Celts

This article is about the European people. For the tool, see celt (tool).

A Celtic cross.

The term Celts, pronounced /kɛlt/ in the singular, refers to any of a number of peoples in Europe using the Celtic languages, which form a branch of Indo-European languages, as well as others whose language is unknown but where associated cultural traits such as Celtic art are found in archaeological evidence. Historical theories were developed that these factors were indicative of a common origin, but later theories of culture spreading to differing indigenous peoples have recently been supported by some genetic studies.

Though the spread of the Roman empire led to continental Celts adopting Roman culture, the development of Celtic Christianity in Ireland and Britain brought an early medieval renaissance of Celtic art between 400 and 1200. Antiquarian interest from the 17th century led to the term Celt being extended, and rising nationalism brought Celtic revivals from the 19th century in areas where the use of Celtic languages had continued.

Today, "Celtic" is often used to describe the languages and respective cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and the French region of Brittany (see the Modern Celts article), but correctly corresponds to the Celtic language family - in which are still spoken: Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx (Goidelic languages) and Welsh, Breton and Cornish (Brythonic languages).

Only in the last two decades of the twentieth century did multidisciplinary studies come to bear upon the history of the Celts. Disciplines such as ancient history, palaeolinguistics, archaeology, history of art, anthropology, population genetics, history of religion, ethnology, mythology and folklore studies should all be taken into consideration and their findings compared one with another, without falling into the fallacies of what John Collis (2003) has termed the "continuous circular argument" (Lorrio and Zapatero).

Development of the term "Celt"

The first literary reference to the Celtic people, as keltoi is by the Greek historian Hecataeus in 517 BC. He locates the Keltoi tribe in Rhenania (West/Southwest Germany). According to Greek mythology, Celtus was the son of Heracles and Keltine, the daughter of Bretannus. Celtus became the primogenitor of Celts . In Latin Celta, in turn from Herodotus' word for the Gauls, Keltoi. The Romans used Celtae to refer to continental Gauls, but apparently not to Insular Celts, which were divided into Goidhels and Britons, and possibly other peoples.

The English word is modern, attested from 1707 in the writings of Edward Lhuyd whose work, along with that of other late 17th century scholars, brought academic attention to the languages and history of the original inhabitants of Great Britain. In the 18th century the interest in "primitivism" which led to the idea of the "noble savage" brought a wave of enthusiasm for all things "Celtic". The antiquarian William Stukeley pictured a race of "Ancient Britons" putting up the "Temples of the Ancient Celts" such as Stonehenge before he decided in 1733 to recast the Celts in his book as Druids. The Ossian fables written by James Macpherson and portrayed as ancient Scottish Gaelic language poems added to this romantic enthusiasm. The "Irish revival" came after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 as a conscious attempt to demonstrate an Irish national identity, and with its counterpart in other countries subsequently became the "Celtic revival".

Nowadays "Celt" is usually pronounced as /kɛlt/ and "Celtic" as /'kɛltɪk/ (in IPA) when referring to the ethnic group and its languages, while the pronunciation /'sɛltɪk/ remains in use mainly for certain sports teams (eg. the NBA team, Boston Celtics, and the SPL side, Celtic F.C., in Glasgow). (The pronunciation with /s/ reflects historical palatalization of the letter 'C' when it occurs before 'I' or 'E' in words of Latin origin; in the Classical era Latin 'C' was always pronounced as /k/. The modern pronunciation with /k/ is a reversion to the original, whereas the pronunciation with /s/ has not been reverted.) The word spelt as "Celtic" is (arguably) English, as the Latin was "Celticus" or "Celticum", the Welsh is "Celtaidd", and the Irish/Scottish Gaelic is "Ceilteach". By this argument, a pronunciation with /s/ should therefore be acceptable.

