My personal opinion, and I genuinely hope that I do not offend anybody with this, why do you even attempt to discuss phenotypical features in this context? The concept "Celt" is primarily a linguistic - by extension cultural concept, and if we talk about phenotypical features we very quickly end up going back to 19th century race theories and outdated (and in my opinion, quite dangerous) concepts of race, blood line and nationality. I'd like to reiterate that I'm not accusing anybody of anything here, but I'd like to give you a reminder that you're on the false track here.
Also, why do you guys think the Iberian theory is wrong ?
First off, I have to say that I am by no means supporting the traditional Central European (that is, Hallstatt/La-Téne) scenario (though I don't think it to be completely wrong either), but I do not consider the Atlantic hypothesis to be correct either (which does not mean that it makes a valid point):
- if you look at the expansion patterns of the Hallstatt and La-Téne cultures, it's clear that they only peripherically intrude into Iberian (the former) and Ireland (the latter). However, by the time the Romans showed up in Iberia, much of the peninsula is firmly Celtic or otherwise Indo-European (well, the Romans obviously never conquered Ireland, but as far as we know, it was wholly Celtic by the times the Romans took Britain). The Atlantic hypothesis thus (correctly) points out that the traditional model cannot explain this.
- I find that it stretches the imagination to assume that the Proto-Celts arrived directly from Pontic-Caspian region, possibly via a maritime route, directly in the west of the Iberian peninsula and then colonized half of Europe from there.
as to why they spread to anatolia, it makes no difference at all, wheater celts are from central europe or iberia to spreas to anatolia, people tend to migrate, and if they come from iberia or central europe doesnt have to do anythign with that.
I am no expert, not at all. so my theories are not true, but it is what i am thinking could be possible.
- one of the greatest objections against the hypothesis (in my opinion) is that there is no such migration (or more broadly, spread pattern) from Iberia to Central Europe (Beaker-Bell, perhaps? but this is also debatable). What we do see happening instead is that we have a multitude of archaeological cultures from Central Europe successively spread from Central Europe (Urnfield, Hallstatt, La-Tene), with more or less peripherial effects. At the same time, we also have an expansion from Central Europe towards the east.
- the problems with Beaker-Bell (who are otherwise a good candidate for cultural and/or demic movements) are several: the first is it's relative ancientness and also it's vast extend (southern Scandinavia, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, North Africa - areas which certainly never were Celtic, and the latter wasn't even Indo-European until the Romans showed up!). The second is a genetic argument: if we correlate R1b with the expansion of the Beaker-Bell culture (Y-Haplogroup R1b is one of the best arguments for a major demic movement), the distribution pattern of R1b subclades in Western Europe is non-consistent with an Iberian origin.
when i look at it, migration from iberia seems plausible. Celts never were that dominant in Central europe, there were raetians, there were pannonians, there were illyrians, if the celts managed to get whole of france, britain under their control, then why is central europe not totally dominated by celts ?
If you look at what happens in the archaeological context, and also what Greek and Roman writers have to say on the topic, it's clear that Celtic presence in Central Europe was declining from the 3rd century BC onward, principally from the double pressure of the expansion of the Romans and the Germanic tribes. If you however say "okay, the Celts just expanded into this region, it was never heavily Celtic in the first place" you end up with an insolvable problem: if Hallstatt was supposedly
not Celtic, what else was it? Amusingly, even the authors who firmly support the Atlantic model (e.g. Koch, ODonnell) dodge exactly that question.
However it seems more likely at the moment, they came from iberia, some spread over to the british isles, others wandered eastwards to modern france and austria and southern germany and others remained in Iberia.
- In other threads, I've posted the map of continental Celtic place names by
Falileleyev of the university of Cardiff here on Eupedia a couple of times, which is very good in illustrating another key problem with the Iberian origin: Celtic place names in Iberia show a clear northwest (highest) - southeast (lowest) gradient. If Iberia is the original Celtic homeland, why are place names so rare in the south and east? To me, it looks more that Celtic languages were introduced from the north
by a maritime route. We do (potentially, anyways) have a mechanism for explaining such a spread pattern - the Atlantic Bronze Age trade networks that linked Iberia, Armorica and the British Isles, but we need to
reverse the spread direction.
- If the proponents of the Atlantic hypothesis come up with reasonable arguments against the objections above, then hooray, but until then it'd be cautious and keep an open eye. People shouldn't view the problem as black and white (that is
either Iberia
or Central Europe). It could be that both hypotheses are actually (to certain degrees) right or wrong at the same time.
- As a last word, I might add that an Iberian (or more broadly Atlantic) origin is actually much more compatible with the Anatolian Hypothesis (as opposed to the Kurgan model), because in it's context, it stands to argue that the Neolithic societies of the Megalithic builders must have indeed been speakers of Proto-Celtic. But this point is pretty moot because there are so many inconsistencies in the Anatolian Hypothesis itself that I find more likely to assume that it's simply wrong.
