The Celtic Culture across Europe, around 900 B.C.
So real, it's unreal. Or is it?
Zoka CoffeeCelts is a modern term used to describe any of the European peoples who spoke, or speak, a Celtic language. The term is also used in a wider sense to describe the modern descendants of those peoples, notably those who participate in a Celtic culture. Celts were a diverse group of independent, indigenous tribal societies. While similarities in language, artifacts, religion and social structures are known, each culture had its own language and traditions.
Proto-Celtic culture formed in the Early Iron Age in Central Europe (Hallstatt period). By the later Iron Age (La Tène period), Celts had expanded over wide range of lands from Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to Galatia (central Anatolia) in the east.
The earliest direct attestation of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions, beginning from the 6th century BC. Continental Celtic languages are attested only epigraphically and in toponymy. Insular Celtic is attested from about the 4th century AD in Ogham inscriptions. Literary tradition sets in with Old Irish from about the 8th century. Coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge, survives in 12th century recensions. By the early centuries AD, following the expansion of the Roman Empire and the Great Migrations of Germanic peoples, Celtic culture had become restricted to the British Isles (Insular Celtic), with the Continental Celtic languages extinct by the mid-1st millennium AD. "Celtic Europe" today refers to the lands surrounding the Irish Sea plus Cornwall and Britanny on either side of the English channel.
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 Pontic-Caspian steppes. It is not generally accepted, however, that Celtic became differentiated from other branches of Indo-European at such an early stage. By the time speakers of Celtic languages enter history around 600 BC, they were already split into several language groups, and spread over much of Central Europe, the Iberian peninsula, Ireland and Britain.
Some scholars think that the Urnfield culture of northern Germany and the Netherlands 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 ca. 1200 BC until 700 BC, itself following the Unetice and Tumulus cultures. The Urnfield period saw a dramatic increase in population in the region, probably due to innovations in technology and agricultural practices. The Greek historian Ephoros of Cyme in Asia Minor, writing in the fourth century BC, believed that the Celts came from the islands off the mouth of the Rhine who were "driven from their homes by the frequency of wars and the violent rising of the sea". The spread of iron-working led to the development of the Hallstatt culture directly from the Urnfield (c. 700 to 500 BC). Proto-Celtic, the latest common ancestor of all known Celtic languages, is considered by this school of thought to have been spoken at the time of the late Urnfield or early Hallstatt cultures, in the early first millennium BC. The spread of the Celtic languages to Iberia, Ireland and Britain would have occurred during the first half of the 1st millennium, the earliest chariot burials in Britain dating to ca. 500 BC. Over the centuries they developed into the separate Celtiberian, Goidelic and Brythonic languages. Whether Goidelic and Brythonic are descended from a common Insular-Celtic language, or reflect two separate waves of migration, is disputed.
The Hallstatt culture was succeeded by the La Tène culture of central Europe, and during the final stages of the Iron Age gradually transformed into the explicitly Celtic culture of early historical times. Celtic river-names are found in great numbers around the upper reaches of the Danube and Rhine, which led many Celtic scholars to place the ethnogenesis of the Celts in this area. Others however believe that the fact that the La Tène culture is too late to explain the original Celtic homeland; rather its extent demonstrates the subsequent spread of a pre-existing Celtic culture throughout Switzerland, Austria, southern and central Germany, northern regions of Italy, eastern France, Czech Republic, Portugal, Slovakia and parts of Hungary and Ukraine. Diodorus Siculus and Strabo both suggest that the Celtic heartland was in southern France. The former says that the Gauls were to the north of the Celts but that the Romans referred to both as Gauls. Before the discoveries at Hallstatt and La Tene, it was generally considered that the Celtic heartland was southern France, see Encyclopedia Britannica for 1813. Pliny the Elder places Celtica in the delta of the river Guadalquivir in the south of Portugal and Spain, i.e. referring to Celtiberia: "praeter haec in Celtica Acinippo, Arunda, Arunci, Turobriga, Lastigi, Salpesa, Saepone, Serippo. altera Baeturia, quam diximus Turdulorum et conventus Cordubensis, habet oppida non ignobilia Arsam, Mellariam, Mirobrigam Reginam, Sosintigi, Sisaponem."
A large portion of the indigenous populations of Britain and Ireland today may be partially descended from the ancient peoples that have long inhabited these lands, before the coming of Celtic and later Germanic peoples, language and culture. Little is known of their original culture and language, but remnants of the latter may remain in the names of some geographical features, such as the rivers Clyde, Tamar and Thames, whose etymology is unclear but possibly derive from a pre-Celtic substrate (Gelling). By the Roman period, however, most of the inhabitants of the isles of Ireland and Britain were speaking Goidelic or Brythonic languages, close counterparts to Gallic languages spoken on the European mainland.
