THE LOST CELTS OF CHINA [1998]
UK
In March 1998 the “Times” featured an article about some 3,000 year-old mummies found preserved in the desert of Western China, and there was a television programme on the subject. Scientists were astonished, not only by the wonderful preservation of these bodies, but also by their racial type, which is so very unlike present Chinese inhabitants. These people were tall, long nosed and red haired. Their clothing was still discernible as being woollen tartan in brown, (faded red?) white and blue! The weave was a twill. Work is in progress to analyse samples of DNA from the mummies, but the early results support links with European populations.
The area is known as the Tarim Basin, and the Takla Makan Desert covers most of it. It has mountains on three sides, which separate it from Tibet, India, Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics of Russia.
The Chinese began their excavations in the Takla Makan desert in the late 1970s, but due to the prevailing politics, no westerners became aware of their existence until 1988. Nowadays, the people of the region want autonomy and independence from Beijing, hence the recent accessibility of data on historical subjects.
At the beginning of this century some ancient manuscripts were found in the same area of north western China, and they appear to go back to 600 AD. The language, known as Tocharian , was similar to Celtic and Germanic languages in many ways, placing it in the Indo-European family of languages, which are in no way allied to Chinese. For instance, their words for the number three are tre and trai. The mummies antedated the texts by about 2000 years, but they could have spoken an earlier form of the language.
There have been other similar finds in the area, in the Altai Mountains on the borders of Russia with China and Mongolia. The most famous burials are those in the Ulagan Valley, excavated between 1929 and 1949 and several on the Ukok Plateau, between 1990 and 1993. The Ukok burials are from the Iron Age, between 600 and 400 BC, but the physical types are very similar. The tombs contain well preserved bodies of people and horses, with plenty of textile and leather goods. The tombs are low earthen mounds or barrows, which must have been dug during a warm season, otherwise it would not have been possible to penetrate the permafrost. They were lined with logs, which formed chambers, and the dampness from the summer thaw must have frozen in the winter to preserve the bodies so remarkably. Some had tattoos, and scientists studying them think that they had much in common with the Scythians. One man discovered in 1995, was wearing a woollen cap, high leather boots and a marmot coat. He had his red hair plaited and was buried with a horse. There was horse harness decorated with griffins, which are akin to the Welsh dragon A large four-wheeled wagon with a felt canopy was also found in another barrow. In 1995 the government of the Altai Republic passed a law prohibiting any more excavations. Once again, as in the case of the manuscript finds, these burials are about 2000 years after those of the Takla Makan desert, but the people and their clothes are so similar that they are highly likely to have been of the same race.
Ancient Chinese and Roman historians considered that the Tochanans were a Gothic people, and Yair Davidy, who has done extensive research into the areas settled by ancient- Scythian, Celtic, Gothic and Teutonic tribes, considers that an offshoot may be traced in Toxandria an area of ancient Belgium and Holland which was settled by Scythians, and where Scythian and Sarmatian artifacts have been found. An ancient vase, discovered· in Italy, has two figures named “Toxamus” and “Kimerios” , which links the Tocharians with the Cimmerians. “Toxaris” was a Scythian hero in Classical literature.
The Cimmerians were an earlier branch of the peoples who afterwards became known as “Cells” and “Scythians”. These people were originally descended from the tribes of Israel which were taken into captivity by the Assyrians and resettled in Northern Mesopotamia and Medo-Persia. In his extensively researched book, The Tribes, Yair Davidy traces the origins of a great number of the tribes and clans of ancient Israel who eventually settled in Western and Northern Europe and the British Isles Some earlier Cells, from a prior migration, even found their way to the Americas from about 1,000 BC, and their traces have been studied by the late Dr. Barry Fell in his book America B.C. These earlier migrants could have been some of the same people who escaped from Egypt once the Pharaohs began to put pressure on them and treated them as slaves. Many adventurous spirits left the area ahead of the Exodus.
Dr Mair, an expert in archaic languages from the University of Pennsylvania, first made contact with the mummies discoverers, and he thinks that they were an offshoot of the Celts who began to spread across Europe from about 1800 BC. A section of them could have gone eastwards, although the general trend was a westward migration The discoverers believe that the people of the mummies died out in about 1000 AD, but there are people still living in the area who resemble the type.
