Original subtitles

In early 2015 in Yorkshire, the remains of a body were discovered in an unmarked

grave. They belonged to a man who had died in his early 20s.

Beside him lay a large sword and the heads of five spears.

It was an Iron Age ritual burial.

Graves like this have been discovered throughout Europe and we now know that

this man once shared a common culture.

that stretched from Turkey to Portugal.

We know this because he was one of our prehistoric ancestors.

A Celt.

In Britain, we're never far from our Celtic past.

The Celts seem to belong to a shadowy, wilder, more primal time than anything

more recent history.

But much about their origins, beliefs and ultimate fate remains a mystery.

But a story etched in vivid colour is how these powerful tribal people

battled for survival against their archenemy, the Roman Empire.

From the first Celtic raiding parties that rampaged through ancient Italy, to

Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul, and the Celts' last stand under the warrior

queen, Boudicca.

One of the greatest cultural conflicts that still defines our world today and

reveals Europe's most enigmatic ancient people.

Once the heart of Europe's greatest empire.

For hundreds of years, this city ruled over lands stretching from Syria to

Britain.

Rome's power was forged on its military strength, enshrined in its laws, economy

and monuments.

But even before this empire spread across Europe, it would be challenged by

powerful barbarian forces from land.

north of the Alps.

Warrior tribes that would fire the imagination of Romans for centuries to

The Celts.

This is the Roman image of the Celt. It's called the Dying Gaul.

He's completely naked. He has tousled and unkempt hair, a moustache, and

his neck, he's wearing a torque, which is the ultimate status symbol of the

elite Celtic warrior.

In Roman eyes, this is the quintessential naked savage.

And more importantly, It's a naked savage who has been subdued and

Here on his side, he's bleeding from a mortal wound.

And in his agony, he's dropped his sword to the ground and then slumped

alongside it, awaiting death.

It's a beautiful and very powerful and moving work of art. But it's also

propaganda. This is how Rome wanted its citizens to see, to perceive the Celtic

opponent.

A noble, yes, but essentially a savage.

A powerful, potent image to set against the idea of Rome as

a disciplined, ordered, civilising presence.

The Romans and Celts would struggle for supremacy in Europe.

A conflict that, in the end, would define them both.

But while Rome would celebrate its victories in monumental architecture,

Celts would gradually fade from history.

One big difference between the Celts and the Romans is that the Celts left us no

written records of their own. Theirs was an oral tradition, not a written one.

Unlike the Romans, who documented almost every detail of their lives in their

writings, in their sculptures and in their monuments.

But the Celts aren't entirely invisible to us. The world that they left behind

is there to be discovered beneath our feet.

Throughout Europe, archaeologists are unearthing the world of the ancient

I'm in central France in Champagne country and here on the outskirts of

in April 2013, a team of archaeologists found something very exciting

indeed. They were investigating this area simply because this is going to be

site of a large new warehouse.

And what they stumbled across was a burial site.

They discovered the graves of 27 men and women and they'd been buried here in

the 4th century BC.

This was an Iron Age cemetery.

The people buried here were Celts.

Finds like Boucher give us direct insight into who the Celts really were.

This is one of the skeletons from those graves at Boucher, and in fact this is

one of the most complete skeletons that were found, because some of the bones

are in a very bad state of repair indeed.

Now I've looked really carefully at these bones, and I can't see any signs

injury or disease on them, but in fact there are some marks, or perhaps I

say stains.

just here on the left forearm bone.

Now, this isn't a disease. This is where something made of copper or copper

alloy has lain very close to these bones in the grave.

And in fact, with all these skeletons, with all these graves at Boucher, it's

not the human remains themselves that are the most interesting.

It's what was buried with them.

The bodies were accompanied into the afterlife by their possessions.

and they reveal a surprisingly sophisticated culture.

We've got some fibulae, some brooches here, some bracelets, some little pins

up there, and a couple of necklaces as well.

The fibulae are gorgeous.

This fibula is a pièce de résistance.

It has a repeating pattern running along the body of interwoven spirals, and

then this...

