Expert: John Shea - 5/24/2011

Question
I have been reading about the Celts and couldn't help but notice an unusual amount of similarities between the two groups. Both worshiped similarly named deities (Bel among Celts, Baal among Semites), revered hills and sacred groves and used piled up stones for their altars. The word for holy in Manx is "casherick" in Hebrew it is "kasher." Was there any contact between these groups in ancient times?

Answer
Dear Alex
Both Semitic and Celtic languages have a relatively recent common ancestor, and are grouped together by historical linguists into the Indo-European language family.  (Keep in mind these are modern-day language categories, not actual self-conscious groups of people who thought of themselves as "Celt" or "Semite" -both terms are recent inventions.  This recent origin accounts for a lot of the similar terms, and, possibly for other cultural similarities as well.  If you read about comparative religion, you will also find a lot of convergences, like sacred groves of trees, piling up stones for altars, animal sacrifice, etc. throughout areas recently populated by Indo-European speakers, and in other regions too.  The whole field of anthropology is devoted to discovering which of these similarities reflect common ancestry, which reflect mutual influences, and which are just coincidences.  We are, also, of course, interested in the differences, too.  
There was lots of contact between groups speaking Celtic and Semitic languages, that is to say between transalpine western Europe and the East Mediterranean basin. By contact, I mean exchanges of goods, people, and ideas.  In fact, you should envision Europe and western Asia as a complex network of linked populations.  There were some gaps and barriers (large bodies of water, mountain ranges), but there were probably no large groups of humans anywhere in that part of the world who were wholly isolated from one another. Archaeological discoveries of trade goods from the Mediterranean in northern Europe and vice versa support this view of the past.
Barry Cunliffe's new book, Between the Oceans, is a good study of linkages between these regions in prehistory.
Cheers
John Shea
Professor
Anthropology
Stony Brook University