Anglo-American Roots


Chapter 3--



 
America & Britain in Prophecy:
Anglo-American Ethnic Roots


In his 1976 book, Destination America, Maldwyn A. Jones says that most Americans have preferred to mix culturally, socially and religiously with those of their own ethnic background: "They seldom intermarried and it was soon clear that intermingling, far from producing social unity, generated ethnic discord which could erupt into open violence. Insofar as the melting pot functioned at all, it did so slowly and imperfectly" ("Myth of the Melting Pot," p. 145).
 
In an interesting Los Angeles Times article, Ernest W. Lefever (a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.) reported, "Most Americans seem to have given up the dream of a serene melting pot--as both unrealistic and perhaps a bit un-American. Many of us have settled for a less demanding metaphor of America as a bountiful and variegated salad bowl" ("America Is Being Ripped Apart," Aug. 8, 1993).
 
Who Were the Germans?
Today, many are confused regarding the word "German" as commonly used in history books. Modern Germans have never referred to themselves as "Germans." They call themselves Deutsch-and their country, Deutschland. Spanish-speaking peoples today call Germany by the name Alemania. There are two French words for "German." One is Allemand, which, according to the authoritative French dictionary, Le Petit Robert, is derived from the Latin word Alamanni, a people who were part of the confederation of German peoples (p. 50). The other word is Germain, from the Latin word Germanus. The French dictionary offers a possible etymological sense (descriptive, literal meaning from root word origins) of "born of the same father and mother" or "of the same blood" (p. 862). When the Norman French conquered England in 1066 A.D., a whole host of French words entered into Anglo-Saxon-Celtic usage, which in this case is easily seen.
 
The first-mentioned "Germans" were actually a Celtic tribe, which had formerly lived east of the Rhine River. Notice what the Encyclopaedia Britannica says: "Of the Gaulish [Celtic] tribes west of the Rhine... the Treveri claimed to be of German origin, and the same claim was made by a number of tribes in Belgium.... The meaning of this claim is not quite clear, as there is some obscurity concerning the origin of the name Germani. It appears to be a Gaulish term, and there is no evidence that it was ever used by the Germans themselves. According to Tacitus it was first applied to the Tungri, whereas Caesar records that four Belgic tribes... were collectively known as Germani.
 
"There is no doubt that these tribes were all linguistically Celtic, and it is now the prevailing opinion that they were not of German origin ethnologically, but that their claim had come from over the Rhine (Caesar de Bellico Gallico ii 4). It would therefore seem that the name Germani originally denoted certain Celtic tribes to the east of the Rhine" ("Germany," 11th ed., p. 830). According to Kephart's Races of Mankind, the word "German" simply means "warrior" (p. 380)-i.e. Guerre-man = "war man." Therefore, it is fairly easy to see how later warlike invaders of this same territory-the northern Teutonic or Scythian peoples as well as the modern Germans-could have easily been referred to as "Germans.--
 
This also explains how some Germans have been labeled as Celts. Notice this description of the Celts in the Britannica: "The ancient writers regarded as homogeneous all the fair-haired peoples dwelling north of the Alps, the Greeks terming them all Keltoi. [The Romans called the same Celtic peoples Galli or Gauls.] Physically they fall into two loosely-divided groups, which shade off into each other. The first of these is restricted to northwestern Europe, having its chief seat in Scandinavia. It is distinguished by a long head, a long face, a narrow aquiline nose, blue eyes, very light hair and great stature....
 
"The other group is marked by a round head, a broad face, a nose often rather broad and heavy, hazel-gray eyes, light chestnut hair; they are thick-set and of medium height. This race is often termed Celtic or ALPINE from the fact of its occurrence all along the great mountain chain.... It thus stands MIDWAY not only geographically but also in physical features BETWEEN the Teutonic type of Scandinavian and the so-called [olive-complexioned] Mediterranean race with its long head, long face, its rather broad nose, dark brown or black hair, dark eyes, and slender form of medium height" ("Celt," 11th ed., vol. 5). Though the "Alpine" group contains some truly Celtic people (as not all Celts are tall and fair-haired), the majority of the Alpine people are actually true Germans. Notice that they are a completely different stock of people from the Northwest European types mentioned first.
 
How do we know that the Germans should be identified with this "Alpine" people? Madison Grant, in The Passing of the Great Race (1916) writes that "from the time of the 30 Years War [ended 1648], the purely Teutonic race in Germany has been largely replaced by the ALPINE types in the south and by the Wendish [Slavic] and Polish types in the east. This change of race in Germany has gone so far that it has been computed that out of 70,000,000 inhabitants of the German Empire [at the time], only 9,000,000 are purely Teutonic in color, stature, and skull characters" (p. 185).
 
Fleure, in The Peoples of Europe, says that "the dominant broad-headedness of the Alpine" race has spread over most of modern Germany (p. 42). It is simply indisputable that this is the modern type of German today.
Of what ethnicity are most Americans? A July 7, 1986, article in U.S. News & World Report revealed that, based on 1980 census figures, nearly 80 percent of Americans polled claimed descent from Northwest Europe: "The government found out that there were 134 different ethnicities living in the United States. The largest number--nearly 50 million, or 22 percent of the population [at the time]--claimed English lineage. Americans of German ancestry are almost as numerous. Just behind them are people with Irish ancestors."
 
According to that article, here are the actual figures given in the 1980 census: English, 49.6 million; German, 49.2 million; Irish, 40.2 million; French, 12.9 million; Scottish, 10 million; Dutch, 6.3 million; Swedish, 4.3 million; Norwegian, 3.5 million; Welsh, 1.7 million; Danish, 1.5 million. This adds up to a total of 179.2 million U.S. citizens who claimed descent from the peoples of Northwest Europe.
 
Americans who are not of Northwest European ancestry make up only about one quarter of the total U.S. population. Latest population figures reveal that blacks constitute only 11.9 percent of the American populace while Hispanics make up only 9.5 percent (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1995 Book of the Year, p. 741).
 
A Whole Nation "Sifted"
 
Remember from chapter two that God said He would "SIFT the house of ISRAEL among all nations, as grain is sifted in a SIEVE; yet not the smallest grain shall fall to the ground" (Amos 9:9). An interesting "parallel" has occurred in American history.
 
For years, immigrants to the U.S. were greeted by the Statue of Liberty on their way to America's chief port of entry, Ellis Island. Notice what Maldwin Jones says: "Ellis Island was a gigantic SIEVE, whose sole function was to keep out undesirables.... [and serve as a gateway] to America for sixteen million immigrants" (pp. 54, 64).
 
It is interesting to note that U.S. immigration laws and policies--during much of America's critical, formative years and up until the middle of the 20th century--deliberately favored the peoples of Northwest Europe while, at the same time, limiting white peoples from southern or eastern Europe. This idea of a "sieve" has circulated since the early American settlements--and God was seen as the One doing the sifting: "The Puritan founders of New England never doubted that they were, in a quite special way, God's chosen people. One of their leaders spoke of God's having 'SIFTED a whole nation' in order to find the instruments which were to work out His purposes in the new world" (p. 18).
 
American President Calvin Coolidge echoed this sentiment in 1923: "It has often been said God sifted the nations that He might send choice grain into the wilderness [of America]. Who can fail to see in it the hand of destiny? Who can doubt that it [the U.S.] has been guided by the hand of God?"
 
John Hay, the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, made this incisive statement in 1787: "Providence [had] been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs." Yes, the peoples who formed the 13 original British colonies were overwhelmingly of British stock and spoke the "mother tongue," English.
 