This strange white button just here is actually made of coral, so that would

have come from the Mediterranean.

This is a fairly classic Celtic talk.

The thing which characterises them is this opening at the bottom with these

terminals, and the whole neck ring would have been twisted open in order to

place it around somebody's neck.

And it's got this nice decoration stamped onto the shaft.

A few of the graves contained weaponry.

And these swords are absolutely beautiful.

They are still in their scabbards and the degradation of the iron has meant

it's sprung apart.

So you can actually probably see the sword sitting inside there.

Now the length of these swords is interesting.

They're not quite as long as the slashing swords that would have been

the cavalrymen amongst the Celts.

So these are designed to be carried by warriors on foot.

And here this iron band is decorated.

We've got these strange circles just here, but if you look at them really

carefully, you realise what they are.

These circles, which are made of coral, are the eyes of two dragons.

Now we've got this lovely symmetrical pattern on this scabbard, which is

actually very different from this one.

Both these styles are typical of the period, but they're very individual at

same time. And you can imagine that these swords would have been very prized

personal items.

The picture emerging is that the Celts were a people with individual style and

technical skill.

who took pride in their appearance and weaponry.

It's a far cry from the naked savage depicted by Rome.

Over two and a half thousand years ago the Celts and Romans were destined to

meet. as Celtic influence spread south of the Alps into northern Italy.

And we know that some Celts must have come through here, the alpine pass of

Valcamonica.

Carved, etched into the rocks hereabouts are markings that some archaeologists

believe could be the very earliest depictions of Celts.

As they came through these high alpine passes, they encountered a mountain

people called the Kamuni.

And it may well be the case that it was those Kamuni who made these marks on the

rocks and so created the very first indelible record of what the Celts

like and what they had.

And what you've got on here is something really quite remarkable.

Most obvious, perhaps,

is a depiction of a four -wheeled vehicle, a chariot.

Elsewhere, there's a couple of warriors, or at least figures who seem to be

armed with spears and shields.

But it's a fabulous, unforgettable snapshot of what someone saw when a new

people arrived.

What is clear is that the Celts you've entered say were ready to fight.

This whole area is just peppered, littered with the rock carbons, so that

even got to look underneath the leaf mould, in case you're missing something.

Clear it away.

And look there, right away.

That's fantastic.

See that figure there, Luke?

A man, his head, two legs, he's got shoes on, and he's holding a spear, and

then, and he's left.

Well, that's either a small kind of buckler -type field, Or it could be a

trophy. It could be a man's severed head. Who knows?

And so it goes on.

Just got to keep revealing the canvas. There's more.

There's a crowd of them there.

Armed with spears and shields and swords.

More of them.

They're fantastic.

Everything about it seems to be either warlike and aggressive or jubilant. You

know, the figures are either threatening combat or they're celebrating victory.

But they're very much alive.

Whoever saw them and decided to commit their image to the rock had been

impressed and wanted to make sure that some aspect of their arrival was

remembered.

The Celtic tribes were migrating, taking new lands and moving south towards

central Italy.

The ordered, structured world of Rome had a storm coming.

To find out what happened when the Romans first met the Celts, we have to

on this, Livy's history of Rome.

Now, bear in mind that Livy, Titus Livius, was a Roman, so he's likely to

part of that, and he was writing 300 years after the event.

He tells us that that first meeting between the Romans and the Celts took

in 387 BC.

Inclusium, a town in what's now Tuscany, a hundred miles north of Rome.

It's hard to believe, strolling around this peaceful Tuscan hill town today,

events that unfolded here would set in train centuries of conflict and

bloodshed.

Libby writes that outlandish warriors in their thousands, armed with strange

weapons, marched to Cluthium in search of new lands to conquer and riches to

plunder. They were led by a Celtic tribal leader and warlord called Brenna.

While the Celtic horde descended upon Clusium, the town's officials sent word

Rome asking for armed protection.

But the request was denied.