The term "Celt" or "Celtic" can be used in several senses: it can denote a group of peoples who speak or descend from speakers of Celtic languages; or the people of prehistoric and early historic Europe who share common cultural traits which are thought to have originated in the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. In contemporary terms, there are typically six nations defined as 'Celtic Nations'. To be defined as a Celtic nation, that nation must have ownership of a Celtic language. The first six are usually defined as Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany. Galicia is also considered a Celtic nation as gaelic language still survives in people and places names, while Asturias sometimes is considered to be modern Celtic nations based on the survival of Celtic traditions similar to the traditions of other Celtic nations, however, the Celtic language has not survived in either. England likewise retains some Celtic influences yet hasn't retained a Celtic language (even Cornwall became fully English speaking during the 18th century) and thus falls outside of categorisation as a Celtic nation. The Brythonic language of pre-Anglo Celtic speaking peoples influences dialects of some of its regions further from the south east, particularly those bordering Scotland and Wales and in the south west, the best known of which are Cumbric which was spoken from Strathclyde to Derbyshire as recently as the 11th century, and the language centred on Devon — both languages are under-going a modern revival. Other areas of Europe are associated with being Celtic as well, including France, which traces its roots to the Gauls. In Scotland, the Gaelic language traces at least some of its roots to migration and settlement by the Irish Dál Riata/Scotti. Due to the settlement of English speaking Angles in the lowlands, which — among other things — reduced the spread of the Gaelic language which was supplanting Brythonic in Scotland, Scots Gaelic survives only in the country's northern and western fringes in the area which comprised of the Scot kingdom of Dál Riata.

"Celts" in Britain

The use of the word 'Celtic' as a valid umbrella term for the pre-Roman peoples of Britain has been challenged by many writers — including Simon James, formerly of the British Museum. His book The Atlantic Celts - Ancient People Or Modern Invention? makes the point that the Romans never used the term 'Celtic' in reference to the peoples of the Atlantic archipelago, i.e. the British Isles and Ireland, and points out that the modern term "Celt" was coined as a useful umbrella term in the early 18th century to distinguish the non-English inhabitants of the archipelago when England united with Scotland in 1707 to create the Kingdom of Great Britain and the later union of Great Britain and Ireland as the United Kingdom in 1800. Nationalists in Scotland, Ireland and Wales looked for a way to differentiate themselves from England and assert their right to independence. James then argues that, despite the obvious linguistic connections, archaeology does not suggest a united Celtic culture and that the term is misleading, no more (or less) meaningful than 'Western European' would be today.

Miranda Green, author of Celtic Goddesses, describes archaeologists as finding "a certain homogeneity" in the traditions in the area of Celtic habitation including Britain and Ireland — She sees the inhabitants of the British Isles and Ireland as having become thoroughly Celticized by the time of the Roman arrival, mainly through spread of culture rather than a movement of people.

In his book Iron Age Britain, Barry Cunliffe concludes that "...there is no evidence in the British Isles to suggest that a population group of any size migrated from the continent in the first millennium BC...". Modern archaeological thought tends to disparage the idea of large population movements without facts to back them up, a caution which appears to be vindicated by some genetic studies. In other words, Celtic culture in the Atlantic Archipelago and continental Europe could have emerged through the peaceful convergence of local tribal cultures bound together by networks of trade and kinship — not by war and conquest. This type of peaceful convergence and cooperation is actually relatively common among tribal peoples; other well known examples of the phenomenon include the Six Nations of the Iroquois League and the Nuer of East Africa. The ancient Celts are thus best depicted as a loose and highly diverse collection of indigenous tribal societies bound together by trade, a common druidic religion, and similar political institutions — but each having its own local language and traditions.

Michael Morse in the conclusion of his book How the Celts came to Britain concedes that the concepts of a broad Celtic linguistic area and recognizably Celtic art have their uses, but argues that the term implies a greater unity than existed. Despite such problems he suggests that the term Celt is probably too deep-rooted to be replaced and — what is more important — it has the definition that we choose to give it. The problem is that the wider public reads into the term quite anachronistic concepts of ethnic unity that no one on either side in the academic debate holds.

