China – Stuff on Celts, Druids, Standing Stones and suchlike.

Spoiler alert! One of the mysteries not explained until the end of the second book of the Wisdom of Rhiannon series is Geraint’s origin.

Read no further if you would prefer to find out through the story in the book, otherwise, the answer follows below.

In fact in one of those mysteries that all authors seem to experience, even this author, is that often the story somehow tells itself. Nowhere in the author’s mind was the so-called “back-story” to the history of Geraint (one of the central characters). That is until the story decided to reveal it, through the device of a historical article concerning one of Caesar’s huge extravagances. His purchase of a large quantity of silk.

At the time of Caesar there was a huge controversy in Rome over the cost and use of silk, especially by Roman women.

In vain the Senate issued several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds. We are told that the importation of Chinese silk resulted in a huge outflow of gold, and silk clothes were considered to be decadent and immoral. To quote Seneca the Younger (c. 3 BCE- 65 CE, Declamations Vol. I):

I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one’s decency, can be called clothes… Wretched flocks of maids labour so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife’s body.

He was not alone, Pliny the Elder (23- 79, The Natural History), wrote:

The Seres (Chinese), are famous for the woolen substance obtained from their forests; after a soaking in water they comb off the white down of the leaves… So manifold is the labour employed, and so distant is the region of the globe drawn upon, to enable the Roman maiden to flaunt transparent clothing in public.

But in his way, Caesar was even more extravagant, purchasing a huge quantity of silk and using it to shade the spectating Romans as he was carried triumphantly through the City to celebrate one of his triumphs. Even his own soldiers were critical of his expenditure, complaining that it was money that could have been better spent on rewarding them.

And so the seed was planted. Who conveyed the silk from China to Rome? Who would have guarded it on its long journey? And so the back-story was born.

The following is a partial summary of a longer article to be found in Celtic Life International (https://celticlife.com/the-chinese-celts/) and the Independent newspaper, (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/a-meeting-of-civilisations-the-mystery-of-chinas-celtic-mummies-5330366.html). Perhaps it should be of no surprise that the then nomadic Celts found their way to the far north part of the Silk Road in China. Today we see only vast distances, easy to fly over, difficult to walk across, but when walking was your only option, and it is part of your way of life, what is distance but time travelled?

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There is no doubt that he is a Celt. The man’s hair is reddish brown flecked with grey, framing high cheekbones, a long nose, full lips and a ginger beard. When he lived three thousand years ago, he stood six feet tall, and was buried wearing a red twill tunic and tartan leggings. His DNA confirms it.

What is extraordinary is that his body was discovered – with the mummies of three women and a baby – in a burial site in the sands of the Taklamakan Desert in the far-flung region of Xinjiang in western China, In the language spoken by the local Uighur people in Xinjiang, “Taklamakan” means: “You come in and never come out.”

DNA testing confirms that he and hundreds of other mummies found in Xinjiang’s Tarim Basin are of European origin. We don’t know how he got there, what brought him there, or how long he and his kind lived there for. But, as the desert’s name suggests, it is certain that he never came out.

One of the women who shared the tomb has light brown hair which looks as if it was brushed and braided for her funeral only yesterday. Her face is painted with curling designs, and her striking red burial gown has lost none of its lustre during the three millenniums that this tall, fine-featured woman has been lying beneath the sand of the Northern Silk Road.The bodies are far better preserved than the Egyptian mummies, and it is sad to see the infants on display; to see how the baby was wrapped in a beautiful brown cloth tied with red and blue cord, then a blue stone placed on each eye. Beside it was a baby’s milk bottle with a teat, made from a sheep’s udder. Analysis has shown that the weave of the cloth is the same as that of those found on the bodies of salt miners in Austria from 1300BC.

Tag: China

A traveller on the Silk Road

Celts on the Silk Road 3,000 years ago