Celtic origins reconsidered in

the light of the

‘archaeogenetics revolution’
John T. Koch
Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies
Allentoft, M. E., M. Sikora … K. Kristiansen & E. Willerslev 2015 ‘Population
genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia’, Nature 522, 167–72.
§2
In recent years ancient DNA data has expanded
exponentially. New evidence has been found
for hypotheses about the origins of Proto-Indo-
European and its branches, including Proto-
Tocharian, Proto-Anatolian, and Proto-Indo-
Iranian. But facing the challenging complexities
in the archaeological and genetic record of
Europe’s Atlantic Façade, this dynamic
literature has been more hesitant in advancing
ideas about the how, where, and when of
Proto-Celtic.
Cassidy, L. M., R. Martiniano, E. M. Murphy, M. D. Teasdale, J.
Mallory, B. Hartwell, & D. G. Bradley 2016 ‘Neolithic and Bronze
Age migration to Ireland and establishment of the insular Atlantic
genome’, PNAS 113/2, 368–73

At present, the Beaker culture is the most probable

archaeological vector of this Steppe ancestry into Ireland from
the continent …. The extent of this change, which we estimate at
roughly a third of Irish Bronze Age ancestry, opens the possibility
of accompanying language change, perhaps the first introduction
of Indo-European language
ancestral to Irish.
….

This turnover invites the possibility of accompanying introduction

of Indo-European, perhaps early Celtic, language.
§3
An exception is a novel hypothesis sketched in
a study published three years ago by a team
based at Trinity College Dublin. Lara Cassidy
was the lead author. Her co-authors included
Jim Mallory and team leader Dan Bradley.
Cassidy et al. provides a convenient starting
point for this talk. The aim today will be to
tease out a few implications of their linguistic
hypothesis and see how it fits with other
research, mostly evidence published since
then.
In the 2016 study, full-genome sequencing of
four prehistoric individuals led to the
interpretation that a migration of Indo-
European speakers entered Ireland between
the Middle Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (so
roughly the Irish Beaker Period, 2400–2100 BC)
and that their language then evolved in situ to
become Gaelic.
 Rathlin Island men
§4 2026–1534 cal BC

Cassidy, L. M., R. Martiniano,

E. M. Murphy, M. D. Teasdale,
J. Mallory, B. Hartwell, & D.
G. Bradley 2016 ‘Neolithic
and Bronze Age migration to
Ireland and establishment of
the insular Atlantic genome’,
PNAS 113/2, 368–73.

Ballynahatty woman
3343–3020 cal BC
In brief, the evidence for this proposal was
(1) a Neolithic woman (dated 3343–3020 cal BC) from Ballynahatty, buried beside
the Giant’s Ring henge near Belfast. Her DNA could be traced to the ancient Near
East and, in this, was similar to that of many other early European farmers as well
as modern Sardinians. She also showed admixture from western European
hunter–gatherers.
(2) Three men from an Early Bronze Age cist burial (dated 2026–1534 cal BC) from
Rathlin Island: their DNA, unlike that of the Ballynahatty woman, contained high
levels of ancestry from the Pontic–Caspian steppe with admixture from the central
European Neolithic.
The Neolithic and Early Bronze samples also differed in that the latter had detailed
similarities with the modern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh populations, but absent
from the older genome. These include genes for haemochromatosis, lactase
persistence, blue eyes, and tall stature. Subsequent studies have found similar
transformations of populations—from gene pools lacking the steppe component
to those with it heavily present—occurring between 2500 and 2000 BC in other
parts of Atlantic Europe, including Britain and the Iberian Peninsula.
Renfrew, A. C.
1987 Archaeology
and Language: The
Puzzle of Indo-
European Origins.
London, Pimlico,
1998. First
published,
London, Cape.

§5
What the TCD team was proposing was
conceptually similar to Renfrew’s 1987
hypothesis, which also involved a migration by
Indo-European speakers into Western Europe
several thousand years ago followed by
evolution in situ into what became the
attested Celtic languages. The difference is
that Renfrew did not envision a second
prehistoric mass migration after the one that
brought agriculture. Therefore, the continuous
evolution in the West producing Celtic in his
1987 model went back to the First Farmers
who arrived in the Iberian Peninsula about
7500 years ago and in Ireland and Britain
about 6000 years ago. So, more than a
thousand years before what Cassidy et al.
proposed.
One of the ogham
inscribed stones from the
souterrain (‘the Cave of
Dunloe’) at Coolmagort
(Cúil Má Ghort), Co. Kerry

