The Earliest Celts

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The Earliest Celts
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Approximately 300BC
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Approximately 300BC
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The Earliest Celts

• In any discussion of the Celts, whether ancient
  of modern, it is frequent to find the word Celt
  or Celtic used in a way that suggests that it
  was a term for a cohesive and easily recognisable
  people, if not even race, in the past, not to
  mention the present.
• We must be careful to approach the word and
  those who are labelled with this word with great
  caution.

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Celts and Indo-Europeans

• Roughly half the worlds population speaks
  languages derived from a shared linguistic source
  known as Proto-Indo-European.
• The likely speakers of this linguistic form
  inhabited central Eurasias steppe grasslands in
  the bronze age approximately 6000BC.

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Celts and Indo-Europeans

• Their innovative use of the ox, wagon,
  horse-riding and warriors chariot turned their
  homeland into an area of communication, commerce
  and cultural exchange. This area can be
  tentatively located north of the Black and
  Caspian Seas (todays Ukraine and southern
  Russia).

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Celts and Indo-Europeans

• This linguistic form spread in a westward
  direction towards Europe. Language expansion is
  often psychological.
• The initial expansion was due to widespread
  cultural shifts in group self-perception
  (identity). The pre-Indo-European languages were
  abandoned for a variety of reasons perception of
  change in identity, out-marrying.

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Celts and Indo-Europeans

• Some of these changes were increased mobility
  (technology), new pastoral economies,
  status-ranked political systems, inter-regional
  connectivity.
• Language shift flows in the direction of
  paramount prestige and power.
• This prestige and power was recognized amongst
  the Celts, Romans, Scythians and others at
  different periods.

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Celts and Indo-Europeans

• The earliest form of what can be called Celtic
  developed from Indo-European.
• Other branches also evolved Germanic, Slavic,
  Hellenic, Italic (from which came Latin), Baltic,
  Iranian, Northern Indian.
• We can think of Indo-European as a language
  spreading across Europe during a long period
  approx. 5000-3000BC.

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Celts and Indo-Europeans

• It does not imply a large population movement
  naturally some, perhaps the earliest Neolithic
  and bronze age farmers.
• By about 3000-2500BC branches of Indo-European
  had evolved, including what we call
  proto-Celtic. At some point, the differences
  between Celtic and Germanic must have become
  clear, as well as the differences between Celtic
  and Italic.

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Celts and Indo-Europeans

• What is important to realise is that the people
  who spoke Indo-European in eastern, central and
  western Europe and its later varieties were the
  descendants of peoples who had inhabited the same
  areas for probably several thousand years before
  that- well into the neolithic period.

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Celts and Indo-Europeans

• Many people share similar genetic profiles across
  Europe, North Africa and beyond in the middle
  east which have little to do with the languages
  they speak.
• This is true as well for those very early Celtic
  speakers in Europe and beyond in Britain and
  Ireland. c800BC.

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Celtic languages In western Europe c500BC
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Celtic and identity

• Many would think today that a Celtic identity
  is easily assumed or easily recognisable. But the
  term is controversial.
• There are two kinds of basic identity identity
  from within and identity from outsidean
  identifiable us versus an identifiable them.
• The word Celtic was widely used by the Greeks and
  Romans, and was revived in the 17th century by
  scholars, especially Edward Lhuyd.

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Celtic and identity

• In fact, those Greek and Latin writers actually
  used a variety of terms to refer to those
  populations who spoke Celtic

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Celtic and identity

• Keltoi, Galatai, Albiones, Celtiberi, Britanni,
  Iverni.
• All of these come from Celtic languages
  originally and probably referred to local
  Celt-speaking communities. (group-names).

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Celtic torque worn around the neck. 100BC
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Ceremonial helmet from eastern Europe
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Centre (boss) of an Iron Age Celtic shield
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Celtic helmet from Britain (Thames)
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The Earliest Celts

• Although we now use the word Celtic widely to
  refer to the Irish, Scottish Gaels, Welsh,
  Cornish, Bretons, Manx and sometimes the
  Galicians in Spain, this usage only goes back to
  the end of the 1600s, and was mainly revived as a
  term which referred to their languages.
• Irish (Gaelic) Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish,
  Breton and Manx.

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The Earliest Celts

• Scholars working in the late 1600s (especially
  Edward Lhuyd) and the 1700s noticed that earlier
  forms of Irish and Welsh had obviously
  similarities with what was known then of the
  ancient Celtic languages of Europe spoken up
  until approximately the 1st and 2nd centuries AD,
  in particular Gaulish, the Celtic language of
  France.