Instead, Rome sent three of her ambassadors to negotiate a peaceful

It would be the first time Rome would come face to face with her greatest

adversary. And so begin centuries of struggle for the heart and soul of

As negotiations started, the Celts demanded land.

And with vastly superior numbers, they were in no mood for compromise.

There was a fierce argument and in the heat of the moment, a Roman ambassador

stabbed his spear through a Celtic chieftain's heart, killing him

In

a

single stroke, the oath of neutrality, one of Rome's own accepted customs, was

broken.

The Celts demanded that the Roman in question be handed over to them for

suitable punishment.

The demand was ignored.

Big mistake.

Livy wrote, the Celts flamed into uncontrollable anger and set forward

terrible speed, covering miles of ground.

The cry went up.

To Rome.

The Romans came face to face with the Celts in 387 BC, but from modern

archaeology we know that Celtic culture goes back much further than that.

Some of the earliest evidence comes from a tiny village southeast of Salzburg in

Austria called Hallstatt.

It's a place that has given its name to an entire Celtic period.

and has become synonymous with early Celtic culture.

This is Hallstatt, tucked away in a fold of the Austrian Alps. It's a quiet town

with an even quieter population, and yet it's one of the most famous names in

archaeology, and the ideal starting point for any investigation of the

because it's here that we catch the very first glimpses of Celtic material

culture. By which I mean identifiable things left behind by kelp.

Hallstatt culture. I had it drummed into my head when I was an archaeology

student. And now, 30 years after I first heard the term, I'm finally here.

1 ,000 graves out of perhaps 5 ,000 scattered across the upper valley, an

city of the dead.

Within the graves were over 20 ,000 artifacts dating back as far as 800 BC.

Intricate brooches, gold bracelets, vessels made of sheet bronze,

iron daggers, and axes.

This was the earliest evidence of a long -forgotten prehistoric culture, a

culture we now recognise as Celtic.

Archaeologist Hans Restreiter has worked here for over 25 years.

What was special about the graves that were found here?

The number of the graves, we have more than 5 ,000 of them, and also the grave

goods we found within the graves. We have a lot of jewelry and other luxury

products in the graves. Here in Hallstatt, more than 60 % of the graves

a lot of grave goods.

Ah, right, so the majority of people who died and were buried in these graves

were rich enough to take stuff with them.

Yes, that's it. How do you know this wasn't a graveyard for the wealthy? How

you know the poor weren't buried somewhere else?

No, the traces on the skeletons, the muscle marks, show that also the people

the rich graves have worked their whole life long.

And these muscle marks show traces of heavy workload.

So what kind of activity creates that kind of buildup of wear and

tear on the bone? For the women, for example, we see that they have a heavy

workload on one shoulder. It seems they have carried heavy loads on one

shoulder. And for the men?

We have no muscles on the legs.

Right. But we have a lot of muscles here on the shoulders.

Right. So whatever it was they were doing required upper body strength.

Yes. But not a lot of moving around.

Right.

What made Hallstatt unique can still be found buried deep inside these

mountains.

A valuable commodity that made the ancient people who lived here rich and

Hallstatt famous.

You could be right. We have the first prehistoric site.

We are entering here. Take care, Slippery.

Right.

Now this tunnel is a little bit different than the one we walked up.

Oh, yeah, it is. Here we see the remains of one of these huge prehistoric

tunnels. So you've re -excavated a space that was originally made 3 ,000 years

ago. Wow.

And the shining's a crystalline sand. That's the salt.

That's the salt, yes. The poor rock salt, this is the salt the prehistoric

miners were looking for.

And this salt is heading in this direction, so the prehistoric miners

the direction of the salt.

Salt was highly prized as a vital preservative in the ancient world, and

Celts of Hallstatt mined it on a massive scale.

This mountain is riddled with huge excavated galleries, up to 200 metres

and 20 metres high.

Everything the miners left behind is preserved perfectly.

Here you see thousands of burnt -down tapers to illuminate the light.

Tapers from the end of flaming torches?

Yes.

And this is everything that the wealth of Halstatt society, Halstatt culture,

was all built on. It's this.

