Ancient DNA | Iron Age Gaul | The ancestors of the French

Nos ancetres les Gaulois?

For 150 years, French schoolchildren have been told that the Gauls were their ancestors. It was a political slogan, not a scientific claim. But when geneticists sequenced the DNA of Iron Age Gaul, the slogan turned out to be close to the truth. We tested 105 Gaulish genomes against the French of today in Global25.

105 genomesfrom Bronze and Iron Age France, from Picardy to Provence, modelled here in Global25
14 to 22the Global25 distance between the average Gaul and several present-day French and Belgian groups: very close
No turnoverbetween the Bronze and Iron Ages: the Gauls were already in place, and much of their ancestry still is

Hero image: AI generated illustration of Gaulish Celts in Iron Age France, with warriors in mail and torcs, a chieftain and an oppidum on a hill behind. Clothing, weapons and setting are approximations based on La Tene period finds, and the scene is not a reconstruction of any documented moment or of the individuals whose genomes are discussed here.

"Nos ancetres les Gaulois", our ancestors the Gauls. The phrase comes from the school textbooks of the Third Republic in the 1880s, when a young nation needed a founding people. It was taught, famously, to children in the French colonies who had never seen a Gaul, and it has been mocked ever since as a myth. The real history of France is a long series of migrations: Greeks and Romans, Franks and Burgundians, Vikings in Normandy, and much more.

And yet. When Claire-Elise Fischer, Melanie Pruvost and their colleagues sequenced the DNA of 49 Bronze and Iron Age people from across France in 2022, and placed them next to the 243 ancient genomes published by Samantha Brunel and colleagues in 2020, a surprising picture emerged. The Gauls really are, to a large degree, the ancestors of the modern French. We tested it ourselves.

Four thousand years of ancestorsKey dates for the peopling of France, from the Bronze Age to the first Gaulish genomesabout 2300 BCThe steppe arrivesPeople with steppe-related ancestry reach what is now France. MostFrench men still carry their Y-chromosome lineages.800 to 450 BCHallstattEarly Iron Age chiefdoms, rich princely graves and trade with theGreek world. The lady of Vix is buried about 500 BC.450 to 50 BCLa TeneThe classic Celtic culture of the Gauls: oppida, coinage, the artstyle and the warrior burials of the Aisne and Champagne.58 to 50 BCCaesar conquers GaulAlesia falls in 52 BC. Gaul becomes Roman, and its peoplebecome Gallo-Romans.AD 400 to 600Franks, Burgundians, VisigothsGermanic kingdoms replace Roman rule. The Franks give theirname to France.911NormandyThe Viking leader Rollo receives the lower Seine valley, theorigin of the Duchy of Normandy.1880s"Nos ancetres les Gaulois"Republican school textbooks make the Gauls the nationalancestors of every French child.2020 and 2022The genomesBrunel and colleagues publish 243 ancient genomes from France;Fischer and colleagues sequence 49 Bronze and Iron Age Gauls.
The main events in the peopling of France, from the arrival of steppe ancestry to the first ancient genomes. Dates are standard historical and archaeological ones.

Who the Gauls were

The Gauls were the Celtic-speaking peoples of Iron Age France, Belgium and neighbouring regions, divided into dozens of tribes: the Aedui of Burgundy, the Arverni of Auvergne, the Belgae of the north, the Volcae of Languedoc. Their world had two great phases. The Hallstatt culture (about 800 to 450 BC) produced the princely graves of the early Iron Age, like the burial of the lady of Vix with her enormous bronze crater. The La Tene culture that followed gave us the classic Celtic art style, the fortified towns called oppida, and the warriors Julius Caesar fought and described.

Genetically, the Gauls were the end product of the three great layers of European prehistory. First the western hunter-gatherers, then the early farmers who came from Anatolia around 5000 BC, and finally the steppe herders whose descendants reached France about 2300 BC. By the Iron Age these had blended into a single population. The important finding of the 2022 study is that nothing much changed between the Bronze and the Iron Age: no new migration, no population turnover. The shift from Bronze to Iron was a change in technology and society, not in people.

A gradient from north to south

France was never genetically uniform, then or now. We split the Iron Age genomes into regional groups and modelled each as a mixture of the three ancestral layers. The result is a smooth gradient: steppe ancestry highest in the north, farmer ancestry highest in the south, with the hunter-gatherer share roughly constant.

