1 The origins and geographical distribution of the Celts

The Celtic language family is a branch of the larger Indo-European family, which leads some scholars to a hypothesis that the original speakers of the Celtic proto-language may have arisen in the central Asian steppes. However, the Celts enter history and archaeology located in central Europe, whence they (or their language and culture) spread over a range from Ireland in the west to Anatolia in the east, and from Denmark and Scotland in the north to the Iberian peninsula and northern Italy in the south.

It is not known whether the Picts of Scotland were Celts or the remnant of an earlier population of the British Isles who had been pushed to the margin by Celtic invasions. However, in historical times Scotland was colonized by the Celtic Scoti from Ireland. Additional forays into Greece and central Italy during the historical period did not result in settlement, though the same movement that brought Celtic invaders to Greece pushed on through to Anatolia, where they settled as the Galatians.

As there is no archaeological evidence for large scale invasions in some of the other areas, one current school of thought holds that Celtic language and culture spread to those areas by contact rather than invasion. However, the Celtic invasions of Italy, Greece, and western Anatolia are well documented in Greek and Latin history.

Some scholars think that the Urnfield culture represents an origin for the Celts as a distinct cultural branch of the Indo-European family. This culture was preeminent in central Europe during the late Bronze Age, from c. 1200 BC until 700 BC. The period of saw a dramatic increase in population in the region, probably due to innovations in technology and agricultural practices. The spread of iron-working led to the development of the Hallstatt culture directly from the Urnfield (c. 700 to 500 BC).

The subject of the replacement of the Hallstatt culture by the La Tène culture, the final stage of the Iron Age, and its gradual transformation into the explicitly Celtic culture of early historical times, is complex. However the technologies, decorative practices and metal-working styles of the La Tène were to be very influential on the Celts. The La Tène style was highly derivative from the Greek, Etruscan and Scythian decorative styles with whom the La Tène settlers frequently traded. The La Tène culture was distributed around the upper reaches of the Danube, Switzerland, Austria, southern and central Germany, eastern France, Bohemia and Moravia, and parts of Hungary.

It was not the Celts, but rather earlier inhabitants of Europe who built Stonehenge and the other megalithic monuments in the areas settled by the Celts. But though the Celts did not construct the monuments, the religious significance of these places may well have endured among the conquered people and the Celts eventually adopted the practice of worshipping there as well.

2 Celts in the British Isles

The conventional historical view holds that the Celtic influence in the British Isles was the result of successive invasions from the European continent by diverse Celtic-speaking peoples over the course of several centuries.

The nature of their interactions with the indigenous populations of the isles is unknown. However, by the Roman period most of the inhabitants of the Isles were speaking Goidelic or Brythonic languages with close counterparts to Gaulish languages spoken on the European mainland. The degree to which the spread of Celtic languages was due to peaceful cultural interaction, or to military conquest, is a debated point among historians. The relative paucity of surviving information about the inhabitants of the British Isles prior to Celtic influence suggests conquest.

An alternate theory, proposed during the 1970s by Colin Burgess in his book The Age of Stonehenge theorized that Celtic culture in Great Britain 'emerged' rather than resulted from invasion and that the Celts were not invading aliens, but the descendants of the people of Stonehenge. Support for this idea comes from the study by Cristian Capelli, David Goldstein and others at University College, London which shows that genes typical of Ireland and Scotland are common in England and Wales and these genes are similar to the genes of the Basque people, who speak a non- Indo-European language. This similarity, they argue, shows that the non-Indo-European native inhabitants of Britain were not wiped out by invasions of either Indo-Europeans bringing farming or Celts in 600 BC. They suggest that 'Celtic' culture and the Celtic language were imported to Britain by cultural contact not mass invasion. The genetic similarity is less marked in women in Britain who have a genetic makeup closer to that of Northern Europe —possibly because women tended to move to their husbands' homes.

3 Celts conquered by the Romans

At the dawn of history in Europe, the Celts who had settled in present-day France were known as Gauls, and were described by Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars. Other Celtic tribes invaded Italy, establishing there a city they called Mediolanum (modern Milan) and sacking Rome itself in 390 BC. Not until 192 BC did the Roman armies conquer the last remaining independent Celtic kingdoms in Italy.

