What makes a person celtic

The way the Romans depicted the Celts has influenced our modern opinions of their society, as evidenced by popular depictions like the Asterix comics, but there are a lot of fascinating facts about Celtic society which show a different side of the Celts altogether. Today, people think of the Celtic culture as being a part of Irish and Scottish heritage. The instantly recognizable Celtic art style is something people associate with Ireland, and movies such as Braveheart cement the idea that the Celts were present in Scotland.

So, it comes as a surprise to learn that the Celts were not originally from either of these regions. In fact, the earliest evidence of Celtic culture is from the site of Hallstatt, Austria. The site has over burials with Celtic features, dated to approximately BC.

Celtic warrior. Thanks to the Roman accounts, we tend to think of the Celts as scruffy, dirty, and smelly. However, the archaeological evidence shows that this is far from true. Celtic sites have an abundance of grooming tools, such as combs and hair pins.

There is even evidence that it is the Celts introduced the Romans to soap, and that it was mandatory in some tribes for the men to bathe before enjoying their evening meal. The reverse side of a Celtic bronze mirror from 50 BC.

Although many of the Roman ideas about the Celts were exaggerated or entirely inaccurate, they did have some traditions which were barbaric. One of the grimmer aspects of Celtic tradition was the practice of head-hunting. The Celts believed that human souls resided in heads, and so after victory in battle Celtic warriors would decapitate their enemies.

Having a large collection of enemy heads was a sign of prestige to the Celts, and they would even go so far as to decorate the doors to their houses with the heads of their enemies to show off how successful they were in battle.

At one site in France there is even a pillar with special niches carved out to display severed heads. The fact the Celts were able to spread across such a large part of Europe and survive so long was probably due to their advanced weaponry.

The Hallstatt Culture was one of the first to adopt iron for weapons , which was far superior to the bronze weapons used by their rivals. This edge on their competitors — perhaps more accurately described as their victims - was something they took full advantage of to grow their empire and spread far further than would otherwise have been possible.

Celtic swords BC to 43 AD. While the Romans had the Julian calendar, the Celts had their own calendar for predicting the seasons and calculating time.

The Coligny calendar was found in woods near Coligny, France in the s, and consisted of a large bronze tablet with intricate engravings. It was originally a mystery what the tablet, which is 1. When it was reconstructed, it was finally revealed to be a calendar which covered 5 years divided into 12 months per year with an extra month once every third year which functioned in the same way as a leap year.

The calendar was extremely complex, and even accounted for the different times the sun and moon took to circle the earth which meant it kept time accurately, unlike the Julian calendar which sometimes resulted in the Romans celebrating the start of Spring in August.

The calendar was probably created and used by druids and functioned partly to help with the timing of festivals and rituals. The Celts were known for their prowess in battle and in particular for their skills on horseback.

They had a special kind of sword called a Spatha, worshipped a horse goddess called Epona and were even recruited into the cavalry of the Roman armies after their regions had been conquered. They would also use horse drawn carriages in battle and were very skilled in this technique.

They were known to decorate their horses and chariots with the heads of their enemies to show how many people they had killed in battle and so intimidate the enemy. Celtic Horsemen. There were hundreds of gods and goddesses in the Celtic pantheon, and some of them were so niche that only a single tribe or even family worshipped them.

The druids, who led religious ceremonies, were in charge of rituals which included sacrifice. These ceremonies would usually take place at shrines in natural locations such as hilltops and streams, but there were some secret ceremonies which would be conducted in hidden sacred groves.

The druids were very important in Celtic society as they served as judges, teachers, and lore-keepers. Unlike many ancient civilizations, there are many accounts of women who were warriors in the Celtic society. One such female warrior is Boudicca who infamously fought to prevent the Romans from invading her territory. Likewise, the Norman conquest of England did not leave any genetic evidence.

Follow Pallab on Twitter. First Europeans 'weathered Ice Age'. DNA yields secrets of human pioneer. DNA ancestry 'astrology' claim. People of the British Isles Project. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Striking similarities. Image source, None. Into the Dark Ages. Northern Irish groupings. Published 6 November Published 22 October Published 7 March Nature Journal. These remains, found on Rathlin Island also shared a close genetic affinity with the Scottish, Welsh, and modern Irish, unlike the earlier farmer.

This suggests that many people living in Ireland today have genetic links to people who were living on the island at least 4, years ago. It tells a semi-mythical history of the waves of people who settled in Ireland in earliest times. It says the first settlers to arrive in Ireland were a small dark people called the Fir Bolg, followed by a magical super-race called the Tuatha de Danaan the people of the goddess Dana.