As we learned in the last chapter, the British Isles--and most of continental Europe--were populated in ancient times by the Celts. However, Great Britain was eventually overrun by peoples from the east known as the Angles and Saxons. In time, the Anglo-Saxons would come to dominate all the countries which made up the British Isles--the Angles even giving their name to England (Angland). The Celts were pushed west. Yet, even today, a substantial portion of the British population remains Celtic.
 
W
hat are the ancestral roots of the British and American peoples? Is America just a blend of all manner of ethnicities--a "mongrel nation" as Adolph Hitler labeled it? And what about the Britons? Aren't they primarily a Germanic people? Who are these peoples really? These are some of the fascinating questions we will be tackling in this chapter.
 
Is America a "Melting Pot"?
 
Who Were the Celts?
 
Who were the Celtic peoples? The Britannica states, "Celt... the generic name of an ancient people, the bulk of whom inhabited the central and western parts of Europe" ("Celt," 11th ed., vol. 5).
 
World Book Encyclopedia says, "The first Celts were a mixed people. They tended to be fair-haired and light-skinned, but some had darker-colored hair and complexion [brunets]. They were taller than many of their neighbors, but not so tall as the Norsemen" ("Celts," vol. 3).
 
The same entry continues, "Little is known of the Celts until about 500 B.C. Then they were found mainly in southwestern Germany, but later, the Celts ranged east, west, and south. They soon spread over most of western Europe. In the British Isles, they were divided into two branches. One branch, which included the Irish, the Manx, and the Highland Scots, spoke Goidelic [Gaelic]. The other branch to which the Welsh [Cymry], the Cornish [of Cornwall, England], and the Bretons [of Brittany, France] belonged, spoke Brythonic. The Celts in Europe developed the Gaulish language."
 
History clearly shows that, eventually, few of the Celts remained east of the Rhine River. In the days of Julius Caesar (1st century B.C.), the Celtic lands included northern Italy, northeastern Spain, France, Belgium, Denmark, western Germany and Switzerland. Also, a small group of Gauls (Celts or "Galatians") settled in central Asia Minor and was still there in the first century A.D. As a wide-ranging, on-the-move people, the Celts were united in their languages, dress and culture--and in their pagan religion (druidism). Caesar wrote about the Celts in his Gallic Wars. But his is not the definitive history to which we will look for the ancient origins of these peoples. For that, we must turn elsewhere.
 
Of the many thousands of books dealing with ancient history, none has presented ancient British origins in as clear and accurate a light as the monumental, multi-volume work, The History of the Anglo-Saxons from the Earliest Period to the Norman Conquest by the well-respected English historiographer, Sharon Turner (1768-1842). He says, "Europe... has been peopled by three great streams of population from the East, which have followed each other, at intervals so distinct, as to possess languages clearly separable from each other. The earliest of these... comprised the Cimmerian and Celtic race. The second consisted of the Scythian, Gothic, and German tribes; from whom most of the modern nations of continental Europe have descended" (vol. 1, p. 3).
 
According to Turner, the "third and most recent" ethnic group to migrate into Europe was the "Slavonian and Sarmatian nations... who have now established themselves in Poland, Bohemia, Russia, and their vicinities. It is from the first two generations of the European population [Celts and Scythians] that the ancient inhabitants of England successively descended.... The earliest of these that reached the northern and western confines of Europe, the Cimmerians and Celts, may be regarded as our first ancestors; and from the German or Gothic nations who formed, with the Scythians, the second great flood of population into Europe, our Anglo-Saxon and Norman ancestors proceeded" (pp. 4, 21).
 
Samuel Lysons wrote about "the Cimmerians seeming to be the same people [as] the Gauls or Celts under a different name; and it is observable that the Welsh, who are descended from the Gauls, still call themselves Cymri or Kymry" (Our British Ancestors, 1865, pp. 23, 27).
 
Turner mentions that the ancient Celtic and Cimmerian languages were the same. He also says "that the Kimmerioi of the Greeks were the Kimbroi of the Greeks, and the Cimbri of the Latin writers.... Diodorus Siculus expressly says, that to those who were called Kimmerioi, the appellation of Kimbron was applied in the process of time.... Plutarch, in his Life of Marius, also identifies the Kimbri with the Kimmerioi" (footnote, p. 28).
 
Turner also noted that the Keltoi (Celts) were the same people as the Galatai, and that they, in turn, were the same as the Galli (the Gauls), and that the Keltoi were "one of the branches of the Cimmerian stock" (p. 36).
 
Who Were the Anglo-Saxons?
 
According to the 1980 U.S. Census figures previously cited, "Germans" were the second-largest ethnic group in America after the English. Of course, if we count all peoples of British stock (English, Scots, Irish and Welsh), we find them more than twice as numerous as the Germans. Still, the "Germans" represent a sizable portion of America's ethnic background. Moreover, even the English have descended from early "Germanic" invaders of Britain. Exactly who were these people?
 
Teutons or "Germans" migrated to England as Angles, Saxons and Jutes in the decades immediately following the departure of the Roman legionnaires from Britain around 410 A.D. In The Story of English, a 1986 companion book to the PBS television series of the same name, authors McCrum, Cran and MacNeil say, "The tribes which now threatened the Celtic chiefs of Britain were essentially Germanic.... There are, Tacitus [famed Roman historian, c. 55-120 A.D.] writes, seven tribes.... One of these seven barbarous tribes was the Angli, known to history as the Angles, who probably inhabited the area that is now known as Schleswig-Holstein [immediately south of Denmark on the Jutland Peninsula].... The speech of the Angli belonged to the Germanic family of languages" (pp. 56-58).
 
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Angli (Angles) definitely had a close affinity with the Saxons ("Saxons," 11th ed., vol. 24). The Story of English continues, "To this day the [cultural] gap between the English on the one hand and the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish on the other, is often huge.... To the Celts, their German conquerors (Angles, Jutes and Saxons) were all Saxons" (p. 61).
 
So historians are generally agreed in referring to all the major peoples who followed the Celts into Britain as "Germans." But, as we will examine shortly, they were quite different from other tribes, whose descendants today inhabit Germany. Still later, some of those so-called "Germans" who had settled in Britain migrated to America as British colonists. After the British North American colonies were founded, numerous other "Germans" left Germany and began flooding into those British colonies.
 
Who were the "Germanic" Saxons? Sharon Turner says, "The Saxons were a... Scythian tribe; and of the various Scythian nations which have been recorded, the Sakai, or Sacae, are the people from whom the descent of the Saxons may be inferred with the least violation of probability. Sakai-Suna or the Sons of Sakai, abbreviated into Saksun, which is the same sound as Saxon, seems a reasonable etymology of the word 'Saxon.' The Sakai, who in Latin are called Sacae, were an important branch of the Scythian nation. They were so celebrated, that the Persians called all the Scythians by the name of Sacae; and Pliny [the Elder, Roman historian, A.D. 23-79]... speaks of them as among the most distinguished people of Scythia (Pliny, lib. vi. c. 19). Strabo [Greek historian, c. 63 B.C.- 24 A.D.] places them eastward of the Caspian [Sea]" (p. 87)!
 
According to historian William Camden, the Saxons and the Getae (Goths) were related Scythian peoples. He writes, "But that [opinion] of the most learned German seems most probable and worthy to be embraced, which makes the Saxons descend from the Sacae, the most considerable people of Asia, and to be so called quasi Sacasones, or Sons of the Sacae, and to have gradually overspread Europe from Scythia or Sarmatia Asiatica, with the Getae, Suevi, Daci, and others. Nor is their opinion ill-founded, which brings the Saxons out of Asia" (Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 1, p. 151). Herodotus says, "For the Persians call all the Scythians Sacae" (Polymnia, bk. 7, para. 64).
 