§6
It is important to head off a misconception, especially easy for non-
linguists. If we say that language of the three Rathlin men, or the Irish
Beaker People about 500 years before them, evolved continuously into
the Irish of historical times, that does not mean that they were speaking
a language that could be categorized as any historical variety of Irish,
even the Primitive Irish of the most archaic ogham inscriptions.
Although they speak of an ‘early Celtic’ in the abstract of their paper,
the Indo-European of 4,000 years ago, out of which Celtic evolved,
would not necessarily have undergone many or any of the distinctly
Celtic innovations, such as the weakening of *p, or the Celtic
transformations of the long vowels, and syllabic liquids and nasals.
As an analogy, one could say—more or less accurately—that the Italian
spoken in Rome today had evolved in situ from the Latin spoken there
2000 years ago. That doesn’t mean we should label that ancient
language Italian or that it was not equally the ancestor of Portuguese,
Spanish, French, and Romanian.
Chang, W., C. Cathcart,
D. Hall, & A. Garrett
2015 ‘Ancestry-
Constrained
Phylogenetic Analysis
Supports the Indo-
European Steppe
Hypothesis’, Language
91/ 1, 194–244.

§7
Another possible misconception might be
inspired by this Roman analogy—with its rapid
expansion of Latin from a compact homeland.
The Cassidy et al. hypothesis does imply that
the Proto-Celtic homeland included Ireland,
but does not imply that it was only Ireland.
That leads to the question of exactly how
extensive the Proto-Celtic homeland was and
how big could it have been. There are several
reasons we tend to think of the history of
language families as great expansions from
small homelands. As well the fully historical
story of the Roman Empire and the resulting
extent of the Romance languages, there is the
fact that family-tree models of language
families look like that—branching widely from
a single node or trunk.
Ringe, D., T. Warnow & A.
Taylor 2002 ‘Indo-European
and Computational
Cladistics’, Transactions of
the Philological Society
100/1, 59–129.

§8
There is also the method we use to reconstruct
unattested languages like Proto-Celtic. In the
historical-comparative method, forms from
related attested languages are compared,
resulting in a single starred form in their
unattested common ancestor. Most real
languages used by complex societies have
regional dialects, levels of formality, and
vocabularies particular to occupational
specialists and social domains. Nonetheless, a
linguistic innovation originating in one such
linguistic sphere can spread to the others—if
and until the common language ceases to be
used for regular communication across
varieties, and consequently splits up. However,
the basic historical-comparative method won’t
recover this diversity within a single language.
Instead, it produces what looks like an
undifferentiated proto-language. It is hard to
imagine such variation-free languages
occupying large territories.
 §9

Koch, J. T. 2013 ‘Out of the Flow and Ebb of the European Bronze Age: Heroes, Tartessos, and
Celtic’, Celtic from the West 2: Rethinking the Bronze Age and the Arrival of Indo-European in
Atlantic Europe, Celtic Studies Publications 16, ed. John T. Koch & Barry Cunliffe, 101–146.
Oxford, Oxbow Books.
In assessing the implications and viability of
the Cassidy et al. hypothesis, we should also
understand some things about the Bronze Age.
As the era’s name implies, bronze was
essential, becoming the invariable fabric of
tools, weapons, and ornaments. If the term is
used accurately, bronze means an alloy that is
mostly copper with around 10% tin.
 Ling, J., Z. Stos-Gale, L. Grandin,
K. Billström, E. Hjärthner-
Holdar, P.-O. Persson 2014
‘Moving metals II: provenancing
Scandinavian Bronze Age
artefacts by lead isotope and
elemental analyses’, Journal of
Archaeological Science 41/1,
106–32.

§10
Neither copper nor tin occur widely in forms
that could be easily exploited in ancient times.
However, some regions with little or no
exploitable copper or tin—such as
Scandinavia—had very rich Bronze Age
cultures, and consumed massive quantities of
metal. About a ton a year has been estimated
for Denmark. Recent isotopic and chemical
testing of Bronze Age artefacts have found that
copper from the Ross Island mine near
Killarney circulated throughout Britain and
Ireland in the Beaker Period and that metal
from Great Orme (which is near here) reached
Scandinavia in the Bronze Age. The key point
presently is that there was regular and intense
long-distance exchange in the Bronze Age,
which involved continuous transmission of
complex cultural and technological
information.
§11

