There's continual mentioning of the Celts on this forum in both a racial purity and a mythological romantic way both out of step with modern thinking and archaeology which proves clearly they didn't exist.

Here's a new book and review which addresses the gap between archaeolgical fact and popular romantic culture.

The Atlantic Celts
Ancient People or Modern Invention?
Simon James

Did the Ancient Celts Ever Exist in Britain?

The Celtic peoples hold a fundamental place in the British national conscious-ness. In this book Simon James surveys ancient and modern ideas of the Celts and challenges them in the light of revolutionary new thinking on the Iron Age peoples of Britain. Examining how ethnic and national identities are constructed, he presents an alternative history of the British Isles, proposing that the idea of insular Celtic identity is really a product of the rise of nationalism in the eighteenth century. He considers whether the "Celticness" of the British Isles is a romantic, even politically dangerous, falsification of history, with implications for the debate on self-government for the Celtic regions of the United Kingdom.

Simon James is an Iron Age and Roman arch�ologist with the British Museum.

The Atlantic Celts: Ancient people or modern invention?

By Simon James, 1999, British Museum Press, �6.99
Reviewed by Geoff Jones

THE ANCIENT CELTS are in fashion at the moment. They even have a unit of the national curriculum to themselves. The generally accepted story is that they were a warrior race who spread across Europe around 500BC, eastwards and southwards to modern Italy, Greece and Turkey, and north and west to the British Isles.

Arriving here around 300BC, they ethnically cleansed the previous inhabitants (though this tends to be downplayed), co-existed with the Romans, and were finally driven west by new invaders to what are now Wales, Scotland and Ireland, where the remains of Celtic culture still survive. There is a picture of a typical Celtic warrior - flowing hair, lots of gold jewellery, long sword - Conan the Barbarian with a lot more style.

Simon James' new book, based on modern archaeological evidence, exposes much of this as myth. There is no evidence for any massive invasion, only for a patchy immigration of small numbers and the taking up of 'Celtic' technology and art forms by the already existing people of the islands. Furthermore, he suggests that the idea of a Europe-wide 'Celtic' cultural entity or 'nation' was merely an invention of 18th century historians and linguists. (In fact, the very word 'Celt' used to describe the iron-age peoples of Europe, only dates from the 18th century). But his short book raises many important questions, especially on the issues of 'culture' and 'nationality', in the light of the modern surge in 'nationalisms'.

James starts by discussing how to define 'nationality' and rejects traditional definitions based on genetics, linguistic similarity, or some more general 'culture'. He concludes that the only definition which holds water is one based on an individual's conscious awareness - if someone considers themselves Welsh, then they are part of the Welsh nation, regardless of their ethnic or 'cultural' background.

Following from this, he considers what would be the consciousness of the iron-age peoples of the British Isles. This consciousness would, of course, be based on their social existence. Small family groups living by primitive agriculture, would have little except 'short range' contacts - with the next village, possibly with the odd travelling salesman or local specialist like a smith, miller or herbalist. They would be very unlikely to have any 'long range' consciousness of being part of a 'Celtic culture'. When technological developments in agriculture enabled the production of surpluses for trading, there would be the development of a new 'warrior' class, which might be formed from foreign invaders, but much more likely of local 'strong men' picking up the most advanced technology in swords, spears etc from local or even overseas contacts and living by appropriating the surplus. Members of this class would aim to weld together the family units in 'their own' area to form their own petty kingdom. In James' phrase 'Kings created peoples, not peoples kings'. These 'Kings' would of course be interested only in the success of their own kingdom, and hardly have any consciousness of any greater 'Celtic solidarity'. A brief view of the history of mediaeval Wales gives a highly depressing demonstration of the process, with Welsh princes doing deals with the English, or with Normans, in order to further the aggrandisement of their own petty 'kingdom' against neighbouring 'kings'. And as far as any wider 'Celtic solidarity' was concerned, an Irishman and a Welshman meeting on a forest track would be extremely unlikely to cry 'Hail fellow Celt!', but much more likely to try to cut each others heads off. With regard to the development of wider 'national consciousness', James is more tentative. He suggests that this comes about as a result of a major outside threat. In the case of England, for example, the invasion of the Vikings demonstrated the relative similarity of different petty 'English kingdoms' such as Wessex and Mercia, in the face of hostile invaders with a completely different language, religion and traditions.

James' final theme is the reason for the invention of the idea of 'Celticism' in the 18th and 19th centuries, primarily by scholars in Wales and Scotland. He describes it in terms of a reaction against the all-conquering power of youthful English capitalism, especially when the name 'Britain' was appropriated and, in James' words, 'non-English identities faced potential cultural oblivion through assimilation and submergence into a common Britishness which was overwhelmingly English in character'. Obviously, in a short book he cannot go into much detail about the nature of this reaction, its class composition and its specific form. These questions have been discussed in much more detail by other writers, particularly in the case of Wales by Gwyn Alf Williams. James' book is a short one and many of the ideas he puts forward are not at all as far from accepted academic wisdom as might be expected from the publicity it has received. But it can be highly recommended as a healthy antidote to the windy rhetoric on 'Celtic culture' which comes from some quarters and a useful contribution to the discussion of what constitutes a 'nation'.