The famous English poet and historian, John Milton--author of the classic work, Paradise Lost--wrote, "They [the Saxons] were a people thought by good writers to be descendants of the Sacae, a kind of Scythians in the north of Asia, who with a flood of other northern nations came into Europe, toward the declining of the Roman Empire [c. 400s A.D.]" (History of England, 1835, bk. 3, pp. 406-407). Scythian artifacts from many thousands of tombs have been found all across southern Russia and as far west as Berlin.
 

 
Anciently, the vast, sparsely inhabited land stretching from eastern Europe far into Asia was known as "Scythia." In fact, at one time or another, the Scythian people were scattered from the Carpathian Mountains, eastward across the Steppes of southern Russia, all the way to the Great Wall of China! The area north of the Black Sea, however, was their main center from about the fifth century B.C. until they migrated westward from that region during the first centuries of the Christian Era.
 
The westward migration of the Scythians into Europe greatly diminished their numbers in their Asian homeland. This enabled them to be pushed completely out of Asia and eastern Europe by the Sarmatians--the ancestors of the Slavs. Many modern nations of Europe can claim descent from the Scythians: "This second stock of the European population [the Scythians] is peculiarly interesting to us [Anglo-Saxons], because from its branches not only our own immediate ancestors, but also those of the most celebrated nations of modern Europe, have unquestionably descended.
 
"The Anglo-Saxons, lowland Scots, Normans, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Germans, Dutch, Belgians, Lombards and Franks have all sprung from that great fountain of the human race, which we have distinguished by the terms SCYTHIAN, German, or Gothic" (Turner, pp. 82-83)! For his unparalleled work in ancient historiography, Turner is certainly to be highly respected. But is his identification of the Scythians with the Germans accurate?
 
Are the Anglo-Saxons True Germans?
 
Most true Germans are characterized by "Alpine" round skulls (see box: "Who Were the Germans?"). Yet ethnologist Madison Grant writes, "In the study of European populations the great and fundamental fact about the British Isles is the almost total absence there today of true Alpine round skulls" (p. 137).
 
Ripley, in The Races of Europe, says, "The most remarkable trait of the population of the British Isles is its head form; and especially the uniformity in this respect which is everywhere manifested. The prevailing type is that of the long and narrow cranium, accompanied by an oval rather than broad or round face" (p. 303). Remember that this is the same as the northern Celtic type. It is also the same as the Teutonic, Scandinavian type--the Scythian type!
 
Nomadic Horsemen
of the Steppes
It is helpful to note that anyone who lived in the vast region of Scythia (beyond the limits of the Greco-Roman world) was looked upon as a "Scythian"-a term which incorrectly came to be synonymous with "barbarian" from the perspective of Greek and Roman writers. Actually, the Scythian tribes had a well-developed, though nomadic, way of life. These nomads dwelled mainly in tents or wagons. They raised some crops, but their main talent was in tending livestock: cattle, sheep, goats and especially horses!
 
The Scythians were acknowledged to have been the best horsemen of their day, and no cavalrymen could match their skill in fighting. In about 512 B.C., Darius the Great tried to subdue them north of the Danube River and the Black Sea, but he failed. On numerous occasions the Scythians defeated the powerful armies of their enemies--the Assyrians, Persians and Romans. In fact, it was some of the hard-riding, violence-loving Scythian tribes which later laid in the dust the might and glory of Rome!
 
Archaeological evidence and historical records reveal that the Scythians were fair-skinned peoples closely akin to, if not identical to, today's northwestern Europeans! In fact, archaeologists have discovered burial mounds containing the frozen bodies of Scythian chieftains and their retainers. "The chieftains were exceptionally tall and strong and... racially the Altai [a Scythian tribe] were predominantly [of] European type.... At least one man had black wavy hair and one woman a luxuriant soft pile of dark chestnut tresses. A silver and gilt amphora [vase] discovered in 1862 in a grave at a site called Chertomlyk, also on the Dnieper, bears in relief on its gleaming surface a group of Scythians who could be American wranglers: one is roping a shaggy-maned steed, another is removing hobbles from a saddled horse.... The Budini [another Scythian tribe, were] a powerful people with bright red hair and deep blue eyes.... Sometimes the Scythians prepared a sort of haggis [a Scottish dish] by boiling the flesh of a cow in its own skin.
 
"They were in all respects a passionate people-bearded men with dark, deep-set eyes, weather-cured faces and long wind-snarled hair. They drank from the skulls of slain enemies and flaunted the scalps of their foes as trophies. In a time when nations had not yet developed skilled cavalrymen and relied almost entirely on foot soldiers and chariots, the Scythians came riding at the gallop, shooting fusillades of singing arrows from their bows.
 
"Herodotus also reported that the Scythians liked to get high from marijuana! 'In order to cleanse their bodies, the men make a booth by fixing in the ground three sticks inclined toward one another, and stretching around them woolen felts; inside the booth a dish is placed on the ground, into which they put a number of red-hot stones, and then add some hemp seed. Immediately it gives out such a vapor as no Greek vapor bath can exceed'" (Frank Trippet, The First Horsemen, Time-Life Books, New York, 1974, pp. 9, 18, 105-106, 112, 122). So the ancient Scythians not only looked like most of our American and British peoples (and others of northwestern European descent) today, they even appear to have passed on some of their terrible habits to our modern peoples-their descendants.

 
In a 1915 article "Are We Cousins to the Germans?" Sir Arthur Keith wrote that "the Briton and German represent contrasted and opposite types of humanity" (The Graphic, Dec. 4, p. 720). He explained, "The radical difference in the two forms leaps to the eye. In the majority of the Briton--English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish--the hinder part of the head, the occiput, projects prominently backwards behind the line of the neck; the British head is long in comparison with its width" (p. 720).
 
Keith then pointed out that "in the vast majority of Germans," the back of the head is "flattened"--indicating "a profound racial difference. Even in the sixteenth century, Vesalius, who is universally recognized as the 'father of Anatomy,' regarded the flat occiput as a German characteristic.... He came, rather unwillingly, to the conclusion that the vast majority of modern German people differed from the British, Dutch, Dane and Scandinavian in head form.
 
"The explanation," according to Keith, "is easy. With the exodus of the Franks to France and the Anglo-Saxons to Britain in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth centuries of our era, Germany was almost denuded of her long-headed elements in her population." So the land of Germany seems to have been operating as a massive SIEVE--while the round-headed population elements were retained, the long-headed elements passed through. This is rather astounding! Could something like this have happened by chance alone? Surely there was something more at work here!
 
Did any more of the Scandinavian long-headed type leave? Yes--to America! Look at the entry on "Germany" in the Britannica: "There have been great oscillations in the actual emigration by sea. It first exceeded 100,000 soon after the Franco-German War (1872, 126,000), and this occurred again in the years 1880 to 1892. Germany lost during these thirteen years more than 1,700,000 inhabitants by emigration. The total number of those who sailed for the United States from 1820 to 1900 may be estimated at more than 4,500,000....
 
"The greater number of the more recent emigrants [to the U.S.] was from the agricultural provinces of northern Germany--West Prussia, Posen, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover, and sometimes the emigration reached 1% of the total population of these provinces. In subsequent years the emigration of native Germans greatly decreased" (11th ed., vol. 11).
 
What is so special about northern Germany? Notice this reference from Ripley's Races of Europe: "Northwestern Germany--Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Westphalia--is distinctly allied to the physical type of the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes. All the remainder of the Empire--no, not even excluding Prussia, east of the Elbe--is less Teutonic in type; until finally in the essentially Alpine broadheaded populations of Baden, Wurttemburg, and Bavaria in the south, the Teutonic race passes from view" (p. 214).
 
