The Celts Were Apparently Europe’s Original Frequent Flyers, and Ancient DNA Just Exposed Their Travel History
Thousands of ancient genomes, competing theories, and a rather inconvenient discovery about where Celtic languages may have come from. It turns out our ancestors were moving around Europe, borrowing each other's ideas, and making a complete mess of cultural identity long before anyone invented national borders. HISTORY • SCIENCE • GENETICS • HUMAN CIVILIZATION I have always found it amusing how confidently modern human beings talk about their ancestry. Give somebody a family tree, a surname that sounds vaguely medieval, and an online DNA test that says they're 17% Irish, and suddenly they're explaining the cultural traditions of their ancient people as though they personally attended the tribal meetings. Apparently, somewhere between receiving a saliva-testing kit in the mail and discovering that a distant relative once lived near Dublin, people become certified authorities on the movements of entire civilizations. And now science has arrived to complicate the whole ridicul...
