A jumble of classifications of Celtic

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

First off I will state that what I'm after here is reasoned debate on the issues I am raising. I have no nationalist axe to grind (unlike some of the proponents of the debate, something I will go into in a little more detail). So, it started from reading Stephen Oppenheimer's origins of the British, and also with reference to Barry Cunliffe's (and others) work on Celtic from the West. The more I look, the more reason I have to doubt the 'standard' understanding of Hallstat/La Tene being the centre of so-called Celtic culture. At least part of the problem here is in terms of a broad use of the term Celtic to incorporate on the one hand a spread of material cultures, and on the other the spread of Celtic languages, and the confusion thereof. Associated with this is a linking of the terms Gaul/Gala and Celtic, so that the two terms become synonymous. At the heart of all of this lies, imo, a simple Geographical error, on the part of Herodotus, which has been compounded by a rather romanticised (though honest) extrapolation of material finds into what amounts to a pan-European uber-culture.

There are so many questions to put that I hardly know where to start, so I'll start with the error. Herodotus (or perhaps some later scribe), for some reason, places the source of the Ister (Danube) somewhere in the Pyrennes. He then goes on to describe the location of the Keltoi as beyond the pillars of Heracles (the straights of Gibralter) , which is indeed where we find the Celtici. recent work by Koch on Tartessian seems to have it classified as a Celtic language, and therefore as possibly the earliest written Celtic language. Now what do we actually know about Celtic languages? The remaining Celtic languages (Gaelic/Goidillic, Welsh, Cornish and Bretton) all survive on the West Atlantic coastal areas. Hispano-Celtic languages were spoken most predominantly within the Western part of the Iberian peninsula, with older probably pre-Indo-European, Iberian languages along the Eastern seaboard (along with Greek and Punic insertions). I have little reason to doubt that Gaulish was a Celtic language, especially as Caesar tells us that those within 'real' Gaul (of which more later) refer to themselves as Keltoi. Now, this is quite important, if true. There seems to be an idea that the word Keltoi is a Greek term meaning 'foreigner', but we know from inscriptions found particularly in Spain, that Celtici/Celticos is used by the natives.

Now, in terms of using foreign terms to describe oneself, this brings up the matter of the various 'sub-tribes' of the Volcae. It seems to be accepted that Volcae is derived from proto-Germanic Walhaz (meaning foreigner, allegedly). This should be a rather jarring concept, and I have no idea why it isn't seen as such. Why would we believe that the Romans and Greeks were referring to 'Celtic' tribes by a Germanic term? If it is how the tribes themselves called themselves then why were they using what amounts to a pejorative, foreign term as a prefix for their tribal affiliation? How many other tribal affiliations describe themselves thus (ie a tribal affinity subject to an overarching affinity)? I can think only of the Aeromici. In terms of Volcae there is another possibilty, albeit one might have to stop assuming that they are Celtic speaking. There is a proto-Germanic route wolk, from which is derived the English folk and the German volk. So Volcae (the latinised form) would mean the people/nation/ tribe of. To me this makes more sense. This, however, goes against the prevailing concept of 'Celtic' material culture and Celtic language being synonymous and developed within the Danube are (Halstat, La Tene).

This is exacerbated by the extrapolation of Gaul being equivalent to Celtic. Again we have a surprisingly jarring proposition that Gala (and thence Gaul) is derived from the proto-Germanic route Walhaz. But, again, why would the Romans and Greeks be using a proto-Germanic term? A more convincing etymology is from the Greek Galact, or milk - referring to either the paleness of the people (which is something the Greeks make a point of) or, perhaps, from their reliance upon cattle and therefore dairy produce. Also, as a sidenote, Walhaz is a compound, from the root Wal, which means battle (hence Valhalla, Valkyrie), so Wal-Haz probably means those we battle - so not simply foreigner, but more like enemy.

Tacitus gives us a clue that the language spoken in Galatia was perhaps not German, though his words have been generally taken to inform that they did. He says that the Galatians still spoke a language that was similar to that of the Treveri. That seems pretty specific. Not in Gaul (more generally) but the Treveri in particular. The Treveri identified themselves as Germanic. Another tidbit from Tacitus informs us that the Aesti, who live to the East of the Suevi, share the manners and customs of the Suevi but speak a language more like that of the British. Tacitus spent a fair bit of time in Britain (particularly, I believe, Eburacon - ie North-East England); he was interested in languages and is one of the few early historians to associate languages in writing.

In terms of the languages spoken in Britain the role of Commius is quite telling also. It was he who was sent over to 'sound out' the various British tribes. It was he, also, who negotiated on Caesar's behalf with Cassivellaunus. As this was what amounted to a capitulation to Caesar's power why was Caesar himself or any of his own officers instrumental in this? Commius was a leading member of the Northern Belgic Atrebates (who are likely to be associated with the British entity of the same name). Caesar nowhere else uses a proxy for his negotiations, except for when he sent a friend from the province of Gaul to negotiate with Ariovistus. He was sent because he spoke Gaulish which we are assured by Caesar Ariovistus spoke, due to his long association with the Gauls. So, quite possibly, there was a language barrier between Gaul proper and the British polities which Commius was able to bridge.

One only has to look at a language map of the Italian peninsula during the period of Roman expansion to see that even in such a small area there was a great proliferation of languages. Today once one scratches under the surface of legal national languages on finds a plethora of smaller languages and dialect groups. I think that Brythonnic (as in the relation of modern Welsh) was one of a number of languages present within Britain at the time of first contact with the Roman world. There are substantial differences between the cultural entities that existed within Britain in terms of organisation, religious beliefs and, I believe, language.

I also believe that the Danube cultures which are linked with 'Celtic' material culture had a language with closer affiliations with proto-Germanic, and that the Celtic languages are of the Western Atlantic zone. Only by re-assessing the whole picture (which would involve unpicking the romanticised 'Celtic' story formed in the 19th century) and putting aside prejudices conceived from this, are we likely to piece together a realistic picture of the power structures and affinities during the period leading up to and during the Roman period, and how rhose tie in with subsequent history.

I will state again that I am not interested in any nationalist agenda or ethnic affiliation and would distance myself from any such agenda. I would be very interested in other's thoughts on this.

[Fisherking]

I have heard of the theory but have not read the book of its author.

I understand that it has made a few converts but it is still a fringe theory.

If that theory is based on making the central zone of Hallstat a proto-Germanic one, I would say it is rubbish.

I have no doubt that there were many Celtic dialects. Likely it was more a cultural group than strictly a linguistic one. The culture was an advanced one. More advanced in some regards than those of the Mediterranean cultures they bordered.

I would not say I have a strong nationalistic motive either in asserting that the Hallstat and La Téne cultures were not Germanic or proto-Germanic. The linguistic evidence you have offered (presumably from the books authors) is very flimsy for a number of reasons. So is the location of the Pillars of Heracles. The lands of the Tartessians were split between a Celtic influence and an area without. The languages of Spain is a bad place to try an figure out who was where and when. If we assume that Indo-European languages started in the east and worked west then the Celts had to start in the east. If you wish to assume that the Celts were the first Indo-Europeans you get a whole new set of problems. Due to language distributions it makes more sense that they were the newcomers.

We call the Hallstat culture Celtic and we can trace its spread, at least to a degree. They spread the iron sword through Europe. However, about the same time the iron age also started in Britain, but not Ireland or Spain. In fact we don’t have the iron age in Ireland until about 200 BC, about the same time Celts, at least a later wave, arrived there.

Linguistically there are many rivers in Austria and Germany which still have Celtic names. Other place names we know were Germanized. Relying on the Romans to give us a clear picture of ethnicity of tribes is usually a mistake. We know of many seemingly Celtic tribes in Germany proper and a few German tribes in Celtic areas. We are unsure of the languages of the Belgae. They could have been a mixture of Celtic and Germanic tribes speaking a mixture of languages.

In Spain we do have some Celts in the far west, mostly mixed with other groups, where the Celts are seemingly more advanced and expanding into new areas. If we assume they were there first we have to also assume they are in decline and other groups, while less advanced culturally are in the ascendancy.

When we look at movements prior to the conquest of Gaul and Spain we find Celtic tribes moving into areas previously dominated by others. Are we to assume that it was the reverse in Spain? Why did it take some 300 to 500 years for iron age technologies to find there way to Ireland?

It is not impossible that Celts moved out of Spain, acquired higher levels of technologies and spread them back to the source, but it is unlikely.

[Arjos]

Also the germanic identity, in the area, really came to be later on, with the roman borders and the greater influx of migrating people from Jutland and later with the Goths.

BTW don't get too much mistaken with belgic tribes and Britain, as it seems to have been a relatively recent migration, possibly related to the Cimbrian War. So Commios, simply was a very close kin, even in the range of one lifetime.
Brythonic was the regional evolution of either the local language, mixing with a celtic tongue, brought by new settlers; or of a much earlier proto-celtic language from the Bronze Age.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

I have heard of the theory but have not read the book of its author.

I understand that it has made a few converts but it is still a fringe theory.

I don't necessarily agree with the conclusions that are drawn, but the book raised alot of questions which I have tried to summarise briefly. As for it being a fringe theory, well I'm not sure what that means. In terms of the questions it raises it shouldn't be a fringe theory because at the heart of it it questions a pretty big leap of attribution taken with little, if any, evidence to back it up.


If that theory is based on making the central zone of Hallstat a proto-Germanic one, I would say it is rubbish.

Well I tried to make sure I didn't claim that the language of the area was proto-Germanic, rather that the language may have had more affinity with Proto-Germanic that with Proto-Celtic. (interestingly, the Veneti - those of the Adriatic - language seems to have parallels with Germanic languages, according to Julius Pokorny, a proponent of Celtic philology, ironically). I'm interested to know why you think the idea rubbish. Presumably because you believe that the language of this area is Celtic, but that's my point. On what basis has this link been made? Do you know?


I have no doubt that there were many Celtic dialects. Likely it was more a cultural group than strictly a linguistic one. The culture was an advanced one. More advanced in some regards than those of the Mediterranean cultures they bordered.

Yes, that's my point. There is clearly an advanced material culture which seems to be centered around this area, but on what basis was the link between this material culture and the Celtic languages made? This is where the whole problem starts, because the material culture and language have been linked from the period of initial extrapolation, without any real evidence to do so, yet somehow has become a standard axiom. It might seem self-evident, because of its axiomatic nature, but actually the initial link has little going for it.


I would not say I have a strong nationalistic motive either in asserting that the Hallstat and La Téne cultures were not Germanic or proto-Germanic. The linguistic evidence you have offered (presumably from the books authors) is very flimsy for a number of reasons.

I'd be interested in what those reasons are. To me it seems flimsy, in the extreme, to find a Celtic etymology of the Volcae by imagining that the Romans and Greeks were using a term with a proto-Germanic route and/or the allegedly Celtic tribe were refering to themselves by means of a pejorative proto-Germanic term within the context of a hierarchical dithematic tribal affiliation otherwise unattested among Celtic tribes. the other problem with this particular etymology is that Wal itself does not mean foreigner, it means battle. In terms of attributing Gala again from that same proto-germanic route meaning foreigner the problem arises that not only do we have to imagine the Greeks using a proto-Germanic route, but a compound route - Wal-haz. Were the Greeks in such close contact with the Germanics at this time? And why not use the more obvious Greek root Gala/Galact; milk.


So is the location of the Pillars of Heracles. The lands of the Tartessians were split between a Celtic influence and an area without.

But beyond the pillars of Heracles , I'm sure you will agree, is indeed where we find the Tartessos and the Celtici. And Tartessian has been shown to be a Celtic language and that makes it the oldest known written Celtic language. So, I'm not sure what you are driving at here.


The languages of Spain is a bad place to try an figure out who was where and when. If we assume that Indo-European languages started in the east and worked west then the Celts had to start in the east. If you wish to assume that the Celts were the first Indo-Europeans you get a whole new set of problems. Due to language distributions it makes more sense that they were the newcomers.

But, in what form did Indo-European languages come to Europe, and - just like Greek and Phoenician language/culture, a coastal starting point is not an unreasonable proposition.


We call the Hallstat culture Celtic and we can trace its spread, at least to a degree. They spread the iron sword through Europe. However, about the same time the iron age also started in Britain, but not Ireland or Spain. In fact we don’t have the iron age in Ireland until about 200 BC, about the same time Celts, at least a later wave, arrived there.

This is a bit of a muddled picture, requiring one to ignore the 'oriental' influence in Southern Iberia. But what you highlight again is that link without a basis. yes we call that material culture Celtic, but why? What is the evidence linking Celtic languages with that material culture of central Europe?


Linguistically there are many rivers in Austria and Germany which still have Celtic names. Other place names we know were Germanized.

But many of those so-called Celtic names are actually extrapolated from PIE roots rather than definitive Celtic, and many others have equally competent Germanic roots. Its almost as if the assumption has been made that the material culture and language are linked and therefore there must be Celtic roots within the area.


Relying on the Romans to give us a clear picture of ethnicity of tribes is usually a mistake. We know of many seemingly Celtic tribes in Germany proper and a few German tribes in Celtic areas. We are unsure of the languages of the Belgae. They could have been a mixture of Celtic and Germanic tribes speaking a mixture of languages.

Actually we are unsure of the linguistic attribution of most tribes/polities of this era, and claiming that we know that certain tribes were definitely Celtic is over-egging the case - which seems to be what has been done since the first attribution of 'Celtic' as synonymous with Halstat/La Tene culture. What muddies the waters even more is that, at this early stage what written records we have of the various peoples of Europe are from Latin and/or Greek writers and speakers. Whatever terms we have coming through them attributable to Germanic or Celtic speakers has been transposed in an alphabet that does not necessarily conform to the phonetic reality of the words, and via the ear of one perhaps not attuned to the subtleties of the language. An example is the name Ariovistus. It is clear that Ariovistus does not speak a Celtic language (certainly not Gaulish) as his first language, as Caesar tells us he had learned it through close contact with them. He will have spoken a proto-germanic language yet his name, as transcribed by Caesar seems 'Celtic'. Hari (which means army) and perhaps Vesti ( in the form Vestoz) to live among is a reasonable )ie plausible) proto-Germanic etymology, but Casar would be unlikely to do other than a first approximation when naming him (he's not going to ask him how he spells his name) and so Latinise the name.


In Spain we do have some Celts in the far west, mostly mixed with other groups, where the Celts are seemingly more advanced and expanding into new areas. If we assume they were there first we have to also assume they are in decline and other groups, while less advanced culturally are in the ascendancy.

I don't know what your point is here. What do you mean by "there first"? As opposed to who? The Iberians? The Iberian languages are non Indo-European (so pre-Indo-European). The Celtic language is not supposed to be some millenia old language. The earliest Tartessos inscriptions date to around the 8th century BC, the Celtic language would then spread via the Atlantic zone and up through North-west Spain (predominantly). Bear in mind that what Archaic Latin of this period was preserved in Rome was unintelligible to the Republican Romans.



When we look at movements prior to the conquest of Gaul and Spain we find Celtic tribes moving into areas previously dominated by others. Are we to assume that it was the reverse in Spain? Why did it take some 300 to 500 years for iron age technologies to find there way to Ireland?

This, again, highlights how axiomatic the idea is. You have automatically fallen into the assumed position that the Halstat material culture is synonymous with Celtic languages. And recent evidence suggests that iron working may have begun as early as the 9th century BC in Ireland (http://www.museum.ie/en/collection/iron-age.aspx)


It is not impossible that Celts moved out of Spain, acquired higher levels of technologies and spread them back to the source, but it is unlikely.

This comes back to the axiom at the heart of this. Have a look at the genesis of this idea (that halstat culture is linked with Celtic languages) and you will quickly discover that there is little (if anything, I'm still looking) that leads to the initial link. It is an axiom based upon the imaginings of a pan-European romanticist. I promise you, have a look for yourself. There is nothing in it, which makes me wonder how it could have built itself such a firm grounding within academic circles.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Also the germanic identity, in the area, really came to be later on, with the roman borders and the greater influx of migrating people from Jutland and later with the Goths.