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The Earliest Celts

• This was hardly surprising given that the wide
  spectrum of Celtic culture extended in antiquity
  across Europe from Ireland, Britain, Gaul
  (France), Northern Italy, Austria, Switzerland,
  the Balkans even as far as todays Turkey.
• There are many questions about the people who
  lived in these areas 2000 years ago who shared a
  common culture and similar languages.

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The Earliest Celts

• The Ancient Greeks were the first to use the word
  Keltos or in the plural Keltoi. The Greeks
  did not have a very accurate idea about the
  geography and ethnology of central and northern
  Europe. They thought in terms of Scythians (in
  the east of Europe) and Keltoi in the centre and
  west. This area where the Greeks thought the
  Keltoi lived was called Keltika by them.

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The Earliest Celts

• An early Greek historian Herodotus (c485BC-425BC)
  believed the Keltoi lived around the Danube river
  but also as far away as the Pyrenees. (he was
  right).Other writers placed Celtic settlements in
  Narbonne (S. France) and possibly Noricum in
  Austria. (also right)
• So was the word Keltoi a term used
  indescriminately to describe barbarians north
  of the Mediterrean world?

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The Earliest Celts

• A later writer, the famous C. Julius Caesar
  writing in the first century BC about the Celts
  of France (known as the Gauls), comments that
  although they the Romans call them Galli
  (Gauls), that they call themselves Celtae
  (Celts).
• Another Greek writer called Pausanias suggested
  that the name Keltoi was more ancient a name than
  Galatae or Galli.

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The Earliest Celts

• Pausanias (2nd century AD) in his Guide to
  Greece says that the Gauls live the remotest
  region of EuropeIt was quite late on that
  Gauls became their agreed name in ancient
  times they called each other Celts, and other
  people called them the same.
• This is hearsay of course, and the probability is
  that some of the Celtic-speakers called
  themselves Keltoi, while other used other names
  for their tribal groups.

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The Earliest Celts

• As Barry Cunliffe points out, it is very likely
  that in temperate Europe (the cooler part),
  different tribes came together in confederations
  and allegiances and adopted new names. From the
  4th century BC there were great population
  movements and further regrouping probably took
  place as a consequence.
• Such words as Keltoi and Galli had had some
  specific ethnic reference at one time, but
  gradually they came to refer to peoples with a
  common culture and language.

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The Earliest Celts

• Although we have mentioned two names used by
  Greeks/Romans to signify Celts (Keltoi,
  Galatae/Galli), there were other names used, such
  as Albiones, Celtiberi, Britanni and Iverni for
  local manifestations of Celtic peoples, not to
  mention the many tribal names in Gaul and
  Britain (under the general names Galli and
  Britanni).

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Some of the Celtic Tribes of northern
France Approx.50BC
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The Earliest Celts Language

• Language is an essential part of the picture, and
  together with a destinctive art-style and similar
  artifacts (weapons, ornamental horse-trappings,
  coins etc), and a similar social hierarchy, these
  are the elements which make the Celts
  recognisable in antiquity. These are the La Tene
  Celts mainly whose art and often warlike
  civilisation is so vividly described by Greeks
  and Romans alike.

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The Earliest Celts

• The application of the term Celtic languages
  was coined by Edward Lhuyd for his book
  Archaeologia Britannica published in 1707.
• His choice of the term Celtic was partly
  influenced by his theory- until recently
  universally accepted- that the Celtic languages
  of Britain and Ireland had come from the
  Continent by prehistoric mass migrations.
• This is largely rejected now.

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The Earliest Celts Place-name evidence

• When we look at a map which shows the extent of
  Celtic-speech in the c.300BC period (the
  high-point of Celtic civilisation in Antiquity),
  we can see the similarity of speech forms
  reflected in recorded place-names.
• We do not have full inscriptions in Continental
  Celtic until c300BC-100AD (Celtiberian, Gaulish,
  Lepontic)
• We have Old Irish inscriptions in ogam from
  c300-400AD.

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The Earliest Celts

• A common theory about the origin of the Celts as
  a homogenous group speaking Common Celtic (the
  earliest form of Celtic, that developed from
  Indo-European) held that they lived in the high
  Alpine areas of Europe at the source of the
  Danube and along the river.
• This idea is not necessarily wrong, but we have
  to consider other factors.

