Keltz, a well-known word today that has been used to describe many different groups of people

in history, from Iron Age Britons in, well, Britain, to the ferocious Galatians in Central

Turkey. But who were the original counts?

It's the entrance on history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host,

and in today's episode we are exploring the origins of the counts.

It's a story that takes us back almost 3,000 years to early Iron Age France

where archaeology is suggesting that the Celts originated. But it's also a story that will

take us much further afield. The story of the early Celts is one of travel of these people

settling in places like southern France and

northern Italy interacting with other ancient civilizations such as the Etruscan's

and Greeks and coexisting with them. They also had strong ties with Germany, impressive sites like the

massive burial mound called the Magdaleneberg and the huge hill fort settlement that

was the Hoineberg, both of which play an important role in the story of the

Celts and in our episode today. Simply put, the story of the Celts and their origins

covers several centuries and a huge geographic area.

We're going to explore this early Celtic world, their society, the prominence of women in

surviving burials, have they spread from their ancestral lands in Central France across the Alps into

Northern Italy?

And how their culture changed over the centuries to become more militaristic, culminating in a group of warlike Celts sacking Rome in the early fourth century

BC, Celts, who would have been very different to those who'd existed some 200 years earlier.

To talk through the latest research surrounding the original Celts

well I was delighted to interview Dr Rachel the Pope from the University of Liverpool.

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