So that explains the marks on the skeletons in the graves. It's the labour

here. Oh, yes, it is.

The tool handles we find in here, these are the handles of the bronze picks to

break this huge plate of sword.

And the work of those picks explains the marks on the mail.

Skeletons, and we think that the marks from the female skeletons are from the

carrying this huge plate of salt.

So they bear the marks of a lifetime of labour on the skeleton? Oh yes, yes.

So for the household people it was, this was their life, this was their

surrounding, it was quite normal.

They were subterranean?

Yes, oh yes.

Within this ancient mine are also very personal reminders of the people that

worked here.

So am I right in thinking that that there is proof of a life?

Oh yeah, this is a prehistoric excrement.

I'll be honest with you Hans, I never expected to catch this intimate a

of a Celtic salt miner.

I feel a strange sense of communion and brotherhood.

Oh yeah, and in this excrement you also find the eggs of parasites.

So we have the proof that nearly all the miners had parasites on their stomachs.

So it was not a nice time, more than 2 ,000 years ago.

And if it gets wet, it's food mills.

Oh, no, that is unbelievable.

The Iron Age is alive and well down here.

It's preserved because of the salt in here.

It's my first salted poo.

The salt from this mountain was of such high quality it became a prized

commodity. traded throughout the region.

The people of Hallstatt grew rich from this white gold at a time when another

commodity was starting to transform prehistoric society.

Iron.

The secrets of iron production had spread from Asia Minor through the

Mediterranean into Central Europe.

People had long been able to extract copper and tin to make bronze.

Iron ore was more plentiful, but iron was harder to extract and to work.

Repeated heating and hammering yielded a metal hardened, durable and perfect for

weaponry. The Celts became masters at it.

The extraordinary finds at Hallstatt revealed the Celts as wealthy,

and technologically sophisticated.

It was the birth of a new and very distinctive culture, one that would

influence and ultimately dominate Europe.

Hallstatt would become famous as the birthplace of a new culture that thrived

and spread across great swathes of Europe.

By 500 BC, the Celts had arrived in northern Italy.

And by 387 BC,

Having been wronged by Roman ambassadors at Clusium, the Celtic chieftain

Brennus and his men were marching south to Rome, hungry for revenge.

The Roman army, having received word of the approaching Celtic horde, marched

north to meet them, led by General Quintus Sulpicius.

Sulpicius had six legions under his command.

approximately 24 ,000 soldiers.

Just 11 miles from Rome, he encountered his enemy on a plain next to the river

Allia.

This is by no means the most atmospheric play.

Right behind me there's a high -speed rail track.

The whole area is crisscrossed with overhead power lines.

But we believe that thousands of people died here.

This is the battlefield of Allia.

where the Roman army came face to face with the Celts for the very first time

pitched battle.

And it's worth remembering too that the Roman commander, Sulpethius, had next to

no knowledge of his foe. He knew nothing about their tactics or their weaponry.

And furthermore, he'd been caught on the hop with hardly any time to prepare for

what he could now see was ahead of him and coming his way.

Mike Lowe, an expert in ancient military tactics.

has been piecing together what happened on the battlefield nearly 2 ,500 years

ago.

Hey, Neil.

How are you? Good to see you. You too.

Doesn't really have the feel of a battlefield.

No, well, it's not the prettiest, is it? It's a reminder that history happens

under our feet, where we live our everyday lives.

I kind of like the ordinal in this. What about the topography would have

appealed to a commander?

Well, you've got to remember that this is not... the Roman army of later years.

We're talking 387 BC. This is a fledgling Rome.

It's a small force, and they're fighting in a phalanx. That 10, 15 rows deep,

shoulder to shoulder, you've got that rigid, static, entrenched Roman attitude

to fighting. You hold your ground. You take your position.

What I think...

Sulpicius was trying to do was force a pitched battle on this plain. That's

where he set his phalanx, expecting that Brennus would bring his hordes on to

engage them.

And on that hill, which probably didn't have all those trees on back then,

Sulpicius would have put his cavalry, the equites, the elite Roman soldiers.