Ancient historians have placed the Scythians in areas from present day Romania to far east of the Caspian Sea. From there, parties of the wanderers could have gone as far as north west China.
Another researcher, Thomas B Allen, who was in the area, suggested to an official that a thumb print found on a piece of pottery could perhaps be proved to be that of a white man, by an American forensic archaeologist. The shard has not been seen since.
The astonishment of the scientists at this find of European types in an area which is now predominantly peopled by Asiatic or Mongolian types is not difficult to understand, but it is well known how very much the Cells wandered both in Europe and Central Asia, even being found in Afghanistan and northern India. It should not be too difficult, given all the data available on the Celtic culture, to collate and paint a coherent picture of the origins of these widespread people They did not as some authorities seem to think, arise fully developed in an instant, like the legend of Cadmus dragon’s teeth, which he sowed, and they became an army overnight!
In reality, the Cells go back much further than is generally realised and they are divided into a great many different peoples; but their racial type is constant, and their culture was distinctive and developed from early times.
What did these people look like?
Descriptions from ancient literature show them as tall, fair or light brown haired, blue eyed, fair skinned, and with straight noses. These descriptions fit the Takla Makan mummies, some of whom had red hair. This frequently crops up amongst the modern Celts and Gaels. One Tocharian mummy had blue eyes. Old Chinese books described these people as tall, with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses and red or blond hair. Until the discovery of the mummies, scientists scoffed at these descriptions. The clothes were very similar to those found on British and Celtic remains predating 500 BC, and the weave was the same.
The Bronze Age in Europe began about 2800 BC and continued until the Iron Age took over in about 500 BC. The Takla Makan mummies were people of the Bronze Age, it would seem.
We have a very vivid description left to us of a famous Celtic queen, the British Boudicca (Boadicea). It was written by Dion Cassius, a Roman historian, and is as follows:
“Boudicca was tall, terrible to look on, and gifted with a powerful voice. A flood of bright red hair ran down to her knees; she wore a golden necklace made up of ornate pieces, a multicoloured robe, and over it a thick cloak held together by a brooch…. “
This is a very similar portrait to that which we have of a mummy found in Takla Makan. Do these people sound like “painted savages”?
However, in warfare, the Cells went naked, and were tattooed or painted with woad. The Picts, whose name means “painted”, were tattooed or painted in this way. The Celts were ferocious fighters when their liberty was threatened and merited the Romans fear. The Greeks and Romans called them barbaroi, which we nowadays interpret as barbarians, but they were called this in imitation of their speech, which the Romans could not understand. To them, it sounded like bar-bar, bar-bar, reminiscent of the rhubarb, rhubarb, which is muttered by the crowds in plays!
The 4,000-year old “Ice man” discovered in the Alps recently was found near the village w here Professor Mair’s grandfather was born in Austria; which is why he now has an interest in the period. The “Iceman” has. been suggested by some authorities to have been a coppersmith. Working with copper preceded the use of bronze.
Professor Mair has three woollen caps, one from the Tarim basin, one from Southern China, and one from his grandfather’s Austrian village, all similar. Whilst on the subject of headgear, one of the mummies had a high crowned felt hat which is similar to that which is part of the Welsh national, dress to this day! This is another pointer to their Celtic origins.
It seems that there is little doubt about which race the mummies belonged to. Now we must find as much evidence as possible to establish who the Celts were, and their origins.
There are two main strains, of Celt; those called “Celtiberians”, by anthropologists; and the later Celts who went under many different names, such as Cimmeroi, Sakae, Scythians, etc, The Celtiberians colonised the shores of the Mediterranean at a very early date, and had settlements in Spain and Portugal (Iberia). They began their migrations in about 1800 BC, and colonised the British Isles early on. They were the ancestors of the Mycenaeans and early Greeks, the Trojans and the Etruscans, and the very earliest Iberian colonisers were ancestors of the Basques and the Picts. Their carvings and Wri tings have bee n found in North America , dating from about 2000 BC. Experts studying these people consider that they may be considered as Sumerian, or Semitic .
