Course: The Celts
Lecture #1: Introduction
INTRODUCTION
At the start of the first Millenium BC, a civilization which had developed from Indo European roots around the headwaters of the Rhine, the Rhone and the Danube suddenly spread throughout Europe.
Their advanced use of metal work, particularly iron weapons, made them a powerful and irresistible force. Their name comes from the first Greek merchants who encountered them in the 6th century BCE. They called them Keltoi and Galatai. Later, the Romans would echo these names in Celtae, Galatae and Galli.
Today we just call them Celts. This is very appropriate as this seems to be what they called themselves. There are many theories about where the name comes from but the most plausible seems to be that the word derived from an Indo-European root, kel, meaning 'hidden' This survived in both old Irish as Celim (I hide) and old Welsh, celaf.
Thus the Celts were the 'hidden people', perhaps a reference to their religious proscription against setting down their vast store of knowledge in written form in their own language. As Ceasar observed in his "Gallic War: "the druids believe that their religion forbids them to commit their teachings to writing, altho for most other purposes, such as public and private accounts, the Celts use the Greek alphabet."
In modern Irish celt still means an act of concealment. It is also used for a dress or mantel designed to cover one's private parts. It has survived in Scotland in the word Kilt. The ancient Gelts have been called "the First Europeans", the first transalpine civilization to emerge into recorded history. At the height of their greatest expansion, in the third Century BCE they were spread from Ireland in the west across Europe to the central plain of what is now Turkey in the east. They spread from Belgium in the North as far south as Cadiz in Spain and across the alps into the Po valley.
Recent evidence has caused consideration of the Celts having spread to the Xinjiang province of China, north of Tibet. If true, they are the ancestors of the Tocharian people, an Indo European group. Tocharian written texts survive from the 8th to 9th centuries AD.
The Celts left a powerfül military impression on both Greeks and Romans: They defeäted the Eutruscans in 475 BCE and took control of the Po valley in Italy, in 390 they défeated Rome and held the city for 7 months. They defeated the Greek army and sacked the oracle of Delphi, and then returned north. Where they could, the Greeks recruited Celtic units into their armies. Even Cleopatra had an elite bodyguard of 300 Celtic warriors, which on her defeat and death, served the equally famous Herod the Great. Once defeated by Julius Caesar, they even began to serve in the armies of their arch enemy, Rome.
WARFARE WAS NOT THEIR ONLY PROFESSION
Basically they were farmers, engaging in advanced agricultural techniques whose methods impressed Roman observers.
Their medical knowledge was highly sophisticated, particularly the practice of surgery. As road builders they cut the first roads through the previously impenetrable forest of Europe. Most words connected with roads and transport in Latin were borrowed from the Celts.
Their Art and craftsmanship; in jewelry and design have left a breathtaking legacy for Europe. They were undoubtedly the most exuberant of the ancient European visual artists, whose genius is still valued and copied today.
Their philosophers and men of learning were highly regarded by the Greeks; many of the Greek Alexandrian school accepted that early Greeks had borrowed from the celtic philosophers. Even the Romans, who could never forgive the humiliation of being defeated by the Celts, acknowledged their learning. Their advanced calendrical computations, their astronomy and "speculation from the stars" also impressed the classical world.
As already. As mentioned, the Celts were prohibited by their religious precepts from committing their learning to written form, in their own language. In spite of this, there remains some 500 century BCE.
The Celts used the alphabets of the Etruscans, Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans to make these records Moreover, many Celts adopted Greek and Latin as languages in which to achieve literary fame.
The Celts produced historians, poets, playwrights and philosophers, all writing in Latin. It was not until the Christian period that the Celts felt free enough to write extensively in their own languages and then left an amazing literary wealth with Irish taking its place as the third literary language of Europe after Greek and Latin
Ireland, in fact, produced the oldest vernacular literature of Europe While those writing in Latin or Greek were usually writing in a language that was not their mother tongue.
Thanks to the texts written by the Celts in Ireland and Wales we know the vibrant wealth of Celtic myth and legend, the stories of the ancient gods and goddesses, by comparing these texts to the commentaries of the classical writers we can even discover something of early Celtic philosophy
The best part and a humbling one is to know that this civilization, with at least "3000 years of cultural continuum, has not yet perished from Europe: There are still some" 2 and 1/2 millions who speak a Celtic language as a mother tongue.