Population genetics

With the information gathered recently by population geneticists, it is becoming increasingly clear that the old idea of large-scale replacement by newer invaders is sometimes a misleading concept. The Celtic ethnicity debate took off at a particularly early stage in population genetic studies which is a science still in its very early stages of development. Taking this into account along with the fact that these limited studies are dealing only with particular sections of DNA (eg. MtDNA, Y chromosome; no studies can currently be carried out regarding X chromosome inheritance), the results can not be considered conclusive in any way.

In his book Neanderthal, archaeologist Douglas Palmer refers to genetic research conducted across Europe, then states the original modern genetic group in Europe arrived between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago with the spread of farming, displacing the earlier hunter gatherer populations. Such displacement occurred by population explosion, since farming is capable of supporting up to 60 times greater population than the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the same area:

"None of Europe's subsequent historic upheavals - even catastrophic wars and famines - has seriously dented the old pattern set by the influx of farmers. The Goths, Huns and Romans have come and gone without any significant impact on the ancient gene map of Europe".

The Y-chromosomes of populations of the so called Celtic countries have been found in one study to primarily belong to haplogroup R1B, which makes them descendants partially of the first people to migrate into north-western Europe after the last major ice age. According to the most recently published studies of European haplogroups, around half of the current male population of that portion of Eurasia is a descendant of the R1B haplogroup.

Origins and geographical distribution

The green area suggests a possible extent of (proto-)Celtic influence around 1000 BC. The orange area shows the region of birth of the La Tène style. The red area indicates an idea of the possible region of Celtic influence around 400 BC.

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 (see Kurgan). However, as the Celts enter history from around 600 BC, they are already split into several languages groups, and spread over much of Central Europe, the Iberian peninsula, Ireland and Britain, and studies now suggest that some of the Celtic peoples - including the ancestors of all the modern Celtic nations - had a largely pre-Celtic genetic ancestry, shared with the Basque people and possibly going back to the Palaeolithic.

Some scholars think that the Urnfield culture 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 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 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 Britain and to Iberia 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 if they reflect two separate waves of migration is disputed. The La Tène culture, in any case, can be associated with the Gauls, but it is entirely too late for a candidate for the Proto-Celtic culture.

The Hallstatt culture was succeeded by the La Tène culture, and during the final stages of the Iron Age gradually transformed into the explicitly Celtic culture of early historical times. The La Tène culture was distributed around the upper reaches of the Danube, Switzerland, Austria, southern and central Germany, northern regions of Italy, eastern France, Bohemia and Moravia, and parts of Hungary. The technologies, decorative practices and metal-working styles of the La Tène were to be very influential on the continental Celts. The La Tène style was highly derivative from the Greek, Etruscan and Scythian decorative styles with whom the La Tène settlers frequently traded.

Additional forays into Greece and central Italy during the historical period did not result in settlement, though the same movement that brought Celtic invaders to Greece pushed on through to Anatolia, where they settled as the Galatians.

As there is no archaeological evidence for large scale invasions in some of the other areas, one current school of thought holds that Celtic language and culture spread to those areas by contact rather than invasion. However, the Celtic invasions of Italy, Greece, and western Anatolia are well documented in Greek and Latin history. Examine the Map of Celtic Landsfor more information.

Celts in Ireland and Britain

The indigenous populations of Britain and Ireland today may be primarily descended from the ancient peoples that have long inhabited these lands, before the coming of Celtic and later Germanic peoples, language and culture. As to the original culture and language, little is known but remnants may remain in the naming of some geographical features, such as the rivers Clyde, Tamar, Thames and Tyne, whose etymology is unclear but may certainly derive from a pre-Celtic substrate. By the Roman period, however, most of the inhabitants of the isles of Ireland and Great Britain (the ancient Britons) 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. 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. What languages were spoken by the peoples Ireland and Britain before the arrival of the Celts is unknown.