I think Sulpicius was planning to either sweep down on a flanking manoeuvre or

come round behind the Celts. So what did go wrong for Sulpicius and his Romans?

Well, the first thing is, Brennius didn't do what Sulpicius thought he was

supposed to do. He didn't play the game.

He didn't let his undisciplined hordes rush forward.

He had control of them.

And they went streaming up that hill and they drove that elite Roman cavalry

off the battlefield.

The Celts were much more imaginative, swirling and using the landscape.

And it was hit and run and fluid. It's just a different way of commanding the

battlefield.

It sounds as if the analogy is that the Celt is the flowing stream and the Roman

is the rock in the river.

With the elite cavalry dealt with, the Celtic warriors turned their attention

the Roman phalanxes on the plain.

Overrun and outmanoeuvred, the Roman legionaries fled in panic, terrified by

Celtic charge.

Many were cut down in the rout, others drowned in the alia weighed down by

heavy bronze armour.

The Romans would later claim they lost 20 ,000 men that day. The city of Rome

was left to its fate.

The Romans may have thought their enemy had come out of nowhere, but the Celts

had had connections with the Mediterranean world for years.

Hillforts are iconic features of Celtic Europe.

Iron Age castles that were the homes of chiefs.

and great centres of power.

Heunerberg, built in the 6th century BC, lies nearly 250 miles west of

Hallstatt, in southern Germany.

This is Heunerberg.

And in 600 BC, this whole place would have been covered in Iron Age buildings.

And archaeologists are arguing that we shouldn't just see this as a hill fort,

but that this was a city.

perhaps the first city north of the Alps.

The Celtic city of Heuneberg is estimated to have had a population of 5

its construction was on a grand scale.

A five metre high white wall surrounded the entire citadel, punctuated by huge

defensive towers, which were further protected by a large earthen ditch six

metres deep.

This was architecture designed to be impregnable and to impress.

Dirk Krause is the head of archaeology at Heuneberg.

These walls, these are pretty magnificent, aren't they? They're much

magnificent than I expected, I think, for an Iron Age fort.

Yeah, because they are unique and they are very extraordinary.

Normally they're built with timber.

and stone and earth but here they used limestone foundation and above they

with mud bricks and this painting is necessary for the protection of the mud

bricks because we have bad weather here north of the alps it's also for

demonstration of power because these walls were seen from miles away so

who came here knew this is a mighty site

Oh, so this is what the walls are like underneath all that white paint.

Yeah, these are the mud bricks.

They're not baked clay bricks, but they are dried in the sun or at the air.

So just how unusual is this style of building for the Iron Age?

It's extraordinary.

They didn't build with mud bricks north of the Alps, never. Never before and

never afterwards.

Where has this idea come from?

For a long time it was a mystery where this idea came from.

But the combination of mud brick and of towers, which were built in the citadel

wall here, you find it only in the Phoenician culture, for example, in the

Levante or in Sicily or in the Iberian Peninsula.

So maybe an architect came here who learned to build in a Phoenician

context.

It's an example of this Mediterranean influence, I think, centuries before you

think Mediterranean influence really takes off with the Roman Empire.

When you get up on the top of the Heunerberg, you realise just

why it was such an important site.

It dominates the landscape, but it's also extremely well connected within

landscape.

That down there is the Danube, which of course carries on and flows east to the

Black Sea, and to the south of the Hohenberg, the Rhine rises.

So these are really important river routes, but there are also important

overland routes nearby as well. The Autobahn of the Iron Age.

Silver from Iberia, amber from the Baltic, wine and pottery from Italy and

Greece. crisscrossed the continent, east to west, south to north.

Its links to the wider world made Hoeneberg a vital hub for trade and

and helped to build the foundations of a powerful civilisation.

The enormous wealth from this trade transformed early Celtic leaders into

than chiefs. It created an elite class, the oligarchs of the Iron Age.

Some can even be regarded as royalty.

This burial mound protected the grave of a man who died around 530 BC.