The Celtic peoples survive in the Northwest of Europe, confined now to the Irish, Manx and Scots (Goidelic Celts) and the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons (Brythonic Celts).
PROCEDURE FOR THE COURSE: (after seeing part on a Film)
I intend to cover, in the rest of this lecture, the origins and early history of the Celtic peoples, Proto or pre Celts. In weeks following I will cover such topics as Hierarchical arrangement of society, the important professions (farmers, physicians, road builders, artists and architects) of Celtic society, women and their place in the society From here, with hopefully, lecture 5 will begin religion, Druids, myths and legends, divination (the ogham, etc.);= the coming of Christianity and its golden age and fall to Romanization. Finally, the Celts today, including the church. So on to the origin and early history.
[Note: Show “The Celt: Man with the Golden shoes from beginning to Hockdoymon 37 min
ORIGIN OF THE CELTS
(2nd half of class)
First, I want to point out that there are those, a minority, who say that ine Celts are a cherished myth, a romantic fantasy. In a book by Simon James called The Atlantic Celts, he argues that Europe was populated by many different groups and one cannot speak of a monolithic group called "the Celts". Rather, the Iron age British isles: were not uniform but were home to complex regional patterns of multiple identities, as they apparently were in the preceding Bronze Age and have been ever since.
Looking for the Celts is like looking for the "Historical Jesus" He doesn't exist in the sense that one can pinpoint him thru a "quest". So, with this disclaimer, I will proceed to the theories of where the Celts do come from with the assumption that most of the peoples of Europe are, for lack of a better term, Celtic.
There is no documentary evidence about the Celts prior to the early Greek writers and some argue its not proper to speak of "Celts" before the sixth century BC. However, others argue that we can build a reasonable picture of Celtic life during the first millennium BC by the use of comparative Indo-European linguistics and archaeological evidence.
So, who were the Celts and where did they come from?
The first European people north of the Alps to emerge into recorded history, the Celtic peoples were distinguished from their_fellow Europeans by their language. In fact, the use of the term "celtic" to identify this group of languages was only adopted with the development of celtic studies.
By the time the Celtic peoples first appeared in written records, they had already diversified. into speaking different dialects, tho the speakers retained common links in terms of social strücture, religion and material culture.
The Indo-European family of languages encompasses most of the languages, spoken in Europe with several exceptions (basque, among others)..; It also includes the language of Iran and Northern India.
At some remote time in antiquity there was a single parent language which we call "indo-European" for want of a better designation.
With migrations, the parent language changed with many dialects developing. These dialects then became the ancestors to most of the present major: european and North Indian language groups. The Swedish, Greek, Latin, Celtic, German Solovanic, Baltic, Parsee, Sanskrit, and English.
Many words are still used in many of the European languages, for example the word name or Mater is used in nearly all the languages without change in meaning.
Where was this parent language originally spoken and when did it begin to break up?
It is probable that the speakers of the parent tongue originated somewhere between the Baltic and the Black Sea. Also, that the parent torigue was already breaking into dialects before the massive migrations began westward into Europe and East into Asia.
Most academics believe that the parent tongue was found around the fourth millenium BC. By the 2nd Millenium BC, dialects began to emerge. What is extraordinary is the close similarities that wave survived between Irish and Vedic Sanskrit, two cultures that developed over thousands of years and thousands of miles apart. This was also true for law and social custom, mythology, music, etc.
Many words keep the same meaning. the word for knowledge I want to mention. Vid, in sanskrit means knowledge, uid in old Irish. Thus the word druids means "thorough knowledge"
Both Celts and Hindus worshipped in the sacred rivers and made votive offerings there. Both had a mother goddess named Danu (for which the Danube is named), etc. Unfortunately, we don't have any uncontaminated creation myths of the Celts because Christianity had taken a hold and the scribes altered the stories, obscuring their symbolism and significance. This didn't happen in India.
What is important about the creation or origin myths of the Celts is the fact that, in the words of Caesar, "the Celts claim all to be descended from Dis-Pater, declaring that this is the tradition preserved by the Druids." We know the later Celtic kings in Ireland claimed divine ancestry.
