Note 277 — Chapter VI
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Humboldt (“Prüfung,”&c., sections 41, 43, 44), admits a great contrast between the Celts and the Gauls, and not that difference between them and the tribes of the Peninsula, which might be expected from people of different origin. The union he supposes must have been of great antiquity, and could not have taken place by violence. He is not clear that we can call the Celts Gauls at all, and yet he imagines that there must have been emigrations from Gaul; then he supposes them mixed autochthonically with the Iberi, and afterwards pressed together by foreigners occupying the coasts.
Astorloa (p. 199), denies this mixture of Celts and Iberians, and explains away the word: if Celts had crossed into the Peninsula, they would have been settled, he imagines, close to the Pyrenees, and would have left traces in the present people.
Neither of these writers suspects the possibility of their having come from Africa, and having again quitted the Peninsula.