Where Did The Celts Origionally Come From?

Hi there, as far as my information goes the Celts originate from central/ eastern European area. They have roamed many parts of the continent and did have quite some influence. It is a pity that not many people know that they were even the first ever known people to have settlements in the Netherlands, in an area not far from the town of the city of Utrecht which was founded by the Romans much later.
This Celtic settlement was called the "Hilversum culture" after the small town Hilversum , very close to the site were pots etc. were found.
Kindest greetings, Marc.

Actually, the name comes from the word Pretani, which was the Brythonic for Picts (the Gaelic being Cruthin).

This is the name given to the Celtic dialect they spoke. There were literally dozens, if not hundreds, of Celtic tribes (i.e. Parisii, Iceni, Cassiovelauni, Silurii, Arverni, Carnutes, Insubres, Boii, etc).

The portions of the Isles which are currently Celtic are not the only areas in which the Celtic peoples settled. Later on, various Germanic tribes settled in those areas and gradually subjugated and absorbed the Britons.

Rome abandoned Britain long before 500 A.D. Before the Visigoths sacked the city in 410 A.D., the leaders of Britain sent a letter to Emperor Honorius, begging for Roman aid, but Honorius wrote back that they should see to their own defense. By 413, the legions stationed at Hadrain's Wall were gone.

Also, the Anglo-Saxons already had a few petty kingdoms in England before 500 A.D., namely Kent, Sussex, and Essex.

Archeology and genetics seem to indicate that the Indo-European languages (to which the Celtic languages belong) originated either in what is today's Ukraine or Turkey. Many words - invariably those that we can imagine would have been important way-back-when, like 'wolf' or 'mother' (she's still important, for sure) are similar across many Indo-European languages. More modern words, say 'gun,' are entirely different words across the languages. Anyway, when the words are added up, compared and contrasted, it looks like Indo-European may have had a forest and hills origin. That points to Turkey more than it does the Ukraine, this being more savanna-like than the heavily-wooded and mountainous Turkey. Where ever it was, all Indo-European languages can be traced to a group of people that had evolved a language that we might term today as 'Proto-Indo-European' (First-Indo-European).

With the rise of agriculture maybe 10,000 years ago in lands south of Turkey - Mesopotamia, more or less in Iraq (god bless them) it probably was not long before agriculture spread to an Indo-European speaking tribe(s) in Turkey. (As an aside, perhaps the NON-Semitic speaking civilizations of Mesopotamia were Indo-European.) Then, either Indo-European tribes (or their culture), spread westward across Europe bringing agriculture with them. For all its faults, agriculture feeds more people than does hunting and gathering, so population numbers rose and young folks set off for new lands to till. Or, agri-culture spread quickly, more quickly than did actual people, over Europe's pre-farming tribes. In any case, Indo-European dialects made the journey too, and in the various quasi-isolated areas developed into new languages (within the Indo-European family). There surely developed a proto-Germanic, a proto-Slavic, and a proto-Celtic language, among others. These too, continued to evolve as they traveled, intermingled with other Indo-European groups (and with the Cro-magnon non-agricultural people already living in Europe), or became isolated themselves. The spread of peoples out of the hearth-land continued for thousands of years, with Celts of several linguistic persuasions making it all the way to the margins of western Europe.

As I mentioned before, these Celtic speaking tribes would have encountered pre-existing people, people now called the Cro-Magnon. The Cro-Magnon are those humans (likely indistinguishable from us or the incoming Indo-European tribes) that replaced the Neanderthal in Europe, and had now been there for tens of thousands of years. I'd venture to say that the Basque people of northern Spain and southwestern France are the descendents of the Cro-Magnon - and perhaps so to were the Etruscans of Tuscany, Italy - now extinct as a culture. And perhaps, so too, descendents of Cro-Magnon were the Picts and Scotti of Ireland and Scotland.

The question is - as always - are the people of the Celtic lands (the 7-nations more or less) primarily Celtic in genetic origins or are they primarily Cro-Magnon with some Celtic genetic input. Certainly, the cultures became what we call Celtic, but we don't know how much is input from pre-Celts and how much is Celtic proper. What we know for sure is that the pre-Celtic populations were not eliminated, so Celts of today are a blend of the two. So that makes Stonehenge and New Grange ours, even if they are pre-Celtic in origin.