BTW don't get too much mistaken with belgic tribes and Britain, as it seems to have been a relatively recent migration, possibly related to the Cimbrian War. So Commios, simply was a very close kin, even in the range of one lifetime.
Brythonic was the regional evolution of either the local language, mixing with a celtic tongue, brought by new settlers; or of a much earlier proto-celtic language from the Bronze Age.

Well, there are many germanic placenames in these areas (Belgic), and there seems to have been an influx of Danubian 'Celts' during the third century BC if I remember correctly. Of course if one assumes that those from the Danube spoke a Celtic language then one will see a Celtic language area. But what is the link between Halstat culture and Celtic languages at the heart of that axiom?

[Arjos]

For once your correlation with the noun Walhaz, which you rightly translated as "foreigners", "enemies". Would be the most peculiar and unnatural way to identify one's own group, for any society.
Not to mention the very same word (walhaz), was used to describe any foreigner, be that celtic or roman for example.
While if you consider it, as the loanword for a germanic speaking group, to identify their neighbours (who at first happened to be only celtic), makes that much more sense.

The root wolkiō, "river dwellers", has been connected to their homeland: the danubian basin.
It was by their own celtic name, Uolkai, coming into contact with greeks and romans, that the names Οὐόλκαι and Volcae, came to be.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

For once your correlation with the noun Walhaz, which you rightly translated as "foreigners", "enemies". Would be the most peculiar and unnatural way to identify one's own group, for any society.
Not to mention the very same word (walhaz), was used to describe any foreigner, be that celtic or roman for example.
While if you consider it, as the loanword for a germanic speaking group, to identify their neighbours (who at first happened to be only celtic), makes that much more sense.

The root wolkiō, "river dwellers", has been connected to their homeland: the danubian basin.
It was by their own celtic name, Uolkai, coming into contact with greeks and romans, that the names Οὐόλκαι and Volcae, came to be.

And here you present me with a prime example of the circular method of obtaining a Celtic root. The alleged basis for the proto-Germanic walh is from a proposed Celtic, pre-German root wolk. There is no attested proto-Celtic root wolk, it is derived by circular reasoning that the Volcae must be Celtic (due to the Halstat attribution) and therefore the name of the Volcae must derive from a Celtic root. But there is a Germanic root wolk, from which the terms folk (English) and volk (German) are derived. Quite what this proposed pre-Germanic Celtic root is supposed to mean seems to have been overlooked. However if, as you say, it means river dweller from what known Celtic term is this meaning derived?

[Arjos]

That's one of the many hypothesis, another is uolko- for wanderer.

Volk, seems blatant to me that it's a later term, since as I said, it started as a description of their neighbouring "foreigners", ie culturally different people, (Keltoi, more specifically the danubian Uolkai). And it was extended to any foreigner, thus the meaning "people".

The point here is that the the distinction between germanic and celtic, took form at a much later period. So it doesn't make sense to introduce a pre-germanic root for those names. And again the one you mentioned, is hardly fitting for a personal tribe/group, as it means something "external".

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

That's one of the many hypothesis, another is uolko- for wanderer.

This doesn't address the point, and so I have to ask the same question, just of a different hypothesised term. What known Celtic term can this root be derived from? It isn't a Proto-Celtic root is a proposed Celtic root without any evidential standing.


Volk, seems blatant to me that it's a later term, since as I said, it started as a description of their neighbouring "foreigners", ie culturally different people, (Keltoi, more specifically the danubian Uolkai). And it was extended to any foreigner, thus the meaning "people".

But wolk/volk doesn't mean foreigner, it means people. It is not used to refer to other people but to nominate belonging. The term walha is alleged to be derived from this hypothetical proto-Celtic volk - but that proposition a)ignores the Germanic root wolk, and b)ignores the compound Germanic root wal-haz. In other words there is no reason to try and derive the term walha from anything outside of proto-Germanic. The idea that the known Germanic root wolk (ie it has cognates in later Germanic languages) must be derived from a hypothetical Celtic root volk(for which there is no known Celtic cognate) is a quite obtuse piece of logic, don't you think?


The point here is that the the distinction between germanic and celtic, took form at a much later period. So it doesn't make sense to introduce a pre-germanic root for those names. And again the one you mentioned, is hardly fitting for a personal tribe/group, as it means something "external".

It means something pre-positional (people of, folk of, nation of) to the tribal name, which makes far more sense than an additional, tiered ethnonym - a form which is unattested anywhere else. And I'm not sure what you mean by the distinction between German and Celtic happened much later - as far as I'm aware proto-Germanic is proposed from around 500BC, and proto-Celtic from around 800BC.

[Arjos]

But the root of those germanic words is fulka- and I still don't understand, how are you pre-dating wolk- to uolko- or uolkio- for example. It's a loanword.

As for the distinction, in central europe, there wasn't a germanic ethnicity 'til much later. Take the kinship between the Eluetoi and the western Balts, predating the cimbrian war.
You are juxtaposing germanic nouns in time.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

But the root of those germanic words is fulka- and I still don't understand, how are you pre-dating wolk- to uolko- or uolkio- for example. It's a loanword.

You haven't addressed the basic tennet at the base of this, you keep avoiding the question yet still demanding (ie categorically stating rather than suggesting) that wolk is a loanword. You haven't addressed how the conclusion has been reached that wolk is a loanword. What known Celtic term can be understood via the root volk? There aren't any. There is no attested Celtic root volk. There is an attested Germanic root. So in what way, on what basis, is the argument of the definitive nature of this as a loan-word from Celtic structured?


As for the distinction, in central europe, there wasn't a germanic ethnicity 'til much later. Take the kinship between the Eluetoi and the western Balts, predating the cimbrian war.
You are juxtaposing germanic nouns in time.

Again, you are simply taking the axiomatic position without addressing where that position springs from. Did the Western Balts speak a Celtic language? Really? Based upon what evidence? There is no evidential link between the material culture known to us as Halstatt and the languages known to us as Celtic. Some 19th Century romantic has linked the two and it has stuck. The link is based on nothing. Where do we find Celtic languages? Today we find the remnants on the Western Atlantic face of Europe. Hispano-Celtic and Gaulish are, again, Western European languages (and Gaulish is very poorly attested). Look for yourself, I'm not making this up. There is simply no evidential reason why the Halstatt culture and the Celtic languages should ever have been linked. It was and great work and contrivance has been undergone since to shore up that proposition. It is a baseless theory.

Another thing, neither material culture nor language should be associated with ethnicity.

[Arjos]

The fact that those who invaded the Balkans, settled Anatolia in the early 3rd century BC, were celtic and migrated over a century from that area.. None of them spoke a germanic language. The fact that at that time the Jastorf culture, was just beginning to experience depopulation. I never said anything about Eluetoi and Balts sharing language (but again at that time, peoples from core germanic areas, knew and spoke celtic: see, Boiorix, later Ariovistus etc), but in the late 2nd century BC, they considered themselves as close kin and kept close relations. It was in these groups that the Cimbri, found useful intermediaries.

That in your view a language should survive forever in time, where it once was, is honestly ridiculous. Especially considering the adaptability of these tribes.
Central Europe oppidas (another celtic feature), suffered something of a cataclysmic series of events. And it was in that depleted (in terms of population) area, that germanic tribes settled and developed.

What evidences do you have for the wolk- root to predate any celtic language?
Which again on the note of meaning, if you take wolk-, those danubians called themselves "people" (really?), or if you take walh-, they called themselves "foreigners" (again, really?).

And in overall, the distinction germanic/celtic, (with germanic as we understand it today), was something that developed later, with basically the extinction of the eastern celts. Since the bronze age, central europe and northern europe, saw the spreading of communities, close in customs and trade, with in time regionally developed in their own way, in connection to the specific resources or contacts with other cultures.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

The fact that those who invaded the Balkans, settled Anatolia in the early 3rd century BC, were celtic and migrated over a century from that area.. None of them spoke a germanic language. The fact that at that time the Jastorf culture, was just beginning to experience depopulation. I never said anything about Eluetoi and Balts sharing language (but again at that time, peoples from core germanic areas, knew and spoke celtic: see, Boiorix, later Ariovistus etc), but in the late 2nd century BC, they considered themselves as close kin and kept close relations. It was in these groups that the Cimbri, found useful intermediaries.

That in your view a language should survive forever in time, where it once was, is honestly ridiculous. Especially considering the adaptability of these tribes.
Central Europe oppidas (another celtic feature), suffered something of a cataclysmic series of events. And it was in that depleted (in terms of population) area, that germanic tribes settled and developed.

What evidences do you have for the wolk- root to predate any celtic language?
Which again on the note of meaning, if you take wolk-, those danubians called themselves "people" (really?), or if you take walh-, they called themselves "foreigners" (again, really?).

And in overall, the distinction germanic/celtic, (with germanic as we understand it today), was something that developed later, with basically the extinction of the eastern celts. Since the bronze age, central europe and northern europe, saw the spreading of communities, close in customs and trade, with in time regionally developed in their own way, in connection to the specific resources or contacts with other cultures.

Again you come back with the axiomatic response, without addressing the central question. I am not suggesting a language should remain within an area I am saying that the remaining Celtic languages are on the West as are any truly attested Celtic languages from any period.

You ask what evidence I have for wolk which predates Celtic which utterly ignores the fact that there is no known Celtic term which can be derived from wolk. There is no Celtic root wolk, there is only a proposed Celtic root from which it is alleged the German root wolk is derived. It is ludicrous circular logic.

Again you just keep pronouncing on these Eastern Celts without addressing the central question. What evidence is there that links Halstatt culture with Celtic languages? And, again, you confuse material technology with the language and that is the problem - an erroneous link has been formed without any evidence to support it and it is so axiomatic you seem incapable of even understanding that it is being questioned.

What evidence is there that those who settled Anatolia spoke a Celtic language? You will find that the evidence is, again, derived from circular logic.

[Fisherking]

We can talk about 19th century bias and much of it could use revision. The idea that the Celts could have come from the west was an idea I had long, long ago as a kid looking at maps. But then I studied them. I am not one to overlook controversial theories, but with this one it would take something quite extraordinary to convince me of its validity.

Relying on Herodotus for information is problematic. Some call him the father of history, other have called him the father of lies. He had some pretty wild notions.


The Romans called the Celts Gallia and the Greeks Keltoi. This is presumably what they called themselves. In Irish the word for folk (ethnically like peoples) is Gael. The Brythonic languages have changed so much that it is difficult to say. These are also Insular Celtic languages. There are no surviving Continental Celtic languages. Gaul is what the Romans called the areas of Celtic dominance but Latin had undergone shifts in pronunciation from the time they first met those peoples. Greek had also shifted. Gael and Kell are not that far apart.

It is not a good practice to pick a few words and try to tie them to another Indo-European language. Also tribal names are usually what others call a people and not what they call themselves. Trying to attribute proto-Germanic roots to Celtic names could prove an upside down process as Germanic derived later than Celtic and the peoples were in direct contact with each other.

We have no complete vocabularies for those Celtic languages but extrapolate from known Insular words.

Now, very importantly, the Tartessian language is recently classified as Celtic (2011) but doing so overlooks some serious problems. As I said before, a portion of there lands were occupied by Celts and part not. Just like calling Pictish Celtic it is a stretch IMO to call Tartessian Celtic because some elements may be similar. Pictish was once linked to Basque, who are the modern descendants of the Aquitani and covered most of the area leading to Iberia. Modern DNA testing is also linking the Irish most closely to these people. There are several ways to view this. My take would be the old Celtic veneer, where the base population was ruled by a Celtic elite. Further, there was also an important Paleolithic culture in the area of the Basques which may well have been seafarers, as are their Basques were in historic times.

The Veneti of Gaul were a Celtic people but the Veneti of Italy were not. Many people assume they were the same. It is a common error.

Hallstatt culture is linked with the Celts but so are the Beaker culture and the Urnfeld culture though others seem to be offshoots of those cultures, particularly the Beaker culture which took in an even larger area than Hallstatt or La Téne.

I will agree that placing Iberian and Irish Celts is problematic but they are Indo-European speakers, though not the earliest, meaning they likely arrived in the late bronze age. We also have anecdotal evidence that at the time of the Celtic-Roman meeting the two languages were mutually intelligible. This would mean they were separated only by a few hundred years from divergence, in all likelihood.

By the way, Hallstatt means salt town. There is a German root for hall that means something very different than the Celtic one for salt. The statt is Germanic. There are a lot of Celtic root words used in town names in Austria and Germany. Some have been Germanized others not. The Germans didn’t make those names up and they serve no nationalistic purpose. If the Celts were never there then who made up the names?

Much in the attempts to tie Celtic names to Germanic roots is not beneficial. It could be looked upon as obfuscation. Many languages have word of similar sounds that mean something totally different. With German and Celtic being both Indo-European a few may even mean the same.

German is a younger language than Celtic. I am tempted to say that much of the authors theory is based on his own obfuscations, intended or unintended. Trying to turn Celts of the Danube into Germans is way over the top. Danube its self is Celtic and relates to the goddess Danu which you also find in the western fringe of Europe.

I am not from here but I happen to be living in Bavaria (said to mean land of the Boii) in a town with a Germanized Celtic root by a river with a Celtic name with Hallstatt remains all around and there is nothing exceptional about this place. There are hundreds more as well as a few with Roman names. There is evidence of Celtic speakers from France, across Germany, Czechoslovakia, into the Balkans to the Black Sea, to what is today Turkey and beyond. We have as much evidence of Celtic speakers in Bulgaria as we have in Spain. The coinage left behind is not in German, it is Celtic. I am afraid those arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny.

The argument is starting to sound like a : We never went to the moon, prove that we did. Well along with the material artifacts the Celts had a great propensity for minting coins. So unless the Germans used Celtic for all the coinage they made then it would mean they must have been speaking Celtic languages and using Celtic names. Does anyone have proof that the Germans were even making coins at that time?

It makes perfect sense that the Celtic languages that survived did so because they were in the far west just as it makes sense that Basque survived because it was isolated and insulated from the Romantic languages. Linguistically the argument just does not wash.

All that said, I wouldn’t mind taking a look at the material and forming my own conclusions but that could take a while.


edit: Also as to your link, iron making doesn’t mean iron age. Iron was long known but not as useful as bronze until the processes of hardening it were discovered. The Hallstatt culture also made steel on a frequent basis. That in and of its self makes it easy to identify its smithing.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

We can talk about 19th century bias and much of it could use revision. The idea that the Celts could have come from the west was an idea I had long, long ago as a kid looking at maps. But then I studied them. I am not one to overlook controversial theories, but with this one it would take something quite extraordinary to convince me of its validity.

Studied 'them'? You have fallen straight into the axiomatic position; the Halstatt culture=Celtic language. That is the issue here. There is no evidence (other than forced - unattested - proposed etymologies) that Halstatt culture and Celtic languages have very much to do with each other. It was a leap of imagination made a couple of centuries ago, with no evidential support. One might as well blindly believe that the Romans are, most assuredly, Trojan refugees. It is a myth, and yet has become so entrenched that minds seem transfixed by it. Just have a look for yourself how little evidence there is for a Celtic language being spoken in the Danube area.


Relying on Herodotus for information is problematic. Some call him the father of history, other have called him the father of lies. He had some pretty wild notions.

Pretty ironic considering that it was the association (mistaken) of Celtic with the Danube that lead to the myth in the first place. What we do know is that, as Herodotus tells us, The Celtici live in this area (ie beyond the pillars of Heracles). Of all the now dead languages of Europe, the ones that we can most comfortably attribute as Celtic (ie are related to surviving insular Celtic languages) are those in the Western portion of the Iberian peninsular. Tartessos has been confirmed as being related to Celtic. So here we have an attested, written Celtic language from the 8th century BC. No such evidence for a Celtic language exists within the Danube basin. So, how does it make sense to continue with the story of Celtic migration through Northern Iberia and down when Celtic is attested some four centuries before this is supposed to have happened in the South-West of that country?