Most interestingly, the book says that the group which then came to Ireland and fully established itself as rulers of the island were the Milesians—the sons of Mil, a soldier from Spain.

Modern DNA research into male Y chromosomes has found that the the R1b haplogroup reaches very high concentrations in Western Ireland and the Basque country in northern Spain.

While the picture for matrilineal descent mother to daughter is more complex, it seems that the northern Spanish and the Irish might have common male ancestors at some point in history. There are also interesting cultural similarities along the western seaboard of Europe, stretching from Spain up to Ireland - as has been written about by the archeologist Barry Cunliffe. Although it might seem surprising, it is worth remembering that in ancient times the sea was one of the fastest and easiest ways to travel.

When the land was covered in thick forest, coastal settlements were common and people travelled around the seaboard of Europe quite freely.

This coincides with the time of the famous Irish king Niall of the Nine Hostages, who legend says brought St Patrick to Ireland as a slave. The O'Neill family, who claim to descend from Niall, have certainly been a powerful family through the ages in Ireland. Meanwhile, the latest research in suggests that the Irish are most closely related to people in North West France Brittany where a Celtic language has traditionally been spoken and in Western Norway.

Interestingly, where earlier studies didn't find much impact of Viking DNA among the modern Irish, a recent study suggests there may have been more influence than perviously thought. What we can take from all of this is that, although the Irish today feel part of a single group united by cultural and national identity, this culture and identity is ultimately founded on waves of migration connecting the island to the wider world of European peoples and beyond.

DNA testing of the male Y chromosome has shown that Irish males have the highest incidence of the R1b haplogroup in Europe. While other parts of Europe have integrated continuous waves of new settlers from the east, Ireland's remote geographical position has meant that the Irish gene-pool has been less susceptible to change. The same genes have been passed down from parents to children for thousands of years. The other region with very high levels of this male chromosome is the Basque region.

This is mirrored in genetic studies which have compared DNA analysis with Irish surnames. Many surnames in Irish are Gaelic surnames, suggesting that the holder of the surname is a descendant of people who lived in Ireland long before the English conquests of the Middle Ages. Men with Gaelic surnames, showed the highest incidences of Haplogroup 1 or Rb1 gene.

This means that those Irish whose ancestors pre-date English conquest of the island are descendants in the male line of people who probably migrated west across Europe, as far as Ireland in the north and Spain in the south. Some scholars even argue that the Iberian peninsula modern-day Spain and Portugal was once heavily populated by Celtiberians who spoke at now-extinct Celtic language. They believe some of these people moved northwards along the Atlantic coast bringing Celtic language and culture to Ireland and Britain, as well as France.

Although the evidence in not conclusive, the findings on the similarities between Irish and Iberian DNA provides some support for this theory. However, more recent studies confirm that when a complex picture is taken of Irish DNA, including both male and female lines of descent, the closest similarities are between the Irish and people living in Western Britain. In particular, people in the north of Ireland are close genetic relatives of those living in Western Scotland, probably due to a long history of migration between the two regions.

Read more about National Geographic's 'Genographic' project in the west of Ireland. The Kingdom of Dalriada c AD is marked in green. Pictish areas marked yellow. I live in Northern Ireland and in this small country the differences between the Irish and the British can still seem very important. Blood has been spilt over the question of national identity.

However, research into both British and Irish DNA suggests that people on the two islands have much genetically in common. Males in both islands have a strong predominance of the Haplogroup 1 gene, meaning that most of us in the British Isles are descended from the same stone age settlers. The main difference is the degree to which later migrations of people to the islands affected the population's DNA. Parts of Ireland most notably the western seaboard have been almost untouched by outside genetic influence since early times.

At the same time London, for example, has been a mutli-ethnic city for hundreds of years. Therefore while the earliest English ancestors were very similar in DNA and culture to the tribes of Ireland, later arrivals to England have created more diversity between the two groups.

Irish and Scottish people share very similar DNA. The obvious similarities of culture, pale skin, tendency to red hair have historically been prescribed to the two people's sharing a common Celtic ancestry.

Actually, in my opinion, it seems much more likely that the similarity results from the movement of people from the north of Ireland into Scotland in the centuries - AD. At this time the kingdom of Dalriada, based near Ballymoney in County Antrim extended far into Scotland. The Irish invaders brought Gaelic language and culture, and they also brought their genes. The MC1R gene has been identified by researchers as the gene responsible for red hair as well as the accompanying fair skin and tendency towards freckles.