Celtic dagger found in Britain.

Later research indicated that culture had developed gradually and continuously, and in Ireland little archaeological evidence was found for large intrusive groups of Celtic immigrants, suggesting to historians such as Colin Renfrew that the native late Bronze Age inhabitants gradually absorbed European Celtic influences and language. The very few continental La Tène culture style objects which had been found in Ireland could have been imports, or the possessions of a few rich immigrants, further supporting this theory of cultural exchange rather than migration. Julius Caesar had written 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 and it was suggested that there might have been only a handful of élite Belgae in Britain. In the 1970s this model was taken to an extreme, popularised 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 these 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. The study by Cristian 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 and are similar to the genes of the Basque people, who speak a non-Indo-European language. This similarity supported earlier findings in suggesting a largely 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.

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, in a manner similar to how Irish possibly spread over the west of Scotland. 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 and the Orkney and Shetland Islands are those populations with the least traces of ancient (Celtic) British continuation .

For obvious reasons the question of whether or not England originated with a Genocide against the indigenous, culturally Celtic, population is highly controversial and has clear political overtones - particularly with the contemporary emergence of strong Nationalist movements in Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall and the ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland.

Celts in Iberia

Main article: Celtiberians.

Traditional scholarship surrounding the Celts virtually ignored the Iberian Peninsula, since material culture relatable to the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures that have defined Iron Age Celts was rare in Iberia, and did not provide a cultural scenario that could easily be linked to that of Central Europe. There were two main archaeological and cultural groups. On the one hand were the Hispano-Celtic or Iberian-Proto-Celtic group along the Iberian Atlantic shores, made up of the Lusitanian tribes (in Portugal and the Celtic region that Strabo called Celtica in the southwest including the Algarve), the Vettones, Vacceani and Germani tribes (of central west Spain), and the Artabric, Asturian and Cantabrian tribes of the Castrejo culture of north and northwest Spain); On the other hand, the Celtiberian group of central Spain and the upper Ebro valley, which present special, local features. The origins of the Celtiberians might provide a key to unlocking the Celticization process in the rest of the Peninsula.

Roman influence

At the dawn of history in Europe, the Celts in present-day France were known as Gauls. Their descendants were described by Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars. There was also an early Celtic presence in northern Italy. Other Celtic tribes invaded Italy, establishing there a city they called Mediolanum (modern Milan) and sacking Rome itself in 390 BC following the Battle of the Allia. A century later the defeat of the combined Samnite, Celtic and Etruscan alliance by the Romans in the Third Samnite War sounded the end of the Celtic domination in Europe, but it was not until 192 BC that the Roman armies conquered the last remaining independent Celtic kingdoms in Italy.

Under Caesar the Romans conquered Celtic Gaul, and from Claudius onward the Roman empire absorbed parts of the Celtic British Isles. Roman local government of these regions closely mirrored pre-Roman 'tribal' boundaries, and archaeological finds suggest native involvement in local government. Latin was the official language of these regions after the conquests.

The native peoples under Roman rule became Romanized and keen to adopt Roman ways. Celtic art had already incorporated classical influences, and surviving Gallo-Roman pieces interpret classical subjects or keep faith with old traditions despite a Roman overlay.

Romanization

The Roman occupation of Gaul, and to a lesser extent of Britain, led to Roman-Celtic syncretism, see Roman Gaul, Roman Britain. In the case of Gaul, this eventually resulted in complete Romanization and the extinction of the Gaulish language, see Gallo-Roman culture.

Celtic Christianity

While the regions under Roman rule adopted Christianity along with the rest of the Roman empire, unconquered areas of Scotland and Ireland moved from Celtic polytheism to Celtic Christianity which was a major source of missionary work in other parts of Britain and central Europe, see Hiberno-Scottish mission. This brought the early medieval renaissance of Celtic art between 390 and 1200, developing many of the styles now thought of as typically Celtic, and found through much of Ireland and Britain, including the north-east and far north of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland Islands. This was brought to an end by Roman Catholic and Norman influence, though the Celtic languages and some minor influences of the art continued.