It is generally known that the northern "Low Germans" differ from the southern "High Germans." But there were differences even among the Low Germans.
 
Another source comments, "A separate study, in the case of Germany at least would seem to indicate that those [immigrants] who went to the U.S.A. in the 1800s were somehow different from those who stayed behind and German officials themselves remarked on such a difference. The claim for such a distinction is based on consideration of physical types, areas-of-origin within Germany, religious orientation and social outlook" (Yair Davidy, The Tribes, Russell-Davis Publishers, p. 430). It seems America's Puritan founders were indeed right in believing that God was sifting a whole nation!
 
It is clear, then, that the Anglo-Saxon peoples are not Germanic--at least in the modern sense of that term. Neither are the Teutonic peoples of Scandinavia and the rest of Northwest Europe who sprang from the Scythians.
 
These people who overran the British Isles were in many respects the same as the Celts who were already living there. Notice what Professor Huxley's Racial Origins says: "The invasion of the Saxons, the Goths, the Danes and the Normans changed the language of Britain, but added no new physical element. Therefore we should not talk anymore of Celts and Saxons, for THEY ARE ALL ONE. I never lose an opportunity of rooting up the false idea that the Celts and Saxons are different races." Winston Churchill was of the same opinion (History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 1, preface).
 
The Celtic people are certainly not German either. The modern Germans (Deutch) represent an altogether different group of people located today in Greater Germany--i.e. Germany, Austria, western Poland, the western Czech Republic and the Rhineland of eastern France. We will learn the true identity of these people later in this brochure.
 
From Where Did the Celts Arise?
 
When did the Celts or Cimmerians begin migrating into Europe? And from where did they come? Though they have since moved on, a large Celtic populace spent a considerable amount of time in Spain. There they were known as the Celtiberri or Celtiberians--thus Spain and Portugal are located on the "Iberian Peninsula." This is quite interesting since Iberia was the name of a region between the Black and Caspian Seas, just south of the Caucasus Mountains and north of Armenia! Notice this from the multimedia encyclopedia, Microsoft Encarta '95: "Iberia, ancient name for both the Iberian Peninsula and the country lying between the Greater Caucasus and Armenia, approximately coextensive with present-day Georgia [south of Russia]" ("Iberia," Microsoft Corp. and Funk and Wagnall's Corp., 1994).
 
This word is also the probable origin of the name, Ireland! The name Ireland comes from Eire-land ("Eire" being what the Irish call it). Traditionally, this name came from "Erin." The Romans called it Hibernia or Ivernia. It sometimes appears as Iberon. But where did these names come from?
 
The late Harvard professor Barry Fell wrote, "One of the ancient names of Ireland is Ibheriu, pronounced as Iveriu, a fact that suggests that the word is derived from a still-earlier pronunciation, Iberiu. Now this is very interesting, for the Gaelic histories assert that the ancestors of the Gaels came to Ireland from Iberia, the old name of Spain. Could Iberiu be the same as Iberia, the name of the older homeland having been transferred to the younger? Many people, including some linguists, think this may well be the case" (America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World, 1976, p. 43).
 
Could such Irish forebears in Spain have come from the area of Iberia just south of the Caucasus Mountains? The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (c. 891 A.D.), the primary source for the early history of England, says Southwest Asia was at one time the home of the Celts: "The first inhabitants [of England] were Britons [Welsh or Kymry], who came from ARMENIA, and first peopled Britain southward" (p. 21, translated by James Ingram).
 
Some people argue that the compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle used the word "Armenia" by mistake. They cite the fact that A History of the English Church and People by Bede (673-735 A.D.), which was used as one of the sources for the Chronicle, has a similar sentence using the word "Armorica" instead--i.e. modern Brittany in northwestern France. However, those who argue in favor of this should consider that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was a monumental work overseen by MANY people. Bede was just ONE person. More than likely, it was he who made the slip by using the word "Armorica"! Samuel Lyson's history also traces the "Cimbri" to Armenia. And remember that Armenia was just south of Iberia and the Caucasus!
 
Observe this from the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Cimmerii... Herodotus (iv., 11-13), in his account of Scythia, regards them as the early inhabitants of South Russia (after whom the Bosporus Cimmerius q.v. and other places were named), driven by the Scyths along by the Caucasus into Asia Minor, where they maintained themselves for a century....
 
"Certainly it is that in the middle of the seventh century [650s] B.C., Asia Minor was ravaged by northern nomads (Herodotus iv., 12), one body of whom is called in Assyrian sources Gimirrai and is represented as coming through the Caucasus. To the north of the Euxine [Black Sea] their main body was merged in the invading Scyths. Later writers identified them with the Cimbri of Jutland [present-day Denmark], who were probably Teutonized Celts" ("Cimmerii," vol. 6, p. 368).
 
This is quite strange. Around the 650s B.C., 70 years after Israel's second deportation in 721, a group of Scythians--evidently southeast of the Cimmerians--were pushing some Cimmerians north through the Caucasus and some west through Asia Minor. Yet, the Cimmerians who went north through the Caucasus encountered more Scythians coming from the east! How was this possible? The answer will become clear when we later learn who the Scythians actually were.
 
Armenian Homeland?
 
Dr. Robert Owen says, "In leaving the Far East, they [the Cimmerians, Cimbri or Kymri] must have occupied a country south of the Caucasus, extending from the river Araxes [between the Caspian and Black Seas], to the... Sea of Azov [north of the Black Sea], where Herodotus remarks on the many places yet bearing the name of Kimmerian in his time" (The Kymry, p. 11). Owen discovered "in the nomenclature of rivers and mountains some grounds for inferring the occupation of the country east of the Euxine Sea [Black Sea] by Celts or traces of their presence, which any temporary irruption [forcible entry] in later times will never suffice to explain" (p. 12).
 
So we see a great deal of historical evidence that the Celtic people traveled north through the Caucasus region into eastern Europe. Dr. Owen continues, "It is not impossible that some of the Kimmerioi, who retired from their Asiatic home before the onset of the Scythians, took a northern course, which the pursuers afterwards followed... from the Sea of Azov to the shores of the Baltic" (pp. 26-27).
 
Thus the Cimmerians moved north, along the eastern side of the Black Sea, and were then forced westward by the advancing Scythians--who were coming around the north side of the Caspian Sea from the east.
 
When did this merger and struggle between the Cimmerians and Scythians occur? Dr. Edwin Guest says, "Our most trustworthy authorities agree in fixing these events in the latter part of the sixth century B.C." (Origines Celtica, vol. 1, 1883, p. 17). He thinks that historic event occurred in the late 500s B.C.--two centuries after the Israelites had been taken captive, and about a century after the Assyrian Empire was destroyed (612 B.C.).
 
This time frame makes sense. Remember that World Book says little was known of the Celts until the 500s B.C. Notice also: "The Celts [began] to emerge from the anonymous mass of the non-literate peoples of Europe during the late sixth century B.C." (Vencelais Kruta, Celts of the West, pp. 10-11).
 
As the Cimmerians came up around the Black Sea, they migrated to the Crimea, north of that sea: "Crimea [called by the Russians by the Tartar name Krym or Crim]... a peninsula on the north side of the Black Sea.... The earliest inhabitants... were the Celtic Cimmerians, who were expelled by the Scythians during the seventh century B.C." ("Crimea," Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 7). Under Scythian pressure, these "Celtic Cimmerians" were forced into Europe and on around the Black Sea to its southwestern shores. There they converged with other Celts (Cimmerians), who had been pushed westward across Asia Minor by a different group of Scythians, and had crossed the Bosporus Strait into Thrace -- present-day European Turkey. Sharon Turner wrote, "The Kymry came from the eastern parts of Europe, or the regions where Constantinople [Istanbul, Turkey] now stands" (p. 32).
 