According to genetic research, genes for red hair first appeared in human beings about 40, to 50, years ago. These genes were then brought to the British Isles by the original settlers, men and women who would have been relatively tall, with little body fat, athletic, fair-skinned and who would have had red hair.

So red-heads may well be descended from the earliest ancestors of the Irish and British. The origin of the term "Black Irish" and the people it describes are debated see the comments below!

The phrase is ambiguous and is mainly used outside of Ireland to describe dark-haired people of Irish origin. The ambiguity comes in when trying to determine whether dark-haired Irish people are genetically distinct from Irish with lighter coloring. Dark hair is common in Ireland, while dark complexions are more rare. One theory about the origins of the term is that it describes Irish people who descend from survivors of the Spanish Armada. There are other hypotheses, mostly placing Irish ancestors on the Iberian peninsula or among the traders that sailed back and forth between Spain, North Africa, and Ireland, particularly around the Connemara region.

Some "Black Irish" are of Irish-African descent, tracing their ancestry back to the slave trade. Many of these people live on Barbados and Montserrat. Some readers, writing below, with typical Black Irish coloring have had genetic testing done to confirm that they have Spanish, Portuguese, and Canary Island heritage. This is a fascinating subject. As stated in my earlier comment here, I visited Northern Spain recently and saw at least 3 doubles.

I'm Irish, hailing from Tipperary, and Ryan is my maiden name. My father had red hair. If the woman in the photograph that accompanies this article had dark hair and a widow's peak, she would be me in an earlier decade. Everyone wants to know where they came from.

We are creatures of the past. Every thought and instinct, hope and wish we have is a product of our genes and history interacting with the present.

Just received the results of DNA testing. Oddly enough, I have carried a very Eastern European type last name through my life. The Scots and Irish are actually Gaelic, the English is the most Celtic, you only have to know about Boudicca the biggest and most famous Celtic queen of the lot!

It does make me laugh when they say they are Celts, they are gaelic, doesn't roll off the tongue so easily does it? Hi, I just wanted to say your article is very interesting. Iberian was mentioned on my pg. Now I think the Spanish blood that my Mother talked about must of come from there. I knew of Irish and American India as well. Good read! My family has always talked about 'Black-Irish'.

Both my dad and my wife's dad had jet-black hair in their youth my aunts and uncles included. Both fathers had genetic testing done recently and they both have DNA matches from Ireland and Spain. I am working on my family genealogy and DNA testing family members. My Mother is an Owens and her mother is a Ruggles. Mom's father is an Owens J2a3-L Through my parents I inherited the Rh- blood factor while my siblings did not. I also make it a point to search for the haplogroups of my ancestors so I can learn more about my ethnicities I inherited from them.

From both my parents I have the Irish. This is a really interesting article and brings about a few "aha" and "oh? Heidi: Yes, the idea that enough Spaniards survived shipwrecks during the Armada by swimming ashore in Ireland's west coast to have left a sizable genetic marker there has been debunked. That 'Mediterranean' look already existed there for many thousands of years.

That doesn't mean that various European people haven't migrated to Ireland in more recent centuries either, as has happened in Britain, but those immigrants would have moved to the bigger cities, such as London, Dublin, Edinburgh, and Cardiff.

Then there are those Irish emigres to Britain. I have friends who live in the Cotswolds in England, and they are from Wales originally, but really only the wife of this couple. The husband is actually Irish, as his grandfather moved to Wales for work in the early 's. He does consider himself Welsh, though he never learned to speak it growing up near Swansea. His wife does know how to speak it. Wales was once a hub of industrial activity, and it attracted other British and Irish as well as people from other parts of Europe for the jobs available in the steel works and coal mines back a century ago.

But go to those old coal valleys like the Rhondda and everyone is really Welsh and it's been like that for thousands of years, not unlike rural Ireland where everyone is really Irish. Since the Cornish have been designated a separate ethnicity in England. The Basques were barely affected genetically by Roman, Germanic, or Moorish invaders.

In fact of those three invading groups, only the Moors had much of a genetic effect on the Iberians as a whole. The DNA of Basques suggest that they are descendants of an admixture of people who had been living there since the end of the Ice Age or before then with later comers, Indo-European speakers and R1B1 carriers, who came into the region during the late Stone Age and through the Bronze Age, but the ancient language held and a Centum Indo-European language, what would have become a proto-Celtic language, never caught on there.

So proto Celtic and later Celtic languages were spoken in the Iberian peninsula eventually, but not in the Basque region, as it was a matriarchy, and the mothers kept the old language and customs alive.