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The Earliest Celts The Iron Age

• Part of that theory of the origin of the Celts is
  associated with the highly developed forms of
  Celtic society and art that we usually call
  Hallstatt and La Tène.(700BC c50BC)
• Certainly when we talk about the ancient Celts
  we are talking about the societies that developed
  between c700BC-c50BC. This is also known as The
  Iron Age.

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The Earliest Celts

• These two periods of Celtic civilisation are
  named after two localities. Hallstatt is in
  Austria and La Tène in Switzerland (lac Leman),
  both in Northern Alpine areas, and rich in
  archaeological finds belonging to the Celtic
  world.
• They are also indicative of societies controlled
  by wealthy land-owning élites.

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Approximately 500BC
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The Earliest Celts

• The Hallstatt culture which spread beyond the
  North Alps to parts of Germany and France is
  notable for its remarkable burials with chariots
  and valuable gold ornament, as well as imports
  from the Mediterranean. They were able to control
  the trade routes between central and west Europe
  and the world of the Greeks.

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Possibly the Islands were Celtic- speaking
centuries before this
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TheCeltic Migrations

• Another factor which can be misleading for our
  understanding of Celtic origins is the fact that
  large contingents of La Tène Celts started to
  move from their original homeland to northern
  Italy, and especially to eastern European regions
  (Balkans, southern Poland, Transylvania, and as
  far as central Turkey (Galatia). This undoubtedly
  meant that Celtic was spoken in these areas for
  some hundreds of years.

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The Earliest Celts

• This reopens the question of a Celtic homeland.
• There is no archaeological evidence for a mass
  migration into Britain and Ireland, yet both
  became Celtic-speaking. How? Can we know?
• One theory talks of exchange of elite goods and
  values.
• Cunliffe goes as far as to suggest that Celtic
  developed as a lingua franca alsong the Atlantic
  coast, and eventually found its way not only in
  Britain and Ireland but also up the main rivers
  of France as far as the Alps.
• Perhaps the language found its core in central
  France.

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The Earliest Celts

• But this would have happened in the Late bronze
  Age (c1200-c700BC), rather than the Hallstatt or
  La Tene periods.
• Trade discussions, and cross-tribal delegations
  would have been made up of high-ranking members
  of that society, and within it Celtic may have
  evolved, and in the earliest stages may not have
  been the language of the majority (just the
  elite).

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The extent of the early Celtic World

• Place-names are one of the most useful ways of
  tracking the extent to which Celtic language and
  culture had spread by approximately 300BC.
• The modern countries and regions where Celtic
  languages are still spoken Ireland, Wales,
  Scotland and Brittany as well as Cornwall and the
  Isle of Man have Celtic place-names in profusion.

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The extent of the early Celtic World

• We know that Celtic was spoken in Ireland and
  Britain in antiquity. But the ancient continental
  Celtic languages Gaulish, Lepontic, Celtiberian
  and Galatian and perhaps Belgic left much
  evidence of their former prestige in Europe.

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The extent of the early Celtic World

• Celtiberian is found written in the Phoenician
  script in the centre east of the Iberian
  peninsula, although Celtic names are found
  throughout Spain and Portugal.
• Group-names such as the Celtici, Callaeci,
  Gallaeci (hillforts Mirobriga, Nertobriga etc).

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The extent of the early Celtic World

• French place-names often hide a Celtic origin. We
  know from Roman times that France was very much
  part of the Celtic-speaking world if not the very
  centre. Its tribal names, and hillforts almost
  all have classic Gaulish names (Parisi,
  Bituriges, Alani, ). (Bourges, Alain)
• Further east from France in central and eastern
  Europe, there is a substantial body of names
  often labelled Celtic.

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The extent of the early Celtic World

• Group-names like the Lugii (NE Europe), the
  Helvecones (numerous hounds/warriors), as well as
  the widespread Boii, Tectosages, the Cotini, the
  Anartii. In the Carpathians and Balkans other
  group-names (probably Gaulish warriors who had
  wandered far from their western roots) like the
  Taurisci, and the Scordisci.

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The extent of the early Celtic World

• In the Black Sea area we find again group-names
  such as the Britolagai and the Vergobritiani.
• Further into the south east were the Galatians
  around todays Ankyra in Turkey. And even beyond
  that in the Ukraine.

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Approximately 500BC