"The first inhabitabts [of England] were Britons, who came from Armenia."
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (c. 891 A.D.)

 
The Danube River formed the northern border of Thrace. The migrating Celtic Cimmerians followed the Danube westward, then--as we've seen--fanned out over Europe into France, Belgium, Switzerland, northern Italy and northern Spain. Some of them settled in the "Cimbric Chersonosus," the Jutland Peninsula of modern Denmark (though some writers have also used this name for the Crimea). Others moved northward into Scandinavia, while a considerable number of them migrated further westward into Britain and Ireland.
 
Lysons's history summarizes these facts quite well: "The chain of evidence seems to be complete. Appian [of Alexandria, Greek historian, 2nd century A.D.]... says the Cimbri were Celts. Diodorus [of Sicily] says that the Cimbri were Gauls or Celts; Gauls were Galatae... Geltae or Keltae. The names are synonymous.... The Cymric Celts [migrated] from Armenia to Britain... it confirms all the traditions of the Welsh, the views of Nennius [9th century British monk and historian] and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and all our earliest histories, and to anyone who has studied the question, seems most convincing" (p. 27).
 
How and when did the Scythian fathers of the Anglo-Saxon and other Northwest European peoples come into Europe? Madison Grant wrote, "The Nordics [Scythians]... migrated around the northern and eastern sides of the Caspian-Aral Sea" (p. 214). Sharon Turner says, "Herodotus, besides the main Scythia, which he places in Europe, mentions also an Eastern or Asiatic Scythia, beyond [east of] the Caspian [Sea] and Iaxartes [River]" (p. 82).
 
But where did the Scythians come from? Remember that the name Saxon was from "Saksun" which came from "Sakai-Suna." This branch of the Sacae is actually mentioned in ancient history: "They seized Bactriana, and the most fertile part of Armenia, which, from them, derived the name Sakasina; they defeated Cyrus; and they reached the Cappodoces on the Euxine.
 
"This important fact of a part of Armenia having been named Sakasina, is mentioned by Strabo... and seems to give a geographical locality to our primeval ancestors, and to account for the Persian words that occur in the Saxon language, as they [the Saxons] must have come into Armenia from the northern regions of Persia" (Turner, p. 87)! So at this point the Scythian Saxons were in the same region as the Cimmerians! What's going on here?
 
The Master Key Linking Two Great Peoples
 
The real master key to unlocking the mystery of why the Cimmerians and Scythians were both coming from the same places--around the south Caspian Sea region--is to be found in the well-known BEHISTUN ROCK INSCRIPTIONS (also called Bisutun Inscriptions).
 
While exploring Persia in 1835, a British army officer, Sir Henry Rawlinson, noticed a great rock rising about 1,700 feet above the main road from Babylon to Media. On the face of that perpendicular rock cliff, 400 feet above the road, Rawlinson noticed a smoothed surface with cuneiform (wedge-shaped) engravings. Upon further investigation, Sir Henry noticed that those inscriptions were written in three languages: Persian, Susian (Elamite or Median) and Babylonian. These inscriptions had been engraved around 520 B.C. at the command of Persian Emperor Darius I--or "Darius the Great" (ruled 521-486 B.C.)--to commemorate his reign and military successes.
 
Rawlinson performed a great service for historical scholarship when he made squeezes (clay impressions) of the inscriptions. For modern historians, those trilingual cuneiform inscriptions proved to be a master key to understanding the ancient languages of the Near East, thereby unlocking to the world the vast treasures of Assyrian and Babylonian literature: "In 1835 the difficult and almost inaccessible cliff was first climbed by Sir Henry Rawlinson, who copied and deciphered the inscriptions (1835-1845), and thus completed the reading of the old cuneiform text and laid the foundation of the science of Assyriology" ("Behistun," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 3).
 
Do the Behistun Rock Inscriptions help us in understanding our Celtic (Cimmerian) and Anglo-Saxon (Scythian) heritage? Yes! They list 23 provinces which then constituted the Persian Empire (c. 520 B.C.). According to the translation by L.W. King and R.C. Thompson (Inscriptions of Darius the Great at Behistun, British Museum, 1907), the 19th province listed, in the Persian language, is called "Scythia" (phonetic: Saka--Rawlinson has Sacae). It is also named "Scythia" (phonetic: Sakka) in the Susian (Median) language. But, in the Babylonian language, that same province is called "the land of the Cimmerians" (phonetic: Gimiri)! The Cimmerians and Scythians must have been of the SAME PEOPLE!
 
Notice the following extract from The History of Herodotus: "The ethnic name of Gimiri first occurs in the cuneiform records of the time of Darius Hystapses [Darius I], as the Semitic equivalent of the Arian name Saka [Sacae = Scythians = Saxons].... The nation spoken of contained at this time two divisions, the eastern branch, named Humurga... and the [western branch] Tigrakkuda or 'archers,' who [shared a common border]... with the Assyrians" (translated by G. Rawlinson, H. Rawlinson and J.G. Wilkinson).
 
Here is more about these eastern and western branches of the Scythians: "A group of Amyrgian Scythians in the time of Darius, king of Persia, were reported as then dwelling on the Tigris [River] banks. They were led by a chief Saku'ka and revolted against the Persian rulers. In a bilingual inscription these Amyrgians are called Saka Humuvashka in Persian and Gimirri Umurgah in Babylonian. Gimirri [in the Babylonian version] means either 'Tribes' or Cimmerians or perhaps both since the Scyths and Cimmerians were originally ONE ENTITY" (Davidy, p. 360).
 
Sir Henry Rawlinson was also of this opinion: "The identification of the Persian Sacae or Scythians with the people named by the Greeks Kimmerioi [Cimbri = Celts]... would seem highly probable" (Proceedings of the Royal Asiatic Society, May 12, 1849, p. xxi). How about that! Incredibly, history reveals that the Celts (Cimmerians) were merely the western branch of the wide-ranging Scythians!
 
Madison Grant concurred with this conclusion, writing that the Cimmerians, the Sacae (Saxons) and the Massagetae all sprang from the Scythians (p. 194). So these great peoples, seemingly originating in northern Mesopotamia and in Persia, were basically the same. The Cimmerians (to the west) and the Scythians (to the east--yet always advancing westward upon the Cimmerians) were actually branches of the same great family!
 
Fascinating Racial Roots!
All peoples on earth today have descended from Noah's three sons-Shem, Ham and Japheth-as recorded in Genesis 10. (NOTE: By comparing the known geographic origins of the major racial groups with the ancient locations of the biblically listed descendants of Noah's sons, it is possible to determine which son of Noah fathered which major race.) Ham is the father of the Negroids-the dark-skinned peoples who inhabited Africa, India, and, anciently, certain eastern Mediterranean countries like Canaan. Japheth is the father of the Mongoloids-the yellow and brown peoples of Asia and the native Indian tribes of North, Central and South America. Many of the olive-skinned peoples who inhabited the countries of the northern rim of the Mediterranean Sea (e.g. Greeks) are also descendants of Japheth and his sons. Shem is the father of the Caucasoids-the fair-skinned blonds, red-heads and brunets who are often called the "white" peoples. So the Anglo-Saxon-Celts must have descended from Shem. This makes absolutely perfect sense when you realize that the very name of the Caucasian race is derived from the CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS-the area we've been reading so much about!
 