Under Caesar the Romans conquered Celtic Gaul, and from Claudius onward the Roman empire absorbed parts of the Celtic British Isles. Roman local government of these regions closely mirrored pre-Roman ' tribal' boundaries, and archaeological finds suggest native involvement in local government. Latin was the official language of these regions after the conquests.

Later these regions adopted Christianity along with the rest of the Roman empire. The unconquered Ireland adopted Christianity as well, and was a major source of missionary work in central Europe.

4 Celts pushed west by Germanic migration

Elsewhere they were pushed further westwards by successive waves of Germanic invaders, perhaps themselves at times pressured by Huns and Scythians or simply population pressures in their homeland of Scandinavia. With the fall of the Roman Empire the Celts of Gaul, Iberia and Britannia were 'conquered' by tribes speaking Germanic languages.

Elsewhere, the Celtic populations were assimilated by others, leaving behind them only a legend and a number of place names such as the Spanish province of Galicia (i.e., Gaul), Bohemia, after the Boii tribe which once lived there, or the Kingdom of Belgium, after the Belgae, a Celtic tribe of Northern Gaul and south-eastern England. Their mythology has been absorbed into the folklore of half a dozen other countries. For instance, the famous Medieval English Arthurian tale of " Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is almost certainly partially derived from the medieval Irish text Fled Bricrend The Feast of Bricriu.

Argument rages in the academic world as to whether the Celts in Britain were mostly wiped out/pushed west as the lack of evidence for influence of the Celts on Anglo-Saxon society suggests, or whether the Anglo-Saxon migration consisted merely of the social elite and that the genocide was cultural rather than physical due to such relatively few numbers of Anglo-Saxons mixing with the far larger native population. Recent DNA studies have supported the idea that Anglo-Saxon England evolved from the imposition of a new culture on the previously Celtic people of England. Interestingly too, contrary to popular ideas of 'Celtic Nationhood', DNA evidence in England shows greater representation of ancient British influence than in Scotland, which has more Scandinavian influence.

5 Celtic social system and arts

The pre-Christian Celts had a well-organised social hierarchy. They produced little in the way of literary output, preferring the bardic, oral, tradition. They were highly skilled in visual arts and produced a great deal of intricate and beautiful metalwork.

In some regards the Celts were conservative with respect to other known branches of Indo-European culture, e.g. they still used chariots in combat long after they had been reduced to ceremonial roles by the Greeks and Romans.

5.1 Celts as head-hunters

"Amongst the Celts the human head was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, centre of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world." - Paul Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art.

The Celtic cult of the severed head is documented not only in the many sculptured representations of severed heads in La Tene carvings, but in the surviving Celtic mythology, which is full of stories of the severed heads of heroes and the saints who carry their decapitated heads, right down to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight who picks up his own severed head after Gawain has struck it off, just as St. Denis carried his head to the top of Montmartre. Separated from the mundane body, although still alive, the animated head acquires the ability to see into the mythic realm.

Diodorus Siculus, in his 1st century History had this to say about Celtic head-hunting:

"They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and carry off as booty, while striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold; thus displaying what is only a barbarous kind of magnanimity, for it is not a sign of nobility to refrain from selling the proofs of one's valour. It is rather true that it is bestial to continue one's hostility against a slain fellow man."

The Celtic headhunters venerated the image of the severed head as a continuing source of spiritual power. If the head is the seat of the soul, possessing the severed head of an enemy, honorably reaped in battle, added prestige to any warrior's reputation. According to tradition the buried head of a god or hero named Brand protected Britain from invasion across the English Channel.

6 Celt - a contested term?

The use of the word 'Celtic' as a valid umbrella term for the pre-Roman peoples of Britain has been challenged by a number of writers - including Simon James of the British Museum. His book The Atlantic Celts - Ancient People Or Modern Invention? makes the point that the Romans never used the term 'Celtic' in reference to the peoples of the Atlantic archipelago , i.e the British Isles. He makes it clear that the term was coined as a useful umbrella term in the early 18th Century when the England united with the Scotland to create Great Britain. The British found it expedient to use the hitherto neutral term British for their own imperial ends. Thus a new term was needed to unite nationalists in Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The term 'Celtic' fit the bill. James makes the point that archaeology does not suggest a united Celtic culture and that the term is misleading, no more meaningful than 'Western European' would be today, and is also anachronistic.