The same north to south gradient, then and nowWestern hunter-gatherer, early farmer and steppe ancestry in Iron Age Gauls and present-day French (our analysis)0%25%50%75%100%fitNorth Gaul (Picardy)Iron Age14434339Normandy Gaul *Iron Age15384744Alsace-Lorraine GaulIron Age14444240Champagne-Burgundy GaulIron Age14513535South Gaul (Languedoc)Iron Age16543140Nord todaypresent day11464335Normandy todaypresent day10444640Brittany todaypresent day13414643Alsace todaypresent day10474334Paris todaypresent day11484140Auvergne todaypresent day11523631Occitanie todaypresent day12513734Gascony and South todaypresent day15562939Provence todaypresent day543827Western hunter-gathererEarly farmer (Anatolia)Steppe (Yamnaya)* Normandy Iron Age: an average of three low-coverage genomes, less precise than the others.
Western hunter-gatherer, Anatolian farmer and steppe ancestry in Iron Age Gaulish groups and present-day French regions, modelled in Global25 (our analysis). The Iron Age gradient and the modern one line up almost exactly. Fit distances near 30 to 40 are normal for population averages.

The northern Gauls of Picardy and the Aisne carry about 43% steppe ancestry; the southern Gauls of Languedoc about 31%, with more of the Anatolian farmer component that had always been stronger around the Mediterranean. The remarkable thing is the bottom half of the chart: the present-day French regions fall in almost exactly the same places. Nord and Normandy sit high on steppe, like the ancient northern Gauls; Auvergne, Occitanie and Provence sit high on farmer ancestry, like the ancient southern Gauls. The gradient has barely moved in two thousand years.

The heirs of the Gauls, region by region

Because the gradient is regional, the question "who descends from the Gauls?" also has a regional answer. We measured the Global25 distance between each present-day French region and each Iron Age Gaulish group. The closest match is almost always the Gauls of the same part of France.

Who are the heirs of the Gauls?Global25 distance between present-day French regions and Iron Age Gaulish groups (our analysis)Iron Age Gauls from:NorthNormandy *AlsaceBurgundySouthNord1939202339Pas-de-Calais2139222839Brittany1425183648Seine-Maritime2839273751Paris2343242235Alsace2343232441Auvergne3455331224Occitanie295028922Provence4565452838South-west4966472618Bearn5269492918French Basques5369513221Corsica8510484626315 or less16 to 2223 to 3031 to 45over 45Distances x 1000; bold marks the closest Gaulish group for each region. * Normandy: three low-coverage genomes.
Global25 distance between each present-day French region (rows) and each regional group of Iron Age Gauls (columns), our analysis. Darker is closer; the bold number in each row is the closest Gaulish group. The best matches run down the diagonal, matching north with north and south with south.

People from Auvergne and Occitanie are closest to the Gauls of Burgundy (distances of 9 and 12, which is extremely close). People from the Nord, from Brittany and from Alsace are closest to the northern and eastern Gauls. People from Gascony, Bearn and the Basque country are closest to the southern Gauls. Corsica stands apart from all of them, as an island with its own history. The diagonal of best matches running down the table is the clearest possible sign of genetic continuity in place.

So how Gaulish are the French?

Continuity does not mean nothing happened after Caesar. Rome brought people from Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, the Franks and other Germanic peoples arrived in late antiquity, and the Vikings settled Normandy. To weigh these, we modelled each modern region as a mixture of its local Iron Age Gauls, a Germanic source and a Roman Italian one.

How Gaulish are the French today?Present-day regions modelled as local Iron Age Gauls plus Germanic and Roman Italian sources (our analysis)0%25%50%75%100%fitNordGaulish share 56 to 75% across models7415128Pas-de-CalaisGaulish share 58 to 80% across models801218BrittanyGaulish share 50 to 75% across models752512Seine-MaritimeGaulish share 27 to 46% across models35501518ParisGaulish share 59 to 70% across models593514AlsaceGaulish share 48 to 62% across models5828149AuvergneGaulish share 86 to 88% across models876OccitanieGaulish share 86 to 91% across models897ProvenceGaulish share 73 to 75% across models752310South-westGaulish share 90 to 94% across models9416BearnGaulish share 91 to 96% across models9616Iron Age GaulsGermanic (early medieval Bavaria)Roman Italy (Imperial)The range under each name covers two local Gaulish sources and two Germanic sources. Gauls and Germanic peoples are genetically close: treat the split as approximate.
Each present-day region modelled as its local Iron Age Gauls plus a Germanic source (early medieval Bavaria) and a Roman Italian source (our analysis). The south and centre are overwhelmingly Gaulish; the north is more mixed; Normandy alone shows a Germanic, Viking-era component rivalling the Gaulish one.