Historians explained this as the result of successive invasions from the European continent by diverse Celtic-speaking peoples over the course of several centuries, though this is now generally seen as only the elite. The Book of Leinster, written in the twelfth century, but drawing on a much earlier Irish oral tradition, states that the first Celts to arrive in Ireland were from Iberia. In 1946 the Celtic scholar T. F. O'Rahilly published his extremely influential model of the early history of Ireland which postulated four separate waves of Celtic invaders. It is still not known what languages were spoken by the peoples of Ireland and Britain before the arrival of the Celts, or if these invasions ever took place.
Later research indicated that the culture may have developed gradually and continuously between the Celts and the indigenous people of Britain. Similarly in Ireland little archaeological evidence was found for large intrusive groups of Celtic immigrants, suggesting to archaeologists such as Colin Renfrew that the native late Bronze Age inhabitants gradually absorbed European Celtic influences and language. Although archaeological evidence has often been proved unreliable in the past. It should also be noted that genetic evidence proves that most Celtic people of coastal and northern Ireland have little traces of R1b genes, therefore indicating that when the Celts came to Ireland, the absorption of the indigenous inhabitants was regional (mainly central).
Julius Caesar wrote of people in Britain who came from Belgium (the Belgae), but archaeological evidence which was interpreted in the 1930s as confirming this was contradicted by later interpretations. The archaeological evidence is of substantial cultural continuity through the first millennium BC, although with a significant overlay of selectively-adopted elements of La Tène culture. There is numismatic and other evidence of continental-style states appearing in southern England close to the end of the period, possibly reflecting in part immigration by élites from various Gallic states such as those of the Belgae.
However, this immigration would be far too late to account for the origins of Insular Celtic languages. In the 1970s the continuity model was taken to an extreme, popularized by Colin Burgess in his book The Age of Stonehenge which theorised 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. The existence of Celtic language elsewhere in Europe, however, and the dating of the Proto-Celtic culture and language to the Bronze Age, makes the most extreme claims of continuity impossible. More recently a number of genetic studies have also supported this model of culture and language being absorbed by native populations. A study by Christian Capelli, David Goldstein and others at University College, London showed that genes associated with Gaelic names in Ireland and Scotland are also common in certain parts of Wales (in most cases) are similar to the genes of the Basque people, who speak a non-Indo-European language. This similarity supported earlier findings in suggesting a large pre-Celtic genetic ancestry, possibly going back to the Paleolithic. They suggest that 'Celtic' culture and the Celtic language may have been imported to Britain by cultural contact, not mass invasions around 600 BC. A different possibility is that the Celtic language should differentiated from the Celtic culture.
Some recent studies have suggested that, contrary to long-standing beliefs, the Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons) did not wipe out the Romano-British of England but rather, over the course of six centuries, conquered the native Brythonic people of what is now England and south-east Scotland and imposed their culture and language upon them (this may also be the case with the Celts and aboriginals of Ireland), much as the Gaels may have spread over Northern Britain. Still others maintain that the picture is mixed and that in some places the indigenous population was indeed wiped out while in others it was assimilated. According to this school of thought the populations of Yorkshire, East Anglia, Northumberland and the Orkney and Shetland Islands are those populations with the fewest traces of ancient (Celtic) British continuation.
Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, apparently the religion of the Iron Age Celts. Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure. Among Celtic peoples in close contact with Rome, such as the Gauls and Celtiberians, their mythology did not survive the Roman empire, their subsequent conversion to Christianity, and the loss of their Celtic languages. Ironically, it is mostly through contemporary Roman and Christian sources that their mythology has been preserved. The Celtic peoples who maintained either their political or linguistic identities (such as the Gaels and Brythonic tribes of the British Isles) left vestigial remnants of their forebears' mythologies, put into written form during the Middle Ages.
Because of the scarcity of surviving materials bearing written Gaulish, it is surmised that the pagan Celts were not widely literate— although a written form of Gaulish using the Greek, Latin and North Italic alphabets was used (as evidenced by votive items bearing inscriptions in Gaulish and the Coligny Calendar). Caesar attests to the literacy of the Gauls, but also wrote that their priests, the druids, were forbidden to use writing to record certain verses of religious significance (Caesar, De Bello Gallico 6.14) while also noting that the Helvetii had a written census (Caesar, De Bello Gallico 1.29). Rome introduced a more widespread habit of public inscriptions, and broke the power of the druids in the areas it conquered; in fact, most inscriptions to deities discovered in Gaul (modern France), Britain and other formerly (or presently) Celtic-speaking areas post-date the Roman conquest. And although early Gaels in Ireland and parts of modern Wales used the Ogham script to record short inscriptions (largely personal names), more sophisticated literacy was not introduced to Celtic areas that had not been conquered by Rome until the advent of Christianity; indeed, many Gaelic myths were first recorded by Christian monks, albeit without most of their original religious meanings.
