Celts in Ancient China?

[Gaius Drustanus]

Vivid colour images of Celtic style tartans, wonderful almost Modern looking Garments, (skirts, hats, shirts, trousers etc), incredible nonChinese weaving and sewing techniques, plaid woolen twill just like the Scots, brightly dyed in full Living colour, complicated Woven patterns, woolen twill of many types.
Wonderfully preserved and now photographed in color plates "The Mummies of Urumchi" by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (got the book from Browns Bay Library and it's Mind Boggling pictures!)'
Europeans living in Ancient China!
Who would have thunk it.
These Mummies are tall, fair, blonde and possibly Blue eyed. The oldest date from about 4000 years ago at Cherchen and Loulan ("The Beauty of Loulan") through to around the era of Emperor Charlemagne.
The bodies are wonderfully mummified (freeze dried) by the dreadful climatic conditions of the feared Takla Makan Desert on the Silk Road, just South of the Gobi.
I've prattled on about these Mummies on GD before and they have been seen on SKY TV docos.
A distant Eastern Outpost of the Halstatt Celts, the Tokarians held out against the Huns and the Han Chinese until about 1000AD.

[Gaius Drustanus]

Typo!
That's Elizabeth Wayland Barber. "The Mummies of Urumchi". ISBN 0-393-04521-8
It's a Book, BTW.

[crite40]

Ave Gaius!
I had come across these Celts some time ago on the discovery channel, where they reported on some of the Archeology they were doing in Northern China.
Very interesting, it supports my long held belief that the Celts were one of the world's great innovating peoples. Makes you wonder how many of the frequently alleged (without serious proof) innovations from China were really Han Chinese in origin?
I'll give them gunpowder though, the Han were very big on alchemy!
After all you Romans got your chain mail from the Celts, they had Much better ships than you and Celtic chariots have been found with bronze roller bearings!!!
About time we "Caucasians" got the credit we deserve.
Vale

[Gaius Drustanus]

Thank you Crite40 for those insights

Interestingly the words for Chariotry, Spoked Wheels and certain aspects of horsemanship in Chinese language are Aryan/IndoEuropean loan words.
So it can be inferred that the Ancient Han Chinese were taught Chariotry by people or persons of Aryan race, possibly Celtic descendent, (ooooh, wash my mouth out with soap, I used the "R word". OMG Sorry Soory to Haggisbane and the Mod Squad!).

In Julius Caesars day, the Ancient Britons were still using chariotry (by then obsolete).

The most distant Eastern branches of the Aryan caucasian Language, Tokarian A & B from the Tarim basin of China c1000AD, are MOST CLOSELY RELATED linguisticallyto the most Western branches, brythonic and goidelic Celtic of Ireland, Britain and Gaul etc.

These Fabric/Garment survivals, freeze dried, are AMAZING! The Patterns and colours. Vivid and alive with vibrancy.

Tall, blonde and Handsome, three or four thousand year old Cherchen Man was buried with 10 HATS of various wonderous designs. One of them was a forward peaked Phrygian type cap commonly worn by the Aryan Romans and Greeks and last seen as a design for Medieval Norman Helmets.
The Phrygians too, like the that other Anatolian Aryan people, the Hittites, were, of course, of Indo-European Linguistic Group.
Who said the Celts didn't have an Empire?

[Gaius Drustanus]

A bit overextended here though, that Celtic Empire.

[Gaius Drustanus]

Perhaps the claimed Roman legion descendents of Western China (Lequon) are the last descendents of a daring and suicidal Foreign Aid relief column sent East to support these long lost Friends and Allies of the Roman People against the Hunnic Common Enemy.
A foreign policy initiative against the Huns maybe to divert Atilla from his devastating pressure against the limes of the Eastern Roman Empire or in the day of Aetius and the Battle of Chalons in Gaul against the mongolian barbarian yellow threat. UUUmmmmmm?
That way, they wouldn't show ANY ITALIAN DNA those Chinese legionaries. Ethnic Romans were too smart for that Lark (probably sent Pict or Irish newly inducted "roman" citizens)
Foreign Policy, eh. Great plot for a Historical Movie!

[BigMac]

I do remember reading of chinese silks and coolie hats found in a celtic grave at the bottom of a hungerian salt mine.

TTFN

[Gaius Drustanus]

Would that be the Ancient Salt Mines of Halstatt, near Salzburg, in Austria?
A pre LaTene culture, the Halstatt culture is considered to be Proto-Celtic in Central Europe, from which they or their Culture radiated out into Western Europe
(and to sack Rome, settling in Northern Italy at Cisalpine Gaul).
This was diaspora was both by Migration (or Conquest) and/or cultural dessemination in the early first millenium BC.
In the 19th Century or earlier apparently some remarkably preserved finds are recorded of garment and fabric turning up in the Mines but the items were not conserved.
Organic material doesn't always rot in these subterranean galleries.
The grave yard there, set in picturesque Alpine mountains by a beautiful mountain lake, was excavated later, giving us the name "Halstatt Celts" for these ancient people.

[Gaius Drustanus]

Later today on SKY TV a repeat documentary this afternoon about these Caucasian mummies of Ancient China.