Gimbutas, M. 1970 ‘Proto-Indo-European Culture: The Kurgan Culture During the 5th to the
3rd millennia BC’, Indo-European and Indo-Europeans, ed. G. Cardona, H. M. Koenigswald &
A. Senn, 155–98. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Mallory, J. P. 1989 In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth.
London, Thames and Hudson.
Anthony, D. W. 2007 The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the
Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Along with these factors, we should consider
the archaeogenetic evidence that has been
seen as marking the rapid expansion of Post-
Anatolian Indo-European from what is now
South Russia and Ukraine in the 3rd
millennium BC. Two milestone papers
published in 2015—Allentoft et al. and Haak et
al.—, as well as subsequent work including
Olalde et al. 2018, have been seen as strongly
confirming the core claim of the Steppe or
Kurgan Hypothesis of the Indo-European
homeland and dispersal. This is the idea
advanced by Marija Gimbutas and later
elaborated by Mallory and David Anthony.
Allentoft, M. E., M. Sikora … K. Kristiansen & E. Willerslev 2015
‘Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia’, Nature 522, 167–72.
Haak, W., I. Lazaridis, N. Patterson, … J. Krause, D. Brown, D. Anthony,
A. Cooper, K. W. Alt, & D. Reich 2015 ‘Massive migration from the
steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe’, Nature
522, 207-11.
Damgaard, P. de Barros, R. Martiniano, … L. Orlando, M. E. Allentoft,
R.Nielsen, K. Kristiansen, M. Sikora, A. K. Outram, R. Durbin, E.
Willerslev 2018 ‘The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze §12
Age steppe expansions into Asia’, Science 10.1126/science.aar7711
One key detail in which the new aDNA data has not yet confirmed
this pre-archaeogenetic version of the Steppe Hypothesis has
concerns the Anatolian branch. It is widely agreed that Anatolian was
the first to split off on the Indo-European family tree. The classic
Gimbutas/Mallory/Anthony version of the Steppe Hypothesis would
predict that speakers of Anatolian languages had ancestry from the
Pontic-Caspian Steppe. But the remains of six presumed Hittite
speakers, included in the extensive study of Damgaard et al. 2018,
had no steppe ancestry. There are reasons not to jump to
conclusions: there were only six ‘Hittites’, and the Hittite Empire in its
heyday had probably absorbed individuals of diverse backgrounds,
including some descended from speakers of non-Indo-European
languages. But for the time being the archaeogenetically-informed
version of the Steppe Hypothesis has to allow the possibility that—
while Post-Anatolian Indo-European formed on the Pontic-Caspian
Steppe—its ancestor, Proto-Indo-European itself, took shape south of
the Caucasus.
Garrett, A. 1999 ‘A new model of Indo-European subgrouping and
dispersal’, Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the
Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 12–15, 1999, ed. S. S. Chang, L.
Liaw, J. Ruppenhofer, 146–56. Berkeley, Berkeley Linguistics Society.

