I found this film pleasing to view and easy to follow, with the synthesis of horror and beauty resulting in a grim tone.
“Known to early Greek writers as the Cimmerians,” the Celts represent the heroic image of Robert E. Howard’s Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Conn, Cormac MacArt, Conan and Black Vulmea characters, as well as a handful of lesser protagonists. When we see, in the early Conan stories, the civilized supporting cast of the Conan stories in such tales as The Phoenix on the Sword and The God in the Bowl, we are being entertained and intrigued by a Greco-Roman view of their northern neighbors. As exemplified by this film, these ancient societies were slave cultures, as represented by Howard in his yarns set in antiquitous worlds.
Here is some attention paid to the wine trade with the Hellenic world, which was more extensive than the filmmakers had time to get into. The Celts were drunks, and so was Conan, another aspect of Howard’s heroic vision that was quiet faithful to the mythic models he seemed instinctively attuned to.
At 51:15 view the description of the Celtic chieftain for a Conan or Bran Mak Morn model. Note that the birch bark cap is similar in material and design to American Indian head pieces of the same northerly latitudes. It is fascinating that Howard used his Celtic Picts as stand-ins for Indians in frontier and pirate-themed stories set in northern European settings.
A brutal fact presented in this film is that between the ages of 13 and 26 most women perished. This fact helps us understand the pervasive attraction of women in that age group to post modern men, for the loss of our women in their prime is engrained in our psychology. We might feel more empathy for Howard’s slave girls in this lethal and severely stratified society that inhabited the misty forest lands of Europe when civilized man still clung to the shores of the Middle Sea.
One correction: The narrator suggests that lions were unknown to the Celts. However, the European lion persisted in the forests and mountains of Europe until at least 500 B.C.
Note: the linguistic and genetic mapping discussion toward the end of the video is fascinating. At 47:30 the geneticist makes Howard’s case for the Black Irish or Dark-haired, north-western European character which was his favorite.
Howard flat-out denied that his Picts were Celts on numerous occasions. Reading his "Men of the Shadows" story is the easiest way to see his long-standing viewpoint. That story shows that REH viewed Picts as "Mediterraneans" (he later said that the Basques were basically southern Picts). Also, it shows that the Picts themselves felt zero kinship with Injuns, calling them "red-skinned savages". To Howard, the Picts were the very first race of Man who had fought proto-Celts since the days of Atlantis, just as the Picts fought Cimmerians in the Hyborian Age and actual (REH) Celts in our own epoch.
I really like the way this documentary takes the accepted language-based racial distribution theories that have held such currency since the 1900s and basically proves with DNA evidence that Howard's fantasy was closer to reality. After reading Cunlife's Pytheas the Greek it was apparent how practical migration from the Mediterranean basin would have been for a people like the Carthaginians for instance—which brings to mind his treatment of Hannibal Barca in Delenda Est...