I'm sorry, I see no evidence for the peoples in WEstern China to have been 'proto-Celts'. I can agree that they were 'Indo-European' peoples but how can you call them proto-Celts????
I used that label for lack of a better word.. just a difference in terminology.
Referring to the different articles in this thread/discusson, it has been (more or less) established ( as a premise? ) that a red-haired, caucasoid type of people lived in western china at a specific period of time, preceding and coinciding with historical records of celts moving into the etruscan region..
Since the Etruscan record is the first we know of that actually refers to them as celts, I simply referred to that group prior to that time as "proto-celts", meaning that the western world didn't have a name for them before that time, and we ( I ) were not sure what they were called.
Indo-europeans may very well be an accurate name/label/description.. I don't know..
That is, I guess, what I'm trying to establish..