That's because he's simply taking a mainstream archaeological view and presenting it to the general public.

Third, the same Western marker is extremely strong in totally non-Celtic populations as Basques. Celts can't have made a significant apportation in Basque blood because not a single Celtic word has entered Basque vocabulary (while hundreds of Latin words have), meaning that Basques were closed to and probably in continuous conflict with neighbour Celts (celtizied tribes). There is a misleading idea that invasions and aculturation mean genocide or ethnic cleansing. In fact that's very very strange, at least in large ammounts. Connacht was inhabited since at least the Megalithic age (c. 3500 BCE), assuming that Hg1 is a Celtic marker (that it isn't), where did all the farmers, shepherds and fishermen of Connaught and the rest of Ireland and the rest of the British islands, etc. go to? Think again.

 The basques were not an isolated population, they certainly interacted with the people around them, i.e, the celts and others. In fact the "basque" haplotype is also seen in Bavaria with noticeable frequency as well as France and Spain but nowhere esle.  This mean the basque did interact with other people, in fact the "connacht" haplotype occurs more frequently inside of the basque country than the "basque" haplotype itself, this suggest a large perhaps gradual "celtic" input into the basque country.

 I would like, however , to know more about the research (you saying it was done on the male, are you suggesting the markers was on the Y chromosome) Even that it is still relevent, Y chromosome are inherited in block (you cannot inherit part of it but the whole thing, itself representing 1/46 of the chromosomes material, the Y chromosome does not crossover also, although it mutates), so if there were other type of people in large proportion in these historically "celtic" area, then the "connacht" haplotype would not occur at such high frequency since it would have been dilluted by other haplotypes unless the other people also has the "connacht" haplotype indicating that these peoples are related. I guess they need to do more refine research, but this is  a strong evidence of a celtic nation. the history is inside our cells, a  magnificent library of information and stable over thousands of years.

 Dude I don't know what you are talking about seriously. What you are showing me is some total nonsense (with source leading to geocities). I seriously doubt your source. The research I'm reffering  has nothing to the crap you are posting now in an incoherent manner. It doesn't make any sense. In no case did I mention language. Hell you can't even spell the word chromosome right. Y chromosome is better to be studied, because it has no crossingover, it is not altered with time (unless mutation). I'm gonna find the research (a serious one) , but i'm afraid you are lost here, you just don't many any sense to me in the field of genetics. Mitochondrial DNA is hardly a way to access your ancestry, it is only pass from maternal side and do you know mitochondrial DNA is not even of human origin, but from a parasitic origin, the early mitochondria were parasite trap inside a cells, the parasite however develop a symbiotic relationship to that host.

If that's all your argument you should shut up. Disqualification, specially gratuitous disqualification like that one you're using can hardly be any kind of argument but actually diqualifies the poster. Use your neurones here, not just your guts.

In fact it is worse precisely for all those reasons: let's suppose that I have Hg1 for Y-cromosome and H MtDNA haplogroup (I really don't know but it's likely, as both my purely male and purely female lineages can be traced nearby up to where we can know - alternatives could be Hg22 and V). Does this mean anything? No! Most of my other ancestors come from different regions (Italy, Castile, who knows where?) and they are not represented at all in those maps. My Hg1, being a mutation that happened c. 27,000 years ago, means that only 1 among aprox. 14,000 ancestors of that time is represented... it's simply ridiculous. Including MtDNA, you'd get one among 7000 ancestors only. You can assume that statistically one error would anullate another error, etc.  but that's not necesarily the case. Instead overall genetic studies take in account all lineages equally. They may have other problems but at least they are representative of the true genalogic tree.

And some scientists think that, at least occasionally, Y-cromosome can combine with the alike parts of X-cromosome... what could well explain why there are only 8 MtDNA types and at least 22 Y-cromosome types in Europe. Finally you have to concede that eventually two mutations could converge - this would be rare but not totally impossible.

Well, that's the same of Y-cromosome (at least in principle). Why would be Y-chromosome male-male-male... lineage more representative than MtDNA female-female-female... lineage? They are obviously equivalent (again in principle) - or are you reasoning that pure female lineage has no importance for some unconfessed macho reasoning?

This reasoning is again irrelevant and badly done. While mithocondrias have bacterial origin, they are obviously symbiotic and not parasitic. All our DNA comes eventually from bacteria and mithocondrias are in all cells of all animals, so it's as human as the rest of our DNA (having the advantage that it doesn't recombines at all, unlike Y-chromosome).