HYPERBOREAN ODYSSEY 2: Shetland

 

 

Part two of my Hyperborean Odyssey is in Shetland, Britain's northern most islands and the alleged site of the legendary Thule described by the ancients. I visited the archaeological site of Jarlshof which has Bronze age round houses, Iron-Age wheel houses, a Pictish broch and the largest Norse settlement in the British Isles. Shetland was under Nordic rule up to 1472 so it still has some strong cultural ties to Scandinavia despite also having a rich Pictish history.

Why did Celts build Hill Forts in the Iron Age? History Documentary

 

Why did Celts of the British Isles build over 4000 hill forts during the Iron Age? The answer may have something to do with the conflict between those Bronze Age cowboys who maintained traditional pastoralist transhumance lifestyles, and those in the forts who depended more on arable farming. This can also explain why British Celts were the most lactose tolerant people on Earth at that time. In this documentary I visited Barbury Castle in Wiltshire, Castle an Dinas in Cornwall and several other magnificent Iron Age hill forts.

Sources:
 

• Patterson, N. et al. Large-scale migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age. Nature 601, 588–594 (2022) 
• Valdez-Tullett A. Sheep in Wealth’s Clothing: Social Reproduction across the Bronze Age to Iron Age Transition in Wiltshire, Southern England. European Journal of Archaeology. 2017;20(4):663-681. doi:10.1017/eaa.2016

 

Art created for Survive the Jive by Christian Sloan Hall and Alex Cristi. Other images are owned by their respective creators as credited on screen. 

 

Celtic punk enjoys some milk

 

CARN EUNY: Cornwall’s 2000 year old CELTIC VILLAGE

Cornwall, or Kernow in the Cornish language, was once part of an independent Celtic kingdom called Dumnonia. In this documentary we travel 2000 years back in time to the Celtic iron-age village and roundhouses of Carn Euny. The Iron Age village preserves some of the oldest Celtic architecture, as well as a mysterious passage and chamber called a fogou and a sacred well which has been in constant use since pagan times. We shall also see reconstructed Celtic roundhouses from Butser ancient farm to get an insight into the daily life, culture, religion and economy of the Ancient Britons.

Sources: 

 - Berresford Ellis, Peter., ‘The Ancient World of The Celts’ (Constable, 1998) 

- Borlase “The Natural History and Antiquities of Cornwall, and Observations of the Scilly Islands" 

- Christie, P., et al (1978). The Excavation of an Iron Age Souterrain and Settlement at Carn Euny, Sancreed, Cornwall. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 44, 309-433. 

-Walker, Charles ‘Strange Britain’ 1989

JIVE TALK: When did CELTS arrive in Britain? NEW DNA evidence

THE DECLINE OF TRANSHUMANCE AND THE RISE OF HILLFORTS IN ENGLAND

Where did Celts come from? Who were the Druids?

Celts are known for tartan, faeries, druids, bagpipes and the British Isles - but the origins of the Celtic culture lie in the Unetice culture of Bronze age central Europe and it spread out with the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. In this history documentary, I look at the genetic evidence for the spread of Celts into Britain and Ireland in the Iron Age, as well as the Galatian Celts into Anatolia. Then I examine some Celtic archaeological artefacts such as the Gundestrup cauldron and the Marlborough bucket and I introduce the viewer to some of the basic aspects of Druidry and the Indo-European religion of the ancient Celts.

Celtic chariot warrrior art by Alex Cristi

Aristocratic Iron age Gaul and Caledonian Death Lord art by Christian Sloan Hall

T-shirts with the Gaul design are available here...

Galatian DNA - Evidence of Celtic expansion

This map show's Greek geographer Strabo's account of the migration of the Tectosages, one of three Celtic (Gaulish) tribes, descended from the Volcae tribe which originates in Germany, that migrated East to Phrygia to form the Galatian Celtic group. Even Saint Paul wrote that there were Celts there in his Epistle to the Galatians ("you Celtic goyim don't need to get circumcised") so their presence is well attested. But now we have their DNA! (one sample at least)

The Iron Age sample called Anatolia_IA_MA2197 can be modelled as 57% Bell Beaker derived (signifiant because although Beaker folk didn't speak Celtic, we know the Celts were Beaker descended), it also shows a strong affinity with a sample from the Halstatt Proto-Celtic culture of Austria.

 Interestingly, if we assume the Hallstatt and Urnfield people to be genetically similar to the Celts who expanded East and West in the 3rd century BC and to the ones who brought Celtic languages to Britain in 6th BC we can see that in all the modern day "Celtic" regions, their genetic influence is small (UK, Brittany and Ireland) to negligible (Galicia - where there are greater amounts of medieval Arabic admixture than Iron Age Hallstatt).

The paper
Eurogenes blog post on the modelling

Where Did Celts Come From?

While Germanic language is widely agreed to have emerged around 3000 years ago in Northern Denmark, amongst a people who were genetically like modern Danes, and then to have spread from 750BC as neighbouring peoples adopted the language for some reason, it is harder to pin point who the first Celtic speakers were or explain how their languages got to Britain.

As I have said in videos, the modern British genetic profile emerged 4500 years ago with the arrival of the beaker folk from Holland, but these people did NOT speak a Celtic language, as linguists agree Proto-Celtic isn't that old (maybe 3000 or 3500 years old). This means that either: 

a) The peoples of the British Isles adopted a Celtic language due to trade with continental Celts
b) A small Celtic elite took over Britain and Ireland and somehow changed the culture and language but not the genetics
c) A continental population of Celts took over Britain and Ireland and did change the genetics, but this change is only very slight because they were already closely related to the people of the British Isles.

Archeologically, the Hallstatt culture of the 8th to 6th centuries BC, is seen as the first proper Celtic material culture. The two black stars on the PCA chart above, made by Eurogenes, represent two skeletons from the Hallstatt culture, and it can clearly be seen that one plots among the Dutch and one among the Northern French, but neither among modern "Celtic" areas. However, the purple Iron Age Celts on the chart are between the older Bronze age British samples and the Halstatt samples indicating there WAS an invasion of continental Celts to Britain who were related to these Halstatt samples and that they changed the DNA of Britain and Ireland.

Modern English people plot between these purple Iron Age Celts and the red Anglo-Saxon samples, but there is always the possibility that other 5th century Anglo-Saxon invaders from Frisia, Holland etc would have plotted like modern Dutch people just as the much older Halstatt sample does - thus making the job of distinguishing "Celtic and Germanic DNA" very complicated! Especially when you also see that the Anglo-Saxon samples are closer to the Bronze Age Britons than the Halstatt Celts are.

EDIT: Eurogenes actually said there may have been as much as 10% admixture from a Celtic source in the iron age.

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