Garrett, A. 2006 ‘Convergence in the Formation of Indo-European

Subgroups: Phylogeny and Chronology’, Phylogenetic Methods and the
Prehistory of Languages, ed. P. Forster & C. Renfrew, McDonald
Institute Monographs, 139–51. Cambridge, McDonald Institute for §13
Archaeological Research.
The key point presently is that, when the long-
distance metal-exchange networks formed in
Bronze Age Europe, steppe ancestry—probably
bringing with it Post-Anatolian Indo-European
speech—had spread widely. However, unlike
Renfrew’s Anatolian Neolithic hypothesis, the
spread of Indo-European had occurred near
the beginning of the Bronze Age, not a
thousand+ years before that. A shallow dialect
continuum with a high degree of mutual
intelligibility between dialects is the
implication. Within the emerging Bronze Age
networks, interacting dialects then crystallized
as the early Indo-European branches, along
the lines proposed by Garrett.
Olalde, I., S. Brace, M. Allentoft, I. Armit, K. Kristiansen, … P. W.
Stockhammer, V. Heyd, A. Sheridan, K.-G. Sjögren, M. G.
Thomas, R. Pinhasi, J. Krause, W. Haak, I. Barnes, C. Lalueza-Fox,
& D. Reich 2018 ‘The Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic
Transformation of Northwest Europe’, bioRxiv 135962. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1101/135962. §14
Some results consistent with the Cassidy et al. hypothesis
were published as part of a large study focussing on
Beaker-associated human remains: Olalde et al. 2018.
That study found a startling 90% replacement of
population between the Neolithic and Beaker Period in
the individuals sequenced from England and Scotland—
ging from genomes without steppe ancestry to genomes
with high percentages of it. The immediate source
population appears to have come from the Netherlands,
where Beaker-associated individuals were virtually
indistinguishable genetically from the British samples.
Interestingly, Olalde et al. 2018 also detected some
lessening of the steppe component in South-eastern
England in the Iron Age. These results are consistent with
resurgence of Neolithic ancestry that had gone
undetected or under-detected in the sequenced
genomes from the Beaker Period and Bronze Age.
Genetic resurgences of that sort are not uncommon.
 Olalde, I., S. Brace, M. Allentoft,
I. Armit, K. Kristiansen, … P. W.
Stockhammer, V. Heyd, A.
Sheridan, K.-G. Sjögren, M. G.
Thomas, R. Pinhasi, J. Krause, W.
Haak, I. Barnes, C. Lalueza-Fox,
& D. Reich 2018 ‘The Beaker
Phenomenon and the Genomic
Transformation of Northwest
Europe’, bioRxiv 135962. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1101/13596
§15 2.
As well as the non-Indo-European Palaeo-Basque and Iberian
languages, Ancient Celtic languages were spoken in the pre-
Roman Iberian Peninsula. The emerging archaeogenetic picture
for the Peninsula is complex. The Beaker package, in its mature
form, has now been found together with human remains with
high levels of steppe ancestry in Britain, the Netherlands,
Germany, and Northern Italy.
The earliest form of the Beaker Proto-package appears in the
Lisbon area about 2800 BC. Beaker material then spread, by sea,
around the Pyrenees after 2600 BC. Of the 32 Beaker-associated
individuals sequenced in Olalde et al. 2018, only 8 showed any
steppe ancestry and none of the six from Portugal. In other
words, it does not look like the Beaker package originated
amongst people with steppe ancestry, and that leads to the
suspicion that these ‘Proto-Beaker People’ did not speak an Indo-
European language. But when Beakers spread further east, the
background of the people using them changed: people
genetically closer to the Rathlin Island men.
 Martiniano, R., L. M. Cassidy,
R. Ó Maoldúin, … D. G.
Bradley 2017 ‘The population
genomics of archaeological
transition in west Iberia:
Investigation of ancient
substructure using
imputation and haplotype-
based methods’, PLoS Genet
13(7): e1006852.
§16 https://doi.org/10.1371/jour
nal.pgen.1006852
In 2017 a study by Martiniano et al. published
genomes of two Middle Bronze Age men from
South Portugal; both had typically steppe R1b
Y chromosomes, also autosomal steppe DNA,
though at low levels. Subsequent publications
of more Iberian aDNA (Valdiosera et al. 2018;
Olalde et al. 2019) fill in the picture. The R1b Y
chromosome and steppe autosomal DNA
began to appear in Iberia about 2500 BC. On
the paternal side, this intrusive ancestry
coexists with indigenous lineages over the next
500 years. Then, by 1900 BC, male steppe
ancestry had completely replaced the
indigenous Y chromosomes common in the
Iberian Neolithic. There was little evidence for
women with steppe ancestry migrating into
the Peninsula in the Early Bronze Age.
 Harrison, R. J. & V. Heyd
2007 ‘The Transformation of
Europe in the Third
Millennium BC: the Example
of ‘Le Petit-Chasseur I + III’
(Sion, Valais, Switzerland)’,
Prähistorische Zeitschrift,
Band S, 129–214.

Olalde, I., …M. B. Richards,

K. W. Alt, W. Haak, R.
Pinhasi, Carles Lalueza-Fox,
D. Reich 2019 ‘The genomic
history of the Iberian
Peninsula over the past 8000
years’, Science 363, 1230–
1234.

Valdiosera, C., … M.
Jakobsson 2018 ‘Four
millennia of Iberian
biomolecular prehistory
illustrate the impact of
prehistoric migrations at the
far end of Eurasia’, PNAS Mar
2018, 115 (13) 3428–3433,
DOI:
§17 10.1073/pnas.1717762115
This pattern implies that men with steppe
ancestry, similar to that found together with
Indo-European languages elsewhere, had been
highly successful in producing children with
women of indigenous Iberian background,
likewise their male descendants over and over
for more than 10 generations.