The Romans called the Celts Gallia and the Greeks Keltoi. This is presumably what they called themselves. In Irish the word for folk (ethnically like peoples) is Gael. The Brythonic languages have changed so much that it is difficult to say. These are also Insular Celtic languages. There are no surviving Continental Celtic languages. Gaul is what the Romans called the areas of Celtic dominance but Latin had undergone shifts in pronunciation from the time they first met those peoples. Greek had also shifted. Gael and Kell are not that far apart.

This is too much of a simplification of the use of the terms Kelt and Gaul. It is a little more complex than that, and the two terms became almost synonymous being used in different contexts as meaning very different things. And as for the idea that people identify themselves by what others call them, that is by no means a hard and fast rule. It may be that it occurs, but it doesn't follow that it is the case. What is almost certainly the case is that when a tribal name is used it is generally from the people themselves and is more than likely how they identify themselves.


It is not a good practice to pick a few words and try to tie them to another Indo-European language.

Again this is pretty ironic because this is what the whole facade of 'evidence' for Celtic languages in Central Europe during the Halstatt period is based upon - conjectured, unattested etymologies.


Also tribal names are usually what others call a people and not what they call themselves.

As I said above, what we usually see (except when using sweeping terms like Gaul or Germani or Kelt) is a name by which the people concerned identify themselves. I don't think it would be stretching it too far to propose that the Aedui would perceive themselves as being of the Aedui, for example.


Trying to attribute proto-Germanic roots to Celtic names could prove an upside down process as Germanic derived later than Celtic and the peoples were in direct contact with each other.

Firstly I'm not trying to attribute Germanic roots to Celtic names. If you are referring to Ariovistus then... he was Germanic and almost certainly spoke a Germanic language. It seems likely, therefore, that he would have a Germanic name. My point was that Caesar's Latin ear, and his practiced use of the Latin alphabet, leads to a Latinised form of the name (the same can be seen with Arminius, for example). As for the idea that the German language deriving later than Celtic - well we don't know when Germanic or Celtic initially derived from PIE, and as for their being in close contact - this again is straight back to the axiomatic 'truth' of Halstatt material culture=Celtic language.


We have no complete vocabularies for those Celtic languages but extrapolate from known Insular words.

I know, but the problem is some of the extrapolations are very, very stretched.


Now, very importantly, the Tartessian language is recently classified as Celtic (2011) but doing so overlooks some serious problems. As I said before, a portion of there lands were occupied by Celts and part not. Just like calling Pictish Celtic it is a stretch IMO to call Tartessian Celtic because some elements may be similar.

I'm not really sure what your argument is here. Whether or not you think it should be classified as Celtic it is, and that is through many long years of work by John Koch. In Italy some parts spoke Italic and some parts didn't. Does that mean we shouldn't classify those languages as Italic because there were other languages present? I can assure you that the language has not been accepted because it has some similarities but because Koch showed that it is a Celtic language. He didn't just say one day this looks a bit Celtic and...voila it was so.


Pictish was once linked to Basque, who are the modern descendants of the Aquitani and covered most of the area leading to Iberia. Modern DNA testing is also linking the Irish most closely to these people. There are several ways to view this. My take would be the old Celtic veneer, where the base population was ruled by a Celtic elite. Further, there was also an important Paleolithic culture in the area of the Basques which may well have been seafarers, as are their Basques were in historic times.

I'm not sure what this has to do with Tartessian being a celtic language.


The Veneti of Gaul were a Celtic people but the Veneti of Italy were not. Many people assume they were the same. It is a common error.

I didn't make the error, I was specifically referring to the Adriatic Veneti. The reason I brought them up was because there is a possible link between the language of the Adriatic Veneti and Germanic languages. There are reasons to believe that Adriatic Veneti and Rhaetic are related in some way though Rhaetic is very poorly attested. Poorly attested though it is it there is more evidence for a Rhaetic language in the area of the Danube around this time than there is any Celtic language. Now Adriatic Venetic has also been seen as sharing similarities with Slavic languages. So, what we possibly have here are a set of related languages, or a 'sprachbunden' from which proto-Germanic and proto-Balto-Slavic have arisen (so you see I am not talking of a Germanic language per sé, but rather pre-proto-Germanic languages.


Hallstatt culture is linked with the Celts but so are the Beaker culture and the Urnfeld culture though others seem to be offshoots of those cultures, particularly the Beaker culture which took in an even larger area than Hallstatt or La Téne.

Yes it has been, but why, that is fundamentally the question I am trying to get you to address. If you look at the original reasoning you will find no evidential reasoning for linking these material cultures with Celtic languages.


I will agree that placing Iberian and Irish Celts is problematic but they are Indo-European speakers, though not the earliest, meaning they likely arrived in the late bronze age. We also have anecdotal evidence that at the time of the Celtic-Roman meeting the two languages were mutually intelligible. This would mean they were separated only by a few hundred years from divergence, in all likelihood.

Well I don't think that we do have such evidence, what we do have is a lack of references to the use of translators (Caesar does mention a Gaul from the Province on his staff - I forget his name - who he sends to Ariovistus because he speaks Gaulish), and we also forget the probability that, among the trading and aristocratic classes at least, being multi-lingual was probably the norm.


By the way, Hallstatt means salt town. There is a German root for hall that means something very different than the Celtic one for salt.

And what is the Celtic root for salt? The PIE for salt is sal. The Welsh for Salt is halen. However this has come about as a result of changes that occured within Welsh sometime between the 8th and 12th centuries AD - between Old and Middle Welsh (http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/dwew2/old_and_middle_welsh.pdf), so the alleged Celtic root for salt here is in error.


The statt is Germanic. There are a lot of Celtic root words used in town names in Austria and Germany. Some have been Germanized others not. The Germans didn’t make those names up and they serve no nationalistic purpose. If the Celts were never there then who made up the names?

Check those alleged Celtic roots out and you'll find they are as far-fetched as Hal for salt.



Much in the attempts to tie Celtic names to Germanic roots is not beneficial.

Even less beneficial has been the forcing in of false etymologys to non-Celtic words. They are NOT Celtic words, that is the point.


It could be looked upon as obfuscation. Many languages have word of similar sounds that mean something totally different. With German and Celtic being both Indo-European a few may even mean the same.

The obfuscation has already taken place. I've said it before. Investigate those supposed Celtic roots for yourself and you will begin to see how forced the Celtic etymology is. You are right to say that there are many shared roots and many of the alleged Celtic terms are simply PIE roots, with no attestation in Celtic at all.



German is a younger language than Celtic. I am tempted to say that much of the authors theory is based on his own obfuscations, intended or unintended. Trying to turn Celts of the Danube into Germans is way over the top. Danube its self is Celtic and relates to the goddess Danu which you also find in the western fringe of Europe.

Axiomatic central tenet appears again. There is no reason to believe that the Halstatt culture should be linked to Celtic languages. Danu is indeed a Celtic God, but what you obviously haven't been told is that Danu is pretty Indo-European wide. There is also a Mother-Goddess called Danu in the Hindu Rigveda, Goddess of a lake. Danu also happens to be a Scythian term likely meaning river and probably from the same religious root. Danu is PIE not Celtic.


I am not from here but I happen to be living in Bavaria (said to mean land of the Boii) in a town with a Germanized Celtic root by a river with a Celtic name with Hallstatt remains all around and there is nothing exceptional about this place. There are hundreds more as well as a few with Roman names. There is evidence of Celtic speakers from France, across Germany, Czechoslovakia, into the Balkans to the Black Sea, to what is today Turkey and beyond. We have as much evidence of Celtic speakers in Bulgaria as we have in Spain. The coinage left behind is not in German, it is Celtic. I am afraid those arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny.

What is celtic about it? Please just check for yourself. Watch the celtic facade crumble before your eyes.


The argument is starting to sound like a : We never went to the moon, prove that we did. Well along with the material artifacts the Celts had a great propensity for minting coins. So unless the Germans used Celtic for all the coinage they made then it would mean they must have been speaking Celtic languages and using Celtic names. Does anyone have proof that the Germans were even making coins at that time?

What Celtic is this that you speak of? Have a closer look.

It makes perfect sense that the Celtic languages that survived did so because they were in the far west just as it makes sense that Basque survived because it was isolated and insulated from the Romantic languages. Linguistically the argument just does not wash.

All that said, I wouldn’t mind taking a look at the material and forming my own conclusions but that could take a while.


edit: Also as to your link, iron making doesn’t mean iron age. Iron was long known but not as useful as bronze until the processes of hardening it were discovered. The Hallstatt culture also made steel on a frequent basis. That in and of its self makes it easy to identify its smithing.[/QUOTE]

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Just a quick addendum. Danu is not attested within Celtic writing. The idea comes from a proposed root for Tuatha Dé Danann, but the extrapolation of mother-Goddess Danu seems to be a much later (Victorian) invention which bears little resemblance to the text itself. Which leaves Danu as a Scythian/Vedic (Indo-Iranian) word. Given the geographical position of the Scythians and the rivers bearing the Danu/Don prefix a Scythian root is far more likely than a Celtic one.

[Zarakas]

Question - did not the people originally move from the East to the West, thus inhabiting western Europe? Hence, most European languages are indo-european?

[Fisherking]

You know, I couldn’t even read the posts after I read part of your first sentence.

For all the world you sound like a Political Commissar.

If you can extrapolate the name of a tribe into some German root I think I can extrapolate Danu from Donau which the Germans still call the River.

German place names are very simplistic and straight forward; Hog-brook, Bridge at thunder hill, Deep valley. They have one or two names for hills and so on. Celtic languages are much more varied. There are eight or more names for hills of different types, differences in streams beyond brook and river. The differences are easy to spot in names. Not some other convenient language for those who chose to deny…but then again, I don’t think you want to see. What most vanishes before my eyes is the preposterousness of your book’s argument.

While writing this I also noted your use of Welsh for etymology. Forget it!

In the early 5th century the language changed so quickly and profoundly that one generation could not understand the next. Not to mention the later changes. It is like trying to build the works of Shakespeare from a shredded Norwegian book.

Most of your linguistics are just cherry picking and obfuscation.

It is all starting to sound too much like a sensationalist author having the Celts arriving from the west from some Atlantian Culture with the Children of Danu.

There is a lot wrong with the study of ancient Celts. Too much romanticism and too much New Age tripe.

Arguing that the Celts didn’t start in Central Europe is like arguing that there were no Native Americans in the eastern US because there is insufficient linguistic evidence.

I don’t think the authors were very interested in facts or what is known. I think they wanted to make a splash and sell books.

This all ignores too much, distorts evidence, uses straw men and denies artifacts in order to offer the gullible enough to go along with their premise.

Thanks for enlightening me.



Your premise asks us to assume that the Celts in the west were always there and since they were Indo-European then that language group had to spread in the opposite direction. As language is usually assumed to spread with cultures, please tell me what culture spread from the west eastward to account for this. Do you have one?

The earliest archaeological date for Celts in Spain is circa 1400 BC with the Urnfeld culture. What proof do you have that they were there before?
They are not placed in the British Isles until 650 BC or later. Do you have some evidence that they were there at an earlier date?

The Celts, Italics, and Illyrians are linked to the “cord pottery” culture in Central Europe and said to have been one of the first Indo-Europeans to have arrived. Circa 2100 BC these languages were though to have diverged. Of course in your view the Celts were never in Central Europe so how do you explain the similarities linguistically?

What you may not be aware of and what your linguistic scrabble game is ignoring is Celtic peoples were called different names: Gauls in France, Belgae in Northern France, Galates in the Balkans and numerous tribal names everywhere. But there is no doubt that they all spoke one language, or similar varieties of the same one. This comes from town names, inscriptions and Celtic words written down by Greek and Roman authors. Their language system is what is called "Classical Celtic": it was very close to the Italic group of tongues, and Julius Caesar even had to write his letters to his legates in Greek for Gaulish leaders not to be able to read them if they might happen to gain hold of these missives. He did so because Latin could be understood by Celts quite well without having had to study it.

Gaulish was highly inflected, but had practically nothing in common with Insular Celtic morphology and phonetics: it had no initial mutations, had an ordinary Indo-European word order (subject - predicate - adverbial modifiers) and grammatical forms similar to those of the Proto-Indo-European model.

I am afraid that the whole thing sounds like a case of Denial and little else.

[Fisherking]

I read the Bryn Mawr review.

I have to say I am skeptical of the work.

Disregarding cultural artifacts is not unacceptable other than the coinage. Coinage and inscriptions disregarded is too much IMO. My opinion on the classification of Tartessian as Celtic is too presumptive and ignores too much of the vocabulary. I can see it as influenced by Celtic but not much more.

The theory relies more heavily on lack of evidence than anything else. It doesn’t explain the relationship between Italic and Illyrian languages. It not only ignores classical authors testaments to a Celtic presence it also ignores people who call themselves Celtic or Gauls in those lands.

We not only have artifacts bearing Celtic inscriptions as far as the Balkans but in some cases we have the inscribed negatives used to make the molds for those items, and they are of local manufacture. In other words, we have better proof of Celts in the east than we do of Celts in the west, if we are to rely on Celtic inscriptions.

With the recent DNA analyses linking Irish and Basque it is not good supporting evidence for a western origin of Celtic speakers. That is until Koch proves that Basque is also a Celtic language and not a non Indo-European one.

I am disinclined to accept lack of evidence as proof of western origins. It ignores too much recorded data and inscriptions and chooses the data set and applies it inconsistently to suit the primus.

To me it is just another case of an academic reaching a conclusion and using only that which supports the case while ignoring or discarding conflicting evidence and viewpoints.

The book is quite expensive and I don’t think I will be buying it.

I do see why you took the tact you did in presenting the case. Looking from a different prospective is not bad but this requires overlooking too much hard data for me to credit it.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

You know, I couldn’t even read the posts after I read part of your first sentence.

For all the world you sound like a Political Commissar.

In what way? (and, by the way, I have taken part in this discussion without recourse to personal effrontery, that is generally how I pursue such debates.) This is THE crux of the argument; that the notion of Celtic roots in the Danube area is the result of a misreading of Heroditus, linking the Danube with the area of the Celts - which is why it was ironic that you claimed that Herodotus was a poor witness. When you read it properly you will note that his placing of the Celts is not connected at all with the Danube. he places them beyond the pillar of Heracles, naming the Celtici. We also now have a confirmed written Celtic language dating from the 8th century BC in this area - whether or not you believe it to be so.

ALL of the etymologies attributed as Celtic are forced etymologies. If the argument that you counter this with is that you have studied the Celts and decided it is not so then all you are doing is highlighting that you have studied the Halstatt era material culture and just accepted that they are Celtic - without any notion of how, linguistically, that attribution has come about. Don't take my word for it - as I have said many times - check them out for yourself and you will see that the so-called Celtic roots are either PIE roots (and therefore equally applicable in other PIE languages) or horribly mangled and stretched narratives which, when one looks just a little more closely, begin to look, frankly, foolish - an example of this is the alleged Celtic etymology of volc, which is unattested, and linking this with the Germanic Wal-haz, which has a perfectly well reasoned internal etymology not requiring any contortion from external sources. As for the basis of wolk/volc, there is the PIE ueik (to happen, to become equal, to come together), perhaps related to uoiko (house, village, settlement). We know that there is a Germanic term volk/folk, or perhaps this root might be ulcoas (wolf) which we know from vlk (Slovak) volk (Slovenian). What volc is not is an attested Celtic root.


If you can extrapolate the name of a tribe into some German root I think I can extrapolate Danu from Donau which the Germans still call the River.

Yet you are happy to accept an unattested etymology of said tribe as Celtic. Why? And, as I said before, the attribution of Danu as an Irish deity does not bear out closer inspection.


German place names are very simplistic and straight forward; Hog-brook, Bridge at thunder hill, Deep valley. They have one or two names for hills and so on. Celtic languages are much more varied. There are eight or more names for hills of different types, differences in streams beyond brook and river.

There are as many words for hill in proto-Germanic as there are in any of the near PIE languages. Also, many of the alleged Celtic roots for such as hill are (at the fear of repeating myself) PIE, and merely proposed as Celtic - as I keep suggesting, you can check this out for yourself.


The differences are easy to spot in names. Not some other convenient language for those who chose to deny…but then again, I don’t think you want to see. What most vanishes before my eyes is the preposterousness of your book’s argument.