He's become known as the Hochdorf Prince because dispatched with him into the

afterlife were some of the most remarkable finds of the early Celtic

housed in the depository of the Stuttgart Museum.

This is fantastic. Just look at this.

This is the couch that the Hochdorff prince was laid to rest on in his tomb.

And it's made entirely out of sheet bronze, riveted together.

It's got this wonderful hammered pattern, stylised warriors fighting in

combat. And then at each end we've got the representation of a four -wheeled

chariot pulled by two stallions with a warrior holding a...

shields and a spear

i

suppose you've got to remember that when it was pushed in the grave it would

have been a beautiful shiny bronze object and not this green verdigrid

appearance that we that we see now and you can see that this bronze couch is at

the moment resting on these steel legs which of course are not original

This is what it originally stood on.

So this is one of the eight legs of this couch, and you can see that it's a

little bronze figurine. So this is a woman bearing a pot on her head, and

drilled all over and would have been inlaid with coral.

And she's standing astride a wheel, so she's a miniature unicyclist. So this

couch would have been on casters.

Also discovered in the tomb were drinking horns, bronze plates and a vast

cauldron decorated with three lions that would have contained up to 500 litres

of honey mead.

This is the cauldron.

It is enormous.

The size of it is incredibly impressive.

And cauldrons really are emblematic of something which was...

Pretty fundamental in Celtic society, and that, of course, was feasting.

This was the way that chieftains showed their power and their wealth and kept

their allies close to them.

Just based on the size of his cauldron, the hocked -off prince must have been a

fairly important person.

But the greatest luxuries of all were found on the prince himself.

Our Hochdorf prince was wrapped in layers and layers of cloth.

Not only that, he was adorned with all of this gold.

And it is stunning.

He was wearing this beautiful golden neck ring. When you look at it really,

really closely, you realise that what appears at first glance to be an

pattern is in fact a little repeating stamp of a tiny rider on a horse.

And then there are these two...

golden fibulae, or brooches, and you can see that the pins have been

deliberately bent.

So this is part of the strange ritual of his funeral.

He was buried with these brooches, but they're not to be used again by a living

person. And then other objects, like a bronze dagger, which has been encased in

gold, again with a hammered pattern all over it.

But I think... What is most extraordinary about this entire

shoes. Now, of course, I say shoes, but the shoes themselves have long since

rotted away.

But what we have left are these wonderful gold plucks going around the

the shoe here and right up and over the toe.

So having lived in luxury, he took luxury to the grave with him.

And he also took everything he needed to carry on feasting.

right into the afterlife.

From the tiny alpine village of Hallstatt had grown one of Europe's

ancient cultures.

The Celts may not have fitted the classical model, but they were a rich,

and structured society.

A telling contrast to the Roman image of a naked warrior, the wild barbarian.

of the dying Gaul.

I learnt the accepted theory as an archaeology student, but brand new

is suggesting that Celtic origins might be far more complex and intriguing.

If we're trying to track down the Celts and find out how and where it all

started, there are a number of lines of evidence that we can follow. There's

archaeology, so we can look for their material culture, their swords and seals

and jewellery, and look at how that spreads across Europe.

But we can also look at language, because we believe that these Iron Age

spoke very similar languages and that we have surviving Celtic languages in the

west of Europe.

in Wales, in Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany.

But it's not to any of those places that I've come in search of ancient Celtic

language. It is to the Algarve, to south -west Portugal.

John Cook is a philologist, the study of literary text, and he's behind a new

theory of Celtic origins that starts with a very old source.

the ancient Greek historian Herodotus.

John, I must say that I didn't expect to come to Portugal in search of the

Celts, but you think that they were here.

Oh, I have no doubt that the Celts were here.

As well as saying that the Celts lived near the source of the Danube,

in our first good references to the Celts, writing in the 5th century BC,

that they also lived...

beyond the pillar of Hercules at the Straits of Trafalgar. And next to a

he calls the Cunetes. And the Cunetes seems to be a Celtic name as well. So we

have Celts in name and Celts linguistically.

