Celtic nations
[2] The term nation is used in its original sense to mean a people who share a common identity and culture and are identified with a traditional territory.
The six regions widely considered Celtic countries in modern times are Brittany (Breizh), Cornwall (Kernow), Ireland (Éire), the Isle of Man (Mannin, or Ellan Vannin), Scotland (Alba), and Wales (Cymru).
[citation needed] Parts of the northern Iberian Peninsula, namely Galicia, Cantabria, Asturias in Spain, and the North Region, Portugal, also lay claim to a Celtic heritage.
[6] Numerous archaeological findings, such as castros (hill forts) and artifacts bearing Celtic motifs, support the presence of Celtic-speaking cultures in Gallaecia dating back to at least the Iron Age.
These regions actively participate in pan-Celtic events such as the Festival Interceltique de Lorient, where Galicia and Asturias are recognized alongside the six core Celtic nations.
"[19] There are virtually no known fluent speakers of Irish Gaelic in Newfoundland or Labrador today, though memorized passages survive in traditional tales and songs.
Hence, for certain purposes—such as the Festival Interceltique de Lorient—Gallaecia, Asturias, and Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia are considered three of the nine Celtic nations.
[33][34] The Republic of Ireland enjoyed a period of rapid economic growth between 1995 and 2007, leading to the use of the phrase Celtic Tiger to describe the country.
[37] A Y-DNA study by an Oxford University research team in 2006 claimed that the majority of Britons, including many of the English, are descended from a group of tribes which arrived from Iberia around 5000 BC, before the spread of Celtic culture into western Europe.
However, three major later genetic studies have largely invalidated these claims, instead showing that haplogroup R1b in western Europe, most common in traditionally Celtic-speaking areas of Atlantic Europe like Ireland and Brittany, would have largely expanded in massive migrations from the Indo-European homeland, the Yamnaya culture in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, during the Bronze Age along with carriers of Indo-European languages like proto-Celtic.
Unlike previous studies, large sections of autosomal DNA were analyzed in addition to paternal Y-DNA markers.
This genetic component, labelled as "Yamnaya" in the studies, then mixed to varying degrees with earlier Mesolithic hunter-gatherer or Neolithic farmer populations already existing in western Europe.
[38][39][40] Furthermore, a 2016 study also found that Bronze Age remains from Rathlin Island in Ireland dating to over 4,000 years ago were most genetically similar to modern Irish, Scottish and Welsh, and that the core of the genome of insular Celtic populations was established by this time.
[43] The term Celtic nations derives from the linguistics studies of the 16th century scholar George Buchanan and the polymath Edward Lhuyd.
Nevertheless, the term Celtic to describe the languages and peoples of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland was accepted from the 18th century and is widely used today.
[44] These areas of Europe are sometimes referred to as the "Celt belt" or "Celtic fringe" because of their location generally on the western edges of the continent, and of the states they inhabit (e.g. Brittany is in the northwest of France, Cornwall is in the south west of Great Britain, Wales in western Great Britain and the Gaelic-speaking parts of Ireland and Scotland are in the west of those countries).
It has also been proposed that a more ancient proto-Celtic presence can be traced back to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (16th–15th century BC), when North Westwern Italy appears closely linked regarding the production of bronze artifacts, including ornaments, to the western groups of the Tumulus culture (Central Europe, 1600–1200 BC).
[57] La Tène cultural material appeared over a large area of mainland Italy,[58] the southernmost example being the Celtic helmet from Canosa di Puglia.
[70] The Boii, the Scordisci,[71] and the Vindelici[72] are some of the tribes that inhabited Central Europe, including what is now Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Poland and the Czech Republic as well as Germany and Austria.
This claim may not only be political: according to a 2000 study by Semino, 35.6% of Czech males have y-chromosome haplogroup R1b,[75] which is common among Celts but rare among Slavs.
Celts also founded Singidunum near present-day Belgrade, though the Celtic presence in modern-day Serbian regions is limited to the far north (mainly including the historically at least partially Hungarian Vojvodina).