Celts pushed west by Germanic migration

Celts were pushed westwards by successive waves of Germanic invaders, perhaps themselves at times pressured by Huns and Scythians or simply population pressures in their homeland of Scandinavia and Northern Germany. With the fall of the Roman Empire the Celts of Gaul, Iberia and Britannia were "conquered" by tribes speaking Germanic languages.

Elsewhere, the Celtic populations were assimilated by others, leaving behind them only a legend and a number of place names such as Bohemia, after the Boii tribe which once lived there, or the Kingdom of Belgium, after the Belgae, a mixed Celtic-Germanic tribe of Northern Gaul and south-eastern England. Their mythology has been absorbed into the folklore of half a dozen other countries. For instance, the famous Medieval English Arthurian tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is almost certainly partially derived from the medieval Irish text Fled Bricrend (The Feast of Bricriu).

Argument rages in the academic world as to whether or not the Celts in England were mostly wiped out/pushed west as the lack of evidence for influence of the Celts on Anglo-Saxon society suggests. Many historians now argue that the Teuton migration was smaller than previously believed or may have consisted merely of a social elite and that the genocide was cultural rather than physical due to such relatively few numbers of Anglo-Saxons mixing with the larger native population. A recent DNA study on Y-chromosome inheritance has suggested that the population of England maintains a predominantly ancient British element. The general indigenous population of Yorkshire, East Anglia and the Orkney and Shetland Islands are those populations with the least traces of ancient British paternal continuation . Ironically, it may be Viking genetic influence and not Anglo-Saxon which has had a more profound impact on paternal British bloodlines, or it could very well have been a combination of both groups.

Celtic social system and arts

The pre-Christian Celts had a well-organized social structure, based on class and kinship, with the religion we call Celtic polytheism. Elected Kings led the tribes, and society was divided into three groups: a warrior aristocracy; an intellectual class including druids, poets, and jurists; and everyone else. Women participated both in warfare and in kingship, and all the offices of high and low kings were filled by election under the system of tanistry, both factors which would confuse Norman writers expecting the feudal principle of primogeniture where the succession goes to the first born son. Little is known of family structure, but Athenaeus in his Deipnosophists, 13.603, claims that "the Celts, in spite of the fact that their women are very beautiful, prefer boys as sexual partners. There are some of them who will regularly go to bed – on those animal skins of theirs – with a pair of lovers", implying a woman and a boy. Age-structured homosexuality was common in pre-Christian European cultures and accepted as normal by the Romans and the Greeks. It would be wrong to blindly accept this as truth; as the Greeks had a very limited view on Celtic society. Unfortunately, the Celts didn't write for themselves and we have only this to go by.

Celtic societies were organised around warfare, but this seems to have been more of a sport focussed on raids and hunting rather than organised territorial conquest, drawing obvious comparisons to warfare among Native Americans prior to European contact. This was the age of hillforts and duns, but there was apparently no urbanization.

There is strong archeological evidence to suggest that the pre-Roman Celtic nations were tied into a network of overland trade routes that spanned Eurasia from Ireland to China. Celtic traders were also in contact with the Phoenicians: gold works made in Pre-Roman Ireland have been unearthed in archeological digs in Palestine, and trade routes between the Celtic nations and Palestine date back to at least 1600 BC.

Local trade was largely in the form of barter, but as with most tribal societies they probably had a reciprocal economy in which goods and other services are not exchanged, but are given on the basis of mutual relationships and the obligations of kinship. Though they had a written language, the Ogham script, it was only used for ceremonial purposes and they produced little in the way of literary output. Instead, Celtic peoples preferred the oral Bardic tradition. The oldest recorded rhyming poetry in the world is of Irish origin and is a transcription of a much older epic poem, leading some scholars to claim that the Celts invented Rhyme. They were highly skilled in visual arts and Celtic art produced a great deal of intricate and beautiful metalwork, examples of which have been preserved by their distinctive burial rites.