...and you haven't bothered to look at the basis of those alleged Celtic etymologies have you?


While writing this I also noted your use of Welsh for etymology. Forget it!

Thank you. This is part of exactly the point I'm trying to make. Where do you think the Celtic etymology of Hall(Hal) for salt comes from? The only Celtic attestation of any term for salt with Hal is the Welsh Halen - which as I pointed out is a much later internal change.



Most of your linguistics are just cherry picking and obfuscation.

Don't take my word for it then, check for yourself. The etymologies I have pointed out are responses to the 'clearly' Celtic terms you have put forward. Tell me where you think the alleged Celtic etymology for hal as salt comes from.


It is all starting to sound too much like a sensationalist author having the Celts arriving from the west from some Atlantian Culture with the Children of Danu.

Which is another ironic statement when you consider, ie actually look at - as I have asked you to do - the basis of the Celtic from the Danube narrative. It is based upon the romantic notions of a 19th century historian forming a story about a united pan-European culture and language. There was no linguistic evidence to link Celtic with the Halstatt culture.


There is a lot wrong with the study of ancient Celts. Too much romanticism and too much New Age tripe.

Exactly.


Arguing that the Celts didn’t start in Central Europe is like arguing that there were no Native Americans in the eastern US because there is insufficient linguistic evidence.

No it isn't. It is nothing like the same thing. Take a look for yourself where the story comes from.



This all ignores too much, distorts evidence, uses straw men and denies artifacts in order to offer the gullible enough to go along with their premise.

Distorts evidence? I don't know how many times I have to repeat this, take a look for yourself how distorted the alleged Celtic roots are for the alleged Celtic words in the Danube area. As for ignores too much; Herodotus said that the Celtici live beyond the pillars of Heracles - where we find a written Celtic language from the 8th century BC. Any link between the Danube and the Celts within Herodotus' description is completely in error. So, how do you deal with that information?

Let's see...


Your premise asks us to assume that the Celts in the west were always there and since they were Indo-European then that language group had to spread in the opposite direction.

Well, we see a strawman. Why "always there"?


As language is usually assumed to spread with cultures, please tell me what culture spread from the west eastward to account for this. Do you have one?

No, language has been assumed to spread in this instance, and language spread and the spread of culture is a little more nuanced. Again a strawman.


The earliest archaeological date for Celts in Spain is circa 1400 BC with the Urnfeld culture.

Whoa there. Now the Celts are determined as Urnfield and existing since 1400BC....??


They are not placed in the British Isles until 650 BC or later. Do you have some evidence that they were there at an earlier date?

And, again, you are on with 'they', in other words straight back to the axiomatic 'truth'.


The Celts, Italics, and Illyrians are linked to the “cord pottery” culture in Central Europe and said to have been one of the first Indo-Europeans to have arrived. Circa 2100 BC these languages were though to have diverged. Of course in your view the Celts were never in Central Europe so how do you explain the similarities linguistically?

The later archaeological cultures are linked with cord pottery you are right, but how this in any argues for the linguistic predilictions of these people is a bit of a puzzle. You are going off at a tangent, but I know exactly why.


What you may not be aware of and what your linguistic scrabble game is ignoring is Celtic peoples were called different names: Gauls in France, Belgae in Northern France, Galates in the Balkans and numerous tribal names everywhere.

I'm not ignoring anything, you are simply following the axiomatic 'truth' again. There is no evidence that Galatians or the Belgae in Northern France spoke a Celtic language.


But there is no doubt that they all spoke one language, or similar varieties of the same one. This comes from town names, inscriptions and Celtic words written down by Greek and Roman authors. Their language system is what is called "Classical Celtic": it was very close to the Italic group of tongues, and Julius Caesar even had to write his letters to his legates in Greek for Gaulish leaders not to be able to read them if they might happen to gain hold of these missives. He did so because Latin could be understood by Celts quite well without having had to study it.

This is just such a poorly evidenced proposition I don't know where to begin. Latin was not comprehensible if you spoke Gaulish, but if you spoke Latin it would be. Pretty straight-forward. As for "Classical Celtic", what is that? I have never heard of such a thing. I know that most of the words that come to us through Latin speakers are Latinised, but that obscures rather than illuminates a languages true form.


Gaulish was highly inflected, but had practically nothing in common with Insular Celtic morphology and phonetics: it had no initial mutations, had an ordinary Indo-European word order (subject - predicate - adverbial modifiers) and grammatical forms similar to those of the Proto-Indo-European model.

Yes, that is because a) Gaulish is a very, very tentatively attested language and also the fact that insular languages have undergone hundreds of years of insular changes. The Celto-Iberian languages are very much PIE as well, as is Tartessian.


I am afraid that the whole thing sounds like a case of Denial and little else.

Hang on, aren't you the one denying the peer-reviewed work of John Koch? And the attestation of Celtici as the oldest known form of the word Celtic, and even their geographical location?

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

I read the Bryn Mawr review.

I have to say I am skeptical of the work.

Disregarding cultural artifacts is not unacceptable other than the coinage. Coinage and inscriptions disregarded is too much IMO. My opinion on the classification of Tartessian as Celtic is too presumptive and ignores too much of the vocabulary. I can see it as influenced by Celtic but not much more.

The theory relies more heavily on lack of evidence than anything else. It doesn’t explain the relationship between Italic and Illyrian languages. It not only ignores classical authors testaments to a Celtic presence it also ignores people who call themselves Celtic or Gauls in those lands.

We not only have artifacts bearing Celtic inscriptions as far as the Balkans but in some cases we have the inscribed negatives used to make the molds for those items, and they are of local manufacture. In other words, we have better proof of Celts in the east than we do of Celts in the west, if we are to rely on Celtic inscriptions.

With the recent DNA analyses linking Irish and Basque it is not good supporting evidence for a western origin of Celtic speakers. That is until Koch proves that Basque is also a Celtic language and not a non Indo-European one.

I am disinclined to accept lack of evidence as proof of western origins. It ignores too much recorded data and inscriptions and chooses the data set and applies it inconsistently to suit the primus.

To me it is just another case of an academic reaching a conclusion and using only that which supports the case while ignoring or discarding conflicting evidence and viewpoints.

The book is quite expensive and I don’t think I will be buying it.

I do see why you took the tact you did in presenting the case. Looking from a different prospective is not bad but this requires overlooking too much hard data for me to credit it.


It seems that some of the hard data you refer to may not be as 'hard' as you believe. You say that "it doesn't explain the relationship between Italian and Illyrian languages", I'm not sure what you mean. I don't see how an explanation of Celtic origin would have to explain a relationship between two completely separate languages. If, on the other hand, you mean the relationship between Celtic and these two languages there is no close link. They are PIE languages, but the proposed Italo-Celtic is widely discredited (it was politically motivated when formed, and has very, very little merit), and llyrian is so poorly attested that nothing much can be said of its relationship with other languages.

As for the link between Irish and Basque, that was a very tentative argument, and many attempts have made to link Basque with a number of languages (most famously Finnish) - again there really is very little supporting those propositions.

It seems odd, then, that you cite these rather tentative and generally unsupported language relationships as a reason to discount the peer-reviewed and accepted argument of Tartessian as Celtic

EDIT: I have re-read and realised that I have misunderstood your point regarding Basque and Irish. You spoke of a genetic link between the Basque region and Ireland (a link that also exists within the British isles more generally). This is from a very early (mesolithic) migration from a proposed Iberian refuge. It is one part of the evidence of an Atlantic zone within Europe, and is one piece of the jigsaw of Celtic from the West. We know that cultures were spread along the West Atlantic coast and that this seems to form a separate zone from the mediterranean zone and the central European zone (and yet another, Baltic zone), though all of these zones had interactions with each other.

[Fisherking]

Now that we understand each other a little better perhaps we can do somewhat better.

My view is that the author defines the Celts based only on language and then denies that the language extended over a larger area.

We have Celtic inscriptions and coins using Celtic languages, along with their molds over a very wide area. We have Classical Era authors placing them in that same area. The authors (Barry Cunliffe and John T. Koch) choose to discount our ignore this information.

Now, just to clear things up, at least Koch, discounts the culture and language link. To our knowledge these are generally linked. We can trace examples throughout known history but for this instance we should ignore it and say that it should not exist.

Tartessian is classed as a Celtic language per Koch. The prime dissenters are in everyway the equal of Koch in scholarship, if not more so, but review is a political process and with Cunliffe on the team it adds a lot of political weight.

Tartessian falls in an area which had been overrun by Celts but until Koch it was seen as a PIE isolate and most of it is still unintelligible. Turdetani language is still classed as PIE even though the two are closely related. So, here we are asked to believe that Tartessian had not become Celtizied but was Celtic but we must ignore its closest related language.

At any rate, we are asked to believe that these peoples didn‘t move around much. That people starting in the west stayed in the west. I take it that we are to assume that the first peoples in the British Isles came there from France and or Spain. Someone had to move there after the ice age and they couldn‘t sprout like mushrooms.

We are asked to assume that these people spoke a Celtic language that they brought with them. For me this is much too big of an assumption, given the rules they themselves set out.

The most dynamic and expansionist peoples or cultures going back to the Paleolithic (old stone age) were centered in Southwestern France and Northeastern Spain. The very regions associated with the Proto-Basques. They did expand their material cultures into areas the authors assume to have always been Celtic but we do class Basque as PIE, do we not? These people are also the ones linked genetically with the British Isles. Why are we to assume they took a different language?
Here, Pictish shows similarities with the Basque language but has recently also been classed with Celtic but it still shows strong PIE traits and vocabulary. Languages do change and are sometimes replaced. Why are we to assume that this never occurred until historic times?

There are other inconsistencies in the material I may get to later but I don‘t want to get too longwinded.

Some graphics that might be of use:


http://llmap.org/viewer.html?maps=11626

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Iberia_300BC.svg

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

As you say we seem to understand each other a little better, you are right, but I don't think that you understand the argument very well. The reason I say this is that you keep referring to them as always having been there. Now, Koch is not suggesting that a PIE language appeared in isolation on the South-West coast of the Iberian peninsula To quote him "It
should be explained at the outset that an Atlantic hypothesis of Celtic origins does not require a rejection or minimizing of the Indo-European character of Celtic (cf. Meid 2008), nor a relocation of the Indo-European homeland to the west.. "
http://ifc.dpz.es/recursos/publicaciones/29/54/26koch.pdf (http://ifc.dpz.es/recursos/publicaciones/29/54/26koch.pdf)

The 'corded-ware' culture is not the only Neolithic expansion from the East, there was also a Mediterranean expansion which we can see in the 'impressed ware' culture that is found in modern Croatia/West coastal Greece, Eastern Italian peninsula up to the Po and round to the toe; Eastern Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Liguria, South France with further pockets on the Eastern Iberian peninsula and South-West Portugal (beyond the pillars of Heracles).

We also see a cultural/material link between the Western Atlantic peoples during the late bronze age, defining it as a separate cultural zone from both the more general Mediterranean and the Central-European zones.

As for the assuredly Celtic names on Central European coins... The names as they appear on the coins are often shortened, and suffixes etc. are usually deduced. This is important to understand because, obviously, whatever your apriori assumptions about the coin's cultural origins will affect the deductions you make. You also mentioned Ambiorix as a clearly Celtic name, but this is in no way clear. Rix and ambi are PIE roots, riks being a particularly ancient and wide-spread example; rex (Latin), raja (Sanskrit) and in German we see it in OHG as Rih, in Vandalic as Riks, Gothic as Reiks etc.

One other thing to note is that, outside of this alleged Celtic 'home' there are few (if any) terms with bi-lingual roots (the examples you have brought up are Hal-statt and Ba(io)varia. Again, this expectation (that alone among the world's languages) that Celtic was introduced as a partial prefix or suffix into an alien language, ought to be jarring.

Of course if one dismisses Celtic as the language of these areas then what was spoken? A pre-proto-Germanic language (and pre-Balto-Slavic). We may even have the remnants of this extinct language within modern Dutch. Maurits Gysseling proposed, based upon work by himself and Dr. S.J. De Laet a 'Belgian' language (associated with the Belgae); this is based upon endonyms, toponyms and in certain suffixes found in the Dutch language which are not Celtic nor Germanic, but PIE.

The work on this is far from a solid case, however, and I offer it only as a additional question regarding the security of Celtic as originating in the Danube. The endonyms, toponyms and suffixes linked with this are of very questionable heritage in terms of both Germanic and Celtic, but the problem is that any linguistic argument put forth regarding language is, ironically, shouted down by a projected language origin based upon unattested links to a material culture, dreamed up many years ago in the mind of a very earnest but idealistic and romantic academic.

[Zarakas]

The attached may be of interest and add to debate.
7376

[Fisherking]

I think you misunderstood my assertion. I referred to some of the problems I have with the work but given the terms of their argument I was wondering why they believe the Celts of Iberia carried Basque genetic markers to the British Isles when it is perfectly feasible that those peoples were able to do it themselves.

There was a long succession of Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures springing form the exact area of the modern Basque and Gascon peoples. These peoples are of a Non Indo-European language group. There are two other Non Indo-European languages that were present within known history, the Turdetani and the Iberians. Iberian shows strong signs of being a related language to the Basque language.

DNA studies show the most similarities between the Basques and the population of the British Isles.

https://i.imgur.com/0TwWB.jpg (http://imgur.com/0TwWB)

When one examines the “G Y-DNA a slightly different picture emerges.

https://i.imgur.com/Iyn9e.png (http://imgur.com/Iyn9e)

Why are the Welsh and Cornish different? Could this mean that they came from Spain and brought their language with them? Well except that they were P-Celtic speakers rather than Q-Celtic speakers. Celts of Iberia spoke Q-Celtic. According to the authors, however there were only Germans where P-Celtic was supposed to be spoken.

Kotch theorizes that Celts arrive from Iberia 1200 to 700 BC. Genetic links say the people arrived about 4000 years ago, linking them to the Urnfelds culture of Central Europe because of the metal working of these people in the archeological record. This is also compatible with the Y-DNA evidence.

I do not doubt contact between Iberia and the British Isles, marine or otherwise but the early arrival time and the language spoken do not support this theory.

The other interesting thing I noticed is that Koch acknowledges the existence of the other Celtic languages but then goes to great lengths to deny that the inscriptions and testimony are valid and only Proto Indo-European or German. Doesn’t anyone find this curious?

[Fisherking]

And now back to the Celts.

It might help if we knew just where the other Celtic languages were spoken.

Koch in his earlier books and in his translations attests to their existence.

Saying that the peoples of Central Europe were all Germanic or Raetic have larger problems.

Proto Germanic contained a large number of Celtic loan words but at least a third of the language was of Non Indo-European origins. Germanic languages also have different sounds not common to other Indo-European languages. The commonalities between Veneti and Germanic are not very strong. It is a poorly documented language and only the words and cases for one’s self are akin to German but just as akin to Latin. Since inscriptions and coins have a lot to do with kings and rulers these would be readily noticeable in inscriptions. You may cite Gothic for king but before you do, that was a Celtic loan in its form.


This quote is only from Wikipedia, but I thought you might find it interesting:



Loans into Proto-Germanic from other Indo-European languages can be relatively dated by how well they conform to Germanic sound laws. Since the dates of borrowings and sound laws are not precisely known, using the loans for absolute, or calendar, chronology would be impossible.

Most loans from Celtic appear to have been made before or during the Germanic Sound Shift.[15] For instance, one specimen *rīks 'ruler' was borrowed from Celtic *rīxs 'king' (stem *rīg-), with g → k.[16] It is clearly not native because PIE *ē → ī is not typical of Germanic but is a feature of Celtic languages. Another is *walhaz "foreigner; Celt" from the Celtic tribal name Volcae with k → h and o → a. Other likely Celtic loans include *ambahtaz 'servant', *brunjǭ 'mailshirt', *gīslaz 'hostage', *īsarną 'iron', *lēkijaz 'healer', *laudą 'lead', *Rīnaz 'Rhine', and *tūnaz, tūną 'fortified enclosure'.[17] These loans would likely have been borrowed during the Celtic Hallstatt and early La Tène cultures when the Celts dominated central Europe, although the period spanned several centuries.