Some, though, have argued that Shem's descendants-including Abraham's descendants (Gen. 11:21-32)-are not white. Yet the Bible clearly describes Abraham and Sarah's descendants as "fair" (Heb. yapheh--Gen. 12:11; 24:16; 26:7; Esther 2:7 KJV). As a youth, King David (a Jew) was "ruddy and of a fair countenance" (1 Sam. 17:42 KJV). Such words could never be used to describe either Hamites or Japhethites. "Ruddy: red; reddish; of the colour of healthy skin in white-skinned peoples" (Chambers Concise Dictionary, 1988, p. 932). Israel's Nazarites are described as being "purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies" (Lam. 4:7 KJV). What peoples might have "ruby-red cheeks"? These are words that could never apply to darker-skinned peoples. Black, brown, yellow or even olive-skinned Mediterranean-type people could never be called "ruddy in body."
 
What color are the majority of today's ethnic Jews--many of whom live in Russia or New York City? White! Many of them could easily pass for British, Scandinavian or other Nordic European types. Notice this quote by Huxley and Haddon in We Europeans, concerning the few Nordic type people in Germany: "Hence their physique... is identical: fierce blue eyes, red hair (rutilae comae), tall frames.... It may be noted that red hair is rare among modern Germans, save among those of Jewish origin" (p. 36)!
 
Though some of Shem's descendants are darker because of their intermarriage with darker-skinned peoples, still, it is almost exclusively among the descendants of Shem-such as the Israelites-that we find light-skinned brunets, red-heads and blonds. Therefore the Celts and Scythian Anglo-Saxons must be descendants of Shem! Another indication of this descent is found in the following quote: "Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons [b. 849 A.D.] was... the son [descendant] of Sem [Shem]" (Church Historians of England, vol. 2, p. 443). Notice also: "So the Anglo-Saxons may well have had records of the ancestry of their kings, beginning with Sceaf... and calling Sceaf the son of Noe, born in the Ark, or even identifying him with the Patriarch Shem" (Haigh, Conquest of Britain by the Saxons, p. 115).
 
Nothing here implies that one skin color is somehow better than another. They are just different! God loves all peoples. He is Creator of the many genetic differences among the races-including all the various shades and hues of skin.
Dating the Emergence of the Celto-Scythians
 
When did the Scythian people first come on the scene? "The term 'Scythians' [Gk. Skythes] is used both to describe specific tribes which inhabited the north and east of the Black Sea beginning in the seventh century B.C. and as a generic word for horse-riding pastoralists [shepherds]" ("Scythians," Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 5). Turner confirms this: "The emigrating Scythians crossed the Araxes [in Armenia], passed out of Asia, and invading the Cimmerians, suddenly appeared in Europe, in the seventh century before the Christian Era [600s B.C.]" (p. 85).
 
Chambers Encyclopedia says, "Scythians: Greek Skuthai, Latin Scythae, Assyrian Ashguzai... the Persians called all people like them Saka, were the first nomadic people of which we have any real knowledge.... Herodotus said that the Scyths came out of upper Asia crossing the Araxes... somewhere about 700 B.C., and fell upon the Cimmerians... so that part [of the Cimmerians] were destroyed... and part driven through the Caucasus into regions about Armenia and Media" ("Scythians," vol. 12).
 
Many have tried to argue that the Cimmerians were north of the Caucasus first and then migrated south through the Caucasus--later going back north again (by this reasoning, the only way to explain the northward migration that we definitely know transpired). Yet we see nothing of the Celtic Cimmerians north of the Caucasus until around 500 B.C. However, historical evidence clearly places them south of the Caucasus, in Armenia, when the Scythians met them in about 700 B.C. And they must have been there for at least a short while before that. So when the Cimmerians did go north through the Caucasus, that was almost certainly their first time being there.
 
What else can we learn of this time? Chambers continues, "For the whole seventh century [600s B.C.] Scythians and Cimmerians played their part in the confusion that reigned in western Asia during the last days of the Assyrian empire and the resurgence of Babylon. The Scythians were mentioned in Assyrian records first under Esarhaddon (681-669 B.C.); whereas the Cimmerians were hostile to the Assyrians, the Scythians [at this time] seem to have been friendly.... [The Scythians] are said to have ruled Asia 28 years, penetrating as far as the borders of Egypt, and taking a part in the siege of Nineveh, 612 B.C. No one has satisfactorily fitted this 28 years into the chronology of Media and Babylonia. Herodotus represented the Scyths as returning after it into south Russia and reestablishing their dominion there. Here we may regard them as continuously dominant from 700 B.C. till the last century B.C."
 

 
The Anchor Bible Dictionary entry on "Scythians" also mentions Esarhaddon's reign: "The Scythians... apparently first appear in written history in the annals of Esarhaddon, and seem to be centered at that time in what is today Northwest Iran. According to Herodotus (1.103-6) the Scythians ruled over all of the Near East for 28 years after entering the area from the north; traditionally this period of rule is assigned to the seventh or sixth century B.C.... By the third century B.C., the Scythian presence in the Near East is restricted to the Crimea and the shores of the Black Sea. Ovid [famous Latin poet, banished to the Black Sea for unknown reasons in 8 A.D.] records Scythian life in the first century A.D., by which time their power is spent; the Scythians shortly after fade from history."
 
The same article reveals that Scythian "grave goods [artifacts recovered by archaeologists from tombs] demonstrate economic interaction with the local settled populations, in the seventh and sixth centuries with Urartians [people of Ararat = Armenians] and other northeast groups and in the fifth and fourth centuries with Greeks.... Although the Scythians primarily lived in tents [as wanderers among the nations!], there is some evidence in the North Steppe of settlements dating to the seventh or sixth century B.C."
 
Many scholars have believed that the Scythians originated in the Russian Steppes and LATER moved south around both sides of the Caspian Sea. In fact, the very opposite is true! Archaeologists have examined a great number of graves in the Steppes and have confirmed that Scythian culture in that area didn't begin until the end of the seventh century B.C. (From the Lands of the Scythians: Ancient Treasures from the Museums of the U.S.S.R. 3000 B.C.-100 B.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art and Los Angeles Museum of Art, p. 99).
 
There is NO archaeological evidence showing that Scythians were in south Russia prior to the late 600s B.C.--certainly not thousands of years prior, as some modern scholars have claimed! Yet there is much evidence of Scythians around the southern Caspian area well before 600--and even back to 700 when they clashed with the Cimmerians in Armenia!
 
Herodotus realized that these people weren't originally from there. So he picked another place of origin--to the north. Yet, as we've just seen, that can't be! Where did they come from then? Earlier, we read Sharon Turner's conclusion that these fathers of the Saxons must have come from southeast of Armenia--from PERSIA. Thus the Scythians must have been in Persia, south of the Caspian, even shortly before 700 B.C. And, in fact, Turner informs us that Homer dated the rise of these people to that time.
 
IMPORTANT NOTE: We have established that the emergence of the Cimmerians (Celts) in Armenia and their Scythian (Saxon) brothers in Persia, south of the Caspian Sea, occurred in the 700s B.C. Yet those places were not their original cradles. This is a very significant fact of history.
 
Language Says It All!
 
Can we derive any clues about the origins of the Celts or Scythians based on their languages or traditions? It may come as a surprise to learn that Encyclopaedia Britannica reports, "For many centuries the affinities of the Celtic languages were the subject of great dispute. The languages were in turn regarded as descended from Hebrew, Teutonic and Scythian" ("Celt," 11th ed., vol. 5). "Hebrew"? How could that be possible?
 