It is now necessary to clarify what Sumerian or Semitic means m this context. The earliest settlers of Mesopotamia were the Sumerians, whose origin is unknown. They settled by the banks of the Euphrates and founded the city of Ur, which is called Mugheir nowadays. The area was very marshy, and the Sumerians constructed canals and irrigation systems, which required sophisticated methods of hydraulic engineering and point to a developed civilisation.
Shortly before the birth of Abraham, the Semitic peoples came into the area and took over the civilisation of the old Sumerians, which was in decline. The original Sumerians appear to have belonged to the White Race, but they were not Semites, having no relationship to the nomads who overran Mesopotamia round about 3500 BC: Their language was quite different from any: Semitic or Indo-European language, nor was it akin to Egyptian. In about 2050 BC it became a dead classical language. It never developed an alphabet, but used “cuneiform” to make syllabic symbols , similar to the system still used today in Chinese and Japanese.
North of Sumer, a Semitic language speaking people known as Akkadians came to the area in about 3800 BC. The Semitic civilisation was vigorous and supplanted the Old Sumerian civilisation, becoming dominant by 2450 BC. The Semites invaded from the south, and settled mainly in the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, in what the Bible calls ”The Plain of Shinar”, where the two rivers are only about twenty miles apart.
There were many Semitic kingdoms including that of Alushshid, who reigned about 3800 BC. His name has been found on vase fragments, and it a ppears that the deity worshipped was Baal or Bel.
The Akkadians used cuneiform for their records in the early days. Their civilisation developed and became powerful, but was eventually challenged by other Semitic tribes, such as the Amorites, who conquered Babylon (Babel) around 2000 BC. A library has been found, dating to about 2600 BC, filled with 30,000 clay tablets, or “books”.
In Akkad, in about 2800 BC a Semitic chieftain called Sharga-shar ali ruled. He was also known as Sargon 1. He was skilled in the art of war and he succeeded in defeating the Sumerians, which had hitherto been far-superior to those of the Semites. Sometime between 2100 and 2000 BC more tribes arrived in the area and founded a dynasty. Their ancestor was known as Sumj-abi, which means Shem was my father”, hence their classification, as Shemites or Semites. During this period Abram was born in Ur.
From the researches of Professor C. S. Coon, an anthropologist who wrote in “The Races of Europe!” (published in 1939) as follows:
“It can be shown that the Sumerians, who lived over five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia are almost identical in skull and face form with living Englishmen and that pre dynastic Egyptian skulls can be matched in a seventeenth century plague pit”.
These quotations are referring to the later Semites who took over from the old non-Indo-European Sumerians, who were very different, as we may infer from their little statuettes that have been found.
Professor A.H. Sayce in “Higher Criticism and the Monuments” (1894) says: ..
”The blond-Amorite race was widely spread….in short, the mountainous country of Palestine was largely in the hands of Amorite tribes”.
(“Amorite ” means” “a westerner”).
Sir Leonard-Woolley, in “Ur of the Chaldees” (1929) remarks:
“I have already said that we do not quite know who the Sumerians are; tradition would make them come from the East; the study of their bones and skulls shows that they were a branch of the Indo-European stock of the human race resembling what is called a Caucasian man, a people who in stature and appearance might pass as modern Europeans rather than as Orientals”.
The Hebrews were of the Semitic stock, and later on, in Israel, King David is described as being “ruddy and of a fair countenance’. We are usually led to believe that this meant that he had a healthy outdoor complexion and was a handsome man, but think about it this: “ruddy” means “red-haired” and “fair” means light skinned. Red haired people have very fair skins.
The seventh Dead Sea Scroll described Sarah in these terms
“Her skin was pure white; her hair was long and lovely; her hands were long and slim”.
A typical picture of a Nordic lady of noble birth; Her name, “Sarah” means “A Princess”.
Legend tells that Abraham had a concubine named Keturah, and that he had several sons by her, some of whom went to India and what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan. Genesis 25:6 says :
But unto the sons of the concubines, which Abraham had Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country.
Others may have gone further east, to Russia and China.