Raetic was also a Non Indo-European language, kin to Etruscan but it showed very strong influences from Illyrian and Celtic, more from Celtic. At one point it was thought to be a bridge language between the two.

For languages to contain enough loan words to produce confusion it must also show that they were in contact with people who spoke the language it was barrowed from. It must mean that all these people were in close contact with Celtic speaking peoples.

I hope that Koch and others did not bring up the Pan-Illyrian theory. That was long ago disproved. Also Illyrian names show a strong influence from the Celts. A clear majority of names left in inscriptions derive from Celtic with lesser numbers deriving from Thracian and Greek.

Now we have someone speaking a language and leaving inscriptions that are looking very Celtic. This language is influencing people on all sides, far and near. We have dynamic cultures in the same area. We have people recording these people as Celts and Gauls. But now we are supposed to believe that the only Celts are parking their rear ends in Spain or have sailed on to Ireland and Britain.

Just how did all those people in Central Europe end up with those loanwords? Not PIE because that is just too coincidental, especially for the Germans who may have had very good Non Indo-European alternatives, some of which showed up in other variants of their language.

Who knows, maybe German would have been completely Non Indo-European with out the Celtic influence.

Now the issue of Germanics as the Hallstatt and La Téne cultures. I will not go into everything invented by these cultures but they were revolutionary in many areas. The one thing I will focus on is the use of metal plows. They made them. At least one was found in bronze and the remains of some in iron have been found in Central Europe and southern Scotland. Roman laws in Gaul and Britain effectively prevented there use. Until they were discovered it was thought that the metal plow was invented in China circa 450 AD.

Much of Classical Civilization was lost after the German migrations and the fall of Rome. If it had been the Germans who built and nourished these two cultures is it not safe to assume that they would have continued to practice the culture?

After these events we have no La Téne art, we have no iron plows, all construction including fortifications are done in timber. If the Germans were the founders of these cultures then why such a great leap backwards?

I do not find it so very unlikely that Celts reached the British Isles from Spain. There is more than enough evidence of Irish contact with Spain for me to say that. What I do find unacceptable is the notion that it was the origin of the language and that there is any lack of evidence in Hallstatt and La Téne being Celtic cultures.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

I think you misunderstood my assertion. I referred to some of the problems I have with the work but given the terms of their argument I was wondering why they believe the Celts of Iberia carried Basque genetic markers to the British Isles when it is perfectly feasible that those peoples were able to do it themselves.

I don't think that is the argument. The argument is, rather, that this really defines how old this separate European zone is. What is important is the continuing linkage of material cultures between these areas.


There was a long succession of Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures springing form the exact area of the modern Basque and Gascon peoples. These peoples are of a Non Indo-European language group. There are two other Non Indo-European languages that were present within known history, the Turdetani and the Iberians. Iberian shows strong signs of being a related language to the Basque language.

No argument with you there, but I'm not sure what relevance that has with the clear link between the PIE Celtic languages of the Iberian peninsula, Brittany and Ireland/Western Britain.



Why are the Welsh and Cornish different? Could this mean that they came from Spain and brought their language with them? Well except that they were P-Celtic speakers rather than Q-Celtic speakers. Celts of Iberia spoke Q-Celtic. According to the authors, however there were only Germans where P-Celtic was supposed to be spoken.

The question of Q-Celtic vs P-Celtic is, at best, a neutral question. If one looks at the question a little more then there seem to be two distinct branches. The Hispanic Celtic languages and the Irish languages are Q-Celtic. It has been argued that P-Celtic is a result of aerial contact with other PIE derived languages (Italic/Germanic/ Balto-Slavic). We know that the Brythonnic languages and Gaulish were in contact with other PIE langauges for a considerable length of time. Finding Q-Celtic substrata would be a clue to the efficacy of that. Of course the more Eastern 'Celtic' dialects derive only P-Celtic groups.

The P-Celtic/Q-Celtic dichotomy also highlights how confused the linguistic arguments are. Many of the P-Celtic changes are argued using Middle and Old Irish....which are Q-Celtic languages.


Kotch theorizes that Celts arrive from Iberia 1200 to 700 BC. Genetic links say the people arrived about 4000 years ago, linking them to the Urnfelds culture of Central Europe because of the metal working of these people in the archeological record. This is also compatible with the Y-DNA evidence.

I do not doubt contact between Iberia and the British Isles, marine or otherwise but the early arrival time and the language spoken do not support this theory.

But, conversely, you were recently arguing that Celtic should be associated with the Neolithic expansion into Europe during the fifth and fourth millenia BC.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

And now back to the Celts.

It might help if we knew just where the other Celtic languages were spoken.

Koch in his earlier books and in his translations attests to their existence.

Saying that the peoples of Central Europe were all Germanic or Raetic have larger problems.

Proto Germanic contained a large number of Celtic loan words but at least a third of the language was of Non Indo-European origins. Germanic languages also have different sounds not common to other Indo-European languages. The commonalities between Veneti and Germanic are not very strong. It is a poorly documented language and only the words and cases for one’s self are akin to German but just as akin to Latin. Since inscriptions and coins have a lot to do with kings and rulers these would be readily noticeable in inscriptions. You may cite Gothic for king but before you do, that was a Celtic loan in its form.


This quote is only from Wikipedia, but I thought you might find it interesting:






The thing is, why would it be a Celtic loan-word when the root riks is seen throughout the Germanic language. It is where Reich and rich from. It is, again, a forced etymology which has a perfectly consistent internal counterpart and needs no Celtic loan. This is exactly the kind of wooly thinking that has 'shown' a Celtic substrata within other languages.





Raetic was also a Non Indo-European language, kin to Etruscan but it showed very strong influences from Illyrian and Celtic, more from Celtic. At one point it was thought to be a bridge language between the two.

This positive attestation of Rhaetic, given the attestation, is too strongly held. It is with reference to these poorly attested languages that Celtic has been given such a falsely prominent position within the wider European, and PIE, languages. It is not known whether Raetic is PIE or not. In terms of the early languages of this area more generally you might be interested in this http://www.academia.edu/1841703/Etruscan_Glossary_A_spreadsheet_containing_2_500_Etruscan_words_that_relate_to_Latin_French_and_Ital ian_Update_08.07.12


For languages to contain enough loan words to produce confusion it must also show that they were in contact with people who spoke the language it was barrowed from. It must mean that all these people were in close contact with Celtic speaking peoples.

I hope that Koch and others did not bring up the Pan-Illyrian theory. That was long ago disproved. Also Illyrian names show a strong influence from the Celts. A clear majority of names left in inscriptions derive from Celtic with lesser numbers deriving from Thracian and Greek.

Just how did all those people in Central Europe end up with those loanwords? Not PIE because that is just too coincidental, especially for the Germans who may have had very good Non Indo-European alternatives, some of which showed up in other variants of their language.

What do you mean by "Not PIE because that is just too coincidental"? Is Celltic not PIE? And are these supposed Celtic roots found within, for example, Western celtic languages.

I'm not going to address point after point (some of which are a little confused - there are no laws that I know of banning the use of metal ploughs, and the real push forward in agriculture is in terms of heavy ploughs - and some of the oldest terms for heavy ploughs are found in Slavic languages. As for Classicakl civilisation..... that was Greek and Roman, so I don't know where Celltic comes into the equation.

I will state the case again to see if you can understand how deeply this problem runs. The Danube/Celtic proposition was not a linguistic argument, but over the course of the last 200 years or so has become a linguistic a-priori. There are problems within Celtic that are well-known. Many of the phonological and morphological changes are known to be shared with other language groups, particularly Italic and Germanic. Others are euphemistically known as "problematic" - what this means is that sound changes are neither language wide, nor are they geographically consistent. These attributes of the language group ought to have been ringing alarm bells for linguists, but the idea is so ingrained that arguing against it is nigh impossible.

I'll give you an example of how messed up this is. Lepontic is stated as a Celtic language. When you actually look at the basis for this you start to see the cracks. First alarm bell; the letters used must be being used for different sound values within different inscriptions, and diifferently from other Italic scripts, in order for it to be read as Celtic. Even then the language shows signs of having similarities with Italic (and, with reference to the link above, with Etruscan). 2; the inscriptions cover a wide time period. 3; the language seems to have little affiliation even with its neighbouring 'Celtic' language Cisalpine Gaulish.

So, first we have Herodotus telling us the Celtici live beyond the pillars of Heracles, dubiously linked with a prior sentence talking of the source of the Danube (which, even if he meant the Pyrennes - rather than some now unknown village - is nowhere near the pillars of Heracles). What we also have is, from the mid-first century BC, Diodorus of Sicily writing about the end of the First Punic Wars. Presumably he was using contemporary sources. He talks of the Gauls and the Celts as separate identities. He writes about the Celts and the Gauls uniting, and then he tells us who these Celts are. They are the mercenaries of the un-warlike Tartessians.

The Romans came to use 'Gaul' as a geographical term, as they did Germania. Caesar is clear in telling us in his Gallic Wars that only one part of this geographical area is populated by people who call themselves Keltoi.

I would bet that if you re-assess these language groups without the baggage of the Halstatt/Celtic link (which was from the beginning a false link) then many of the problems of the current, sprawling, Celtic language group will begin to dissolve. Let's assess the Western Celtic languages as a group on their own, for example - starting with the Q-Celtic branches. Let's then assess what inscriptions we have in Central Europe/North Italy/Asia Minor without reference to those Western Celtic languages. What I would bet you would find would be a far different relationship between the language groups.

Koch, Cunliffe at al have to be very circumspect in their proposals. What they argue is that Celtic is a much deeper, older stratum within European languages. Reading between the lines of that one the proposal is(must be seen as) that the language groupings we have held to be Celtic are linked in a much broader, pre-Celtic, post PIE relationship. The other European groups (Italic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic) are later languages. In other words Italic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic languages are derived from this pre-Celtic, post PIE language group and the Western Celtic languages are, likewise, a separate branch. Hence the seemingly wide range of Celtic 'loanwords', the shared phonological/morphological changes, the "problematic" changes.

So, in summary. What we have is a Pre-Celtic, post PIE substrata introduced during the 5th and 4th millenia BC across Europe during the Neolithic migrations which has, through isolations, contacts (with other of these substrata and with pre-existing non-PIE groups) evolved into the Italic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic and Celtic groups from which our current languages derive.

The confusion is in the attribution of this pre-Celtic superstrata as being intrinsically tied to the 'modern' Celtic group; it is in the mis-attestation of a European branch of PIE (the pre-Celtic stratum) as being synonymous with the separate, later branch of Celtic languages (Celto-Iberian, Irish, Brythonnic) - ie the language group as distinct from Italic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic.

EDIT: It is worth pointing out that Proto-languages are not languages that would have been spoken anywhere, the most that we can hope for from proto-languages is to ascribe language cognates that would have been spoken within particular groups - usually we can see a geographical link, not surprisingly, but languages diversify pretty quickly to a point of non-intelligibility (for example, it seems that Latin, Umbrian and Oscan languages, despite being closely related, were not mutually intelligible). What we have then are sprachbunds, language areas which diversify with geographical distance (dialects) - so, the further one travels from one's home, the less related the language grouping becomes until you reach a point of non-intelligibility. With time these changes become so great that we can label the languages as being of a separate branch of the root proto-language. I say this to highlight how incongruent the idea of a European-wide language grouping surviving from the 4th millenium BC to the 1st millenium BC is. Italic is believed to have diversified from it's root around about 1200BC, yet already by the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC there are distinct un-intelligible groups - within a pretty small geographical area.

[Fisherking]

There is some food for thought in this work but the arguments they make are just as flawed as the earlier ones.

I don’t think that the hypotheses answers anything and only adds to the amount of questions that can be asked.

We have irrefutable proof of Central European contacts in the British Isles at early dates just as we have artifacts from Spain. Irish settlement patterns hearken back to the Neolithic but those in Britain proper would seem to be more developed.

If we take the Maritime Bell Beaker culture it points genetically to Wales and Southwestern England as a possible landing site. But it does not cover the whole of the isles. It also points to a different body type for the individuals after this time, but anthropologists discount it as proof of migration.

We can speculate on languages and differences for ever and still reach no conclusion. What we know is historically Celtic languages are or were spoken in the British Isles and reputed to have been spoken over a large area of the rest of Europe.

Culturally all these areas are seemingly linked to the Hallstatt and or La Téne cultures. Earlier cultural links go back to the Beaker culture. The areas are also tied together with the Megalithic cultures of Europe and may be tied to Magdalenian culture.

If we talk about a unifying Celtic culture we can not divorce it from bronze age Urnfelds culture regardless of the language spoken. If we speak of Celtic as only a language with no unifying culture we are left with only what we know historically. All the rest is conjecture. We are left with less to go on than before. We may as well rename the field Atlantic Fringe studies and linguistics can become a large subfield. Forget about most of France, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Czechia , Slovakia, Poland, All of the Balkans, Turkey, and the colony in Egypt as all obviously German want-a-bes.

I suppose I just can’t understand the wish to narrow the field to such an extent. Basing any argument on what Herodotus wrote and supposing that that instance was accurate and not one of his wilder claims just seems one of convince. Most other works by other authors and scholars are ignored. We can’t possibly take their word for it, but Herodotus is to be believed (in this instance) while all the others such as Posidonius and Caesar with first had experience must obviously be mistaken.

We are asked to forget what we know and take the teams assumptions without question. We are to assume that Iberian trade objects mean Celtic language while culture is meaningless in giving us a link. We must accept that German tribes occupied vast territory long before any evidence of their leaving their homelands. We must assume that what Roman and Greek writers recorded was tripe. They couldn’t tell a Celt from a German and the Germans were lying and saying they were Celts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Herodotus_world_map-en.svg&page=1

Rather than invent a hypotheses which seeks to cancel so much of what archeologists, linguists, and anthropologists have found, to include Celtic inscriptions through wide areas of Europe, it may have been wiser to have gone from the standpoint of the Paleolithic Continuity Theory.

http://www.continuitas.org/intro.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_Continuity_Theory

In this theory the Celts colonized from west to east. Something less problematic than changing everyone to Germans.

IMHO Koch and his team are focusing on his linking of a previously unclassified language and trying to draw conclusions linking it to the British Isles. The arguments over language and culture are leave us in a murky darkness. The framework of the PCT are just the reverse. PCT is not perfect. Its model may be too static but it is far clearer than the Western Celts theories put forward by Koch and his team.

The PIE invasion is its self a theory without definitive proof. The unmaking of Eastern Celtic languages is a misguided endeavor seeking to undo recorded history with a weak argument.

Not having read the book I am unsure exactly where these elements come from. Seemingly Cunliffe’s ideas on Celtic being a trade language is within bounds of believability. The Celtic areas of Europe have long been held as a vast trade network. It also would explain why languages would not diverge to unintelligibility and would exert a stronger influence on other languages with which it was in contact

During the time frame of the research Greek had undergone a change where many diverse dialects and branches of the language had disappeared and it had become an almost universal language from Italy to the Indus valley. This came about through a short lived conquest but remained because it facilitated trade. Is there any reason to doubt, in the face of numerous accounts, that it was other than a Celtic language being spoken? Spelling varieties should not be held as proof of nonintelligibility. We have enough to go on from our own English before spelling became a convention to account for a wide range of spellings of the same word.

ADDIDENDEM:

I am having a bit of difficulty here as I have not read the book but the theory is of interest.

I am not sure if it is the theory or your summation that I have the trouble with.
I don’t mean to be disrespectful to either the Koch team or to you.

My difficulties are with the changing of Hallstatt and La Téne as Germanic cultures and telling us that the Romans had no idea of who they were dealing with.

http://www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi/bookreviews/vol01/garstki09.html

Also, separation of Celtic from Gaul I find problematic. Caesar tells us that these people call themselves Celts but the Romans name them Gauls. The Irish refer to themselves as Gaels. The Welsh don’t call themselves Celts either.