The south and the centre come out overwhelmingly Gaulish: around 90% for Auvergne, Occitanie, Gascony and Bearn. The north is more mixed, 60 to 80% Gaulish with a clear Germanic and Roman contribution, exactly where the Franks settled most densely. And Normandy stands out, as it should: it is the one region where the Germanic (here Scandinavian-like) component rivals the Gaulish one, the genetic echo of the Viking settlement of 911.

One caution matters here. Gauls and early Germanic peoples were genetically close to begin with, both being north-western Europeans with heavy steppe ancestry. Global25 cannot draw a sharp line between "Gaulish" and "Frankish" ancestry, and the exact percentages shift depending on which reference populations we use. The ranges under each region in the figure show that wobble. What is robust is the overall message: a large majority of French ancestry was already present in the Iron Age.

The closest living relatives

Finally, we asked the simplest question: which populations alive today are closest to the average Gaul? The answer is a tight cluster of their geographic successors.

Closest living populations to the GaulsGlobal25 distance to the average of 105 Iron Age genomes from France (our analysis)0102030Belgians (C)15French, Occitanie16French, Nord17French, Paris18German Swiss18Belgians (B)20French, Alsace20French, Auvergne20French, Pas-de-Calais21Belgians (A)22Distances x 1000. Gold: French regions. Anything under about 20 is very close for a population average.
The ten present-day populations closest to the average of 105 Iron Age genomes from France (our analysis). They form the north-western European cluster, with the French and Belgians at its centre.

Belgians, French from several regions, the Welsh, the Cornish, the English, the Dutch and the Germans all sit within a short distance. This is the north-western European genetic cluster, and the Gauls are right in the middle of it. They are not the exclusive ancestors of the French, the same ancestry is shared across the Channel and the Rhine, but within that cluster the French and Belgians are the closest of all.

So the schoolteachers of the 1880s, who chose the Gauls for reasons that had nothing to do with genetics, happened to be more right than their critics. "Nos ancetres les Gaulois" is a bad account of French identity, which was built by many peoples and is a matter of culture and citizenship, not blood. But as a statement about where most of the ancestry of most French people comes from, it holds up surprisingly well.

Key points

  • Ancient DNA shows no population turnover between the Bronze and Iron Ages in France: the Gauls were already a settled, blended population.
  • Gaulish ancestry formed a north to south gradient, more steppe in the north, more Anatolian farmer in the south, and present-day French regions still sit in the same places.
  • Each modern French region is genetically closest to the Iron Age Gauls of the same area, a clear sign of continuity in place.
  • Modelled with Germanic and Roman sources, the French come out mostly Gaulish, around 90% in the south and centre, 60 to 80% in the north, with Normandy the great exception because of the Vikings.
  • The living populations closest to the average Gaul are the Belgians and the French themselves, inside a shared north-western European cluster.
  • "Nos ancetres les Gaulois" was a political slogan, but as a statement about ancestry it is roughly true.

Global25 coordinates used in this article

The regional Iron Age Gaulish averages, the three ancestral sources and a few comparisons. They can be pasted directly into the Vahaduo tool.