So how do we square that, what Herodotus is telling us, with this idea that the

Celts... come from Central Europe, that is their homeland, and then they spread

out, and that Western Europe is very much a kind of afterthought?

Well, I think we need to look at that differently. We need to re -examine that

whole idea. It simply doesn't work.

For John, what doesn't work is the absence of archaeological evidence

the Celts here to the Celts of Central Europe.

But... There is evidence linking the Iberian kelp to Britain, Ireland and the

Atlantic coastline.

The clues are etched into ancient stone tablets that date to the 7th century BC,

the same period as the Halstatt kelps.

So, John, what have we got here? What is this stone?

This is a gravestone.

Well, this is found in the far southwest of the peninsula, a place called

Fonteveria, which was a necropolis, a burial ground of the early Iron Age.

And can you read it, John?

This bit, Logobo, the first word, looks very much like dedications that we have

in northwestern Spain of Lugubo. And these are dedications to the Celtic god

Lug, Nirobo.

probably means something like to the chief men.

So we have to the gods, Lug, and to the chief men is the opening of this

inscription.

Logon, I think up here, I think this might be the word for burial because

got a very similar word in northern Italy in a Celtic inscription probably

500 years later.

So this looks like a Celtic word?

Written in stone.

It looks like a Celtic... I mean, it's a Celtic name and it looks like it has a

Celtic inflected ending on it. So it's grammatically Celtic and it's

etymologically Celtic. And it still has links to extant Celtic languages, to

Celtic languages spoken by living people.

Oh, yeah, that's how we know... I mean, that's sort of, by definition, this is

how we decide something is Celtic.

John thinks that this is an ancient language.

written down using the alphabet of the Phoenicians, Mediterranean seafarers who

reached the Iberian Peninsula as long ago as 900 BC.

But although this language has been written using that alphabet, it's not

Phoenician.

It's Celtic.

The Early Celtic had clear links to later Celtic languages spoken in Britain

Ireland, such as Gaelic, Welsh and Cornish.

And John believes that Bronze Age traders and seafarers used this Proto

as they traded silver, copper and tin up and down the Atlantic coastline, from

Portugal to northern Spain, Brittany to Ireland and the West Country.

And for me this is really exciting because this is new. This idea is

what we think about the Celts totally on its head. Instead of thinking about a

migration out of Central Europe, we've got something really interesting

happening on this Atlantic fringe, something that could actually be the

of the Celts.

This new theory suggests that rather than being invaded by Iron Age Celts,

Celtic heritage arrived in Britain during the Bronze Age.

using a very different mechanism.

So, my Celtic -ness might have much more to do with the exchange of ores and

ingot than with the blood and gore of a raiding party.

And if that's true, then Britain and the far west of Europe may have had much

more influence on the spread of Celtic culture in Central Europe than was

previously imagined.

And there's a fascinating piece of evidence to support all of that.

This is a gundlingen sword, an early Celtic sword.

It has this elegant leaf shape, and it sweeps back into a big, broad pommel.

It's typically Celtic. Now, a generation ago, swords like this were cited as

evidence of the spread of the Celts into the West from Central Europe.

So you'd find them made of iron all over Central Germany and France.

But recently, archaeologists have been finding lots of swords like this in

Britain. made of bronze, just like this one. They're from the early 8th century.

They're before Hallstatt.

It suggests that it may have been swords made in Britain from bronze that

influenced the weapons technology of the early Iron Age, spreading from west to

east, from Britain to Central Europe, and not the other way round. So when it

comes to the case of a Celtic warlord like Brenneth and his men, they may have

been carrying weapons that were shaped, by a technology that had its foundations

in Britain.

time the Celtic and Roman worlds had clashed at the Battle of Alia.

According to the Roman historian Livy, 20 ,000 legionaries had lost their lives

that day, leaving the city of Rome at the mercy of the Celtic army, under the

command of Chief Brennus.

Livy wrote the following.

As there was no hope of defending the city, the decision was taken to withdraw

all men capable of bearing arms together with the women and children and able

-bodied senators into the fortress on the capital.

