THE CELTS

When talking about the Celts, people still wonder a lot of things that

have an explanation in the mysterious times of prehistory. During these

times the Celts have developed their culture and their civilization and they

have evolved with the centuries, expanding their horizons.

After the Ice Age, the European continent became the shelter for a lot

of migratory populations who started to set up villages near watercourses so

that they could back up their agrarian productivity. All these migratory

populations have had a great influence on developing the agrarian society

from prehistoric times. In this context, the Celts have a special role, a role

which is proved by the archaeological discoveries that reveal a fascinating

world.

The Neolithic people established in the Northern and Central Europe

have evolved gradually, according to their necessities and their capacities.

At first, the stone axe was their major tool, but the migrations from today’s

Russia have improved their work instruments by changing the stone with the

metals as a raw material. The metal was widely used in Eastern Europe,

where the people were in a superior phase of evolution comparing to the

migratory populations in Europe. Another archaeological proof of the

originality of these past civilizations is the clay pot patterned with ropes. All

these tools date back from a period when the nomads have founded their

cultures.

The Celts were a group of peoples that occupied lands stretching from

the British Isles to Gallatia. The Celts had many dealings with other cultures

that bordered the lands occupied by these peoples, and even though there is

no written record of the Celts stemming from their own documents, we can

piece together a fair picture of them from archeological evidence as well as

historical accounts from other cultures.

What we do know is that the people we call Celts gradually infiltrated

Britain over the course of the centuries between about 500 and 100 B.C.

There was probably never an organized Celtic invasion; for one thing the

Celts were so fragmented and given to fighting among themselves that the

idea of a concerted invasion would have been ludicrous.

The Celts were a group of peoples loosely tied by similar language,

religion, and cultural expression. They were not centrally governed, and

quite as happy to fight each other as any non-Celt. They were warriors,

living for the glories of battle and plunder. They were also the people who

brought iron working to the British Isles.

The first historical recorded encounter of a people displaying the

cultural traits associated with the Celts comes from northern Italy around

400 BC, when a previously unkown group of barbarians came down from

the Alps and displaced the Etruscans from the fertile Po valley, a

displacment that helped to push the Etruscans from history's limelight. The

next encounter with the Celts came with the still young Roman Empire,

directly to the south of the Po. The Romans in fact had sent three envoys to

the beseiged Etruscans to study this new force. We know from Livy's The

Early History of Rome that this first encounter with Rome was quite

civilized.

Although there are several archaeological discoveries about the lives

of these populations, the feature that can divide these civilizations is related

to death and their funeral rituals. In 1500 before Christ most of the

populations in Europe used to bury the dead in common or separate tumuli.

Such tombs were found in Great Britain as well. ‘The Tumulous People’

called that way by the archaeologists were not the only ones who had special

funeral rituals. ‘The Urnfield Culture’ is based on the cremation of the

corpses the evidences of this culture were found in Poland, Bohemia and

Saxony.

From what we know of the Celts from Roman commentators, who

are, remember, witnesses with an axe to grind, they held many of their

religious ceremonies in woodland groves and near sacred water, such as

wells and springs. The Romans speak of human sacrifice as being a part of

Celtic religion. One thing we do know, the Celts revered human heads.

Celtic warriors would cut off the heads of their enemies in battle and

display them as trophies. They mounted heads in doorposts and hung them

from their belts. This might seem barbaric to us, but to the Celt the seat of

spiritual power was the head, so by taking the head of a vanquished foe they

were appropriating that power for themselves. It was a kind of bloody

religious observance.

The Iron Age is when we first find cemeteries of ordinary people’s

burials (in hole-in-the-ground graves) as opposed to the elaborate barrows of

the elite few that provide our main records of burials in earlier periods.

Starting with the year 800 before Christ the history of the Celts seems

to become a bit more clear because of the passionate work of an

archaeologist called Georg Ramsauer. In 1846 at Hallstatt in Austria the

specialists have found a huge prehistoric cemetery. The objects that were

found there proved that the Celts used the iron as a raw material for their

tools. Until the discovery of the ‘Hallstatt Culture’ the term ‘civilisation’

was applied especially to the greek and roman culture. In fact, the Greeks

and Romans mention a population from Central Europe, calling them

‘Keltoi’. This way the ‘Hallstatt Culture’ reflects the celtic civilization from

the IXth century before Christ to the VIIth century before Christ. However,

the next period of the Celts social development is discovered at the same

time when Ramsauer found the Hallstatt Culture. It is called ‘La Tene’ and it

reveals the beauty of the celtic culture.

The terms ‘Hallstatt’ and ‘La Tene’ became the main reference points

that indicate the evolution of the celtic culture. As a consequence of their

evolution, the Celts started to carry on several expeditions, conquering more

territories. They were known as redoubtable, fierce fighters who had no

respect for their opponents.

Despite their skillfulness and their originality, the Celts could not

manage to form an organized nation. They were grouped in tribes and big

families with lots of experience in wars because they were always defending

their proprieties and they could not obey one single leader.

The Celts have migrated to Great Britain during several centuries,

representing two thirds of the existent population which Julius Caesar tried

to describe in ‘De Bello Gallico’. The Celts from Great Britain have the

same traits and the same origins in the Hallstat and La Tene culture. It is

proved that the Celts have migrated here from France by the year 700 before

Christ, bringing here their customs and culture at the same time. However,

they have not made profit of their political potential, although their

fortification gave the romans many troubles.

While textbooks stress the descent of Europe from classical culture,

the face of Europe throughout most of the historical period was dominated

by a single cultural group, a powerful, culturally diverse group of peoples,

the Celts. By the start of the Middle Ages, the Celts had been struck on two

fronts by two very powerful cultures, Rome in the south, and the Germans,

who were derived from Celtic culture, from the north. Through the period of

classical Greece (corresponding to the La Têne culture in central Europe) to

first centuries AD, most of Europe was under the shadow of this culture

which, in its diverse forms, still represented a fairly unified culture.

This monolithic culture spread from Ireland to Asia Minor (the

Galatians of the New Testament). The Celts even sacked Rome in 390 BC

and successfully invaded and sacked several Greek cities in 280 BC. Though

the Celts were preliterate during most of the classical period, the Greeks and

Romans discuss them quite a bit, usually disfavorably.

From this great culture would arise the Germans (we think) and

many of the cultural forms, ideas, and values of medieval Europe. For not

only did medieval Europe look back to the Celtic world as a golden age of

Europe, they also lived with social structures and world views that

ultimately owe their origin to the Celts as well as to the Romans and Greeks.

The period of Celtic dominance in Europe began to unravel in the first

centuries AD, with the expansion of Rome, the migrations of the Germans,

and later the influx of an Asian immigrant population, the Huns. By the time

Rome fell to Gothic invaders, the Celts had been pushed west and north, to

England, Wales and Ireland and later to Scotland and the northern coast of

France.

Despite Julius Caesar’s attempts to attach Britain to the Roman

Empire, history admits the independence of the Celts.

Nicoleta Kotoi - Engleza - Franceza