This could be because of language shifts, or not. Q-Celtic could be said to be the older form of the language at large but that also shows a degree of separation from the main body of speakers. Example: American and Australian English vs. British English. Those reflect the language as it was spoken at earlier times. American English did not go through the shift of the early 1820s and Australian dose not reflect the end of that same shift.

Further, the number of Celtic dialects or languages in Iberia could reflect successive migrations or colonization. It may reflect an older spoken form but does not mean that it was the founding area of the language.

We have Lepontic being absorbed into Gaulish in the 4th century BC. This only demonstrates closer ties with a core area of the language and an influx of speakers.

We can assuredly assume eastern expansion of the Celts. We see them moving south and east from Central Europe in Roman times.

There are models which would say that, for a time, Hallstatt became the new core area of the cultural area. La Téne too could have been a backwater area that developed new ideas that brought about continued expansion. These are patterns of human development. They should not be seen as the cradle of Celtic genesis.

Iberian Celts show Hallstatt influences. Marine Bell Beaker may show the closest to a unifying culture as we get at a later point but genetic links only point to Wales and the South of England. There are also differences in Ireland that would show it was not gotten direct from the source. This still leaves us wondering how the Irish acquired their language.

That just brings us back to this: http://www.continuitas.org/intro.html

Stephen Oppenheimer’s The Origins of the British goes into this area and it does tie in with Cunliffe. It is more a matter of how far back in time you think they may have originated.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

There is some food for thought in this work but the arguments they make are just as flawed as the earlier ones.

I don’t think that the hypotheses answers anything and only adds to the amount of questions that can be asked.

Therein lies the problem of raising such an issue, why it faces such hostility; people like narratives, and more so people like to believe they have a congruent narrative and dislike that being brought into question. However if one is looking for a level of truth in the narrative then one has to re-assess it based upon evidence. I'll explain more as I go along but, though at first it may seem to raise more questions than it answers ultimately it may help to bring a little more clarity into a wide area of subjects and may free up some new areas of investigation.


We have irrefutable proof of Central European contacts in the British Isles at early dates just as we have artifacts from Spain. Irish settlement patterns hearken back to the Neolithic but those in Britain proper would seem to be more developed.

If we take the Maritime Bell Beaker culture it points genetically to Wales and Southwestern England as a possible landing site. But it does not cover the whole of the isles. It also points to a different body type for the individuals after this time, but anthropologists discount it as proof of migration.

We can speculate on languages and differences for ever and still reach no conclusion. What we know is historically Celtic languages are or were spoken in the British Isles and reputed to have been spoken over a large area of the rest of Europe.

What we know is that Celtic languages were (and are) spoken in parts of the British Isles, the assumption (and I have so often seen it written as a statement of fact) that the whole of the British Isles spoke some form of Celtic has simply been assumed, or rather inferred from the initial, falsely attributable, narrative - which was not a linguistic proposition. As for the speculation of languages spoken; for so long it has been an accepted axiom that it was Celtic, and so entrenched is that narrative, that speculation as to other, possibly now extinct, language groups - some of which may help explain the origins of, for example, the Germanic languages, the Balto-Slavic languages and also the differences within branches of those languages. Re-addressing the sprawling and troublesome Celtic group (particularly in terms of Continental Celtic, most specifically the P-Celtic groups, but also pertaining to Welsh) may bring some clarity in terms of the 'problematic' changes and those shared with other groups.


Culturally all these areas are seemingly linked to the Hallstatt and or La Téne cultures. Earlier cultural links go back to the Beaker culture. The areas are also tied together with the Megalithic cultures of Europe and may be tied to Magdalenian culture.

There are cultural links, but the archaeological evidence does not support any major migration at this time, particularly into the Iberian peninsula or the British Isles. That is why I said earlier that any link between material culture and population change/language change are a little more nuanced than simply found shared material = population/language shift. I think it is reasonable to see, for example, the Neolithic expansion into Central Europe as a PIE migration - there was likely little in the way of Mesolithic communities in this area. As Neolithic cultures develop we can see certain zones which appear to follow similar religious practices/beliefs. In both the central European zone and the Western (Atlantic) zone we can see these as being, perhaps, Neolithic/PIE culturally (because of the shift in emphasis away from earlier Mesolithic practices). There are distinct differences between these zones and it can be argued that the Western Atlantic zone tends to at least give a nod, as it were, to earlier Mesolithic norms. In the North, along the Scandinavian coasts, there seems to be more of a continuation with older Mesolithic forms. Also, that in the North farming was much more 'equal' with a continuation of hunter-gatherer existence. (For a really good read on this I would recommend "Europe Between the Oceans" by Barry Cunliffe.

Now, linguistically, what this could mean (in a broad over-view) is that PIE languages were deeply entrenched within the central European zone (and the Mediteranean), that PIE was more heavily influenced on the Western Coast by indigenous languages - and possibly by other migrants into the area, there are some suggestions that there may be an Afro-Asiatic intrusion into Western Celtic languages - and that on the Scandinavian coast PIE might have been pretty much submerged within the older Mesolithic languages. Now that would help explain why there is a seemingly strong non-PIE strand within the Germanic branch of languages.


If we talk about a unifying Celtic culture we can not divorce it from bronze age Urnfelds culture regardless of the language spoken. If we speak of Celtic as only a language with no unifying culture we are left with only what we know historically. All the rest is conjecture. We are left with less to go on than before. We may as well rename the field Atlantic Fringe studies and linguistics can become a large subfield. Forget about most of France, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Czechia , Slovakia, Poland, All of the Balkans, Turkey, and the colony in Egypt as all obviously German want-a-bes.

But if we are talking about bronze age urnfield culture as the basis for Celtic then you are arguing exactly what is suggested. THAT 'Celtic' language is a much deeper stratum within European PIE languages than the languages, developed in the forms that we know them much later, that we find on the west coast of Europe. That these languages, from a pretty early point, follow separate paths surely quantifies them as different language groups. THAT 'Celtic' language would have to be a pre-cursor to at least the Germanic languages, as well as the Balto-Slavic, and quite possibly Italic as well (and hence the shared changes with those groups). It would also, almost certainly, be the pre-cursor of other, now extinct, PIE language groups which may have left traces within modern languages that we have simply attributed to this notional pan-European 'Celtic' (and in doing so misunderstanding the changes that have occured within areas that may be present within modern languages, and may help explain - and would certainly help to broaden investigation into - many linguistic puzzles.


I suppose I just can’t understand the wish to narrow the field to such an extent. Basing any argument on what Herodotus wrote and supposing that that instance was accurate and not one of his wilder claims just seems one of convince. Most other works by other authors and scholars are ignored. We can’t possibly take their word for it, but Herodotus is to be believed (in this instance) while all the others such as Posidonius and Caesar with first had experience must obviously be mistaken.


But that's simply a misrepresentation of the works of authors. Celtic and Gaul were not interchangeable ethnicities until much later. The term Gaul came (over time) to be used as a geographical area. Even then Caesar does not refer to those who lived in Gaul as Celtic (only a portion who called themselves thus). Diodorus of Sicily, as I said, re-iterates the difference between the ethnic/cultural identity of Celts and Gauls and links the Celts with the Tartessians. There is no linking between Gaul and Celt until much later in the day. I have seen the argument made that Galatians spoke a Celltic language because they spoke the same language as in Gaul. Well that isn't what was said by our ancient writer. He specifies the Treveri language, not a more general Gaulish, and the Treveri describe themselves as 'Germanic' (though not German). We talk of a Celtic language being spoken throughout the British Isles as a given, yet we have an ancient writer describing the speech of the Britons as being like that of the Aesti, a tribe in Eastern Germanic/Baltic lands. Which ancient writers is it we have to ignore? The Gaul/Celt synonym is a later invention, it is not to be found within the work of the ancient authors.


We are asked to forget what we know and take the teams assumptions without question.

No, we are asked to look at the evidence and re-assess pre-conceived ideas on the basis of it. That seems eminently reasonable and, indeed, should be the guiding principle, not an optional extra, in terms of reaching answers.



We are to assume that Iberian trade objects mean Celtic language while culture is meaningless in giving us a link.

You mean as opposed to seeing shared material artefacts (which show regional variation - British 'Celtic' art is distinct from that of the Danube area, for example) and - despite there being no archaeological evidence of any significant migration - believe that simply contact with these objects altered a persons speech?


We must accept that German tribes occupied vast territory long before any evidence of their leaving their homelands. We must assume that what Roman and Greek writers recorded was tripe. They couldn’t tell a Celt from a German and the Germans were lying and saying they were Celts.

Firstly, I think I have said something which has confused the issue. Germanic was one language group that arose from this deeper stratum (as were Italic, VBalto-Slavic and possibly/probably other, now extinct, language groups). What can besaid is these central European languages will be more related to those groups than to the Western Celtic languages. They weren't all Germans.

As for the tribes that were supposedly telling us they were Celtic, who were they exactly? Were they the Belgic tribes, or the Galatians, or the Danubian peoples; or even the Aedui or Arverni. Where are the self-proclaimed Celts that we are to call liars?


IMHO Koch and his team are focusing on his linking of a previously unclassified language and trying to draw conclusions linking it to the British Isles. The arguments over language and culture are leave us in a murky darkness. The framework of the PCT are just the reverse. PCT is not perfect. Its model may be too static but it is far clearer than the Western Celts theories put forward by Koch and his team.

But you have made the very argument that they are making. That the 'Celtic' language is to be associated with the Urnfield culture - ie it is a much deeper rooted structure qwithin European languages. It also follows that, in terms of evidence which would support any sort of migration into the British Isles or the Iberian peninsula (as examples) during or since that period that the Western languages we know as Celtic have followed a separate evolution. It cannot be argued that they are one and the same thing.


The PIE invasion is its self a theory without definitive proof. The unmaking of Eastern Celtic languages is a misguided endeavor seeking to undo recorded history with a weak argument.

Actually its not un-making anything except a rather forced conjunct between two language groups which have a)followed separate evolutions and b) are 3 millenia apart in basis.


Not having read the book I am unsure exactly where these elements come from. Seemingly Cunliffe’s ideas on Celtic being a trade language is within bounds of believability. The Celtic areas of Europe have long been held as a vast trade network. It also would explain why languages would not diverge to unintelligibility and would exert a stronger influence on other languages with which it was in contact

Trading languages are pretty rare, and they are usually second languages; so 'celtic' being a trading language would not answer anything about what languages were being spoken in Europe, except in a formalised aspect of trade. More often trade involves multi-linguism. the only force that ca be seen to hold a language together over large areas is...literacy. I don't think there is much argument that literacy was widespread in central Europe.


During the time frame of the research Greek had undergone a change where many diverse dialects and branches of the language had disappeared and it had become an almost universal language from Italy to the Indus valley. This came about through a short lived conquest but remained because it facilitated trade.

It came about, as later Latin did (and all of our most prominent modern languages) through literacy, education and - at the heart of that - accepted norms of grammatical and spelling norms. There is a reason that threatened languages fight for their survival through the right to teach them and through formalisms of them.



ADDIDENDEM:

I am having a bit of difficulty here as I have not read the book but the theory is of interest.


I am not sure if it is the theory or your summation that I have the trouble with.
I don’t mean to be disrespectful to either the Koch team or to you.

My difficulties are with the changing of Hallstatt and La Téne as Germanic cultures and telling us that the Romans had no idea of who they were dealing with.

As I say this may be due to something I said earlier. The argument is not that the La Tene cultures are germanic.


Also, separation of Celtic from Gaul I find problematic. Caesar tells us that these people call themselves Celts but the Romans name them Gauls. The Irish refer to themselves as Gaels. The Welsh don’t call themselves Celts either.

Caesar tells us that only some of the inhabitants of Gaul call themselves Keltoi. he says little about the languages spoken.


This could be because of language shifts, or not. Q-Celtic could be said to be the older form of the language at large but that also shows a degree of separation from the main body of speakers. Example: American and Australian English vs. British English. Those reflect the language as it was spoken at earlier times. American English did not go through the shift of the early 1820s and Australian dose not reflect the end of that same shift.

It goes a bit deeper than that though. You argued that 'Celtic' must be linked with the Urnfield culture.


Further, the number of Celtic dialects or languages in Iberia could reflect successive migrations or colonization. It may reflect an older spoken form but does not mean that it was the founding area of the language.

Except that the archaeological evidence simply doesn't support that argument.


We have Lepontic being absorbed into Gaulish in the 4th century BC. This only demonstrates closer ties with a core area of the language and an influx of speakers.

What do you mean by 'absorbed'. There seems to be very little in common between Lepontic and Gaulish. Lepontic seems to have ceased to be.


We can assuredly assume eastern expansion of the Celts. We see them moving south and east from Central Europe in Roman times.

No, we see Central Europeans moving South and East, not Celts.


There are models which would say that, for a time, Hallstatt became the new core area of the cultural area. La Téne too could have been a backwater area that developed new ideas that brought about continued expansion. These are patterns of human development. They should not be seen as the cradle of Celtic genesis.

I agree, but that is exactly the initial narrative that has lead to the whole 'celtic' story that holds such power over modern thinking.


Iberian Celts show Hallstatt influences. Marine Bell Beaker may show the closest to a unifying culture as we get at a later point but genetic links only point to Wales and the South of England. There are also differences in Ireland that would show it was not gotten direct from the source. This still leaves us wondering how the Irish acquired their language.

The Etruscans show Greek influence. That no more makes them or their language Greek than Halstatt culture can say anything about the cultural conformity or language of the Iberian peninsula or the British Isles. I'm sorry but I don't understand your last point.

[Fisherking]

Apparently, up to a point we are in agreement. The point at which we diverge seems to be in the eastward expansion of the peoples we are calling Celts and Germans.

Both of these terms have become embroiled in modern times in nationalistic interpretations.

The Romans seemingly called everything beyond the Rhine and Danube Germanic but never defined it beyond that point.

When we speak of the tribe Treveri the Romans tell us they speak a Gaulish language, practice the Gaulish culture, but claim a Germanic past.

The Belgae are described in much the same way. He noted that the Belgae, being farthest from the developed civilization of Rome and closest to Germania over the Rhine, were the bravest of the three groups, because "merchants least frequently resort to them, and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind".

Belgae are also placed in Britain and Ireland. Further, some scholars hypothesize the language differences in Belgae as being an overlaid with an older I-E language but not German. I am sure you would not find this far out of line, since we find the same with Lusitanian and possibly other languages.
With the possible exception of the Frisii, it has been stated that Germanic speakers were no nearer than the Elbe in Caesar‘s time but perhaps the Ems.

Let us look far into the past.

If we go to the end of the ice age Central Europe from the Alps north to the Danube was still glaciated for some time. If Indo-Europeans were around then wouldn‘t they be moving into new unpopulated areas? How unlikely is it that they may have happened to have been Celts or Pre-Celts? If they were Proto-Germanic what were the geographic boundaries that prevented the cultural spread from the area to the rest of the populations?

From the Paleolithic onward we find cultural expansion from Southwest France/Northeast Spain and often the Targus moving eastwards into Central Europe. For tens of thousands of years we have a cultural affinity with the same zone inhabited by the Celts as outlined with the later Iron age maps of Celtic areas in Central and Western Europe. Not until the Neolithic Revolution do we find cultural spread moving in the other direction.

In the Aurignacian culture we find a spread that could even be the founding of the PIE group. It is also the first culture wholly proven to be associated with modern humans.

The Solutren culture starts in the western Atlantic region, France and Spain. It was succeeded by the Magdalenian culture which roughly incorporated those regions known as Celtic in Roman times.

Tardenoisian culture and its near relations are the last of these united areas but mtDNA haplo group U5b1 gives a tie in to the Megalithic culture of the Neolithic. It mirrors most of the Continental Celtic distribution.

In the Neolithic such broad united cultures are hard to find. There is also evidence of some population shifts which could be migrations. European Megalithic culture shows it could have started in the Mesolithic from sites in the British Isles, France, and Scandinavia. The number of sites in Ireland, particularly the valley of the Boyne would point to it being the center if not the origin of it. It also includes the Germanic homelands of Denmark and southern Sweden.

