Links across the Celtic lands
There’s a lot of talk these days of the non-Celtic nature of the British and Irish, with no invasion of Celts and no cultural connection with European Celts; that the megalithic peoples of the isles are different: certainly there was movement of Belgic groups who took their touta name with them when they set up sister states in Britain, but the indigenous descendents of the isles are more these days said to be separate.
It is useful, then to see how the arrival of the Celtic gods in Ireland as recorded in the Second Battle of Moytura provides the names of the Tuatha de Danaan, how the Mabinogi and related texts provide the names of the British gods and how the Gallo-Roman monuments to god give the names of Gaulish gods: and see how similar they are!
Archaeology has revealed Gallo-Roman stone monuments with pairings between Roman and Celtic gods. Those monuments give us such equations as Apollo Belenos, Apollo Grannus, Iupiter Taranis, Iupiter Uxellinus, Mars Ambiorix, Mars Nodens (identical to Irish Nuada), Mars Teutates, Sequana (mother godess of the touta of the Sequani in the same way to the Irish Eriu, and a river goddess of the Seine functioning as the Irish Boand to the Boyne), Mercury Arvernos, Mercury Lugdunensis, and so on. Additionally they give us Epona (which is usually equalised with the Welsh Rhiannon), Maponos (equalised with Welsh Mabon) and Ogmios identical with Irish Oghma).
In Cath Maige Turied (the Second Battle of Moytura), which ascribes detailed functions to the different gods of the Tuatha de Dannan. These Celtic Gods (the Children of Don in Welsh) feature names as prominent from old Celtic times as Nuadu (Nodens), Lugh (Lugos) and Oghma (Ogmios), and they have gods which are, if not under the same name, known from the continental Celts like the smith-god Goibhnu, the horse-godess Macha. They even have the same tripartite Matronae (triple mothergodess; the goddess of the land), which is well known from the continental Celts – Eriu, Fotla, Banba. And, it is Lugh who leads the Celtic victory – none other than Lugos Mercurius of ancient Gaul. He is said by Caesar to be the most prominent of the Gaulish gods.
There is always more to discover, but the nature of “celticity” in a fundamental level of theology certainly provides cultural evidence; afterall, it is the people and their society that we connect with!
Here is a wonderful piece that shows the pitfalls of DNA research:
A classic pitfall that researchers find themselves in is gathering evidence to ‘prove’ their idea.
Ga?? Shouldn’t they be trying to prove ideas? Well, yes they need to demonstrate how robust their ideas are. But there is another route – that is the seeking of ‘data’ in order to make their idea seem valid.
Check this out: The full article is on Stone pages website.
“Nations like Ireland and Scotland have more in common with the Portuguese and Spanish than with ‘Celts’ — the name commonly used for a group of people from ancient Alpine Europe. There is a received wisdom that the origin of the people of these islands lie in invasions or migrations to the Atlantic islands around 2,500 years ago. But archaeologists have recently questioned that theory, and now Daniel Bradley, co-author of a genetic study into Celtic origins, from Trinity College Dublin, and his team, say DNA evidence supports their thinking.
Geneticists used DNA samples from people living in Celtic nations and compared the genetic traits with those of people in other parts of Europe.
The study showed that people in Celtic areas — Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany and Cornwall — had strong genetic ties, but that this heritage had more in common with people from the Iberian Peninsula.”
Now think for a moment: Testing DNA from Wales, Scotland and Ireland and comparing it to DNA samples from… France, Germany and Italy: Do you think the latter will have “celtic” traits in them???
What would the DNA of an ancient “Alpine European” test out as? Not very French, German or Italian – the populations of ‘Celts’ were displaced by the latter! The European Celts spoke, named gods and organised their society in the same manner as Celts from Britain and Ireland; ethnocentricity being as it is, the DNA samples would likely be like the modern Celtic areas.
Here’s a real example of multiple and extended chances for DNA to enter a population:
At Lellizzick, near Padstow in Cornwall, as a result of tin mining, “the site had been used over a long period with various phases of occupation, building and rebuilding, small-scale industrial activity on parts of the site, principally slag from metal working.”
Tin mining in Kernow is reported from the voyage of Pytheus, and “the whole site was likely to have been occupied from the Bronze Age through the Iron Age and on into the Roman era, when the finds suggested that it had been a trading station importing wine, oil and pottery from as far afield as the western Mediterranean, exchanged for Cornish copper and tin and related metal products.
This trade continued right through the Roman period. But perhaps the most important finds were the discovery of sherds of north African red slip ware in undisturbed archaeology that implied that trade with the Mediterranean had continued well into the fifth and sixth centuries AD.”
Info from Time Team (Channel 4) – Padstow, North Cornwall: First screened 9 March 2008
Trade of goods takes people to and from wide ranging destinations; the goods influence the culture of both importer and exporter, and the odd genetic input will have happenned from time to time.
This illustrates the point made previously about identifying genetic traits and connecting them to a particular period!