Our ancestors the Gauls, the Slavs and the Dravidians, by Xavier ROUARD There are numerous common roots between Gaulish and Slavic languages, and in particular with Southern Slavic languages, as well as with Lithuanian and Slavon, proto-Slavic languages, attesting of close links between Gauls and ancient Slavic world, which I will detail in the first place in order to demonstrate that the linguistic concordances established in the second part of this study are founded. These concordences can be explained in the first place by the fact that, according to recent studies, based on recent genetical discoveries, nearly one half of present day Europeans stem from the Yamna steppe riders who, coming from the Caucasus and Iran, and perhaps even from the mountains of Altay, Pamir and Hindu-Kush, settled down in the steppes of Southern Russia and Ukraine in contact with proto-Slavic sedentary populations, as these of the Cucuteni-Tripolje culture (who could be of Dravidian origin, as the cultures of Vinča, Butmir and Visoko). The Yamna culture is genetically linked up to 75% with corded ware and war hatchet cultures, which expanded from Russia to Baltic countries, Poland, Czech and Slovak Republics, Germany and Gaul. These cultures are at the origin of all Indo-European languages and of Slavic, Germanic and Celtic peoples, which explains similarities between Gaulish, Slavic and Indo-European languages. Several recent studies also corroborate the theory, expressed a long time ago by French historians, according to which Gauls stem from Cimmerians (kymru meaning compatriot in Gaulish), who stemmed from Yamna and Srubna cultures (which succeeded). Thracians, closely linked with Cimmerians, Illyrians, Sarmatians and Veneti also originate from the North of the Black Sea. Around 5.000 BC, ancestors of Western Indo-Europeans, as Ligures (whose name could come from the Dravidian word gori, mountain) and Gauls, built an Empire in Ukraine, South-Eastern Russia, Moldova, Romania and Carpathian Mountains. The Gaulish tribe of Budyni even remained in the region of the Don river. All those peoples migrated farther, some of them to Poland (Veneti) others to Balkans (Thracians and Illyrians), others to Anatolia (Thracians, Illyrians, Veneti and Celts). Expelled from Anatolia, Cimmerians, Celts and Veneti migrated to Gaul. However, the Halstatt and Urnfield civilisation expanded from the Danube region to Gaul only at the end of the Bronze age, around 1.500 BC, which raises the question of the origin of the megalithic civilisation which expanded in Gaul from around 5.000 BC. Several studies bring answers to this question, including a study of UNESCO, which evokes migrations from Asia to Europe during the VII th millennium BC and a study of the University of Toronto, which explains the proximity between Sanskrit and archaic Slavic languages, as old Slavon (linked to old Bulgarian) and Slovenian, by very ancient contacts. This proximity, which extends to Gaulish, can be explained by the contribution to Gaulish of Veneti, ancestors of Slovenians, whose name would come from the Sanskrit word vind, known, familiar, according to this study. S. Zaborowski, in the origin of Slavs, underlines the very close links of Veneti with Gauls from the birth of the civilisation of Halstatt, and then in Gaul, Northern Italy. Bohemia, Pannonia and Illyria, where Gauls were surrounded only by Slavs and dissolved in the local population. A Romanian study also underlines the very ancient links of the Pelasgian Carpatho-Danuban civilisation with Vedic Indo-Aryans, older than the civilisation of Kurgans. Another study underlines similarities between Dravidian, Caucasian languages, Romanian, Albanian, Etruscan and Iberian languages. André de Paniagua, in several books, corroborates this theory, suggesting that Celts and Veneti would partly originate from Dravidians coming from primitive India, mixed with peoples of the steppes coming from Altay to settle in the first place in the Caucasus and the North of the Black Sea and form the civilisation of the Kurgans and migrate farther to the Danuban region and the Balkans, and then to Western Europe, where they would have brought the Dravidian megalithic civilisation. According to him, this theory is supported by the diffusion from India to the Caucasus, the Balkans, Italy and Brittany of the Dravidian words vel, vin, meaning white (beli in Slavic, balaros, vindos in Gaulish) and kar, kara, meaning black, which appear in the names of the white lake of Van in Armenia, the white Albania in the Caucasus and the Balkans, the Black Sea (kara deniz in Turkish), the black mountain of Montenegro (crna gora in Slavic), the Veneti of the Adriatic (whose name would come from the Dravidian word adru, area of water, as the name of the river Oder-Odra in Polish, where Veneti also settled), the white Venice and Vindobona (Vienna), the Carpathian mountains (black enclosure en Dravidian) and the white Valachia, the white Vannes and the black Carnac, the white Albion and the black Caledonia. The Celts would be “the Celestials of fire” in Dravidian and the Gauls “the Cocks”, from the Dravidian word kur/kori/koli which would have evolved in Galli. According to the linguists Allan Bomhard and John Kern, these Dravidian migrants, whose first homeland would be Iran, and then the Indus valley, would have partly migrated to Central Siberia and could thus have mixed with the peoples of the steppes to migrate farther to the West. Gaul before Gauls also evokes this migration from the East, which could have brought the megalithic civilisation developed by Dravidians and built the menhirs of Carnac. The word druid would come from Dravidian, as well as the name