Samuel Lysons says, "Thus I propose to show in the course of these pages, when we come to the relics of British worship remaining in this country... the remarkable similarity between those names and the Hebrew and Chaldee languages. The same theory holds good in the names of some of our old British families" (p. 21). Continuing, he writes, "Now whatever may be the historical value of the Welsh poems, it is undoubted that Taliesin [renowned 6th century Welsh poet] in his Angar Cyfyndawd, says that his lore had been 'declared in Hebrew, in Hebraic'" (p. 22).
 
Thus, Lysons argued that the Celtic tongue was closely related to the Hebrew language. "Yet this we gather from the names attaching to the British monuments... that there is a strong affinity between these British names and that language of which Hebrew is either the original or one of its earliest off-shoots; and that therefore Hebrew, Chaldee, or some other very near cognate, must have been the language of the first inhabitants [the Celts or Kymry] of this island" (p. 83). Isn't that amazing?
 
But Lysons isn't the only one who sees a kinship between the ancient Celtic tongue spoken by the Kymry and the Hebrew language. Robert Owen writes, "Most Welsh scholars have employed their time on the production of grammars and dictionaries. The Hebrew learning of Dr. John Davies of Mallwyd seems to have influenced his countrymen to accept the Puritan atavism [resemblance to remote ancestors] of referring Welsh to the language of Moses [Hebrew] as its fountain" (p. vi).
 
What about the Scythians? Is their language also related somehow? The Scyths spoke Scythiac, which is classified thus: "Scythiac... Scythian [language]... There is a strong similarity between the Hebrew and the Scythian languages" ("Scythiac," New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 1971, vol. 8). Then why isn't English--our language through the Anglo-Saxons--like Hebrew? Undoubtedly, as the Scythians were "sifted through" the true German peoples, they must have adopted much of the early Germanic language--from which modern English is descended. Still, it is truly remarkable that the Celtic and Scythian languages were both tied to Hebrew! Isn't it becoming more and more clear who these people were?
 
Hard, Physical Evidence!
Is there any archaeological evidence of Israelites migrating up through the Caucasus and around the northern side of the Black Sea? Yes!
 
Authentic gravestones have been found in the region of the Crimea (or Krim--named after the Cimmerians), north of the Black Sea, bearing Hebrew inscriptions. Three of note were referred to by J.W. Bosanquet in his article, "Synchronous History," published in the 1873 Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, volume 2. One reads, "This is the tombstone of Buki, the son of Izchak, the priest; may his rest be in Eden, at the time of the salvation of Israel. In the year 702 of the years of our Exile." The second states, "Rabbi Moses Levi died in the year 726 of our Exile." And the third says, "Zadok, the Levite, son of Moses, died 4000 after the creation, 785 of our exile."
 
Counting from an eighth century B.C. captivity, the years just mentioned indicate that these people died around the beginning of the Christian Era. Bosanquet says that, according to Neubauer's History of the Crimean Tombs (p. 29), the Israelites there claimed "to be descended from the Ten Tribes." So, many descendants of those Israelites who were deported to Assyria still lived north of the Black Sea at this time.
 
How these people had gotten there is recorded in an amazing epigraph found on another tombstone in this same region. Here is C. Coffin's translation of A.E. Harkavy's German version (published in Academia Scientiarum Imperialis Memoires, St. Petersburg, vol. 24, no. 1, 1863, p. 9):
I Jehuda ben Mose ha-Nagolon of the East country, ben Jehuda ha-Gibbor of the tribe of Naphtali, of the generation Schillem, who went into the exile with the exiles, who were driven away with Hosea, the king of Israel, together with the tribes of Simeon and Dan and some of the generations of the other tribes of Israel, which (all) were led into exile by the enemy Shalmanesser from Schomron [Samaria] and their cities to Chalach [Halah], that is, Backack and to Chabar [Habor], that is, Chabul and to Hara, that is, Herat, and to Gosan [Gozan], the cities of the exiled tribes of Reuben, Gad and the half of Manasseh, which Pilneser [Tiglath-Pileser] drove into exile and settled there (and from there they scattered themselves over the whole land of the East as far as Sinim)--when I returned from wandering in the land of their exile and from journeying in the dwelling places of the descendants of their generations in their resting places of the Land of Krim [the Crimea].

 
This, of course, confirms everything we have already seen about the journeyings of the northern Ten Tribes following their captivity. It is remarkable historical evidence that they passed through the Crimea en route to Northwest Europe!
In his authoritative 1913 work, Scythians and Greeks, Ellis H. Minns wrote of the "Scythians.... Next in importance to their horses came the cattle used for drawing their great waggons.... They had sheep as well, for mutton bones are found in cauldrons in the tombs, as for example at Kul Oba. They made no use of pigs either in sacrifice or any other way.... [and] regarded swine as tabu" (p. 49). Where did this prohibition against eating pork originate? Could it have been from the Hebrew Bible? Leviticus 11:7-8 says, "And the swine... is unclean to you. Their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch" (cf. Deut. 14:8). As is commonly known, the Orthodox Jews of today still strictly observe this dietary principle.
 
Robert Owen relates another interesting detail: "Some of their Celtic traditions resemble Semitic records of antediluvian patriarchs" (p. 33). This historian then shows that, like the Israelites of old (2 Kings 21:1-5), the ancient Britons worshipped "Baal, the sun, and the hosts of heaven.... Our British ancestors were devoted to that kind of worship which they brought with them from the East, whence they came at a very early period, even close upon the Patriarchal times of Holy Writ" (pp. 93-94).
 
Sharon Turner noted the following remarkable practice of the ancient Britons: "The Kimbri swore by a brazen bull, which they carried with them" (p. 34). This fact is a grim reminder of the idolatrous "calf worship" which Jeroboam (first king of the Ten Tribes of Israel) introduced into the Northern Kingdom. Where, then, is all of this leading us?
 

 
An Inescapable Conclusion!
 
Remember from chapter one that the northern Ten Tribes of Israel had been carried away in two separate captivities. The first one, which took place around 734-732 B.C., was the huge "Galilean Captivity," in which about three-fourths of the Northern Kingdom was carried away, including the Israelite tribes dwelling on the EAST side of the Jordan River.
 
This latter aspect of the first deportation is described in 1 Chronicles 5:26: "So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, that is, Tiglath-Pileser.... He carried the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh into captivity. He took them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river of Gozan to this day." These places, according to The Macmillan Bible Atlas, were located in Assyria in northern Mesopotamia (Yohanan Aharoni and Michael Avi-Yonah, pp. 96-97). These locations were in the immediate vicinity of Armenia!
 
The second deportation of Israel occurred with the fall of Samaria, following a three-year siege. This captivity of the rest of the Northern Kingdom--the small "rump state" left around the capital city--is described in 2 Kings 17:5-6: "Now the king of Assyria went throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea [c. 721 B.C.], the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes."
 
How are we to understand this verse? Were those of the second captivity taken to the same places as those in the first captivity--the only additional destination being the "the cities of the Medes," i.e. ancient Media, the territory south of the Caspian Sea? Notice this important missing detail provided by the Jewish historian, Josephus: "The king of Assyria... besieged Samaria three years and quite demolished the government of the Israelites, and transplanted all the people into Media and Persia" (Antiquities, bk. 9, chap. 14, sec. 1). So the vast majority of the people in the second captivity were taken to the lands south of the Caspian Sea!
 
What is the significance of these locations and the time frame of Israel's Assyrian captivities? If you have kept in mind the important note mentioned earlier in this chapter, you may have reached a startling, yet inescapable, conclusion by this point!
 