So if we accept classical writers, the ancient Celts believed that they were physically descended from the sky god who himself was descended from Danu, the “divine waters.”
TEMPORAL ORIGINS OF THE CELTS
Archaeology combines with documentary and linguistic evidence to show thạt the Celtic peoples began to appear as a distinctive culture in the area of the headwaters of the Danube, the Rhine and the Rhone, that is Switzerland and southwest Germany.
The documentary evidence begins with two Greek historians, Hecataeus of Miletus (500-476 BC) and Herodetus (about the same time). Many later commentators, including romanized Celts, confirmed this.
Herodotus mentioned that " The Danube traverses the whole of Europe, rising among the Celts.
Place names in Switzerland and southern Germany provide linguistic evidence. Even today, rivers, mountains, woodland and some of the towns sti!, retain their original celtic names, including the three great rivers themselves, all named for goddesses of the celts.
It has been argued that the survival of so many Celtic place-names for so long after celtic speaking peoples had ceased to live in the area pointed to the names being of indigenous form and of long usage.
The large number of Celtic place names still surviving in Switzerland and southwest Germany are an indication that the historical record saying they were already well settled in this area.
The third source of evidence is archaeological. In terms of artifacts, patterns of settlement and land use, etc. archaeologists have identified two distinct periods of celtic culture emerging. One, the earliest, is called the hallstatt culture (1200 - 475 BC) the other was La tere culture.
According to archaeological evidence, the Celtic peoples descend from a mixture of the Bronze Age Tumulus culture (c. 1550-1250 BC) known for its mounds. in: which they buried their dead ard the Urnfield culture (c.1200 BC) so called because they cremated their dead and buried them in ins. In the 1940's these two cultures were first described as 'proto-celtic' or pre-celtic. The reason was the Hallstatt culture had little to distinguish it from the urnfield people other than working with iron.
Skip – was in Film
The Hallstatt culture was named after Lake Hallstatt in Upper Austria. It was identified by a mainly geometric based art which evolved from its urnfield antecedents. A series of graves were discovered of "princes" who were laid out on four-wheeled wagons with splendidly decorated yokes and harnesses; the graves were in spacious chambers beneath a mound or barrow. The wagons showed the use of an advanced technology, which implied an equally sophisticated knowledge of road construction.
They knew how to smelt iron and the use of other metals. Iron tools and weapons rendered the Celts superior to their neighbours and were doubtless the basis of their sudden eruption throughout Europe and the beginning of the first milleñnium BC.
Archeological evidence shows they had developed trade with the mediterranean world as artefacts from Greece, Carthage, and other places as time found in these tombs. Roman civilization was non-existent at this time.
The La Tene culture (500 - 0 BC) is so called because of the discoveries made in the shallows at the Northeastern end of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland. This appears to be a place of worship where countless artefacts were cast into the water as votive offerings. This culture goes from the fifth century to the first century BC.
This saw the emergence of new decorative art forms and of fast two wheeled chariots and other transport innovations. They were skilled farmers and herders and had a flourishing economy based on produce and livestock.
They developed irrigation systems, road building and transport systems. They mined salt, a highly important product. They expanded to exploiting the natural resources of their land, including gold, silver, tin, lead and iron.
Their craftsmen were second to none, making high quality tools and Leapons, household goods and ornaments for personal adornment. They built their structures mainly of wood, which has not lasted- altho where they chose to build in stone, mainly in Ireland and Britain, there is evidence that they were good architects.
They were also open to trade, their goods providing them with strong purchasing power for those luxury goods the Mediterranean climate of Greece and Italy produced more easily than the harsher northern climates. Celtic society was more wealthy and stable then the classical writers would allow.
Start Here
The Celts were divided into tribes ruled by kings; over-kings had power over several tribes. To speak of "tribes" can give a wrong picture to our modern minds. These Celtic tribes could be as small as 20,000 strong or as large as 250,000. Caesar records that the Helvetii on their migration into Gaul numbered 263,000. Often these tries formed great coalitions, like the Belgae and the Brigantes.
Celtic tribal rulers introduced the idea of coinage slightly in advance of Rome, albeit based on their contacts with Greece, at the end of the 4th century BC. The coins were cast in gold, silver or bronze in molds of clay which had been prepared to give pieces of exactly equal weight. These pieces were then hammered between two stamps with amazing designs that were probably of mythological or religious significance.