In some regards the Atlantic Celts were conservative, for example they still used chariots in combat long after they had been reduced to ceremonial roles by the Greeks and Romans, though when faced with the Romans in Britain, their chariot tactics defeated the invasion attempted by Julius Caesar.

Celtic religious patterns

Main article: Celtic polytheism

Although Celtic gods varied from region to region and tribe to tribe, the Celtic religion had some patterns. For example like Mediterranean cultures most early Celts worshipped in sacred groves. This was once postulated to have occurred because of Celts trading with Mediterranean cultures; however, evidence from Hallstatt era finds show that the earliest Celts practiced this before such trade took place. More reasonably, it is a byproduct of most primitive religion to worship in such a way. However, La Tène Celts also built temples of varying size and shape, though they still usually maintained sacred trees, or votive pools. Worship was, in this way, deferred to temples, when they were available. Numerous temples were converted by the Romans, and with little difficulty; the design was rather similar to Roman temples, as they were both highly influenced by the Greeks, architecturally speaking.

Their druid positions vary; a druid is not always a priest. Druids are any members of a Celtic society who had what we would view today as a college education. The most educated druids were usually doctors, priests, and heralds, as these occupations required the most memorization and skill for their practices. Priests from this class were in charge of a great deal of religious festivals, as well as organizing the calendar; a daunting task as the Celtic calendar is incredibly accurate, but required manual correction about every 40 years, meaning lengthy mathematic discourse.

Druids also carried out sacrifices of crops, animals, and during specific festivals, humans. In a Celtic society, people were not executed for crimes, except during these festivals. Such executions varied, depending on what god the execution was dedicated to. Among the most famous is the human sacrifices practiced in the course of Essus worship. Essus was, more or less, a benevolent law god to many Celts, particularly Gauls. However, Essus worship also intoned a sense of merciless behavior toward repeated criminals, rapists, traitors, and other societal dregs. The offender, if found guilty, would be taken to the temple of Essus, where an oak would be growing through an opening in the temple roof. His stomach would be cut open, and he would be hung from an oak branch.

The Celts' gods were often named after natural things. For example the source of rivers would often have their own goddesses, though rarely many gods. Another theme with Celt gods were triple deities; not only goddesses, but numerous gods. For example the Mothers of Britain, or Cromm Cruach's slovenly, deific, and humanistic forms. The main deities of Celtic religion, contrary to much misconception, were usually male. The world in some remaining myths is often depicted as having been forged by a god with a hammer, such as Dagda or Sucellos, who then poured all life from a magic cauldron or cup; a source of pre-Christian 'Holy Grail' myths in Celtic societies.

While deities varied, several constant deities or demigods existed over a wide area. A great example is Lugos, a heroic sun god from Gaul and the southern, Gallic parts of Britain. He is also known as Lugh (in Ireland), Lleu (in Wales), and Lug (among Celtiberians, who were not culturally true Celts). Early depictions of him exist as early as the Hallstatt era, suggesting him as one of the longest existing gods of Celtic religion. Similar is the horse and fertility goddess, Epona, who was also worshipped by the Romans when they came to rule Gaul. She also seems to have existed from the early era. Finally, there is Sucellos, who is argued by some to have been the 'creator of the universe' in some Celtic religions. He is party to Dagda of Ireland, and was worshipped over an enormous area, including by non-Celtic peoples such as the Lusitani. He was the patron god of the Ordovices tribe of Britain, and was built up by the Arverni and their allies to replace the druidic god Cernunnos, as the Gallic druids were allies of their enemies in the rule for Gaul; the Aedui.