Celtic art is art associated with various people known as Celts; those who spoke the Celtic languages in Europe from pre-history through to the modern period, as well as the art of ancient people whose language is unknown, but where cultural and stylistic similarities suggest they are related to Celts. Also covered by the term is Celtic revival art from the 18th century to the modern era, which began as a conscious effort by Modern Celts to express self-identification and nationalism. Celtic art is ornamental, avoiding straight lines and only occasionally using symmetry, without the imitation of nature or ideal of beauty central to the classical tradition, but as far as we can understand it often involves complex symbolism. It includes a variety of styles and often incorporates subtly modified elements from other cultures, an example being the characteristic over-and-under interlacing—weaving—which only arrived in the 6th century when it was already in extensive use by neighbouring Germanic people. There are three "traditions" of Celtic art, the first being the continental Iron age art mainly associated with La Tène culture which draws on native, classical and (perhaps via the Mediterranean) oriental sources. The second, Iron Age art in Britain and Ireland, draws on the continental tradition while adding distinctive regional styles. The third, the Celtic "renaissance" of the early Middle Ages in Ireland and parts of Britain, is also called Insular art. This third tradition formed the basis for the art of the Celtic revival beginning in the late 18th century.
From the 5th to the mid-9th centuries, the art of the Picts is primarily known through stone sculpture, although some metalwork exists. There are no known illuminated manuscripts. Pictish stones are assigned by scholars to 3 classes. Class I Pictish stones are unshaped standing stones incised with a series of about 35 symbols which include abstract designs (given descriptive names such as crescent and V-rod, double disc and Z-rod, 'flower' and so on by researchers); carvings of recognisable animals (bull, eagle, salmon, adder and others), and objects from daily life (a comb, a mirror). The symbols almost always occur in pairs, with in about one third of cases the addition of the mirror, or mirror and comb, symbol, below the others. This is often taken to symbolise a woman. Apart from one or two outliers, these stone are found exclusively in north-east Scotland from the Firth of Forth to Shetland. They are particularly common in Angus, Aberdeenshire, Sutherland and Orkney. Good examples include the Dunnichen and Aberlemno stones (Angus), and the Brandsbutt and Tillytarmont stones (Aberdeenshire). Class II stones are shaped cross-slabs carved in relief, or in a combination of incision and relief, with a prominent cross on one, or in rare cases two, faces. The crosses are elaborately decorated with interlace, key-pattern or scrollwork, in the Insular style. On the secondary face of the stone, Pictish symbols appear, often themselves elaborately decorated, accompanied by figures of people (notably horsemen), animals both realistic and fantastic, and other scenes. Hunting scenes are common, Biblical motifs less so. The symbols often appear to 'label' one of the human figures. Scenes of battle or combat between men and fantastic beasts may be scenes from Pictish mythology. Good examples include slabs from Dunfallandy and Meigle (Perthshire), Aberlemno (Angus), Nigg, Shandwick and Hilton of Cadboll (Easter Ross). Class III stones are in the Pictish style, but lack the characteristic symbols. Most are cross-slabs, though there are also recumbent stones with sockets for an inserted cross or small cross-slab (eg at Meigle, Perthshire). These stones may date largely to after the Scottish takeover of the Pictish kingdom in the mid 9th century. Examples include the sarcophagus and the large collection of cross-slabs at St Andrews (Fife). The Book of Kells is most probably an 8th century product of an Iona scriptorium, begun there and transferred to Kells in Ireland during the 9th century in response to Viking raids, where it was completed (for other theories see Book of Kells). Elements of its ornamentation reflect Pictish influences. The following museums have important collections of Pictish stones: Meigle (Perthshire), St Vigeans (Angus) and St Andrew's Cathedral (Fife) (all Historic Scotland), the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (which also exhibits almost all the major pieces of surviving Pictish metalwork), the Meffan Institute, Forfar (Angus), Inverness Museum, Groam House Museum, Rosemarkie and Tarbat Discovery Centre, Portmahomack (both Easter Ross) and Tankerness House Museum, Kirkwall, Orkney.