The closely-related Cimmerians (Celts) and Scythians came from two different areas, of Armenia and Persia, which weren't their original homelands. These are the very same places that the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel were taken to as captives in two different deportations! The Celto-Scythian people came on the scene at the exact same time the Israelites were taken into captivity! Who cannot now help but see? This is simple logic: SAME TIME + SAME PLACES = SAME PEOPLE!
 
To see this even more clearly, did you know that the word "Scythian" is in your Bible? It IS--but only once. It occurs in Colossians 3:11, in which the Apostle Paul says that, within God's Church, physical status does not matter: "Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian [nor] Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all." The missing "nor" here was provided in the same way that the New King James Version and other Bible translations provide the missing "nor" between "slave" and "free."
 
Each of the four pairs mentioned here contain two contrasted types of people. The first two clearly contrast Gentiles and Israelites. Undoubtedly the same is true for "barbarian" (Gentile) and "Scythian" (Israelite). In any case, they are viewed as opposites. Scythians are looked upon here as not being barbarians--i.e. not Gentiles. God's Word, then, supports this conclusion!
 
  Israelite Migrations to New Lands!
 
  • Some Israelites left the Holy Land very early. Soon after the Exodus, a group of Danites migrated to Greece and later left for Ireland. King Solomon had a fleet of "Ships of Tarshish" which sailed with the navy of the Phoenician king, Hiram of Tyre. It is a well-accepted fact that Phoenicians established far-flung outposts in North Africa, Spain and Ireland. Therefore, during and after Solomon's reign, it is probable that a number of Israelite colonists did the same--colonizing the British Isles and the coasts of Northwest Europe.
  • In about 734-732 and 721 B.C., the Assyrians deported the Ten Tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel into northern Mesopotamia and the region south of the Caspian Sea. When the Assyrian Empire was later crushed by a Babylonian-Persian-Scythian alliance in 612 B.C., some of the Israelites began to break free from their captors' lands, migrating northwest into Europe. This was a centuries-long process.
  • The first wave of Israelites into Europe migrated from northern Mesopotamia. Some traveled west along the southern Black Sea coast, crossing the Dardanelles. Others went north through the Caucasus Mountains and moved west along the northern Black Sea coast. These peoples became known to historians as the Cimmerians or Celts.
  • The second wave of Israelites migrated north around the eastern side of the Caspian Sea before being pressed westward, centuries later, by the Sarmatians (Slavs). Known in history as the Scythians and Sacae, they moved across southern Russia and then northern Poland and Germany. Because of close proximity, the Scythians have at times been confused with the modern Germans, but they are completely different peoples. The Scythians spread out over most of Northwest Europe, becoming the Scandinavians, Franks, Normans, Lombards, Anglo-Saxons, etc.
  • No one disputes the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic background of the British, by whom Colonial America was primarily settled. These peoples also migrated to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Corroborative Evidence
 
Now let's look at the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras--which claims to be a series of apocalyptic visions to Ezra the Scribe. Though it cannot be trusted as Scripture, it can nevertheless give us a historical perspective. Zondervan Publishers' New Revised Standard Version notes that the bulk of this book was probably written at the end of the first century A.D.
 
Notice the following passage: "And as for your seeing him gather to himself another multitude that was peaceable, these are the nine tribes [footnote: Other Latin manuscripts say "ten" and the Armenian says "nine and a half"] that were taken away from their own land into exile in the days of King Hoshea, whom Shalmaneser, king of the Assyrians, made captives; he took them across the river [Euphrates], and they were taken into another land" (13:39-40 NRSV). Perhaps the missing tribe here, if there was one, was Dan since, as we saw in chapter two, many Danites probably "leapt" west from the Promised Land (Deut. 33:22) before and during the Assyrian invasions. Though, undoubtedly, there were still a number of Danites who went into captivity with the rest of their brothers of the Northern Kingdom.
 
Look at what happened next to the Israelites in Assyrian captivity: "But they formed this plan for themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the nations and go to a more distant region, where no human beings had ever lived, so that there at least they might keep their statutes that they had not kept in their own land. And they went in by the narrow passages of the Euphrates river [undoubtedly the mountain passages north of Lake Van from the Euphrates to the Araxes Rivers].... Through that region there was a long way to go, a journey of a year and a half; and that country is called Arzareth" (2 Esdras 13:41-43, 45 NRSV).
 
The Euphrates-Araxes passages just mentioned would take them NORTH toward the Caucasus Mountains. What about Arzareth--or Arsareth, as it is often spelled? It has traditionally been identified with the region of the Sareth or Siret River--which flows south along the east side of the Carpathian Mountains in eastern Romania until it meets the Danube just before flowing east into the Black Sea. (Remember that it took a "year and a half" to get there from south of the Caucasus.) Incredible! This migration pattern from south of the Caucasus, moving northwest around the north side of the Black Sea until entering Eastern Europe was exactly the same path we have already established for the Cimmerians! Clearly, this is more than freak happenstance, isn't it?
 

 
Was it mere coincidence that the Celtic and Scythian languages both had strong linguistic roots in Hebrew? Was it through unrelated circumstances that the Scythians and Israelites both considered pork taboo? Was it insignificant that the Celts and Scythians were white (Caucasian) people who must have descended from Shem--just like the Israelites? The parallels are manifold. There can be NO DOUBT--WE HAVE FOUND THE LOST TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL! They are the Northwest Europeans who have descended from the Celts and Scythians! Isn't this incredible? God performed a great miracle by preserving the Israelites as a people as He promised (Amos 9:9).
 
This is not a new idea. Notice what Encarta '95 says: "The so-called Anglo-Israelite theory, which gained considerable credence in the 17th century, is that the Ten Tribes were the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon peoples; many Jews were admitted into England about that time based on the strength of the theory" ("Lost Tribes"). Yet it is more than just a theory! The historical proof is simply overwhelming that the Celto-Scythians were none other than the dispossessed Israelites. This is not to say that every Celt or Scythian was an Israelite. But the vast majority of them undoubtedly were!
 
Yet, the greatest and, by far, the strongest proof that our Northwest European heritage can be traced back to ancient Israel lies in the pages of the Holy Bible--in its record of prophecies and God's promises concerning national greatness. Only among the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic peoples have the tremendous birthright blessings promised to Abraham's descendants been realized. And it is through the Bible that we are able to identify the sons of Joseph who have specifically received the birthright--America and the British-descended nations.
 
What about the rest of the Lost Tribes? Though not recipients of the birthright promise of dominance, nevertheless, as God's chosen people also, they have been greatly blessed with material prosperity. There is some debate about which of these tribes form which Northwest European nations today. And, for lack of space, we are not able here to explore all the possible reasons for thinking that a particular nation may represent a specific tribe. Still, it can be stated with a fair amount of certainty that these other tribes may be found in France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland.
 
God Almighty kept His promise! HE REALLY KEPT IT! What tremendous trust and faith in God this should inspire in us. Here is certain, living proof of a REAL GOD! And this God--the Lord OUR God, the God of OUR FATHERS, ABRAHAM, ISAAC, JACOB AND JOSEPH--is not disinterested, far removed or uninvolved. Our God is an intimately INVOLVED God--the God who keeps promises and who answers prayers! Our Father Abraham trusted in God completely. And, for that, we, his descendants as well as the non-Israelites who dwell in our lands have been lifted to the heights of the world, blessed as no other peoples have ever been. We should fall on our knees before God in continual thanks for what he has done for us--for these awesome blessings that we are so unworthy of!
 
In the next chapter, we will examine how God specifically fulfilled the birthright promises. It is truly an awe-inspiring story--filled with amazing evidence of miraculous, divine intervention!