However, there are valid linguistic reasons for classifying the languages of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland with those of Bretony and ofhistorical Gaul and Galatia, and 'Celtic' has been adopted by linguists as a term of convenience, since the Celtic nations did not have a standard umbrella term for themselves.

7 Names for Celts

The origin of the various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts is obscure and has been controversial. It appears that none of the terms recorded were ever used by Celtic speakers of themselves. In particular, there is no record of the term "Celt" being used in connection with the inhabitants of the British Isles or Ireland prior to the 19 th century.

7.1 The name "Gauls"

English Gaul(s), French Gaulois(es), Latin Gallus or Galli might be from an originally Celtic ethnic or tribal name (perhaps borrowed into Latin during the early 400s BC, Celtic expansions into Italy). Its root may be the Common Celtic *galno-power or strength. Greek Galatai (see Galatia in Anatolia) seems to be based on the same root, borrowed directly from the same hypothetical Celtic source which gave us Galli (the suffix -atai is simply an ethnic name indicator). There may also be an element of ancient "fake etymology" in the Greek word "Galatai": "gala" is the Greek word for milk and the Gauls undoubtedly appeared milky-white in complexion compared to darker-skinned Mediterraneans.

7.2 The word "Welsh"

The word Welsh is a Germanic word, yet it may ultimately have a Celtic source. It may be the result of an early borrowing (in the 4th century BC) of the Celtic tribal name Volcae ("Falcons" in Gaulish) into Primitive Germanic (becoming the Primitive Germanic *Walh-, "Foreigner" and the suffixed form *Walhisk-). The Volcae were one of the Celtic peoples that barred, for two centuries, the southward expansion of the German tribes in central Germany on the line of the Hartz mountains and into Saxony and Silesia.

In the middle ages certain districts of what is now Germany were known as "Welschland" as opposed to "Teutschland", and the word is cognate with Vlach and Walloon. During the early Germanic period, the terms seems to have been applied to the peasant population of the Roman Empire, most of whom were, in the areas immediately settled by the Germans, of ultimately Celtic origin,

7.3 The name "Celts"

English Celt(s), Latin Celtus pl. Celti (Celtae), Greek Κέλτης pl. Κέλτες seem to be based on a native Celtic ethnic name (singular *Celtos or *Celta with plurals *Celtoi or *Celta:s), of unsure etymology. The root would seem to be a Primitive Indo-European *kel- or (s)kel-, but there are several such roots of various meanings to choose from (*kel- "to be prominent", *kel- "to drive or set in motion", *kel- "to strike or cut" etc.)

7.3.1 External links

Our Celtic Pride group

8 Related topics

• Gog and Magog
• Saka
• Cimmerians
• Scythians
• Amazons
• Cimbri
• Belgae
• Ancient Britain
• Celtic mythology
• Irish mythology
• Celtic language
• Welsh language
• Cornish language
• Celtic law
• Celtic music
• Celtic knot
• Celtic High Crosses
• Celtic Christianity
• Cumbric language
• Glasgow Celtic
• Boston Celtics
• Water horse
• List of Celts
• List of Celtic tribes
• The Celt belt
• Proto-Germanic

9 Reference

• Cunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. BooksEnthsiast.com.
• James, Simon. The Atlantic Celts - Ancient People Or Modern Invention? University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, August 1999. BooksEnthsiast.com.
• Kruta,V., O. Frey, Barry Raftery and M. Szabo. eds. The Celts. Thames & Hudson: New York, 1991. BooksEnthsiast.com.
• Laing, Lloyd. The Archaeology of Late Celtic Britain and Ireland c. 400--1200 AD. 1975.
• McEvedy, Colin. The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History. Penguin, 1967.
• Mallory, J. P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. BooksEnthsiast.com.
• Powell, T. G. E. The Celts. Thames and Hudson: New York, 1980. third ed. 1997. BooksEnthsiast.com.
• Ward-perkins, Bryan. "Why Did The Anglo-Saxons Not Become More British?" English Historical Review, June 2000.
• Weale, M. Y Chromosome Evidence For Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration. Society For Molecular Biology And Evolution. 2002

Ancient Roman enemies and allies Ancient Peoples

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