About 1300 B.C. a blond, blue-eyed race of Libyans appears in Egyptian sculptures. Whence these blonds came or how they got into Libya is not known, but it is interesting to note that blond Berbers are to be found today in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. These, however, are probably more recent arrivals from the north.
About 1800 B.C. traces of Nordic infiltration appeared among the Hittites. These Nordic conquerors later entered Mesopotamia as the Mitanni and the Kassites, although it may be that they were only the ruling classes of these peoples.
In recorded history the Nordics first appear in the West as Achæans. They came from the North from the Dacian Plains and conquered Greece and Phrygia about 1400 or 1500 B.C.
About 1200 or 1300 B.C. a Nordic people, the Osco-Umbrians, sweeping down from the northeast, entered Italy. They were kindred to the Achæans and were the ancestors of the Latin tribes, including the early Romans. The aboriginal Mediterraneans were driven into southern Italy, where, in Calabria and Apulia, they persist to this day. The contrast between the peoples of North and South Italy is still profound.[2]
The Continental Nordics, as Celtic tribes, entered Gaul in the ninth century B.C. From the evidence of place names, they passed through South Germany. All Gaul except Aquitania, in the southwest, was overwhelmed.
Spain was conquered by Celtic Nordics about 600 B.C., but their domination was never complete and they soon mingled with the natives. The mixed inhabitants of the peninsula were called Celtiberians by the Romans.
During this same period the British Isles were overrun and thoroughly occupied by Celtic Nordics named Goidels and the Celtic tongue was imposed upon the Mediterranean population, although the latter survived as a race in large numbers, especially in the western parts of England and Ireland. These Celtic-speaking Mediterraneans were, until recently, called "Iberians"; but fifteen hundred years ago the invading Saxons called all the people they found in England "Welsh."
In about 300 B.C. a new wave of Celts entered Gaul and Britain. This time they came from the German plains, speaking a somewhat different form of Celtic. On the Continent they were known as the Belgæ and in the British Isles as the Brythons. They gave their name to the British Islands. By Cæsar's time they had conquered the northern third of Gaul and all of England; but the Roman armies put an end to their farther advance. They did not reach Ireland.
Roman writers describe the Celts in Gaul as pure Nordics and speak of them as forming the ruling classes and military aristocracy until their virtual destruction by Julius Cæsar in his ten years of conquest. His campaigns in Gaul are said to have destroyed a million men, chiefly of the warrior caste.
At the time of their greatest expansion the Gauls sacked Rome (387 B.C.). They pressed no farther south and soon retreated to and remained in Cisalpine Gaul, that is, the valley of the Po and the country north of the Apennines.