example).

I agree. True Celts stem from Austria in archeology sites like Hallstatt. True Celts would behead their enemies and preserve the severed heads in jars of cedar oil. Then in their homes, they would display the jars of preserved heads as trophies. Hallstatt is full of such heads, so you could call true Celts "headhunters".

When German royalty took over England, such as the last two bloodlines of British royalty, they tried to legitimize their rule by suggesting a land migration of all Brits from Celts. They pushed a false pretense of Celts.

Primarily, there are archeological finds all over the British Isles of skulls in shrines. And thus they tried to claim it was the same as the Celts of Austria and Germany. It was politically motivated.

But the skull finds in the British Isles are nothing like the Celts of Hallstatt. Skulls in the British Isles are excarnated skulls. They removed the flesh of the dead from the bones and skulls. The bones and skulls were polished. Bones of the dead were bundled and usually placed in a corner of a house foundation or under a sleeping mat. Then the polished skull was set in a shrine to honor a dead loved relative.

True Celts from Hallstatt left the flesh intact on severed heads, preserved in cedar oil in jars. This was done to their enemies.

Then the time differences are vast. The first excarnated skulls and bone bundles in the British Isles carbon date to c. 7000 B.C.E. in West Ireland (source: PBS "Ireland").

Hallstatt and the true Celts only date to a mere 800-450 B.C.E. There's a 6000 year difference between the two groups.

It was wishful thinking of Germanic-rooted British royalty to try to claim that the common British people allegedly came from the Germanic Celts just because of head-skull finds. British Isles skulls exist for thousands of years before the Celts of Austria and Germany.

Which brings the final factor: boat groups. So many times people try to push ridiculous land migrations which are far-fetched. 75% of the world's human population lives along the coast. 3/4ths of the human race lives seaside.

And that's because humanity has been migrating coast to coast by boats for thousands of years. Any historian that tries to push a story of land migration across snow covered, dangerous mountainous terrains of large groups of people is simply ridiculous.

The majority of people migrated along the coasts, which is why 75% of humanity lives seaside.

As for the excarnated skulls in the British Isles that began to appear 7000 B.C.E., it was a boat migration. Excarnated skulls appeared on Cyprus, the Levant, and Egypt 7500 B.C.E., then Spain, Portugal, France and the British Isles by 7000 B.C.E.

By 6000-5500 B.C.E., the excarnated skulls in the Levant were plastered with white skin and red ochre paint on their craniums, because they were red heads. So excarnated skulls 7500-7000 B.C.E. indicates a massive coastal migration of red heads from Cyprus and the Levant into Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland, England and Scotland.

They were ancient red headed mariners that predate the Celts of Austria by over 6000 years.

To be accurate of origins of groups, one needs to present a lineage of seaside-boat migration. Afterall, 75% of the world's population lives seaside and they didn't migrate over high mountains of impossible terrains. They migrated by boat.

a reply to: MapMistress

So how do you explain the lactose tolerance? Primary food source in Areas like Hallstat was fishing and mining salt..

Heeey im not judging, im just using a reference from a couple of scientists in another thread called, Genetics please help

There was a reason i did that thread.. and being coy

Reason of migration is food source, i did another topic about the Indian Sioux and the Buffalo migration, and why the Sioux Settled was because the Bison population went from 45.000.000 to 300 in 60 years of "white man hunting game"

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Anyone can make a claim today of being anything,

originally posted by: tikbalang
a reply to: MapMistress

So how do you explain the lactose tolerance?

Cool caves ideal for cheese production?

a reply to: Anaana

Could be, but probably not.. Salt is however an essential product in cheese making, I'm gonna go with the Ukrainian herdsmen.

a reply to: tikbalang

I didn't realise it was an either or.

Cheese reduces the lactose, making milk digestible for those who cannot tolerate milk, it's an accommodating step, adaptive to more settled conditions. The Pontic-Caspian steppe is most likely where lactose persistence became dominant, certainly, because the lifestyle demanded milk in the diet to survive, therefore those who didn't get sick successfully passed on their genes because they were 'stronger' and 'fitter', those who did, didn't. And due to the high dairy diet in the P-C cultures their fertility, relative to none or occasional diary consumers, went through the roof leading to a massive diaspora of that culture which since they carried their dominant economy with them, animal husbandry, LP would have remained a sexual selective factor.

originally posted by: MapMistress
When German royalty took over England, such as the last two bloodlines of British royalty, they tried to legitimize their rule by suggesting a land migration of all Brits from Celts. They pushed a false pretense of Celts.

I doubt that you will find positive evidence of royalty pushing any particular archaeological theory. The Hanoverians legitimized themselves mainly by not being Roman Catholic. In the politics of the time, the origin of the British population was not an issue.