Most of the research I have read suggests that being Celtic is less a matter of genetics than of culture. For example, I was rather surprised that while my own haplotye suggests that my direct paternal line was in Ireland at least by the 3d Century A.D. and is fairly typical of Ireland, it is not considered a Celtic haplotype.

Indeed, the available evidence tends to suggest that Ireland became a Celtic nation without a large influx of Celtic genetics. Whether this was due to a Celtic invasion or simply adaptation through, for example, trade relations is still open to debate.

The relationship between the Cro-Magnons and current European populations also seems to be somewhat undecided. It is entirely possible that the mainland Celts and ice-age Irish were both descended from different groups of Cro-Magnons.

Wow, everyone sure seems to have a lot of different yet very informative and interesting information on this subject. I haven't done near the research I'm sure that I should have but I came across some info that suggested that in the northern highlands of Scotland there were the Picts named for the tatoos they had across most of their bodies and that they were part of the first group labeled as celts.
After reading all the different backgrounds mentioned in this forum it would appear that any group who peacefully traded and spoke the same language in the time before Rome conquered and spread north could be considered a root of celtic ancestry.

The celts are not defined as a racial group, the celts shared a common language and culture. If the celts were a racial group then the whole of europe would be celtic.

Well, the first people to be 'labelled' as Celts, or a derivative of Celt, were people found in modern day France/Spain who were mentioned in text by visiting Mediterranean people (Greek or Roman, I can't recall, but it was one of them). That name came from a particular tribe's name.

Well, the first people to be 'labelled' as Celts, or a derivative of Celt, were people found in modern day France/Spain who were mentioned in text by visiting Mediterranean people (Greek or Roman, I can't recall, but it was one of them). That name came from a particular tribe's name.

oldraven;

The first recording of the celts in History is from the Greeks who named them the "KELTOI". As the Celtic Language is Indo-Euoropean many believe that they originated in South-East Asia in the Northern Indian Sub-continent or the Hindu-Kush. The Northern Celts of Ireland and Scotland are thought to have migrated out of the Iberian Pennisula (Spain,Potugal) moving North along the Atlantic Coast of Europe. There is a very good reference to the Indo-European Language in Wikipedia.


Camac.

McRoach;

The early encounters between the Romans and Celts did not fair well for Rome. In 390 BCE the Celts humiliated Rome and sacked the City. The Romans of course never forgave them.

to answer your question, might i suggest you first read your Bible, then the Scottish declaration of independence, and then search out some of the excellent books on this subject by E. Raymond Capt. i believe that this will give you a good overall view, the specifics may be rooted out at will.

drjohn;

If by saying read the Bible to find the Celtic roots, I believe you are referriing to the myth of the Lost Tribes of Isreal. It is exactly that a Myth, Fable, the Celts are Indo European not Semetic.


Camac.

There is some good information about the bronze and Iron age Celts contained in the responses above and I can't really elaborate much on what has been already posted.

I did want to point out that one cannot compare the the bronze and Iron age peoples that the Greeks referred to as Keltoi and the Romans referred to as Gauli to contemporary peoples living in the areas popularly referred to as the "Celtic Fringe" in the British Isles, especially Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

With the advent of affordable genetic testing some interesting findings have emerged. On the Eastern Atlantic of Portugal, Spain, France and the British Isles a predominant Y chromosome haplotype referred to as R1b is found. It is suggested that these R1b haplotypes are the remainder of peoples populating an Ice age refuge on the Iberian Penninsula and are not found in peoples whose ancestors migrated into Europe bringing with them the Indo European languages (including the Celts).

If this is the case, then many Scots, British, Welsh and Irish are descendants of aboriginal Europeans who at some point adopted Celtic languages and to varying degrees, Celtic culture.

One happy thing about this is the genetic work supports the Irish folklore such as that written about in the Book of Invasions as having some genetic support for the assertion that the Irish came from Spain.

I always knew there was something about Spain other than the fact the Spanish were one of the few Europeans who knew how to prepare beef.

Thomas Mitchell

Many fascinating replies about the origins of the Celtic people. The simple answer seems to be that the people we know today as Celts (Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Manx, Cornish, and Bretons) came from areas of western Europe, mostly Gaul, Brittany, and Iberia. They probably came from other places before that, but those people account for most of the culture we identify today as Celtic.

By the way, for an outstanding overview of the Celtic migration to Ireland, read The Greener Short by Morgan Llywelyn.

It's not history, but she really knows her stuff and it's a fascinating read.