France_North_Picardy_IA_Gaul,0.126805,0.138826,0.060023,0.038341,0.041929,0.012497,0.001448,0.006131,0.010027,0.011860,-0.004485,0.006315,-0.014368,-0.010110,0.013080,0.000613,-0.007287,0.001270,0.001692,0.002315,0.003480,0.002908,-0.002701,0.001882,-0.000612
France_Champagne_Burgundy_IA_Gaul,0.126295,0.145415,0.052444,0.019992,0.046588,0.006201,0.001585,0.004502,0.017319,0.024346,-0.002280,0.006801,-0.015464,-0.009596,0.007303,-0.000180,-0.004342,0.001483,0.003450,-0.000575,0.003520,0.003699,-0.004002,-0.001830,0.000194
France_Alsace_Lorraine_IA_Gaul,0.128795,0.137878,0.058831,0.036946,0.046659,0.010812,0.005170,0.004810,0.009723,0.013023,-0.004597,0.006606,-0.013917,-0.008543,0.013353,-0.001275,-0.007572,0.001130,0.003249,0.000491,0.005107,0.002816,-0.001327,0.000083,-0.000709
France_South_Languedoc_IA_Gaul,0.129901,0.147632,0.058030,0.015302,0.051317,0.001673,0.000147,0.001240,0.021168,0.033463,-0.003187,0.011540,-0.020422,-0.014227,0.010756,0.001956,-0.000652,0.001362,0.001226,-0.002595,0.007300,0.001530,-0.008211,-0.004624,0.001257
France_All_Gaul_IA_average,0.127059,0.142329,0.056331,0.028199,0.045315,0.008646,0.001871,0.004866,0.014102,0.019239,-0.003413,0.006967,-0.015264,-0.009999,0.010351,0.000126,-0.005499,0.001355,0.002636,0.000422,0.003991,0.003146,-0.003533,-0.000498,-0.000121
WHG_Loschbour_source,0.130897,0.109677,0.203645,0.198000,0.162492,0.059125,0.015041,0.038075,0.100217,0.016219,-0.015427,-0.017235,0.019921,-0.001239,0.061346,0.070670,0.002608,0.007348,-0.008925,0.065406,0.117543,0.010387,-0.049422,-0.173639,0.019519
Anatolia_Neolithic_source,0.117902,0.180087,0.003426,-0.101059,0.051240,-0.047969,-0.003799,-0.006846,0.036167,0.080678,0.008261,0.011309,-0.024164,0.000579,-0.042712,-0.010370,0.022556,0.001388,0.013649,-0.010448,-0.014261,0.005693,-0.004904,-0.003750,-0.004436
Steppe_Yamnaya_Samara_source,0.125838,0.089254,0.042908,0.115456,-0.027868,0.044685,0.004491,-0.002949,-0.054858,-0.072996,0.001858,0.000350,-0.001652,-0.023610,0.037263,0.015734,0.000000,-0.001478,-0.001704,0.012506,-0.003120,0.001374,0.011229,0.018436,-0.004524
Germanic_EarlyMedieval_Bavaria,0.127689,0.132296,0.061299,0.047187,0.042497,0.021424,0.006858,0.006965,0.002398,-0.001723,-0.004960,0.004959,-0.005703,-0.003215,0.016410,-0.000904,-0.008001,0.003951,0.005199,0.002422,0.007203,0.003552,-0.001927,0.013584,-0.002634
Roman_Italy_Imperial_IsolaSacra,0.102014,0.148775,-0.029745,-0.067709,0.001770,-0.023148,-0.001116,-0.005625,-0.005190,0.019112,0.002192,0.002023,-0.005928,-0.001067,-0.010586,0.001690,0.008263,0.000016,0.003755,-0.003689,-0.004492,-0.001020,-0.000755,-0.000105,-0.000509
French_Paris_today,0.127171,0.141436,0.050431,0.023990,0.040903,0.009305,0.002799,0.005454,0.011602,0.018174,-0.007706,0.006812,-0.012906,-0.010384,0.013770,0.006063,-0.001825,0.004664,0.002708,-0.000978,0.002201,0.003575,-0.001232,0.011141,-0.001905
French_Occitanie_today,0.127039,0.144883,0.048879,0.017908,0.043376,0.003416,0.000522,0.003891,0.014856,0.023589,-0.003288,0.006582,-0.015044,-0.009458,0.010737,0.002567,-0.003709,0.002484,0.001425,0.000045,0.003671,0.002446,-0.002550,0.001767,0.000422
Basque_French_today,0.128051,0.152025,0.055173,0.012823,0.056411,0.002510,-0.001410,0.003323,0.030597,0.041204,-0.009272,0.010341,-0.020976,-0.014024,0.013219,-0.001936,-0.011917,0.003028,-0.000716,-0.004415,0.010157,0.002485,-0.008640,-0.009170,0.000072

References

  1. Ancient DNA Fischer CE, Pemonge MH, Santos F, Houix R, Gilbert F, et al., Pruvost M (2022). Origin and mobility of Iron Age Gaulish groups in present-day France revealed through archaeogenomics. iScience 25(4): 104094. doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.104094
  2. Ancient DNA Brunel S, Bennett EA, Cardin L, Garraud D, Barrand Emam H, et al., Pruvost M (2020). Ancient genomes from present-day France unveil 7,000 years of its demographic history. PNAS 117(23): 12791 to 12798. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1918034117
  3. Ancient DNA Fischer CE, Lefort A, Pemonge MH, Couture C, Marquez-Grant N, et al., Deguilloux MF, Pruvost M (2018). The multiple maternal legacy of the Late Iron Age group of Urville-Nacqueville (France). PLOS ONE 13(12): e0207459. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207459
  4. Review Olalde I, Mallick S, et al. (2019). The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years. Science 363(6432): 1230 to 1234. doi.org/10.1126/science.aav4040
  5. Data Global25 coordinates by Davidski (Eurogenes), and the Moriopoulos Collection 2026 of averages. Admixture models, distances and figures: ExploreYourDNA.