Scientists: Power in the Celtic tribes was transmitted through the mother in the Iron Age

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German paleontologists found that power in the Celtic tribes that inhabited the regions of Western and Central Europe before the emergence of the Romans was transmitted through the mother.

A research study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, citing scientists, stated: “We conducted genetic and isotopic analyzes on the remains of Celts buried in burial mounds in southern Germany between 200 and 616 BC. We were able to discover many family ties between members of the Celtic nobility who lived Some of them are 100 kilometers away from each other. The study says that the analysis of these links indicates that power in the Celtic tribes was transmitted through the mother.

This conclusion was reached by a group of German paleontologists led by Johannes Kraus, director of the Institute for the Study of Human History in Jena, when deciphering the genomes of ancient Celts whose remains were found in the so-called "princely hills."

They are believed to be the burial places of the wealthy Celts, as a large number of gold jewellery, bronze dishes, other utensils, household items and even carts were found.

Historians are interested in who was buried in these princely mounds - were they the rulers, wealthy residents of the settlements or sacred people worshiped by the local Celtic tribes? To answer these questions, Kraus and his colleagues deciphered and compared the genomes of Celts from several neighboring hills located in southern Germany. They also determined the ratios of strontium and oxygen isotopes in their bones to calculate their place of birth.

The analysis indicated that there were several groups of closely related individuals whose remains were buried in nearby hills and in cemeteries very far from each other, and that some of the deceased did not come from the areas of Germany in which they were buried. This indicates that these mounds contained the remains of hereditary rulers, and this allowed scholars to reveal the nature of the transition of power in Celtic societies.

In particular, the study of family ties among the Celts from the Eberdingen-Hochdorf and Asbjerg-Gräfenbühl hills indicates that power in their tribes was transmitted through the mother, and in some cases the Celts practiced endogamy. Geneticists concluded that this is what distinguished the Celts from most other European peoples in the Iron Age, and brought them closer to the ancient Romans and Etruscans, in whose societies power was sometimes transferred through the mother.

It is noteworthy that historians and anthropologists give the name Celts to a large number of tribes of Indo-European origin that are similar in language and culture and that lived in Western and Central Europe in the Iron Age and periodically entered into conflict with ancient Rome and the German-speaking tribes. These included the Gaul, Belgian, Lingon, and Poe, as well as the ancestors of the modern Irish, Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and Scots.