New discoveries in genetics have overturned the dogma of decades about the Celts.
Today Celtic languages cling to precarious life on the northwestern fringes of Europe.
Delve into the pre-Roman past and we find Celtic spoken across the continent.
The heritage of the Celts turns up from Portugal to Romania, from Scotland to Spain.
Yet debate continues about who exactly were the Celts, where ultimately they came from,
and whether the modern Celtic-speakers of the British Isles and Brittany
are related to the Continental Celts we know from ancient history.
So a fresh approach is needed.
Blood of the Celts meets this challenge, pulling together evidence from
genetics, archaeology, history and linguistics in an accessible ahd illuminating way.
Jean Manco, author of the pioneering and acclaimed genetic history of Europe,
Ancestral Journeys, has here written a vivid and compelling
account that takes the reader on a voyage of
discovery from the origins of the ancient Celts
to the modern CeltIc Revival. What emerges
may seem startling. Earlier attempts to trace
historical and prehistoric movements using only
modern DNA from living people have been
proved dramatically wrong by findings from ancient DNA.
Lovers of war, wine and song, the historical Celts strike us as a people with a great gusto for life.
Yet they did not fear death, for they believed in an afterlife.
Fate has granted them more kinds of immortality than they had in mind.
As long as any Celtic language is still spoken, the linguistic chain from the ancient Celts remains unbroken.
As long as the earliest Celts have living heirs, there is also an unbroken chain of DNA.
Blood of the Celts will be essential reading for anyone
interested in their Celtic ancestry and also for everyone fascinated by the Celts and their world.
