More than 300 years ago, Edward Lhuyd, the Welsh naturalist, botanist, linguist, geographer, and antiquary, became the director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Llhuyd, who was from Osestry on the Welsh border, travelled widely in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland collecting antiquities and manuscripts for the museum. He also recorded the folklore of the lands he visited.
In 1707, Lhuyd published Archaeologia Britannica: An Account of the Languages, Histories and Customs of Great Britain, from Travels through Wales, Cornwall, Bas-Bretagne, Ireland, and Scotland in which he grouped the Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, and the ancient languages of Gaul together under the generic term of Celtic.
Once Edward Lhuyd had uncovered the Celtic language family, the next problem was to uncover, discover, invent, or create a history which would explain how this linguistic continuity might have come about. Following the thinking of the time, it was assumed that the geographic dispersion of the Celts would be best explained by migration, invasion, and conquest. Lhuyd suggested that the Irish were the first to invade, and they were in turn pushed into Scotland and northern Britain by another wave of Gauls from France who then occupied Wales and the south and west of England. The grand idea of migration as the primary explanation of social and linguistic change dominated the Celtic explanations for the next couple of centuries.
The migration story of the Celts appears to explain the existence of the Celtic languages on the British Isles, but did it really happen or is this just another fantasy about history? Historical documentation—that is, written history—begins with the Romans and their conquest of Britain. If we define Celts as people who speak one of the Celtic languages, then when the Romans invaded Britain, everyone would have been a Celt. On the other hand, for the Romans, the concept of Celts was adopted from the Greek word “keltoi” which was used as a derogatory catch-all name referring to strangers, foreigners, and people from someplace other than Greece. The Romans used the concepts of Celt and Gaul interchangeably to describe the inhabitants of what is now France and northern Italy and these terms distinguished them from the real enemy: the Germans. However, during the Roman period nobody called the inhabitants of Britain Celts nor is there any indication that anyone living in Britain used the word Celt to describe themselves until after Edward Lhuyd applied the term to his newly discovered language family.
In his book Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland, geneticist Bryan Sykes writes:
“Gaelic and her cousin tongues are a strong unifying force of the Celtic lands. Their fortunes, in Scotland, in Ireland, in Wales, and also in Brittany, are a barometer of the self-confidence of the people who call themselves Celts. Since Celtic was a linguistic definition in the first place, this seems only appropriate.”
The
Leabhar Gabhála was an early attempt o link Irish history to the familiar events of the classical world. Compiled by Christian monastic scribes, the
Leabhar Gabhála chronicles four mythical phases of immigration. All of these involve great battles and heroic struggles as the new arrivals oust the former occupants. The last invasion/migration was by the Gaels who brought with them the Gaelic language and are the alleged ancestors of today’s Celtic population.
According to the Leabhar Gabhála, the Gaels were descended from the sons of Mil who came from Spain. Mil was killed by the Tuatha dé Danaan, the previous occupiers and masters of Ireland. Mil’s three sons, Eber, Eremon, and Amairgen, went on to defeat the Tuatha and conquer Ireland. Mil’s wife, Scota, was also killed and the Gaels of Ireland considered her as their ancestral mother and called themselves Scots.
Is there any physical evidence of a mass migration and/or invasion of the British Isles by a group of people who might be considered Celts? One possible clue comes from art: more specifically the intricate naturalistic knotwork that is commonly found in today’s Celtic jewelry. The first appearance of what might be considered Celtic Art emerges about 600 BCE as the La Tene style near the European mountain range known as the Alps. Unfortunately, the archaeological evidence seems to suggest that these people migrated east, not west, attacking the temple at Delphi, Greece in 273 BCE and finally settling in central Turkey.
If the Iron Age in Ireland was the result of a Celtic invasion, then there should be some DNA evidence of it. Looking at mitochondrial DNA (which is passed from a woman to her children), we find that 10% of all Irish men and women belong to haplogroup U (called Ursula by Bryan Sykes) and the geographic distribution of this haplogroup in Ireland is fairly uniform. This haplogroup pre-dates the supposed arrival of the Iron Age Celts which means that the ancestors of these Irish men and women were probably in Ireland prior to any Celtic invasion.
The Y-chromosome DNA, which is passed along the male line from father to son, tells a bit of a different story. Most Irish men—about 80%--belong to haplogroup O (called Oisin by Bryan Sykes). Unlike the descendents of Ursala, this group is not uniformly distributed: geographically, 73% of the men in the southeast (Leinster); 81% in the northeast (Ulster); 95% in the southwest (Munster); and 98% in the northwest (Connacht) belong to haplogroup O. Y-chromosome O is also associated with Gaelic surnames. This male line may be associated with the Celtic invaders. According to Bryan Sykes:
“In Ireland, the maternal lineages are diverse and very old, while the Y-chromosomes are unexpectedly homogeneous, and at first glance look comparatively young.”
Genetics suggest that the Y-chromosome group O arrived in Ireland about 4,200 years ago. On the other hand, archaeologists generally date the beginning of the Celtic Iron Age in Ireland at about 2,500 years ago. Thus, this genetic group seems to have been present in Ireland prior to the Iron Age.
The DNA also shows some other interesting connections. Bryan Sykes reports:
“We have seen some evidence of a genetic link between Ireland and Spain along the Atlantic fringe of Europe, which archaeologists are now beginning to realize was a much busier seaway than was once thought.”
One of the most commonly told stories about pre-historic Ireland is that a group of folks known as the Celts arrived on the island sometime in the third century BCE and brought with them both knowledge or ironworking and the Celtic language. While this is a really nice story, the archaeological data and the genetic data don’t really seem to support an immigration hypothesis. The origins of
Celtic Ireland still remain a bit of a mystery which continues to provoke the curiosity of archaeologists, geneticists, linguists, and people with vivid imaginations.