by A few weeks ago, on my podcast After Dark Radio , my co-host for the night, Danichi, and I, got into a discussion about ancient civilizations. One of the topics was the recent excavation of a 100 naturally preserved mummies in the Tarim Basin in the Xinjang Province in China. Scientists studying the site said the mummies were 3000 to 4000 years old, and were not Asians, but instead, red-haired, lily-white skinned, large nose, deep-set round-eyed, tall in stature caucasians, and according to the New York Times “…archaeologists could hardly believe what they saw.” And they asked: What are white people doing here?
Personally, I don’t think it’s a big mystery.
The mummies were dressed in typical Celtic garb: colorful patterned clothes, tartan plaids, tunics & pantaloons, swirl tattoos painted on face & body, braided long hair. Even though some of the news articles I’ve read have speculated the mummies may be Celtic people, in the same breath, they turn around & rebuff that possibility. Other archeologists guess the mummies are a lost tribe of Europeans who migrated “west to east.” But I think it was the other way around…”east to west.”
If something looks Celtic, tastes & smells Celtic, it probably is Celtic. However, the Celts were not a race, but a group of peoples, or, more accurately, a group of societies. They spoke or still speak dialects of a certain family, called the Celtic languages. Wherever the Celts have lived they’ve left place-names, inscriptions with personal names, & in history the memory of other names, recognized as different from all others and, in general, are the same everywhere.
Twenty years ago, I found an old book called The Rise of the Celts written by Henri Hubert, and published in 1934. The book said the origin of the Celtic peoples came from an Aryan race located in Northern India, at the bottom of the Himalayan Mountains. Anyhow, this is what I’m thinking: Since the Celts were nomads, they must have traveled west, pass the Himalayas until they found the Tarim Basin in China. After all, the Tarim Basin is only a stone’s throw from the mountain range of Tibet. After China, they continued moving westward, through Austria, Spain, and other European countries, until they settled in the British Isles. But where did the Aryan race come from? Perhaps, Sumeria (Sumerian=Aryan). The Sumerians became the Mesopotamians, the Babylonians, and the Khazars, who migrated into the Caucasus Mountains and became the Caucasian/Aryan race. The Khazars then spread out to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, and blended with the races there and imposed their religious belief on those cultures. The Aryans, or the Khazars, drove the Dravidians from northern India and pushed them south, where they became the Tamils, who are in Sri Lanka. So, perhaps, the Aryan race that Hubert writes about is, in fact, the Khazars, who settled near the Himalayan Mountains.
(For a long time, the Khazar civilization was considered lost, but in 2008, Russian scientist uncovered evidence of a Khazar city near the Caspian Sea).
Here is an article from The New York Times, and another article here, with photos and a third article, here
They can be proto-celtic at most, as the Tamrin mummies are older than the ‘Celts’ in Europe? 😉
Yes, the Tamrin mummies are older than the European “Celts”. The La Tene period—which is attributed to the Celts and were the ruling power of a barbarian Europe—developed from 450 BC to the Roman conquest 1st century BCE. But it doesn’t mean the La Tene civilization and the Celts were one and the same. The La Tene period corresponds to only one of several groups of the Celts (the Celts had split-up long before the 5th century BC), who were called the Brythons. And they weren’t the same Celts who settled in Ireland.