Talk:Picts

Why they are called Celtic people in opening article !

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/459553/Pict They are pre-Celtic people in Britannica and stick to that . Edelward (talk) 16:40, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

That's not what the EB article says. It says they may have been descended from pre-Celtic people. "Celtic" is a cultural/linguistic term... the Celts were people who spoke Celtic languages. The Picts spoke celtic languages ergo they were Celtic. Their ancestors may not have been.

It is generally accepted that Pictish was a P-Celtic language and the later Pictish Kingdoms would have been Gaelic speaking. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 11:29, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

It is only accepted by Scottish nationalists . According to Beda Pictish was not similar to Brittonic ! Older period Scottish writters like R. Burns attest the Scottish memories about the extreme hatred of Pict to Scotts and the genoside of Picts by Scotts .The Celtification of Picts is a very modern propaganda trick . Picts were people,originated from North Africa .Their conquest by Celts or the few loaned words borrowed trough trade does not make them Celtic . Before Romans met Picts they had met hundred tribes in Britain having tattoes that is why Romans have no reason to call Picts as the 'tattoed ones' . The name Pict meant -coloured ones- attesting Picts Northern African descend . Edelward (talk) 11:30, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Um, no. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 13:26, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

That is exactly the level of argument man does not need to care about, but to emphasize ,how low cultural arguments of Scottish nationalsts are how subjective and far from any attempt to search for truth they are . The encyclopedia Brittanica does not call Picts for Scotts and they possibly could not be having Matriarchy and being far older in Britain then occupant Celts . But such people given the right edit the article to their nationalistic vision content . This is time for appeal to kick them out of editing Edelward (talk) 14:14, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

There is universal academic consensus that the Picts were a celtic people. This has nothing whatsoever to do with nationalism (personally I am not a nationalist) and it predates Burns by several centuries (I'm unaware of what Burns has to say on the matter, but he was a poet, not a historian). North Africa? Are you joking?Catfish Jim and the soapdish 14:19, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Destruction of the Picts

Just saw a BBC documentary where the are historians claim Norwegians destroyed the picts via genocide. Perhaps it deserves a mention? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkqPEeHxA5I

80.213.85.19 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:54, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

That doesn't sound terribly plausible at all. TheXand (talk) 03:55, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. I think that there's something to be said for the idea that the Picts were culturally "destroyed" by a combination of the Norwegians from the northeast and the Dalradian Scots from the southwest but genocide? No. We'd need some strong sources for that claim. -- Derek Ross | Talk 22:26, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

It's a while since I saw Blood of the Vikings, but isn't the claim only made as regards Orkney & Shetland? Perhaps someone has Julian's book that accompanied the series ... Even then, the claim would really have to be phrased that they appear to have exterminated "the natives". As I recall, the only certain connection between Picts and the Northern Isles is that Bruide mac Bili "destroyed" Orkney. Angus McLellan (Talk) 22:54, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

This may be true - if you exclude archaeological evidence. The first chapter of William Thomson's (2008) The New History of Orkney is called "Pictish Orkney". Ben MacDui 09:35, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah! So what does Mr Thomson say about the genocide? Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:07, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

For this we must delve into chapter 3 "Place names and the Pictish-Norse Transition". I will scour its contents asap. In the meantime there are a few comments at Shetland#Prehistory that may be of interest. Ben MacDui 19:50, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Wisely, Mr T offers us insight into the varying views, and especially the contrast between the "Peace" and "War" theories of Norse colonisation and how they have gone in and out of fashion. He notes that the latter has recently been "restated in appropriately belligerent fashion by Ian Crawford, who was dismissive of the archaeological evidence from Buckquoy" and that "Brian Smith has argued the case for believing that the Norse settlers exterminated or expelled their Pictish predecessors". He draws attention to the savagery of the attacks on the Hebrides and considers it unlikely that Orkney fared differently, but also that genetic evidence places Orkney half-way between the Celtic and Norse worlds and that there is evidence of ongoing Christian life there after Norse colonisation. He concludes by saying "overwhelming Norse naming [of places] suggests a more complete break with the Pictish past than most archaeologists have hitherto been prepared to envisage." He also quotes F. T. Wainwright's (1962) Northern Isles who describes the Picts as "overwhelmed, politically, linguistically, culturally and socially" but Thomson goes on to note that this statement should not "disguise our ignorance of what actually happened" and might mean "widespread slaughter" or "an altogether more peaceful process". In short, we don't know. Ben MacDui 20:25, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