The area was isolated enough that the blood types of Basques are quite different from other nearby Spaniards and French, even if the R1B1 DNA exists in them as it does throughout Western Europe, and it just happens that the Basques have high concentrations of that DNA as do the Irish, Welsh, and Cornish, though some isolated areas of Galicia in Spain and Northern Portugal have the same.

Pay de Basque, or Pais Vasco is also one of those areas where the invaders' language was affected by those they invaded, instead of the other way around. Think of France: Germanic-speaking Franks took up a pre-French Latin to speak as the Roman Empire was falling, eventually which developed as the French language.

Old Barbarian German was lost there. The Franks left their name on the new nation, but not the language the spoke. So, if taking into account that an admixture of more ancient people with newcomers during the late Neolithic and Bronze Ages accounted for Basques and Irish to have similar DNA, it does not make the Basques "Celts. We had an old family legend that could never be confirmed. The legend was that we were "Black Irish" and that we were descended from the survivors of the Spanish Armada.

But when I did some research, it seemed unlikely that there would be such a great population of "Black Irish" in such a relatively short amount of time. My mother's maternal grandmother was from Dublin. But two things stood against delving into her line of the genealogy. And, 2 - the records department in Dublin burned down, so we didn't know where else's to look for records.

Well, my siblings and I bough the a 23andme kit for my mum for Christmas this last year. Mum has just gotten her results, and because the DNA follows the maternal line, we have confirmation that we come from the Basques!!

From some of my reading, I kind of already had a feeling. My mum and sisters are rh negative, and that was another clue for me, as the Basque have a higher percentage of this than other populations. This is super exciting for us and solves a bit of a mystery. Also, my mum has connected with some Irish "cousins" that my husband, daughter, and I will hopefully be able to meet with when we go to Ireland in 3 weeks!

I visited Cornwall in March of and was told that black hair is quite common there. That DNA has a very high representation in a few places in particular: Ireland, Wales, and the Basque region with highest percentages overall.

It is a paternal DNA as well. So proto Celtic languages started in those areas with R1B1, as well as Italic. Celtic is a culture and language group, not a genetic one. Obviously if R1B1 was and is a paternal line, so that means there's a maternal one as well, and geneticists believe that some of that DNA came from people who left north Africa after the last Ice Age, as the Sahara region really heated up, and people there fled into southern Europe and further north.

Now obviously there were other people already in Europe, so there would have been an admixture then, some 10,, years ago, followed around the time 3,, years ago of Indo-European speakers flooding into Europe, causing even more admixtures of people. Quite the opposite. Iberia also had coastal areas in which Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks settled. Compound that with the fact that there was the Muslim invasion of Iberia, with another influx in of northern African people Moors in Iberia, Saracens in the case of Sardinia, Sicily and southern Italy.

Then there's the fact that those with Nordic DNA invaded Britain and Ireland, the Angles and Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries, and a few centuries later the Danes and Vikings in both Britain and Ireland, and northern France as well, leaving some genetic markers with the invaded. When the Roman Empire fell, in the 's, Nordic-type Germanic barbarians invaded the Iberian Peninsula as well, the Suebi and Visigoths in particular, though they didn't leave much of a genetic marker.

The Romans and Italic peoples and some northern Italic people had Celtic roots , however, also did not genetically influence Britain much, or Iberia, but did ancient Gaul France to a greater extent, and Ireland not at all because it wasn't in the Roman Empire.

It's also true that Britain during the time of the Roman occupation, , imported legions, some that were made up of people from the eastern regions of the Empire, like Sarmatians and Alans, people related to Iranians by language, who were from the area of the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. It's thought that 5, Sarmatians settled in Britain in the Roman villas and outposts. There is now some historical evidence that the 'historic' King Arthur could have had Sarmatian, not Briton or Romano-British, roots!

Now, why didn't the Basques lose their language circa 3, BC, and therefore become Celtic speakers? That area apparently had a matriarchal society, and Indo-European invaders, carriers of R1B1, who assimilated with the Basques had children who learned the language and culture of their mothers.

One of the docents told me her mother had black hair, and that no one really knows how to pronounce Cornish, and that Welsh is used as a base to do so, as it is assumed Cornish sounded like Welsh. Regarding the Black Irish, not many Spanish sailors and soldiers who got ship-wrecked during the Armada survived.