Bell Beaker culture is the beginning of metallurgy. It is thought to have come from the Targus area of Iberia. It was contemporary with Megalithic culture and with the building of Stonehenge. It is interesting that the earliest metal smith in the British Isles was found there. The Amesbury Archer, linked to the Beaker culture, borne in the Alps of Central Europe, and with a descendant buried nearby of local birth.
Also, Marine Bell Beaker entered Ireland from South England, not directly from Iberia.

From here we move to the Atlantic Bronze Age, in the west. This is the culture to which Professors Koch and Cunliffe attribute Celtic development and Celtic as the Atlantic lingua franca, later spreading into mainland Europe. But the Atlantic Bronze Age was not a single culture. It was five or more cultures linked by trade. Also linked by trade with all these same areas was the Urnfeld culture and its predecessors of Central Europe. Cultures that relied heavily on Irish metals, by the way. They shared many of the same practices, customs, and traits. The main difference was burial practices. Most of the other religious practices seem to be similar. Urnfeld also differed in the use of hill forts and the styles of fortified settlements that would later become known as oppida. Whether these developed from Urnfeld or the Castro culture is not clear but they seem to have begun in Central Europe.
Both culturally and genetically all of these areas were in close contact with one another for as far back as we have evidence of Homo Sapiens. If we assume that Celtic was spoken at this time by one area it is just as likely that it was spoken by the other.

Hallstatt culture, most would agree, was a Celtic culture springing from Central Europe. It extended from the headwaters of the Seine in the west, north to the upper Elbe and upper Oder, and east to perhaps near present day Budapest. Roughly half the area north of the Danube and east of the Rhine. All the same, it was part of the long standing area of cultural and genetic affinity that extended from the Atlantic to Central Europe and on most every map marked as Celtic at the time. This period lasted from circa 800 BCE to 500 BCE, thereafter it grew into the La Téne culture.

The idea that they become German overnight is more than just a stretch. What we know of the early German Tribes moving into the area came hundreds of years afterwards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germanic_tribes_%28750BC-1AD%29.png

The Celts reached their maximum extent about 275 BCE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Celtic_expansion.PNG

Just around the time the Roman Republic was getting started.

The linguistics cited earlier are in no way proof of German tribes in the area and show more influence by Celts on Germans than the reverse. We only have Germans moving into the region at the time of the Roman Conquest of Gaul and were certainly not on the Danube until long after all Celtic migrations had ended.

This is a gap of about five centuries. How do you think it managed to escape everyone‘s attention for so long?
Surely, archeologically or culturally we should have had some evidence that they were there.

Is there any proof other than the cited linguistics?

[Zarakas]

The link below maybe of interest and add to the debate. In particular, regarding Iberia and British isles.

http://www.minoanatlantis.com/Origin_Sea_Peoples.php

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Apparently, up to a point we are in agreement. The point at which we diverge seems to be in the eastward expansion of the peoples we are calling Celts and Germans.

Both of these terms have become embroiled in modern times in nationalistic interpretations.

The Romans seemingly called everything beyond the Rhine and Danube Germanic but never defined it beyond that point.

When we speak of the tribe Treveri the Romans tell us they speak a Gaulish language, practice the Gaulish culture, but claim a Germanic past.

The term Germania was used as a geographical term by Caesar and later authors, so little can be gleaned as to whether he, or later authors, mean simply from a geographical area when they talk of them being germanic. The same is true of Gaul, and Caesar - in particular - has very good political reasons for describing the areas he invaded as being part of Gaul. Even then he is clear that the area should be broken down into distinct areas. He says very little about the languages being spoken. Where do the Romans describe the Treveri as speaking a Gaulish language? The only time that I have read about their language was in connection with the Galatians and that their languages were similar - importantly, I think, this reference is specific to the Treveri. Archaeological evidence points toward a Danubian cultural expansion within the lands known to us as Belgica or Belgium during the 3rd century BC. The Treveri, describing themselves as 'Germanic', and being an aspect of this Belgae cultural area, are therefore described as being of a language group distinct from Gaulish and similar to that of the Galatians; the Galatians are likely to have come from the Danube area, as are the Treveri. I will make the point again, as you seem to be fixated upon this, that I am not saying that the Danubian culture was German speaking.


The Belgae are described in much the same way. He noted that the Belgae, being farthest from the developed civilization of Rome and closest to Germania over the Rhine, were the bravest of the three groups, because "merchants least frequently resort to them, and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind".

Yes, he describes, essentially, a different cultural group; something that is backed up within the archaeological record.


Belgae are also placed in Britain and Ireland. Further, some scholars hypothesize the language differences in Belgae as being an overlaid with an older I-E language but not German. I am sure you would not find this far out of line, since we find the same with Lusitanian and possibly other languages.
With the possible exception of the Frisii, it has been stated that Germanic speakers were no nearer than the Elbe in Caesar‘s time but perhaps the Ems.

Yes, this is exactly what I have said. That is why I mentioned the proposed extinct 'Belgian' language. The claim is not that these people spoke a German language, or even proto-germanic, nor is it any sort of claim of ethnicity (which I think is a particularly ridiculous notion in terms of the mixed nature of Europe anyway). What the claim here is, is that there are a number of different language groups which have followed different evolutionary paths.

Let us look far into the past.


If we go to the end of the ice age Central Europe from the Alps north to the Danube was still glaciated for some time. If Indo-Europeans were around then wouldn‘t they be moving into new unpopulated areas? How unlikely is it that they may have happened to have been Celts or Pre-Celts? If they were Proto-Germanic what were the geographic boundaries that prevented the cultural spread from the area to the rest of the populations?

Being as early as this expansion is, and given that we take this as being the PIE expansion into Europe then this group would be (even if you want to call these later language groups Celtic) pre-Celtic and pre-Germanic. The only alternative is that a PIE Proto-Germanic sprang into existence on its own. The language groups of central Europe and Northern Europe, and possibly the Italic group as well, were ancestors of this original expansion's languages following different evolutions depending upon variability in terms of contacts and relative isolations ('sprachbund' denouement). This is part of the problem with talking of Celtic being linked with the early central PIE expansion and a later language group.


Bell Beaker culture is the beginning of metallurgy. It is thought to have come from the Targus area of Iberia. It was contemporary with Megalithic culture and with the building of Stonehenge. It is interesting that the earliest metal smith in the British Isles was found there. The Amesbury Archer, linked to the Beaker culture, borne in the Alps of Central Europe, and with a descendant buried nearby of local birth.
Also, Marine Bell Beaker entered Ireland from South England, not directly from Iberia.

Whether the culture entered Ireland via Southern England doesn't really effect the proposition that the Western coast was a distinct zone within Europe. The first known metal-working (as opposed to metal smith) found in the British Isles is in South-Eastern ireland. This occurs prior to metal-working in South-West England; beginning with copper then moving on to bronze, possibly utilising tin found in South-West Britian. What is clear is that there was a cultural zone that existed along the Western Atlantic coast that was in consistent and long term contact, that shared broad similarities in religious systems (if burial is anything to go by).


From here we move to the Atlantic Bronze Age, in the west. This is the culture to which Professors Koch and Cunliffe attribute Celtic development and Celtic as the Atlantic lingua franca, later spreading into mainland Europe. But the Atlantic Bronze Age was not a single culture. It was five or more cultures linked by trade. Also linked by trade with all these same areas was the Urnfeld culture and its predecessors of Central Europe. Cultures that relied heavily on Irish metals, by the way. They shared many of the same practices, customs, and traits. The main difference was burial practices. Most of the other religious practices seem to be similar. Urnfeld also differed in the use of hill forts and the styles of fortified settlements that would later become known as oppida. Whether these developed from Urnfeld or the Castro culture is not clear but they seem to have begun in Central Europe.

What do you mean by other religious practices being similar? Very little can be known about religious practices other than through burials when dealing with religious cultures in archaeology unless we are lucky enough to find literary attestation.


Both culturally and genetically all of these areas were in close contact with one another for as far back as we have evidence of Homo Sapiens. If we assume that Celtic was spoken at this time by one area it is just as likely that it was spoken by the other.

But I don't think that you would argue with the development of general zones where we can find shared religious(burial) practices. In fact it is on this basis, and then more generally material cultural diffusion, that the idea of 'Celtic' Europe is derived. It is a little more nuanced, and language is also more nuanced. Halstatt culture begins in the 8th century BC. By this time different zones have been developing, and contacting, for some three millenia. Are we really supposed to believe that this cultural diffusion - ie the spread of a material culture which shows regional differentiation and little evidence (until perhaps later) of substantial migration would alter the course of the languages spoken across the diffusion area? That Tartessian is Celtic does not mean that it started to be Celtic when we find written records, but rather that by the time written records are found Tartessian is already Celtic. So Celtic in the West precedes Halstatt culture.


Hallstatt culture, most would agree, was a Celtic culture springing from Central Europe. It extended from the headwaters of the Seine in the west, north to the upper Elbe and upper Oder, and east to perhaps near present day Budapest. Roughly half the area north of the Danube and east of the Rhine. All the same, it was part of the long standing area of cultural and genetic affinity that extended from the Atlantic to Central Europe and on most every map marked as Celtic at the time. This period lasted from circa 800 BCE to 500 BCE, thereafter it grew into the La Téne culture.

But it is agreed by most people because that is the story that has been told, without any linguistic basis, for the last couple of centuries. Linguistically it makes little sense. The use of the term Celtic to describe both the basis of PIE languages in Europe (ie associated with Urnfield culture) and a (much)later European group of languages is where the problem lies. That is why we must find different terms to describe these groups. By simply ascribing everything not certainly Italic, or not certainly Germanic, or not certainly Balto-Slavic, or not certainly some other extinct PIE European groups with the broad stroke of 'Celtic', and then compounding that problem by trying to ram that context into a narrower language group spoken on the Western coast of Europe has lead to a mess of linguistic arguments.

It also leads to narratives that simply aren't supported by archaeological evidence, the greatest example being migrations from central Europe into the Iberian peninsula.

I'll give an example from Britain as to how this over-arching 'Celtic' narrative messes up linguistic propositions. There are certain shared grammatical nuances between Welsh and English, and the argument has been made that this is a proof of the Celtic root of English. But that nuance is not found in irish (nor is it found in any older Celtic languages). Taking out the desire for a Celtic uber-language then this actually shows a shared structure within British languages which are not Germanic or Celtic but have survived the Celtic and German influences upon them.


The idea that they become German overnight is more than just a stretch. What we know of the early German Tribes moving into the area came hundreds of years afterwards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germanic_tribes_%28750BC-1AD%29.png

The Celts reached their maximum extent about 275 BCE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Celtic_expansion.PNG

Just around the time the Roman Republic was getting started.

The linguistics cited earlier are in no way proof of German tribes in the area and show more influence by Celts on Germans than the reverse. We only have Germans moving into the region at the time of the Roman Conquest of Gaul and were certainly not on the Danube until long after all Celtic migrations had ended.

I'll say it again, I'm not talking about Germanic instead of Celtic. In terms of Germanic I'm saying that it has come about from the same language as the notional 'Celtic' (the deep-rooted language associated with urnfield culture). Part of the problem is the ridiculous idea of ethnicity I think, but in terms of , for example, Germanic languages having many Celtic 'loanwords', if these 'loanwords' are actually a deeper European PIE root then Germanic is simply a continuum of that language group. The problem arises when a deeper language group (probably shared between the Western Atlantic zone and the Central European zone) is mistaken as being the same as some notional, much later, uber-language spoken across a great swathe of Europe. There would actually be languages derived from this root following different evolutions in terms of contacts and sprachbund distances, so that groups would evolve with subtle differences. Some of those groups became or were 'absorbed' into (ie are extinct but have left traces within) Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic and Celtic languages.


This is a gap of about five centuries. How do you think it managed to escape everyone‘s attention for so long?
Surely, archeologically or culturally we should have had some evidence that they were there.

See above, you seem to be fixated on some Celtic or German dichotomy that simply is nothing to do with the argument.

[Fisherking]

First, I am not sure we can assume a PIE expansion into Europe other than the original population.

The point is that the Atlantic Fringe and the Danube basin were in close cultural contact, seemingly always.

During the Urnfeld and Atlantic Bronze age we find a difference in burials but the religious artifacts and other practices, such as votive offering, hoardings and so on remained near identical. Hallstatt and La Téne cultures had a strong influence in both areas. In Classical Antiquity writers tell us that in this broad area a people they called Celts or Galls lived. They seemed to have a shared language and culture.

We can see differences in genetics, culture, language, and perhaps religion. We can also see similarities in these same areas.

What reason do we have to divide them? Why do we need to assume one group more pure than the other? Does it or should it even matter?

Your statement that you are not nationalistically motivated in dividing the Eastern Complex of Celts from the Western Complex, however, does show that you are aware of the origins of that theory and their nationalistic bent.

Whether you theorize them as Dacian or German makes no difference to the argument.

We have as many reasons to doubt the Celt were in Ireland as we do to doubt those in Bulgaria or Turkey. The only difference being that all the other Celts were wiped out or assimilated except in the far Northwest of Europe.

All areas warrant closer examination. General theories that promote one over the other is not helpful. Let us just see what future discoveries show us.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

First, I am not sure we can assume a PIE expansion into Europe other than the original population.

Do you mean an original early migration linked quite probably with the Neolithic - which is the generally accepted model - or are you proposing that PIE was already in existence within Europe during the Mesolithic?


The point is that the Atlantic Fringe and the Danube basin were in close cultural contact, seemingly always.

It depends upon how one defines 'close'. That there were contacts is not in doubt, but that didn't stop differentiation between groups, and the idea of 'close' contact simply doesn't address the various zones of Europe that developed.


During the Urnfeld and Atlantic Bronze age we find a difference in burials but the religious artifacts and other practices, such as votive offering, hoardings and so on remained near identical. Hallstatt and La Téne cultures had a strong influence in both areas. In Classical Antiquity writers tell us that in this broad area a people they called Celts or Galls lived. They seemed to have a shared language and culture.

Votive offerings tend to begin after burial is replaced by cremation. The idea that practices "remained near identical" is false on the basis that they neither remained (ie were, from quite an early time, differentiated) nor did they become near identical. Halstatt and La Tene cultures (by which we mean material culture) does indeed have a strong influence but is, as I have said, differentiated - and so is almost certainly a passing on of ideas and techniques rather than populations. Especially given that the archaeological record does not support the sort of migration that would be expected with language change - especially in terms of the Iberian peninsula or the British isles. Nor does the most recent genetic evidence.

The ancient writers do NOT use the terms Celt and Gaul interchangeably - that came much later. I have provided examples to you of this. Could you, seeing as you keep repeating the same notion as if it is a given (axiomatic) truth please provide some evidence of this ancient interchangeable attribution, and of the many mentions of the Celtic language spoken by these people?

Perhaps when you begin to look for the evidence of this you will discover that it simply does not exist. This is what I have asked you to do, in case you forgot. Don't take my word for it. The evidence you believe is so firmly behind the 'Celtic Europe' narrative simply isn't what you think it is. I would ask you again to look and see for yourself just how weak the proposition actually is. Also, given that you seem to accept that the Celtic language is associated with Urnfield culture you might like to find any other language that has held together over such a large area, pretty much intact, for going on three millenia.


We can see differences in genetics, culture, language, and perhaps religion. We can also see similarities in these same areas.

Yes, well....that wouldn't be surprising given that PIE as a language probably also shared a cultural/religious heritage. That there are similarities in terms of language, culture and genetics is pretty much a given (if one follows the idea of migration from a PIE origin at some point into Europe). That there are differences is also to be expected given that different populations live in close contact with particular populations and not with the entirety of the population of Europe.


What reason do we have to divide them? Why do we need to assume one group more pure than the other? Does it or should it even matter?

What do you mean what reason do we have to divide them? Because they show differences would seem a pretty good reason. And what on Earth are you talking about with this purity BS? How many times have I referenced that the idea of ethnicity within mixed Europe is ridiculous ? As someone with a surname which comes from a Norman root, a republican Irish grandfather, a Grandmother from an established Scottish Jewish family and another Grandmother whose family were from Yemen..... which ludicrous notion of ethnicity do you think I give a flying fig about? This is about false attribution, about a long held but seriously flawed narrative that needs addressing. Not for some 'ethnic' purpose but because only by abandoning it, and seeing it for what it is can the right questions be asked. It is about looking at the evidence rather than holding onto some story because its comfortable.