It was this La Tene period in which the Celts achieved their greatest expansion. They reached Spain and Gaul about the 9th century BC and Ireland and Britain by about 500 BC if not before. They established themselves as far north as Belgium and as far east as Czechoslovakia and "Slovak states--Bohemia was named after the Celtic tribe the Boi. They settled the Balkans and reached as far as the Black sea.
They settled on the central plain of what is now Turkey, Galatia and from here became mercenaries to the Seleucid kings of Syria and Herod the Great of Israel as well as the Ptolomys of Egypt.
The second and first centuries BC saw the Roman empire taking over much of their land and the Germanic and Slavic migrations whittling away at their borders.
Like all conquerors who write the history, Rome gave an unbalanced picture of the Celts showing them as warlike, flamboyant, given to an excess in alcohol and food and hardly more than high-spirited children needing the "civilizing" hand of Rome.
Of the classical writers only the Greeks, with the exception of those in Roman employ, tended to be unbiased commentators on the Celtic world. Unfortunately many classical writers, particularly Julius Caesar, are seen, even today, as experts on the Celts, not to be disputed.
This can no longer be the picture that we have, of wandering celtic warriors, some with no clothes, raiding civilized centers in Rome and Greece without provocation. Part of this course is to show that this image is no longer acceptable as the following lectures will demonstrate.
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Celts in Britain and Ireland
The first proto or pre-celtic people to arrive by the sea route landed in Ireland and North Britain in the early 14th cent BCE: They were known to the later coming Irish as the "Tuatha de Danaan" It is these people who seemed to disappear when the next influx came around 500 BC who make up what the Irish believe to be Faires, Leprechans, etc. (more on that later.)
At some point, another invasion of tribes who possibly came from Thrace (ancient country of Western Greece and Eastern Turkey) arrived in Ireland: ar After fierce opposition the new invaders were forced to move. over to Northern Britain. They were known as the Picts -a name given them by the later Roman invaders because they tattooed themselves and decorated their bodies for battle, in which their women also participated.
Somewhere between 2000 and 1500 BC. Another group appears to have settled down with the ancient stone age briton. They came from Spain by way of Southern France and the Rhine.
Their knowledge of metal working and the custom of burying their dead hai the hallmarks of the proto celt a They were perhaps the first arrivals of the overland Celt from Switzerland From 1500 - 600 BC they developed the Bronze age culture and,further integrated with the indigenous tribes.
The invading tribes of Goidelic people around 600 BC brought with them the. "Hallstatt" Iron Age culture from central Europe. Their language, Goidelic Gaelic, became one of the main Celtic tongues.
Considering that they were forced to remain in the southeastern counties it was an extraordinary feat of conquest, which suggests another theory. They may very well have been the early Celts who had taken the Carpathian route having trekked across the Balkans to Germany: They did not in fact impose their own language, but found the descendants of their own race.
The last two successive waves of invaders were the Belgic people. From 400 to 300 BC and 50 BC - 45 AD, they overran a greater part of Britain and Ireland: They were a mixture of Brythons and Teutons.
They brought with them the La Tene iron age culture from the continent. It took root and flourished, creating a true Celtic identity. There still remained tribal territories, however, and their language had two definite divisions: Goidelic or Gaelic became the language of Ireland, the Scottish Highlands and the Isle of Mann. - Brythonic or British became the language of Wales and the Cornish Celts, who had always maintained close ties with the Breton Gauls
It was in the British Isles that Druidism actually evolved with the conquest of the Isles. They took into account the religion and relics (including Stonehenge) which the Megalithic people who first inhabited the Isles had created – beginning as early as 2200 BC or so.
The Celts found a people already steeped in magic and mysticism. The ancient chambered tombs or cromlechs were an extraordinary link with their own beliefs of immortality.
More on religion later.
LITERACY AMONG THE CELTS
One of the great myths about the Celts is that they were an illiterate society. To support this Julius Caesar is usually quoted. The Druids believe that their religion forbids them to commit their teachings to writing, altho for most other purposes, such as public and private accounts, the Gauls use the Greek alphabet.. But imagine that this rule was originally established for other reasons because they did not want their doctrine to become public property.
If read carefully, one can see that Caesar is saying while the Celts did ot write native books of philosophy; history and such they were literate, with the Gauls, in particular using the Greek alphabet.
Archaeology has shown that the Celts used other alphabets to write their dialects in, including Phoenician, Etruscan and Latin and sometimes combinations of several, depending on where the text comes from.
The earliest Celtic inscriptions occur in the Etruscan alphabet. However, so far none of the Etruscan inscriptions or texts have been interpreted because it is not an identifiable Indo-European language and a cognate language hasn't been found to give a clue to interpretation. (Need "Rosetta store")
As Latin influences began there was a change from Etruscan lettering to Latin characters. Graffiti-on pottery, manufacturers names and marks; and funereal inscriptions show that the Celts wère far from illiterate.
Perhaps the most interesting text found in 1887 at Rom on a thin lead plate in Latin script dated to around the end of the first century BC. It is a poetic dedication to the Celtic horse goddess, Epona.
The most recent translation comments that the closest example to the Rom Inscription is a Vedic hymn to Indra, demonstrating yet again the common indo-european heritage of the Celtic and Sanskrit traditions.
In spite of many writings found by celtic writers using Latin, the bulk of Celtie-learning, story telling and history was to remain an oral tradition until the start of the Christian era, which is when Irish took its place as Europe's third oldest literary language.
The written language emerged in two phases. The first was the development of a native Irish alphabet - the ogham - This was named after Ogma, the god of eloquence and literacy, who was also known as Ogmios.
Ogham is frequently mentioned in the myths and sagas. It is an alphabet of short lines drawn to meet or cross a base line, originally using twenty characters. The language it represents is archaic. Most of the surviving inscriptions date from the 4th to the 6th centuries AD and are on Stone.
There are some 370 inscriptions, most in Ireland but with a few in Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Mann and Cornwall.
From Irish texts in Latin script we hear that in earlier times Ogam was used to write ancient stories and songs. It was incised on bark or wands of hazel and aspen. These rods of poets were kept in libraries or Tech Screptra. "However, only the engravings on stone have survived.
A clue to what happened to these early Irish books can be found in the "yellow book of Lecan" compiled in about 1400AdIf contained copies of many early texts, even one dating from the 5th century BC. This text mentions that Patrick, in his missionary zeal, burnt 180 books of the Druids: The Irish Christian sources are all fairly clear that the books existed in Ireland before the coming of Christianity.
Irish literature began to emerge from the 6th century AD and was the result of a lengthy period of a sophisticated oral tradition. The wealth of Irish literary material is tremendous, reaching a great outpouring in late nédieval times before the start of the English conquest and the systematic destruction of the language and libraries.
Welsh literature followed the Irish, with manuscripts surviving from the 9th century AD though a complete work dates from the 12th century AD.
The literatures of Irish and Welsh also contain two complete Celtic Law systems, which enable us to make many conjectures about the early social systems of the Celts. The Brehon laws of Ireland are the result of many centuries of oral transmission.. The first known codification was made in 438. AD when King Laoghaire of Tara established a nine man commission to examine the leas, revise them, and set them down in writing. St. Patrick was one of three clerics who served on this commission with 3 judges and 3 kings.
Many of the early Norman and English settlers found the Brehon laws more equitable than those of England and adopted them. Only in the 17th century with the colonial administration were they smashed.
In Wales a similar setting down of the laws was done and survived in some 70 manuscripts.
The Irish were known also for their medical schools and texts. The largest collection of medical texts in one language comes from Ireland up till 1800 AD.
Genealogies trace the pedigrees of the Irish kings back to 1015 BC.
The Celts were anything but illiterate. Bards, story tellers, historians, poets, genealogists and law givers had a special place in the ancient celtic world. Under the etiquette of the Gaelic' court, the Ollamhs or professors, took precedence immediately after the princes of the blood royal and before chieftains and territorial lords. Druids were even allowed to speak at the assembly of the High king.
Thus, the popular Roman view of the ancient Celts as savage and barbarian failed to recognize the reality of their society. As one writer commented in 1768: "Can that nation be deemed barbarous in which learning shared the next honours to royalty"
DVD: The Celts: Hallstatt to Hochdoreman = 37mm/ Fathers of Europe 37-52 / Celts last stand.