Other religious practices also existed; Celts seem to have universally removed body hair. Some postulate this as religious, but was more realistically part of the Celtic propensity for cleanliness. Body hair kept dirt close to the body, and Celts were an extremely clean people, so this was unacceptable. However, Celts also took heads from dead enemies. This was definitely a religious practice in origin. However, even post-Christian Gaels continued this practice into the middle ages; some Irish even took to scalping the heads that they took, so they could braid the scalp through rings on their weapons. The religious connotations by that point were slim, but it does imply that taking heads had incredible cultural importance to have persisted so long after the religious background had been removed. To our understanding, Celts believed the soul resided in the head, and that capturing a head meant that one captured the soul of an opponent, and that when a Celt died, the dead whom he had collected would serve him as slaves for eternity.

Celts as head-hunters

"Amongst the Celts the human head was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, centre of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world." - Paul Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art.

The Celtic cult of the severed head is documented not only in the many sculptured representations of severed heads in La Tène carvings, but in the surviving Celtic mythology, which is full of stories of the severed heads of heroes and the saints who carry their decapitated heads, right down to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight who picks up his own severed head after Gawain has struck it off, just as St. Denis carried his head to the top of Montmartre. Separated from the mundane body, although still alive, the animated head acquires the ability to see into the mythic realm.

Diodorus Siculus, in his 1st century History had this to say about Celtic head-hunting: "They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and carry off as booty, while striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold; thus displaying what is only a barbarous kind of magnanimity, for it is not a sign of nobility to refrain from selling the proofs of one's valour. It is rather true that it is bestial to continue one's hostility against a slain fellow man."

The Celts also believed that if they attached the head of their enemy to a pole or a fence near their house, the head would start crying when the enemy was near. Also if the enemy who's head was taken was important enough they would put it in a church and pray to it believing it had magic powers.

The Celtic headhunters venerated the image of the severed head as a continuing source of spiritual power. If the head is the seat of the soul, possessing the severed head of an enemy, honorably reaped in battle, added prestige to any warrior's reputation. According to tradition the buried head of a god or hero named Bran the Blessed protected Britain from invasion across the English Channel.

Names for Celts

The origin of the various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts is obscure and has been controversial. It appears that none of the terms recorded were ever used by Celtic speakers of themselves. In particular, there is no record of the term "Celt" being used in connection with the inhabitants of Ireland and Britain prior to the 19th century.

The name "Gauls"

English Gaul(s) and Latin Gallus or Galli might be from an originally Celtic ethnic or tribal name (perhaps borrowed into Latin during the early 400s BC, Celtic expansions into Italy). Its root may be the Common Celtic *galno, meaning "power" or "strength". Greek Galatai (see Galatia in Anatolia) seems to be based on the same root, borrowed directly from the same hypothetical Celtic source which gave us Galli (the suffix -atai is simply an ethnic name indicator).

The English form Gaul comes from the French Gaulle and Gaullois, which is the traditional rendering of Latin Gallia and Gallus, -icus respectively. However, the diphthong au points to a different origin, namely a Romance adaptation of the Germanic *Walha-. See Gaul#Name.

The word "Welsh"

The word Welsh is a Germanic word, yet it may ultimately have a Celtic source. It may be the result of an early borrowing (in the 4th century BC) of the Celtic tribal name Volcae into early Germanic (becoming the Proto-Germanic *Walh-, "foreigner of the Roman lands" and the suffixed form *Walhisk-). The Volcae were one of the Celtic peoples that for two centuries barred the southward expansion of the Germanic tribes in what is now central Germany on the line of the Hartz mountains and into Saxony and Silesia.

In the middle ages certain districts of what is now Germany were known as "Welschland" as opposed to "Deutschland", and the word is cognate with Vlach (see: Etymology of Vlach) and Walloon as well as the 'wall' in Cornwall. During the early Germanic period, the term seems to have been applied to the peasant population of the Roman Empire, most of whom were, in the areas immediately settled by the Germanic people, of ultimately Celtic origin.