Your suggestion strikes me as implausible for two reasons.
Firstly, I doubt that eighteenth century Britain identifed the Celts with Germany. The Hallstadt culture was not identified until Victorian times. Their understanding of pre-Roman Europe would have been based on Caesar's Commentaries, and therefore they would have identified Celtic culture with Gaul.
Secondly, there was indeed a Victorian cult of affinity with Germany (I'm just reading Thomas Carlyle again). However, this was based on the Anglo-Saxons, the "invaders from north Germany", not on the Celts. Here the literary influence would have been Bede.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Eh there is evidence from the 18th and 19th century of the "Celts" (they had no real idea who that really meant) being romanticised. It was to prove that the "English" were noble. You saw similar movements in Germany with the Volkish movement, trying to show the Teutonic peoples were the most civil, and well if you know where Volk lead, it showed the opposite. These were the same muppets who associated Stone Henge and the other Megalithic structures with the "Celts", and said the Celts followed a cult of the Sun, and the Sun was really Jehovah.

Only more recently have we begun to understand the entire Indo-European peoples, and how they interrelated. Linguistics was the start

You are correct however that the very earliest ideas about the "Celts" was that they were Germanic.... ugh

a reply to: Anaana

Can you timeline it? Please?

originally posted by: tikbalang
a reply to: Anaana

Can you timeline it? Please?

I could try but I suspect that I can't, the genetics are not clear, or are yet to be adequately quantified or qualified. There appears to be something akin to a spectrum of lactase persistence/lactose tolerance rather than a cut and dried genetic shift, although that is definately the case in Europe. Comparing the situation to Africa where cattle herding contracted significantly due to the climate change that ended the Saharan Subp-luvial, where there is still a smattering of LP but on genes entirely different to those associated with LP in Europe and India, there is a suggestion that LP begins with conditioning towards tolerance. The value of consuming milk was far greater than not, given the benefits to fertility too, milk drinkers were simply more successful.

So, for example, if infants are switched to animal milk, immediately after weaning, or alongside weaning, then they are likely, unless lactose intolerant, to maintain the ability to digest lactose for longer, even if they do not have the lactose tolerant gene. Anyone who is lactose intolerant is unlikely to survive infancy without intervention. Intervention usually only occurs when times are good and food plentiful. As demonstrated in Africa, where domestication of cattle may have been as early as 9000 BC, the herders thrived in the Sub-pluvial when the Sahara was transformed into a vast grassland dotted with deep wadis, but as droughts became increasingly common herding became a niche lifestyle, and the primary economy returned to hunter-gathering. LP/T to those who returned to a non-dairy lifestyle would be neither an advantage or a disadvantage, likewise with intolerance however, so both persist in the genetic background.

In Europe, by contrast, LP could have developed in late ice age reindeer herders, moved down or developed independently among the horse herders (who drank a fermented mare's milk...still do...which has a high lactase content making it ideal for fermentation), and then again developed or was passed on to the sheep and cattle herders that came to dominate the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. In all these cultures, it is likely that the children would have been given the milk from infancy until they were 'adults' (about 10 years old), and then switched to milk products (cooked cheese or kumis). Neither mare's or reindeer produce much more that a pint of milk a day, cattle at that time would have produced a lot less than numerous generation of selective breeding now enable them to do, so it would have been economically used in all cases. I think it helps to look at it more as though lactose intolerance was bred out rather than tolerance was bred in (though it is essentially the same) because for me that makes it clearer to see when and where that behaviour gave those populations an edge in surviving and that would be those times when all ages are dependent on raw unprocessed milk for survival, I would guess. The major point of expansion would be around 4500-4200 BC when the horse herders worked out they could ride the horses as well as eat, bleed and milk them, and that the rider and horse could then manage 10x the size of sheep and cattle herds than someone on foot, and due to that they could sustain larger populations, which in turn probably led to a relaxation of the social conventions associated with population control. This culminated in expansion from around 3700 BC. These people would have been bigger and stronger than most of their southern counterparts, and horses would have given them a tactical advantage. Where conflict arose they usually won.

Given the prevalence of LP in populations like Ireland which were much later dominated by the horse riding Celts, I would suspect this indicates that dairy consumption has been integral to domestication from the start of domestication (at the very least ritually and for feasts, as with kumis and other fermented milk produce), and was as much of a motivator as easy meat once established. In famine, the blood and milk are essential to survival, so I guess that in those early herders lactose intolerance died out and lactase persistence was selected for, and behaviourally supported by milk drinking continuing after weaning and with that behaviour passed through intermarriage between agriculturalists and pastoralists. Intolerant children would not thrive, tolerant ones would.

But I am guessing, informed guessing, but still, the genetics is confusing as it stands, between 4200 BC and 3700 BC is what leads to the expansion certainly, however I think that that is a much softer 'invasion' than is usually implied in most places.