The Celts and the Beaker People
- stephenstrent7
- 1 day ago
- 10 min read
This discussion is taken from chapter 8 of my forthcoming book, Noah’s Flood and the Philosophies of Men.
The 1st-century Hellenized Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, stated that the Galatians (Galls/Celts) descended from Gomer, son of Japheth and grandson of Noah.1 We are then told at the “Amazing Bible Timeline with World History” website, “The Germans, from which the majority of the Western Europe nations such as the French, Spanish, and the Celtic people are descended, are said to have started from Gomer…they travelled across the British Isles and became the forefathers of the present day Gael of Ireland and Scotland and the Cymry of Wales.”2
According to Hecataeus’ 520 BC map of The World, there were no British Isles in 520 BC. Apparently, by then, very few people had ventured beyond the Columns of Hercules, better known as the Pillars of Hercules, and now, the Strait of Gibraltar. The Phoenicians were apparently exceptions, but they weren’t talking. They were traders and were concerned with keeping their sources secret. According to one story, “…Herodotus says the Phoenicians were sailing in the Atlantic Ocean toward the British Isles, where they traded for tin. As they were sailing, they saw a Greek ship following them. The Phoenicians decided to sail very close to shallow water and strand themselves on a reef—so that when the Greek followed, they would also be stranded. This way, the Greeks could not find out where the Phoenicians got their tin.”3
Exactly 200 years after Hecataeus’ map, in 320 BC, a Greek mariner and adventurer named Pytheas wrote a book, Peri tou Okeanou, (On the Ocean), which is credited with being the first recorded voyage to the British Isles. Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of European archaeology at the University of Oxford, said in his book, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek, “Pytheas…move[d] out of the comfortable, familiar waters of the Mediterranean to explore the monster-ridden ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules.” He crossed the English Channel and apparently made landfall in what is now Cornwall, and described a flourishing tin trade, which is alloyed with copper to make bronze.4 Had Pytheas followed the Phoenicians to their secret source of tin?
Pytheas circumnavigated the island of Britain, and was the first to describe the Celtic tribes living there. They were a Celtic-speaking people, like those in mainland Europe, which he called “Pretanni,” or the “painted ones” in the ancient Celtic language, from which the word Britain apparently is derived. The Romans would call them “Picti”, “painted ones”. When Pytheas returned home, he wrote his famous book, which circulated widely throughout the ancient world and influenced scholarly discussion for centuries. Until Tacitus and Julius Caesar wrote their accounts of Britain, some 300 years later, On the Ocean was probably the only source of information. Pytheas’ book opened people’s minds to the size of the world; although it would be another 1800 years before they discovered the other half. The actual book no longer exists but it has been quoted by at least eighteen other authors, over the next nine hundred years, or so.5
Josephus had said, “Now they were the grand-children of Noah, in honor of whom names were imposed on the nations, by those that first seized upon them…along Europe to Cadiz [Spain]: and settling themselves on the lands they light upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names. For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians [Gauls], but were then called Gomerites.”6
Those Gauls were among the Celtic people; in present-day France, Belgium, and Switzerland; against whom the Roman general Julius Caesar fought in 58 to 50 BC in the so-called Gallic Wars. Those wars were also waged by the Romans against the Germanic tribes mainly located east of the Rhine.
In 2022, Nick Peterson and a whole bunch of colleagues, published genome-wide DNA data from 793 individuals, indicating that between 1000 and 875 BC, early European farmers, mostly from France, migrated into southern Britain (England and Wales), apparently bringing early Celtic languages into the British Isles. Those DNA data are consistent with archaeological evidence of increased cultural exchange between the continent and the British Isles during the same time period.7
Britain is a great place to examine sequences of human occupation because of its isolation, which has made it a relative blank slate on which to write the human drama. However, contrary to Josephus’ statement that “none had inhabited before”,8 there were people already living in the British Isles when the Celts arrived. If we take the Bible, and the added philosophies of Josephus, at face value, there shouldn’t have been anyone in the British Isles when the Celts arrive a mere 1000 years or so after their ancestors stepped off the ark into the Middle East.
Unlike in the days of Josephus, who apparently didn’t even know that the British Isles existed, and for many centuries thereafter, when no one knew the history of Britain, we now know a lot about the ancient Britains.