From that stronghold, properly armed and provisioned, it was their intention to

make a last stand for themselves, for their gods and for the Roman name.

The fortress was up there on the Capitoline Hill, one of the seven hills

which Rome was built.

The city.

which had never been defeated, was about to face the fury of its greatest foe.

Livy wrote, Then news came that the Gauls were at the gates, and all too

cries like the howling of wolves.

and barbaric songs could be heard.

That howling of wolves and barbaric din might have come from a carnix, a Celtic

war trumpet.

The Celts carried hundreds of them into battle.

Today, however, there is only one carnix player in the world, musician John

Kenny.

The carnix clearly was used to strike fear into enemies in battles.

The sound is made in the same way that we activate a modern trumpet, trombone,

French horn, tuba. You vibrate your lips.

But with this instrument, the sound is entrapped in a bronze skull, and the

skull works exactly like our skull.

because our vocal cords are amplified by all of the nasal passages and the

shape, form of our skull.

That's why we can make a sound without opening our mouths.

It's exactly the same with this instrument. So the sound isn't projected

forward, it's radial, and that's extremely unusual in the world of

instruments.

The sound of these trumpets, accompanied by howls and shouts, is thought to have

been a deliberate part of the Celtic battle plan, designed to terrify the

The world at that time was a much quieter place.

These instruments can out -shout human beings and play as loud as thunder and

loudly as the sea.

Furthermore, when they're played upright, they're 12 feet high and they

head. So if you see 12 or so of these coming out of the mist in the morning,

screaming like mad, it's quite possible to imagine you're being attacked by a

race of giants.

So there we are.

By the time the Celts entered the city of Rome, its citizens had either

retreated to the Capitoline Hill or fled.

The streets were empty.

Livy tells us that the Celts came across a mansion belonging to Roman nobility

and found the doors open.

Suspecting a trap, they entered cautiously.

But the only thing waiting for them was a group of elderly Romans sitting

motionless. in an act of silent defiance.

The Celtic warrior stood entranced by the spectacle.

On an impulse, a Celtic warrior reached out with his hand and touched the beard

of one of the seated figures.

The Roman lashed out and hit him over the head with his ivory staff.

It was the moment that sealed the city's fate.

Enraged, the Celtic warriors butchered the old men where they sat and looted

burned the imperial city to the ground.

Eventually, faced with the prospect of starvation or slaughter, the Romans,

trapped on the Capitoline Hill, had no choice but to surrender, agreeing to pay

the Celts a ransom in gold.

The commander, Quintus Sulpicius, who had led the army to defeat at the Battle

of Alia, agreed to negotiate a settlement with the Celtic warlord,

They agreed the sum of £1 ,000 in weight in gold. A colossal ransom for a city

already ravaged.

Just to add insult to injury, Brennus used weights that were heavier than

to weigh the gold.

It was the second time he had outwitted Sulpicius.

When the Roman commander objected, Brennus flung his sword onto the scales,

shouting, Vi victus! Woe to the vanquished!

It was a dramatic reminder that the Romans were totally at the mercy of the

Celts. The Romans had learned the hard way that the Celts were far from the

savages portrayed.

During the course of four centuries, they had developed a complex and

tribal network.

Theirs was a warrior culture with a shared language and extensive trading

They had expanded across Central Europe.

through the Alps and south into Italy, where they had defeated the emergent

Roman Empire.

In the years that followed, Rome was rebuilt and defended by a new

barrier, the Servian Wall.

It was a permanent reminder to its citizens of their defeat at the hands of

Celts. They were resolved never to let their city fall again.

For Rome, it was a new beginning.

And over the next few hundred years, the Romans would collide again with the

Celts and battle for survival, for land, for the very heart and soul of Europe.

Next time, 300 years later, we discover the golden age of the Celts and their

expansion to the furthest reaches of Europe and beyond.

In France, Rome's greatest military general, Julius Caesar.

is challenged by a warrior king commanding an army of a quarter of a

men.

At stake is the survival of the Celtic heartland of Gaul.