Few, very few, ended up in Ireland. Some were handed over to the English for money. Some made it to France and then back home. Most of them died, drowned, or if they made it to shore died soon thereafter. What is true is that the island of Valentia off the south coast of Ireland became a refuge for sailors who shipwrecked there, some who were Spanish, but of other nations as well. What is also true is that the west of Ireland had been designated in the late 19th century by scholars such as H.

Wells, as a place where the "Mediterranean" type of Caucasian existed: dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin, though pale olive. And Ireland wouldn't be the only place where that type existed in Britain or Ireland.

So, former Ireland rugby internationals Michael Bradley and Tony Ward who I was once mistaken for have dark hair and eyes, and the olive complexion. I've also visited Galicia some time ago. There are plenty of blond and red-haired, though it's usually auburn, to be seen walking around the streets of Santiago de Compostela or Noia, or Vigo for that matter, along with the usual suspect "Mediterranean" type.

You could see them in northern Portugal as well, such as in Guimaraes, but less so in Oporto. To summarize, we of western European roots might have similar paternal backgrounds, but different maternal backgrounds, therefore the variations in skin, eye, and hair, and considering all the migrations and invasions, it would make anyone carrying the R1B1 DNA, whether from the Shetland Islands or the Algarve, more than likely to have hair, eye, and skin color differences between those two extremes.

A shetlander more than likely could look more like a Viking ancestor, while an Algarvian would look like that Moor who came ashore from the south. It doesn't mean someone from either could also look very much alike, with dark hair, light eyes, and pale olive or fair skin.

Go figure! I was told that the Irish side of our family was Black Irish. My aunt recently had the ancestry. That seems to me that either we had a Spanish milkman somewhere along the line or a relatively recent influx of Spanish blood into our Irish heritage.

I did an Ancestry DNA test and was surprised to find that my largest "pie wedge" was Irish and that my Scandanavian heritage which had been emphasized in family stories was no bigger than my Iberian heritage. I had no idea I had any Iberian heritage.

I knew my mom's family was Scots-Irish-Welsh, and now I have a couple of theories about the Iberian connection, thanks. I was lucky to stumble upon your post today, Marie.

My mother's family emigrated to Brooklyn from Belfast NI in the s. Her mother's family were Ulster-Scots, I assume, from name and religion, and they were members of the mythical Black Irish tribe: they had black hair and eyes and olive complexions.

My father's family came to the US hundreds of years ago and I've traced his mother's side in England as far back as the 16th c. National Geo lumped Ireland in with both Britain and the other NW European countries, so it was sort of a wash, but now I know why, thanks to you: because Irish genes come from all of those countries, as the waves of migration reached the shores over time.

Of course, my Spanish blood may be from one lucky Spanish sailor, from the Armada or another ship, who was saved and welcomed in Ulster or the shores of Scotland! I look forward to your future posts. Unfortunately it can be very difficult to trace family history in Ireland. The best way can be through churches if you know where your first emigrating ancestor went to church.

I wonder if we might be distantly related. My ancestor emigrated from County Antrim to America in the early 's. It's easy to trace the line back through the generations in America, but once in Ireland, the trail goes cold. Any ideas on the best way to further the search in Ireland for a name that has so many variant spellings? They're said to have brought with them the kilt, the bagpipes and the St Andrews flag, all originally Ancient Greek.

Whilst I'm not suggesting this explains it all, I find it interesting these findings support the ancient legends. I've also heard that the Phoenicians carried on a trade between what is today Ireland and Canaan or what is today Lebanon, which is why there are many redheads in Israel and Lebanon and may be the why there are more swarthy complexions in Ireland.

There are a number of Irish Surnames like Duffy that specifically refer to Black. Last name: Duffy. This interesting name, with variant forms, Duffie, MacDuffie, McFee, McPhee, D'Duffie and O'Duhig, is an Anglicization of the ancient Gaelic personal name "Mac Dhubhshith" a compound of elements, "mac" meaning "son of" plus "dubh", "black" and "sith", peace, hence "son of the black one of peace". Of course the Danish Vikings were also referred to as Black, because they wore black metal chain armor.

I work in Mexico and I noticed that I get along especially well with people from Durango, which was populated by the Basques. It is also interesting to note that the great missionaries and revolutionaries of South America were Basque. I had my DNA tested and was told my female line came from Doggerland which is a land between England and Holland, now under water.

I noticed a similarity in the pronunciation of my mother's maiden name Haughey if it were pronounced in Spanish with Jaureguei which is a Basque name. You are right about the red hair. Geneticists seem to find it difficult to distinguish between Scots especially in the West and Irish. Sounds like the phenomenon sometimes referred to as the 'black Irish' about which there are a few theories, but no definitive answers.