As far as the genetic evidence goes, Goodacre et al (2005, Heredity 95: 129) is probably the best source, which shows that Orkney and Shetland had Scandinavian family settlement (equal contribution from males and females, i.e. Y chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA, respectively) such that Orkney is 30% Scandinavian and 70% British while Shetland is 45% Scandinavian, 55% British. This is markedly different from the case in the Hebrides where there is unequal contributions from males and females (males = 22.5% Scandinavian, 77.5% British; females = 11% Scandinavian, 89% British), i.e. lone Scandinavian males settling and taking British female partners. I would tend to view the evidence from Orkney and Shetland as more consistent with settlement of an under-occupied land, rather than a hostile invasion. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 10:00, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

This is mentioned in the Shetland article. However, for a modern parallel, it is fairly clear that the absence of non-European placenames in Tasmania is a result of the fate of the Aboriginal Tasmanians. Ben MacDui 12:23, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

A revert I made a few weeks ago

I was just going through some of my reverts and came across this and thought I should leave a comment on the talk page. I made this revert http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Picts&diff=next&oldid=547741100 I'm not knowledgeable on this topic so it might be a good faith edit ... but to me seemed better fitted to the talk page than in the article. (I should have mentioned this in the edit summary but somehow didn't) Kap 7 (talk) 14:01, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Good faith edit I'm sure, but this is covered with sources in the history-section just below, so removing it was correct. Finn Rindahl (talk) 15:53, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks :) Kap 7 (talk) 01:28, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Remove unsupported matrilineal claim

On 16Sep2012, the anonymous user 83.104.51.74 (User talk:83.104.51.74) added a sentence at the end of the Society section of this Picts article, claiming that the Picts may have inherited land and property matrilineally, while his (or her) source reference did not support this claim. His edit summary was "Add a few words on matrilineality". So, his few words were his own unsupported addition. I liked his source ref, The Female Royal Line: matrilineal succession amongst the Picts?, which does support and discuss the possibility that the Picts' kingship was sometimes inherited matrilineally, and have added it to the Bede source reference in the previous section Kings and kingdoms, where it really belongs. I would be very happy if Wikipedia editors/users could find acceptable evidence supporting the above unsupported claim. Keep trying to help our WP readers, For7thGen (talk) 19:23, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

To quote James Fraser (Caledonia to Pictland, at page 53) "The well known matrilineal thesis was based on a naive over-reliance on Gaelic vernacular origin tales and the extant Pictish king-list, products of the first half of the ninth century (and later)." Fraser goes on to note that Bede does not say that the Picts practised matrilineal succession (or rather, he says it was used only when the issue was in doubt, as was also arguably the case in Northumbria and Francia). It's worth noting that by present reckoning there are only the two historic Pictish kings who are called X son of <mother> rather than X son of <father>, and that those two are precisely the kings to whom Bede refers when he says it was "observed among the Picts to this day". If we were writing this thirty years ago there would be a solid case for including matriliny. Today, not really. Angus McLellan (Talk) 23:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

... the Picts had matriarchy alone with Iberians ,which prooves they were non Indo-Europeans and as such no Celtic at all . 37.110.12.198 (talk) 15:28, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Archives

The talk page here was getting overly-long and difficult to navigate. Archiving was long-overdue. I've set up an archive at Talk:Picts/Archive 1. Most of the material removed there is getting on for 3+ years old. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 09:29, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Which is a nationalist take, I have posted against the nationalistic editors Scottification of Berberic Picts in January 2014 Edelward (talk) 23:07, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

You deleted objective contents because you want to obstruct the objective historic knowledge . If you are an objective person you should have left the editing of this article now-due to your corruptioning the files of historic , objective science and deleting the posts of people ,whose historic opinions you don't wish to hear ,since they contradict yours . 37.110.12.198 (talk) 00:13, 13 February 2014 (UTC)37.110.12.198 (talk) 00:15, 13 February 2014 Edelward (talk) 01:10, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Okay, first I am not a nationalist. Second, nothing has been deleted, everything is still extant at Talk:Picts/Archive 1. If there is a specific discussion you want brought back, just ask. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 16:32, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Gnaeus Julius Agricola

https://archive.org/stream/leabharnangleann00hend#page/n11/mode/2up

The Roman governor of Britain Gnaeus Julius Agricola has directly spoken of the Picts as of no Celtic Britons .

In his classification of people he called Caledonii(people of Northern Britain or the Picts ) as Germanicum - Germanics. While this notion strikes as worthless nowdays it still prooves that eye-witnesses have perceived the Picts as strictly non-Celtic . In fact the governor of Britain strongly insisted on Picts being non-Celts Edelward (talk) 00:48, 13 February 2014 The difference of Picts from Celts was also solidified by such known scientist as Ptolemy ,who gives names of independent Caledonian people distinct from British Celts .then the Gaulish panegeryst Eumenius spred the name Picti for all Caledonians to use by Latin writers . The cannibal savagery of some of tribes also can't possibly be related to Celts Edelward (talk) 01:26, 13 February 2014 Edelward (talk) 01:58, 13 February 2014 (UTC)