To understand the ever-unfolding story of Britain, we can begin by asking the question: what did the Celts bring with them when they arrived there some 3000 years ago? For one thing, the Iron Age arrived in Britain around 800 BC, from mainland Europe, at the same time that the Celts arrived and introduced ironworking technology. Iron is far more versatile and robust than bronze, which it largely replaced, revolutionizing farming and warfare. The Celts brought with them and/or created iron spear-tips, swords, chainmail, horseshoes, war chariots, and shield components, allowing them to dominate the extant Bronze-Age Britains.9
Celtic iron-tipped plough shears allowed Celtic farmers to cut through dense turf and extend farmland into previously inaccessible locations. The Celts also apparently introduced crops like rye, oats, and millet from the mainland to the British Isles.
Most telling, from a historical perspective, are the unique art styles brought to the British Isles by the Celts; including unique geometric patterns, stylized animals, and the famous Celtic knot. Their decorative arts were applied to metal, jewelry, and pottery. In addition to hand-building pottery, some Celtic pottery was made on a potter’s wheel. They also introduced advanced, hotter kilns, allowing more controlled firing and color variation. The Celts also introduced coins into Britain, along with the coin production and business practices made possible by currency.10
Before the Celts, there had been another, previous, and nearly as impactful migration from mainland Europe to the British Isles—the so-called Beaker People. They apparently arrived in the British Isles some 4,400 years ago, 1,400 years before the Celts, and almost exactly at the same time that the entire earth was covered with 15 cubits of water (roughly 22 foot) in 2348 BC, according to Bishop Ussher’s chronology. The Beaker People brought with them the distinctive bell-shaped Beaker Pottery, for which the people and era are named. They also introduced metalworking in copper, bronze, and gold into the British Isles, thus ushering in the Bronze Age to Britain, with new bronze tools and weapons, which previously had not existed in the late stone age, called the Neolithic. They also apparently introduced weaving and a honey-based alcoholic beverage, called mead. Part of the Beaker Culture was a new, distinctive burial style, not previously seen in Britain. Those new burial practices included individual inhumations (burials of the entire body), vs cremations and placing only bones and/or skulls in monuments. The deceased Beaker People were often interred in round barrows with grave goods, including bronze items and their distinctive beakers.11
But the Beaker People were not the first ones in Britain either. There were stone-age people already there when the Beaker People arrived. Those Neolithic people had built gigantic monuments, such as New Grange, Avebury Circle, and the early phases of Stonehenge, even though the Beaker People apparently added the later features, such as the bluestones. As stated above, the Neolithic Britians interred skeletal remains, often cremains, in Neolithic monuments, such as long barrows. Genetic studies also indicate a significant population influx from the Eurasian Steppe (mainly modern Turkey) into the British Isles before the Beaker period. “This farming population was probably much larger than that of the hunter-gatherers, already there, and brought new technologies that marked the beginning of Neolithic (or New Stone Age) Britain.”12
There were hunter-gatherers in Britain during Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) times. However, in this discussion, I will confine my discussion of time-line to the Neolithic. That’s when pottery first appeared there, along with the appearance of long-term agriculture, as opposed to hunting and gathering. The earliest British pottery began to appear around 4000 BC, about the time of Adam and Eve, according to Bishop Ussher’s timeline. I am not going to discuss Adam and Eve here because I have already discussed them thoroughly in my book, Who is Adam? Where Science Meets Religion.13 In that book, I discuss Adam and Eve as real people who lived around 6,000 years ago, but whose premortal life and earthly mission are far more important than most people realize or comprehend. What I am going to discuss here is the succession of pottery, the importance of which, as well as the approximate dates, are discussed in the next blog.