The name "Celts"

English Celt(s), Latin Celtus pl. Celti (Celtae), Greek Κέλτης pl. Κέλτες seem to be based on a native Celtic ethnic name (singular *Celtos or *Celta with plurals *Celtoi or *Celta:s), of unsure etymology. The root would seem to be a Primitive Indo-European *kel- or (s)kel-, but there are several such roots of various meanings to choose from (*kel- "to be prominent", *kel- "to drive or set in motion", *kel- "to strike or cut" etc.)

See also

• Ancient Britain
• Celtic mythology
• Celtic language
• Celtic law
• Celtic art
• Celtic music
• Celtic knot
• Celtic High Crosses
• Celtic Christianity
• List of Celts
• List of Celtic tribes
• List of peoples of Gaul
• List of topics related to Cornwall
• Celtic nations
• Modern Celts
• Pronunciation of Celtic
• Pan-Celticism
• Celtic League (political organisation)
• Celtic Congress
• Anglo-Celtic
• Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Manx and Cumbric languages

Bibliography

• Collis, John. The Celts: Origins, Myths and Inventions. Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0752429132. Historiography of Celtic studies.
• Cunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0198150105.
• Cunliffe, Barry. Iron age Britain. London: Batsford, 2004. ISBN 0713488395
• Cunliffe, Barry.. The Celts: A Very Short Introduction. 2003
• Freeman, Philip Mitchell The earliest classical sources on the Celts: A linguistic and historical study. Diss. Harvard University, 1994. (link)
• Haywood Historical Atlas of the Celtic World. 2001
• James, Simon. The Atlantic Celts - Ancient People Or Modern Invention? Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, August 1999. ISBN 0299166740.
• James, Simon & Rigby, Valerie. Britain and the Celtic Iron Age. London: British Museum Press, 1997. ISBN 0714123064.
• Kruta, V., O. Frey, Barry Raftery and M. Szabo. eds. The Celts. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1991. ISBN 0847821935. A translation of Les Celtes: Histoire et Dictionnaire 2000.
• Laing, Lloyd. The Archaeology of Late Celtic Britain and Ireland c. 400--1200 AD. London: Methuen, 1975. ISBN 0416823602
• Laing, Lloyd and Jenifer Laing. Art of the Celts, London: Thames and Hudson, 1992 ISBN 0500202567
• MacKillop, James. A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0192801201
• McEvedy, Colin. The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History. New York: Penguin, 1985. ISBN 0140708324
• Mallory, J. P. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991. ISBN 0500276161.
• Powell, T. G. E. The Celts. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980. third ed. 1997. ISBN 0500272751.
• Raftery, Barry. Pagan Celtic Ireland: The Enigma of the Irish Iron Age. London: Thames & Hudson, 1994. ISBN 0500279837.
• Renfrew, Colin. Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN 0521386756.
• Rosser, ZH et al. "Y-chromosomal diversity in Europe is clinal and influenced primarily by geography, rather than by language.", Am J Hum Genet. 2000 Dec;67(6):1376-81.
• Ward-Perkins, Bryan. "Why Did The Anglo-Saxons Not Become More British?" in English Historical Review, June 2000.
• Weale, M., et al. "Y Chromosome Evidence For Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration." in Society For Molecular Biology And Evolution, 2002.

External links

• XIII. International Congress of Celtic Studies in Bonn
• Academic discussion with Barry Cunliffe on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time, February 21, 2002 (Realplayer streaming)
• "A Y Chromosome Census of the British Isles" (pdf)
• Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration
• BBC "English and Welsh are races apart"
• BBC "Descendents of the ancient Britons in genetic survey results for Rush and Castlerea, Ireland, 2003".
• The Long Duration of Genetic Ancestry: Multiple Genetic Marker Systems and Celtic Origins on the Atlantic Facade of Europe, October 2004
• Alberto J. Lorrio and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero, "The Celts in Iberia: An Overview" in e-Keltoi 6
  • See also other essays on Celtiberian topics in e-Keltoi 6