When the Israelites were in Egypt, perhaps during and after the time of Joseph, but more certainly after… “there arose a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph…”, (Exodus 1:8)
It was through a study of Sanskrit, the most ancient language of the sub-continent of India, (which is now only used for religious purposes like Latin used to be), which led to a different way, of studying the science of the comparison and origins of languages. In 1783 Sir William Jones went to India as a judge and amused himself by learning Sanskrit. He noticed similarities between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Persian, Gothic and Celtic and surmised that they must spring from the same source. In the next century this was studied and efforts were made to track down the original language, which they dubbed Indo-European. As this work pointed out the similarities between Sanskrit and many European languages as well as many Near Eastern languages, it is feasible that it was the original tongue of the Iberians, or Hebrews. In view of the fact that Tocharian has been classed as an Indo-European language, this is significant.
We have noted the racial similarities between the Semites, the Hebrews, the Celts and the Tocharians. Abraham’s descendants were Isaac, and his son Jacob who became the progenitor of the twelve tribes of Israel. You will remember from Genesis 37, how Jacob’s sons were jealous of their younger brother, Joseph, whom Jacob had designated as his heir by giving him a coat of many colours. What could this be, but a tartan robe? Just as the tribal banners have continued to this day in European Coats of Arms, so has the coat of many colours been preserved in the dress of the Scottish Highlanders. Another link with the Tocharians!..
The colours of the Tocharian plaids are noteworthy. Red (brown), white and blue are not only the colours of the flags of Israel nations, but they were originally those of the hangings of the Tabernacle of the Israelites. (Exodus 25:4). The blue is sometimes referred to as purple, but there are many shades of this colour purple, through royal blue to navy blue. This is because the dye from which all these colours was produced in ancient times was not of a consistent colour. It was produced in Tyre from the murex snail. The process was expensive and the Tyrrhenians were experts. Only royalty and nobility could afford garments dyed with Tyrrhenian purple, but we have seen that a Tocharian mummy had this colour in the tartan. In a very different climate, they may have had to use vegetable dyes, such as woad to perpetuate their traditional clothing.
Another interesting surmise comes from the word “Celt”. In various dictionaries and encyclopaedias a “celt” (without the capital letter); is said to be ‘a stone knife’. The Israelites used a stone knife for the rite of circumcision. It cannot be proved from the remains that these people practised circumcision, since the flesh is destroyed after such a lapse of time. Nevertheless, why else should these people be called by the same name as a stone knife, if it were not part of their ancient custom to use such an instrument? Knives for everyday use would have been of bronze, or of iron in later years. A stone knife could only be a survival for ritual purposes.
Recently, an article in the Sunday Telegraph gave a comparison of the traditional views of Celtic culture and a new thesis which maintains that the Celts were not a homogenous people; that similarities in the cultures of the different groups and tribes had been caused by contact with other cultures. It should be evident from the foregoing that they were a homogenous race, and there is a wealth of literature to substantiate the earlier view that they were all one people and culture. Their art is distinctive and very elaborate, indicative of a high level of civilisation. Because they built in wood rather than in stone, historians have concluded that they were very primitive compared with the Romans and Greeks, who left many monuments to their building skills. Wood is not such a durable material as stone. Many historians, notably, Francis Pryor, are of the opinion that the Celts have not been given their due and new evidences of their skills are coming to light in excavations.
It would also seem that the fact that these typical pointers to the Celts have turned up in such an isolated part of the world as north western China would give the lie to the old largely out-dated hypothesis and the myth of “woad -painted savages” first fostered by Julius Caesar.
There are many clues to link the different tribes of the Celts with the Tocharians which is not within the scope of this article. They are also characteristic of the Shemitic/Semitic/Hebrew/Israelitish races, using these terms in their proper application, and not in the popular idea, that they are all Jews. This race in all its different divisions, fulfilled the name of their ancestor, Heber or Eber, which means “migration”.
To summarise, these similarities between the Celts and the Tocharians are as follows:
They were racially akin, their clothing was similar to that of the ancient Celts, even to pattern and colour, Welsh hats and Austrian caps and their language had Indo-European roots.