A surprising detail is that the same pattern

occurs in all parts of the Peninsula, including
those areas where non-Indo-European
languages were spoken in historical times, such
as Catalonia. R1b is the most common Y
chromosome amongst Basque men today.
Kukarni-Joshi, S. 2019 ‘Linguistic history and §18
language diversity in India: Views and
counterviews’, Journal of Biosciences 44:62 DOI:
10.1007/s12038-019-9879-1
Silva, M., M.
Oliveira, D. Vieira,
A. Brandão, T.
Rito, J. B. Pereira,
R. M. Fraser, B.
Hudson, F.
Gandini, C.
Edwards, M. Pala,
J. Koch, J. F.
Wilson, L. Pereira,
M. B. Richards, P.
Soares 2017 ‘A
genetic
chronology for
the Indian
Subcontinent
points to heavily
sex-biased
dispersals’, BMC
Evolutionary
Biology 17:88.
The pattern at the other end of Indo-European
world in South Asia is similar. Steppe ancestry
and the R1a Y chromosome—the eastern
counterpart of R1b—appeared in the Bronze
Age. This was mostly an in-migration of single
men. The main mitochondrial lineages of
South Asia are much older. R1a and steppe
ancestry in South Asia can be broadly
correlated with the distribution of Indo-
European languages. But as in the Iberian
Peninsula, steppe ancestry goes beyond Indo-
European. Many Dravidian-speaking men in
Dravidian-speaking areas have R1a Y
chromosomes.
§19
What do these comparable patterns in the Iberian Peninsula and
South Asia tell us? Merely to state the obvious, we see that both
male-biased steppe ancestry and Indo-European languages were
aggressively expansionist, but the ancestry was more successfully
expansionist than the language. Where people with steppe
background migrated to new lands as all-male groups and then
paired with indigenous women, followed by their sons,
grandsons, and so on, this led to a situation in which men born in
the new country had mothers, wives, and bilingual children with
the same non-Indo-European first language. During periods of
peaceful stasis on the frontier, these men with steppe ancestry
interacted with neighbouring communities speaking this same
non-Indo-European language. In other words, where the Indo-
European expansion lost momentum at its edges, this led to
situations in which the non-Indo-European of indigenous mothers
and wives was simply the more useful language.
 §20

Koch, J. T. 2016 ‘Phoenicians

in the West and Break-up of
the Atlantic Bronze Age’, Celtic
from the West 3. Atlantic
Europe in the Metal Ages.
Questions of shared language,
Celtic Studies Publications XIX,
eds. J. T. Koch, B. Cunliffe, C.
D. Gibson & K. Cleary, 431–76.
Oxford, Oxbow Books.
A final point in this Iberian/South Asian
analogy: where Indo-European peters out at a
frontier with a surviving non-Indo-European
language, it will be possible to identify
substratum and bilingual effects resulting from
contact with a known language. For example
the retroflex consonants of Sanskrit and the
Indo-Aryan languages descended from it are
often attributed to Dravidian influence, and
several linguists have proposed that the fate of
Proto-Indo-European *p in Celtic might have
something to do with the absence of /p/ in
Iberian and Basque. Other features of the
Proto-Celtic consonant system, such as the
fortis-lenis phonetic opposition, suggest effects
from a substratum language similar to Basque.
 §21
At present, the Beaker culture is the most probable
archaeological vector of this Steppe ancestry into Ireland
from the continent …. The extent of this change, which we
estimate at roughly a third of Irish Bronze Age ancestry,
opens the possibility of accompanying language change,
perhaps the first introduction of Indo-European language
ancestral to Irish.

….

This turnover invites the possibility of accompanying

introduction of Indo-European, perhaps early Celtic,
language.
— Cassidy at al. 2016
I’ll finish by rephrasing the hypothetical
question posed by Cassidy et al.: did the arrival
of groups with steppe ancestry in Atlantic
Europe about 4,000 years ago establish Indo-
European speech there? And did that language
then evolve in situ into the region’s attested
Celtic languages? We can expect new evidence
in the coming years to make it possible to
answer that question with greater confidence.

For now and as new evidence comes to light,

we can keep another question in mind: what is
the alternative? Celtic in Ireland, Britain, and
the Iberian Peninsula used to be explained
with hypothetical migrations in the Late Bronze
Age or Iron Age, so after about 1250 BC. But is
there good linguistic, archaeological, or genetic
evidence for such migrations? Do they explain
anything anymore? These are not rhetorical
questions. The case remains open.
Celtic origins reconsidered in
the light of the
‘archaeogenetics revolution’
John T. Koch
Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies