Theory that \'Celts\' are a myth

[authun]

Yes it happened to some extent - but dominating warrior bands arriving (just as did the Normans) rather than a full scale genocidic movement across England wiping out the previous occupants. There is no evidence of that at all. Gildas and Bede have a lot to account for...

Or rather, the people who interpreted Gildas and Bede in that way have a lot to account for. Bede doesn't claim they were wiped out and even under Aethelfrith who 'conquered more territories from the Britons [than any other]', he states that they were either made tributary or driven out. I have never understood why so many historians ignored the 'made tributary' part especially when in his summary of the Present State of the English Nation, he writes that Britons continue to both live under their own kings and under the subjection of the english.

best
authun

[cagwinn]

That is an incredibly simplistic view of the issue. It is also in my view quite misplaced.

Well, it's not just my view, but also that of some of the top Celticists working today. It is a fact that the loudest whinging about the Celts these days comes from English - and mainly English archaeologists (and don't accuse me for prejudice, as I am part English).

[authun]

Perhaps it would be approriate to see the view of a scholar of Celtic Studies on the subject of Celtoscepticsm.

"One would be seriously misled to accept at face value sweeping conclusions which dismiss the Celts as a constructed 'myth' (Chapman 1992; Collis 1997) or purely a 'modern invention' (James 1999). Nonetheless the Celtosceptics have usefully highlighted a fact that can no longer be ignored: modern writers - of both semi-popular and specialist publications - have written as though three disparate approaches to ancient group identity invariably defined one and the same people. Thus, the Celts have been assumed to be (1) all users of the iron age material culture called 'La Tene' for the Swiss type site, (2) all speakers of early celtic type languages and (3) all groups called Keltoi or Celtae by the Greeks and Romans. (The same ancient writers also repeatedly stated the equivalence of the name Keltoi/Celtae with Galli or Galatae and generally regarded the former part to be more ancient and correct.) Thus, any one of these three symptoms has often been taken to imply the other two and to be adequate to confirm the presence of Celts. A coherent narrative 'Story of the Celts' could thus be achieved, shifting seamlessly between the three types of evidence. At best, this three way modern synthesis is frayed at the edges. La Tene material is rare to nonexistent in areas with well attested Celtic languages - south west Ireland, the Iberian Peninsular, central Anatolia. But notions of the 'Celts' might be more seriously defective if we attach great significance to the negative evidence that the Greeks and Romans never (so far as we know) applied the label Keltoi or Galli to the inhabitants of Ireland or Britain and that the pre modern Gaels and Britons never applied such a label to themselves (again, so far as we know) (Cunliffe 2003, 5; Koch 2003)."

(John T Koch, An Atlas of Celtic Studies)

best
authun

[Ingvar Sigurdson]

Conrtributing within 'Signals of Belief in Early England' 2010, Ronald Hutton remarks
'When the historical evidence for the Roman and Norman and the Viking settlements of England is compared with the archaeolgical, it makes a pretty good fit, in religious as in military, social, economic and political context. To be sure, argument and doubt can arise over particular events and figures, and the extent of of particular developments, but in general the data is compatible. In their record, the Anglo-Saxons now present a striking and troubling, anomaly. All of the historical evidence, whether that left by contempararies or near-contemporaries such as Gildas and the fith-century Gallic authors, or retrospective sources such as Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Historia Brittonum portrays an intensly traumatic experiance of invasion, conflict, slaughter and dispossesion. This is also in apparent harmony with the lingistic and place-name evidence, and the creation of Brittany itself presupposes mass migration prevoked by danger at home. The material evidence of settlement, however, has been powerfully and commonly argued of late to refute all this, and so the two bodies of data are at apparent odds to an unusual extent'

Ingvar

[Theodosius the Great]

no archaeological evidence exists for burnt out or destroyed Briton communities in that period, that peaceful activities like farming and trade continued without interruption ... but the theory ignores the documented military interventions from Carausius to Theodosius and Stilicho that were necessary to defend the island against infaders as well as ignores the "groans of the Britons" entreaties made to Aetius to send help against the Saxons.

Clearly Ammianus was misinformed. What Great Conspiracy ? :roll:

~Theo

[Robert Vermaat]

whether we can legitimately talk about "The Celts" as the indigenous peoples of western Europe

i look at 'The Celts' as a language group and/or a cultural group, rather than a 'people'. I mean, we all drink wine and Coca Cola, plus all of us here speak and write English - I bet that on the same grounds, a thousand years from now some linguist could write a phd about "The English, peopling the world 1600-3000 AD"or something.

[Conal]

I am English/British and have no insecurity whatsoever. My family also happens to have Welsh blood in it (and other groupings too).

I am pleased to hear it and expect this is the case with many Englishmen, however, this is not difinative as far as proving that there is no prejudice in other English (maybe a significant number) academics who take the trouble to write regarding the matter is it?

Isn't it right that we try to get to the real truth of any historic issue?

It is right provided one does not set up Aunt Sally's to further the arguements for a deconstruction. I've had it said to me directly, as a serious arguement, that no ancient peoples called themselves Celtic. When pointed to the opening lines of De Bello Gallica apparently Julius Ceasar may have got it wrong. Certainily he could have but that arguement then applies to all ancient writers ... where do you stop?

Oppenheimer's contentions regarding language in south east England is an example of trying too hard to make matters fit an argument.

Oh and BTW - as much as I admire (and consult the words of) Herotodos; the father of history - he did get mixed up as to where the source of the Danube was, which is why there was so much debate as to whether the homeland of these Keltoi was in the Swiss/Austrian area - or around the Pyrenees.

Bless him :?

[authun]

I've had it said to me directly, as a serious arguement, that no ancient peoples called themselves Celtic. When pointed to the opening lines of De Bello Gallica apparently Julius Ceasar may have got it wrong.

He may have just got the wrong end of the stick. Koch's statement "the Greeks and Romans never (so far as we know) applied the label Keltoi or Galli to the inhabitants of Ireland or Britain and that the pre modern Gaels and Britons never applied such a label to themselves (again, so far as we know)" more accurately describes the situation.

That's not to say they didn't speak a celtic language, it is just an observation that they didn't use the term 'celtic'. It's not an unusual situation either. Many emic labels differ from their etic counterparts. The West Saxons didn't call themselves Saxon but called themselves Gewissae for example. But Koch's point about the etic labelling is interesting because it doesn't use the term Celtic either. Bede writes of Scots, Britons, Picts and English. A quick glance through Bosworth Toller reveals the old english names for the Ireland and the Irish:

Íra-land, es ; n. Land of the Irish, Ireland
Íras; pl. The Irish [v. Íra-land]
betwux Ýrum and Scottum, among the Irish and Scotch,

Dyflen sécean eft Íraland [Yraland, hira land],
"But the people of Ireland are often spoken of as Scottas"

and we get different varieties of Hibernia;
Ybernian, Scottas, Hibernia, Igbernia.

Although they speak a celtic language, no one seems to be using the term 'celtic'. It may simply be that any celtic speaking group who created a strong enough identity became better known by that identity and the 'celtic' term declined.

best
authun

[Conal]

He wasn't just refering to Britain but all Iron Age Europeans.

I personally do not believe that anyone outside the area JC says called themselves Celts used this term for themselves... the Belgic tribes seem not to have so no reason to think the population of Ireland & Britain would either. However it still does not negate the possibilty of grouping by linguistic terms Celtic/Gallic based on 1st contact with some folks who called themselves Celts. If the Belgics had got to the Greeks 1st then we have Belgic lanuages instead of Celtic.

I see no similar arguments against Samnium & Samnites when they are attested to have used the Oscan language and called their country Safinim and Safineis for themselves.

[Ghostmojo]

That is an incredibly simplistic view of the issue. It is also in my view quite misplaced.

Well, it's not just my view, but also that of some of the top Celticists working today. It is a fact that the loudest whinging about the Celts these days comes from English - and mainly English archaeologists (and don't accuse me for prejudice, as I am part English).

Hang on a sec cagwinn - lets' ease off the English a little shall we? Whilst we have our share of revisionists, bigots, xenophobes and every other type of less desirable social component; by and large the English are a pretty tolerant bunch - even upon provacation. Out of the nationalities that make up the UK I would go further (as a generalisation) in suggesting they are perhaps the most accommodating. I know of plenty of Welsh, Scots and Irish people who have made their homes in various parts of England and been welcomed. No problem - no issue. I also know of other examples of English people finding a less than welcome response in the reverse situation. The English are less nationalistic. Having said that of course, new expressions of nationalism (which I don't particularly favour) north and sometimes west of the border have of course made the English start to reassess their own identity. But it is precisely here that we become unstuck - for all of the nationalities - because none of them is pure or so very different. It is a form of backward looking tribalism that draws heavily on myth and aspiration and lightly upon truth and history.

So I don't believe the English are whinging about this at all. I think there is a genuine reassessment going on regarding a subject that has been neglected for a very long time. Nature abhorring a vacuum as it does, allowed all sorts of misconceptions and half-baked truths to flood into academic research from the 1700s onwards. That was at the dawn of the British imperial age. Now in the post-empire period we can start to look into all of this once again, with better tools and more open minds - and with a lot less agendas and political points to score. I'm completely open to discovering a more realistic truth (if that is possible) but I believe many who are attracted to celticism are not. For a very long time there has been the growth of this pseudo-mythical celtic past which is very attractive with its swirly, knotted artistic patterns, folk music and legends of the bards etc. It has got to the point now where almost all folk music heard in the UK is immediately dubbed 'celtic' - when much of it is not. The word Celtic has become a catch-all term. What does it really mean? I am definitely open to other's contributions here and also happy to learn and be corrected but can I ask some questions?

When was the term Celtic first used in connection to any people/s within the British Isles?

When do we first have any reference to any 'native' (and I use that word carefully) people considering themselves to be - or calling themselves Celtic?

... to Herodotus, both the Pyrenees and the source of the Danube are in the land of the Celts ...

Which is a point I mentioned a while back - he appears to have confused the two. He does not so much think both places are within their lands, as he mixes up the Danube source as actually being in the Pyrenees which is is clearly not.

[Ghostmojo]

whether we can legitimately talk about "The Celts" as the indigenous peoples of western Europe

i look at 'The Celts' as a language group and/or a cultural group, rather than a 'people'. I mean, we all drink wine and Coca Cola, plus all of us here speak and write English - I bet that on the same grounds, a thousand years from now some linguist could write a phd about "The English, peopling the world 1600-3000 AD"or something.

Exactly.

Of more immediate comparison would be a Martian landing on earth in let's say Seattle, and visiting a Starbucks and a MacDonalds. He then proceeds to do the same in Milton Keynes, Madrid, Moscow and Tokyo. Would he view the inhabitants of these people as the same group - or would he just see it as typical exporting and importing of dominant cultures that has occurred throughout (Terran) history?

And having sampled their delights would he desire the same thing to happen on his planet or actively combat it? :lol:

The application of the term Celtic is interesting - as to whether it is a modern construct - or whether there is still any connection between these Keltoi/Celtae of ancient Europe and some of the populations of modern Europe (and elsewhere). I accept it is sticking my neck out here, but I remember listening to the argument of an Irish scholar in a Dublin museum (On TV BTW) who refuted the celtic nature of his own people! Now, was he simply treacherous, barking mad, or possibly open-minded enough to have accepted that perhaps the greatest myth is the notion that anybody in the British Isles was ever Celtic in the first place? If a reasonable, cultured and educated Irishman can make such a proposition, in the centre of what many latter-day Celts would consider to be the epi-centre of Celticness - can we not at least wonder if he is correct?

I have the feeling that the Celts certainly existed as a name for a group or groups of western European peoples, which may have covered quite a broad territorial footprint - but here's the thing; the British Isles may well have been completely untouched by all of this (apart from cultural importation). That doesn't mean the peoples of ancient Britain and Ireland weren't special, didn't have their own cultures, languages etc. - but it does mean we might have mistakenly applied the term Celt to them ...

[Conal]

but it does mean we might have mistakenly applied the term Celt to them ...

That of course depends on what you mean by Celt(ic). If it relates to Language & Culture then one could become a Celt as one could become a Roman if the language & culture was adopted especiallly if wholesale.

As to the Irish academic ... there's always one wanting to stand out from the crowd. Academics have egos too!

It's not the general English who are getting shirty (though in my view we are general a shirty bunch) its a clique of English academics.

the British Isles may well have been completely untouched by all of this (apart from cultural importation).

You will need to deconstruct Ceasar as he has given the impression that the "Druid" class met in central France to bear judgement and the like on the tribes there of, and that the place of origin of these types was Britain and that young men were sent there to study. Certainly the report of the destruction of the colony at Anglesea would need to be deconstructed as well. In fact you will need to discredit Tacitus, Cicero and quite a few others too.

I'm reading a mad book at the moment, just started it again ( i started it some time a go but stopped as I was not in the right frame of mind previously) which contends a large Belgic type settlement/oppida in Ireland. It's a self published thing so should be interesting.

[authun]

However it still does not negate the possibilty of grouping by linguistic terms Celtic/Gallic based on 1st contact with some folks who called themselves Celts.

I agree that use of the term to describe a linguistic grouping is valuable as it gives us the possibility to better understand how the languages were either transmitted or carried. The archeology however does not support a homogeneous culture throughout the celtic speaking world and the distribution of some artefacts are attested in, for example, the germanic speaking world as well as in the celtic speaking world. It would serve no useful purpose in such instances to simply extend the boundaries of the celtic speaking world purely on the basis of artefact evidence without exploring other possible explantions.

If the Belgics had got to the Greeks 1st then we have Belgic lanuages instead of Celtic.

As indeed did happen when the germanic speaking world encountered the celtic speaking Volcae and, if the etymological argument is correct, termed all celtic speaking groups 'walhs', a term which endures in the Canton of Valais, Das Welshland (the Suisse Romande), Wallonia and Wales.

best
authun

[Ghostmojo]

I don't really hold any hard and fast views about any of this, but also don't necessarily buy into the accepted and prevailing wisdoms, which I suppose is what being a sceptic is all about.

I have been reading John Haywood's The Historical Atlas of the Celtic World recently, in which he quite fairly tries to incorporate some of the modern reassessment thinking to inform his views, and it struck me that single word he uses most (it litters the volume) when commenting upon the identity, practices and movements of these ancient Celts is ... probably.

He also draws the clear distinction between the Continental [size=85:3r7oiem7](mainland European)[/size] Celts and the Atlantic [size=85:3r7oiem7](British, later Breton & Irish)[/size] Celts, specifically in mentioning that the latter never ever, referred to themselves as Celts during the historic period. Both the Romans observing, and these Britons & Hibernians themselves, viewed them as different from their neighbouring mainlanders. Culturally and linguistically connected yes (probably), but a distinctly different people/s. The denotation is therefore entirely modern, as is the suggestion that the remnant tongues of the so-called Celtic fringes are in fact Celtic languages. How could we compare them to others that no longer exist or we have no record of - just the proposition that Gaelic, Welsh etc are all that survives of once common tongues from right across western Europe from the Bay of Biscay to the Black Sea? The fact that the Bretons settled in Brittany from Britain and not the other way around, suggests to me that their language may be rooted in the British Isles only. Other supposed Celtic groups such as the Galicians don't even speak a (supposed) Celtic tongue at all.

He also takes a very enlightened, and to me, very reasonable view of the modern notion of what being a Celt is all about. The problem is I think it is difficult to view this subject without modern romantic acquisitions/inventions getting in the way. The term these days is both so politically/socially/culturally/nationistically/nostalgically loaded on the one hand and so extremely, widely generic on the other, as to find a central meeting place very difficult.

We know history is written by the victors and bought into by the willing, and in the modern age when information can so easily be propagated - it is often nigh on impossible to get the genie back into the bottle. Sorting out truth from myth, and investigation from propaganda is the devil's own job.

[authun]

The denotation is therefore entirely modern, as is the suggestion that the remnant tongues of the so-called Celtic fringes are in fact Celtic languages. How could we compare them to others that no longer exist or we have no record of - just the proposition that Gaelic, Welsh etc are all that survives of once common tongues from right across western Europe from the Bay of Biscay to the Black Sea? The fact that the Bretons settled in Brittany from Britain and not the other way around, suggests to me that their language may be rooted in the British Isles only. Other supposed Celtic groups such as the Galicians don't even speak a (supposed) Celtic tongue at all.

The linguistic theory of the development of the indo european language groups is supported by inscriptions and fragments of texts which are recognised as 'celtic', eg. Lepontic in the Golasecca culture from 6th cent. BC and Celt-Iberian from the 2nd cent. BC. The theory is that a branch of PIE entered europe via the Danube and on this branch proto celtic and proto italic developed, the italic language group being closer to the celtic language group than any other IE language, eg. Germanic or Slavic etc. Old Welsh and Old Irish sit at the end of this branch. Enough fragments exist for linguists to posit that Leptontic and Celt Iberian were similar to Gaulish. Each of these was subject to its own development and we don't know when they entered their respective areas or if they developed before or after they entered those areas. There is no reason to suppose that they could all understand each other so it is not a common celtic language, rather a group of celtic languages that developed from the same branch. To date, Lepontic was thought to be the oldest celtic language but recently Koch has proposed that the Tartessian scripts, from the 7th cent. BC are celtic.

Galicia in NW Iberia and the celtic inscriptions towards the Black Sea are different to what is seen as the expansion of celtic languages. The place name evidence in Galicia. eg. Citania de Briteiros, points to brythonic migrations there, they are not a development from Celt Iberian. Celts near the Black Sea appear to have been a migration of Central European Celtic speakers into that region, ie taking the language there rather than being developed there.

best
authun