The earliest pottery style in Britain is referred to as “Carinated Bowl”; those pots usually have distinct carinations, characterized by a sharp angle or change in direction in the form of the bowl. The term is from the Latin carina, meaning a keel, suggesting that the bottom of the carinated pot resembles a ship’s keel. Carinated Bowls were seldom decorated. The fabric of the pots was usually stabilized by adding materials to the clay such as shell or stone fragments, which helped to release water from the fabric as the pots dried, as well as reducing cracking during firing. This added material gave the pots a distinctive grainy texture. There is some evidence that this distinctive pottery style may have been introduced from mainland Europe, rather than developing in situ, but that issue is still under debate. Carinated Bowls were no longer made after about 3500 BC.14
Another version of pottery, referred to as “Plain Bowl” began to appear in the British Isles about 3800 BC, presenting a wider range of shapes than Carinated Bowls, with thicker walls and made from coarser fabrics. One type of Plain Bowl, called Hembury Ware has been found across the south-west of Britain. It was made from gabbroic clay, a unique type of clay formed by the weathering of gabbro rock, a coarse-grained, dark-colored igneous rock, unique to the Lizard peninsula of Cornwall. By about 3700 BC, Decorated Bowls were appearing. Plain and Decorated Bowls lasted until about 3300 BC.15
By 3300 BC, Cardium pottery, also known as Impressed ware, began to appear, not just in the British Isles, but all over Europe. The pottery was decorated by pressing various items into the soft clay before firing, such as cockle shells (thus the name, derived from Cardiidae, the cockle family), sticks, bones, reeds, and twisted rope. This type of pottery did not disappear as abruptly as had the previous pottery forms, but eventually morphed into later, Bronze-age styles, with the introduction of the Beaker culture around 2400 BC.16
It seems to me that the story of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; as told in Genesis, and as elaborated by Josephus; is reasonably accurate, except that the statement, “none had inhabited before”, which does not appear in the Bible, but was added by the “philosophy” of Josephus, does not seem to be correct. Genesis chapter 10 ends with the statement: “These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations. These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.” Verse 31 refers to their “tongues”, implying various languages among Noah’s descendants. Genesis chapter 11 seems to be a contradiction, stating that “…the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” To me, this seems like a “just so” story to give a simple, kindergarten-level explanation about the origin of language, presented to a simple people, who didn’t have any idea what might lie beyond the Pillers of Hercules.
However, the “just so” story apparently was based on a real event. We are told in Ether 1:33, “Which Jared came forth with his brother and their families, with some others and their families, from the great tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth; and according to the word of the Lord the people were scattered.” This verse appears to confirm the existence of the Tower of Bable, but no Flood is mentioned in this introductory material. And no mention is made of Jared’s connection to any of Noah’s sons. This seems to be a critical issue in light of the emphasis placed in the Old Testament and the writings of Josephus concerning the population of the earth coming from one of Noah’s three sons. Furthermore, even though the languages were “confounded”, there is no mention of how many languages resulted from this confounding—possibly only two? For example, was this the source of Chinese, Japanese, some 200-300 Australian Aboriginal languages, or the 175-200 Native American languages?
It is far more likely that there is a simpler, more accurate story of Noah and the flood, which I discussed in detail in an earlier blog. Here, I will simply state that, although the descendants of Gomer, a grandson of Noah, likely settled in central, western Europe, they were not the only ancestors of the Celts, a multi-ethnic group with a common language. The descendants of those Celts, with some portion of Gomer’s genes, later moved into the British Isles, which already had people living there, not descended form Noah.
In fact, the Bible provides great information about the time period when Noah’s descendants were inserted into the extant populations of the world. Noah’s story is not a Stone-age story, but is a late Bronze-age story. We read in Genesis 4:19-22, “…Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah…And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-cain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron...” There are actually two Lamechs in the Bible, the one described here is an eighth-generation descendant from Adam through Cain. The other Lamech was the father of Noah and an eighth-generation descendant of Adam through Seth. The two Lamechs were almost certainly contemporaries, and the statement that Lamech’s son Tubal-cain, was “an instructer of every artificer in brass [bronze] and iron”, places the story of Noah into the late Bronze Age. Iron smelting is believed to have begun in modern-day Turkey around 2000 BC, even though widespread iron work and the beginning of the Iron Age didn't occur until around 1200 BC. An estimated date of 2000 BC, places Tubal-cain in the right place at the right time to be an early iron artificer.
In my opinion, the record of Noah’s descendants is consistent with histories from other sources. Those other histories are simply not consistent with the story of a global flood.
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
References
1. Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, chapter 6, paragraph 1; penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/ant-1.html
3. First Rulers of the Mediterranean, education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/first-rulers-mediterranean
4. Cunliffe, Barry, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek, Penguin Publishing Group, 2003
5. Garlinghouse, Tom, Who was the first person to write about the British Isles?; Live Science, 2021; ivescience.com/first-western-description-british-isles
6. Josephus, 1-6-1
7. Patterson, Nick, et al., Large-scale migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age, Nature, 601:588-594, 2022
8. Josephus 1-6-1
10. Ibid
11. McNish, James, The Beaker People: a New Population for Ancient Britain, Natural History Museum, 2018; nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2018/february/the-beaker-people-a-new-population-for-ancient-britain.html
12. Ibid
13. Stephens, Trent D., Who is Adam? Where Science Meets Religion, Castle Books; Amazon KDP, 2023
14. Gibson, Alex, Prehistoric Pottery in Britain & Ireland, Tempus, Stroud, UK, 2002
15. Ibid
16. Ibid
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