Your statement that you are not nationalistically motivated in dividing the Eastern Complex of Celts from the Western Complex, however, does show that you are aware of the origins of that theory and their nationalistic bent.

No, it shows a recognition of the fact that too many times racial/nationalist agendas creep into discussions of the nature of the cultural and linguistic history of Europe (and elsewhere, for that matter) and that is something I am deeply uncomfortable with. I merely wished to highlight that any argument should be clear that this is not involved. Thanks.


Whether you theorize them as Dacian or German makes no difference to the argument.

Errrmm... I'm not sure I understand this in the slightest. Forgive me if I'm wrong but your argument seems now to have simply devolved to "it is Celtic and that's all there is to it". Surely what language was spoken is important, in terms of history; or perhaps no history is important. Isn't truth important, rather than the comfort of a narrative?


We have as many reasons to doubt the Celt were in Ireland as we do to doubt those in Bulgaria or Turkey. The only difference being that all the other Celts were wiped out or assimilated except in the far Northwest of Europe.

The Celts.....See, here I am talking about shared language and you are talking of an ethnicity. Weird.


All areas warrant closer examination. General theories that promote one over the other is not helpful. Let us just see what future discoveries show us.

The whole point of one theory over another is to examine the evidence, and if the evidence is more supportive of one argument then that is generally the one that might be seen to have the greater validity. I thought this was how most discussions or scientifically oriented thinking was judged.

[Fisherking]

Are you really proposing that the people named Celts by the Greeks were a different ethnicity?

Definition: An ethnic group is a group of people whose members are identified through a common trait. This can, but does not have to, include an idea of common heritage, a common culture, a shared language or dialect. The group's ethos or ideology may also stress common ancestry and religion, as opposed to an ethnic minority group which refers to race. The process that results in the emergence of an ethnicity is called ethnogenesis. Some ethnic groups are marked by little more than a common name.


These people came from a core area. They migrated to Italy from over the Alps. They supposedly also went to Greece from roughly the same start point. They spoke a Celtic or Gallish language. That was where it was named and identified for the first time.

If there was some mistake then it would have been in calling the insular peoples by the same general name. Since those in the east would be the original Celts, what do you propose to call the insular and or Atlantic grouping?

Is this a real argument or just a troll?

Do you know haw small the population shift was in the Neolithic? When it arrived in Ireland it was estimated at a 4% to 6% influx of new peoples. There is no massive movement anywhere.

Do you have a theory where 94 to 96% of a population decide to speak a new language? The Neolithic peoples arriving were farmers and herders, not a warrior elite.

You ask me for evidence of a Celtic language in the east and say when I look at evidence I may see something else.

Well, what evidence of Celtic language do you have that it was spoken in the British Isles 2500 years ago? I am to look at your material, and I have, yet you seem to have missed quite a lot of what I presented.

The archaeological record shows a slow spread of ideas, crops, and domesticated animals with perhaps in places population shifts of up to 10% but more often less than half that. We show a slow shift from hunter-gathering to farming.
This is the basis of the PIE Migration theory. The idea of language spread by Hallstatt and La Téne are no more challenged than the PIE theory.

In regards to Celt and Gaul, They are language differences only between Latin and Greek for a common people. Just like the modern country in Central Europe called Deutschland by its people, Germany by the English, and Alemanya in French. In English we have settled upon Celt for the people and Gaul as most of ancient France.

Am I to take it that since the people who showed up in the Balkans and migrated to Turkey and said to have come from the region of the source of the Danube (France, Switzerland, and South Germany) were not the same as those who stayed behind?

Do you argue that the Gauls didn’t speak a Celtic tongue?

It would be a bit difficult to prove that Gaulish is not a Celtic language.

Cunliffe cites these tribes as raiders from Gaul and Koch tell us that the Celtic language of Galatia was spoken until the 4th and possibly the 6th century AD.

If in isolation, they later mixed with other groups and their language underwent changes it does not mean their origins were other than outlined by the Greeks or Romans.

Most of the argument is circular and contradictory. It needs a clearer more concise explanation.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Are you really proposing that the people named Celts by the Greeks were a different ethnicity?

Definition: An ethnic group is a group of people whose members are identified through a common trait. This can, but does not have to, include an idea of common heritage, a common culture, a shared language or dialect. The group's ethos or ideology may also stress common ancestry and religion, as opposed to an ethnic minority group which refers to race. The process that results in the emergence of an ethnicity is called ethnogenesis. Some ethnic groups are marked by little more than a common name.


These people came from a core area. They migrated to Italy from over the Alps. They supposedly also went to Greece from roughly the same start point. They spoke a Celtic or Gallish language. That was where it was named and identified for the first time.

If there was some mistake then it would have been in calling the insular peoples by the same general name. Since those in the east would be the original Celts, what do you propose to call the insular and or Atlantic grouping?

Is this a real argument or just a troll?

Truly? You are really going to use this line? As I have asked you to do (and you clearly have not) you should check these ancient sources for yourself. I have provided examples. The Greeks did not refer to the invaders into their lands from the North as Celts, they referred to them as 'Gala'. It is only a later invention that leads to any alleged synonym between the two. I have provided you with two very clear sources which show that the Greeks understood the 'Celts' to be of Iberian origin. Please provide an ancient Greek source describing the invading people of the North as Celts. The tribe of the Celtici are to be found in.... South-West Iberia. Check the sources for yourself. The error was an un-attested agglomeration of two separate, distinct descriptions into one. The Greeks and Romans do not use the terms inter-changeably.


Do you know haw small the population shift was in the Neolithic? When it arrived in Ireland it was estimated at a 4% to 6% influx of new peoples. There is no massive movement anywhere.

I'd be interested to see the source for that, as it seems a very certain figure, one which I would like to know how it has been calculated. I think the general view is that it is very difficult to know what sort of population change took place during this time; so to give a percentage figure is remarkable. Could you cite the source for this please?


Do you have a theory where 94 to 96% of a population decide to speak a new language? The Neolithic peoples arriving were farmers and herders, not a warrior elite.

So you are arguing that PIE was already in existence prior to the Neolithic....? And you think Koch, Cunliffe et al are 'fringe'?


You ask me for evidence of a Celtic language in the east and say when I look at evidence I may see something else.

Well, what evidence of Celtic language do you have that it was spoken in the British Isles 2500 years ago? I am to look at your material, and I have, yet you seem to have missed quite a lot of what I presented.

In case you missed it, I'm not convinced that a Celtic language was spoken in the British Isles 2,500 years ago - certainly not in all of the British Isles, though I am prepared to accept that parts were Celtic in language.


The archaeological record shows a slow spread of ideas, crops, and domesticated animals with perhaps in places population shifts of up to 10% but more often less than half that. We show a slow shift from hunter-gathering to farming.
This is the basis of the PIE Migration theory. The idea of language spread by Hallstatt and La Téne are no more challenged than the PIE theory.

As I say, I'm interested in the source for these migration figures. Language is not spread by material culture, full stop. I would love to see the argument that can have a material edifice pass on the power of language (other than a book, of course).


Am I to take it that since the people who showed up in the Balkans and migrated to Turkey and said to have come from the region of the source of the Danube (France, Switzerland, and South Germany) were not the same as those who stayed behind?

No, and I don't see how you could come to that conclusion, given that I was talking of the similarities of the languages of the Galatians and the Treveri; and that the writer was specific about that link and did not say like the language of Gaul. The question is whether Gaulish was the same as that language.


Do you argue that the Gauls didn’t speak a Celtic tongue?

Which 'Gauls' are you referring to? Do you mean the wide-ranging Northern invaders who the Greeks called Gala, or those living in what the Romans came to call (as a geographical area) Gala? Is there a difference? Almost certainly.


It would be a bit difficult to prove that Gaulish is not a Celtic language.

As it happens its a bit difficult to prove that it is a Celtic language, in fact it was difficult to say very much about it until it was propped up by external sources which were presumed to be the same language. Much of the lexical basis of Gaulish is drawn from Galatian; there is a great deal of circular argumkent that has gone on here.



Most of the argument is circular and contradictory. It needs a clearer more concise explanation.

Quite the opposite. I will say it once again. Check the ancient sources for yourself. They do not refer to the Celts and Gauls as being one and the same. They clearly place the Celts in the Iberian peninsula. Tartessian is the earliest written Celtic language. That simply does not fit with the alleged spread of this group of languages from a central European, Danubian, base. The circular logic is entirely in the realms of the 'Celtic from central Europe' proposition. It was an un-evidenced link from the start and has taken on a life of its own, which lacks any real cogency. In an argument about the origins and spread of a language you have described a peoples, you have extrapolated a language 6000 years old with one 2,500 years old, consistently inter-changed the terms Gaul and Celt and demanded (without checking the sources) that this is how the Greeks and Romans told it. That isn't surprising because that is the extent of the 'argument' - it is a muddled hotch-potch of distracting and incoherent hubris. If you can't even be bothered to check this stuff out for yourself then please refrain from accusing others of potentially trolling.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

In terms of what both Koch and Cunliffe have had to say in the past with regards to the historicity of the Celts; that they are prepared now to overturn years of their own work, albeit cautiously and with a deal of circumspection, says a great deal of how much value they put upon the new ideas and evidence they are uncovering. It is difficult enough to fly in the face of such an entrenched idea, but even more admirable when it is one's own long-term work that is being put into question.

[Fisherking]

The information on the migratory impacts in certain regions comes from the very same sources that were used in Celts from the West and Facing the Ocean.

You can search them out as I have done trying to reconcile what others have said about the book and its theory with what you have said about the book and its theory.

In the last few week I have researched the book and the research behind the book. I know what the ancient sources said and playing scrabble with the names is a touch silly.

I might have even read the book had it not had a price tag of over €150.00. That is a bit more than my monthly reading budget.


Herodotus
Book 2: On the Ister (Danube)
XXXIII. This is enough of the story told by Etearchus the Ammonian; except he said that the Nasamonians returned, as the men of Cyrene told me, and that the people to whose country they came were all wizards; [2] as to the river that ran past the city, Etearchus guessed it to be the Nile; and reason proves as much. For the Nile flows from Libya, right through the middle of it; and as I guess, reasoning about things unknown from visible signs, it rises proportionally as far away as does the Ister. [3] For the Ister flows from the land of the Celts and the city of Pyrene through the very middle of Europe; now the Celts live beyond the Pillars of Heracles, being neighbors of the Cynesii, who are the westernmost of all the peoples inhabiting Europe. [4] The Ister, then, flows clean across Europe and ends its course in the Euxine sea, at Istria, which is inhabited by Milesian colonists.


33. Of the account given by Etearchos the Ammonian let so much suffice as is here said, except that, as the men of Kyrene told me, he alleged that the Nasamonians returned safe home, and that the people to whom they had come were all wizards. Now this river which ran by the city, Etearchos conjectured to be the Nile, and moreover reason compels us to think so; for the Nile flows from Libya and cuts Libya through in the midst, and as I conjecture, judging of what is not known by that which is evident to the view, it starts at a distance from its mouth equal to that of the Ister: for the river Ister begins from the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Heracles and border upon the Kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those who have their dwelling in Europe); and the Ister ends, having its course through the whole of Europe, by flowing into the Euxine Sea at the place where the Milesians have their settlement of Istria.



33. [1] ὁ μὲν δὴ τοῦ Ἀμμωνίου Ἐτεάρχου λόγος ἐς τοῦτό μοι δεδηλώσθω, πλὴν ὅτι ἀπονοστῆσαί τε ἔφασκε τοὺς Νασαμῶνας, ὡς οἱ Κυρηναῖοι ἔλεγον, καὶ ἐς τοὺς οὗτοι ἀπίκοντο ἀνθρώπους, γόητας εἶναι ἅπαντας. [2] τὸν δὲ δὴ ποταμὸν τοῦτον τὸν παραρρέοντα καὶ Ἐτέαρχος συνεβάλλετο εἶναι Νεῖλον, καὶ δὴ καὶ ὁ λόγος οὕτω αἱρέει. ῥέει γὰρ ἐκ Λιβύης ὁ Νεῖλος καὶ μέσην τάμνων Λιβύην, καὶ ὡς ἐγὼ συμβάλλομαι τοῖσι ἐμφανέσι τὰ μὴ γινωσκόμενα τεκμαιρόμενος, τῷ Ἴστρῳ ἐκ τῶν ἴσων μέτρων ὁρμᾶται. [3] Ἴστρος τε γὰρ ποταμὸς ἀρξάμενος ἐκ Κελτῶν καὶ Πυρήνης πόλιος ῥέει μέσην σχίζων τὴν Εὐρώπην· οἱ δὲ Κελτοὶ εἰσὶ ἔξω Ἡρακλέων στηλέων, ὁμουρέουσι δὲ Κυνησίοισι, οἳ ἔσχατοι πρὸς δυσμέων οἰκέουσι τῶν ἐν τῇ Εὐρώπῃ κατοικημένων· [4] τελευτᾷ δὲ ὁ Ἴστρος ἐς θάλασσαν ῥέων τὴν τοῦ Εὐξείνου πόντου διὰ πάσης Εὐρώπης, τῇ Ἰστρίην οἱ Μιλησίων οἰκέουσι ἄποικοι.#


city of Pyrene: The Heuneburg is a prehistoric hillfort by the upper Danube. It is located in Hundersingen near Herbertingen, between Ulm and Sigmaringen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is considered one of the most important early Celtic centres in Central Europe. Apart from the fortified citadel, there are extensive remains of settlements and burial areas spanning several centuries.
He got some rite and some wrong. Celts did go from the sources of the Danube to western Spain but the Nile is not in Libya.




It is also a bit mean spirited to criticize a theory you have not read and don’t know the research behind. But I suppose it made for a good “cheap shot”.

The PCP is an older and more fleshed out theory than what the one from the book is. Researching the research led me to it. I have some links to it in previous posts and you might find it interesting, or a least entertaining.

As for Celts from the West, I am done with it. I have spent too much time already.

Also on the genetics, you may wish to read, Languages, Genes, and Cultures. That should about do it.

~:wave:

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

The information on the migratory impacts in certain regions comes from the very same sources that were used in Celts from the West and Facing the Ocean.

You can search them out as I have done trying to reconcile what others have said about the book and its theory with what you have said about the book and its theory.

In the last few week I have researched the book and the research behind the book. I know what the ancient sources said and playing scrabble with the names is a touch silly.

I might have even read the book had it not had a price tag of over €150.00. That is a bit more than my monthly reading budget.

You clearly don't know what the ancients said, and still you have not offered any example of the interchangeability of the terms Keltoi and Gala from those writers.

What do you mean the very same sources, can you name the sources or not. Neither Cunliffe or Koch make such over-reaching claims as you have here (ie putting any sort of percentage figures in terms of migration from 6000-7000 years in the past)



Herodotus
Book 2: On the Ister (Danube)
XXXIII. This is enough of the story told by Etearchus the Ammonian; except he said that the Nasamonians returned, as the men of Cyrene told me, and that the people to whose country they came were all wizards; [2] as to the river that ran past the city, Etearchus guessed it to be the Nile; and reason proves as much. For the Nile flows from Libya, right through the middle of it; and as I guess, reasoning about things unknown from visible signs, it rises proportionally as far away as does the Ister. [3] For the Ister flows from the land of the Celts and the city of Pyrene through the very middle of Europe; now the Celts live beyond the Pillars of Heracles, being neighbors of the Cynesii, who are the westernmost of all the peoples inhabiting Europe. [4] The Ister, then, flows clean across Europe and ends its course in the Euxine sea, at Istria, which is inhabited by Milesian colonists.


33. Of the account given by Etearchos the Ammonian let so much suffice as is here said, except that, as the men of Kyrene told me, he alleged that the Nasamonians returned safe home, and that the people to whom they had come were all wizards. Now this river which ran by the city, Etearchos conjectured to be the Nile, and moreover reason compels us to think so; for the Nile flows from Libya and cuts Libya through in the midst, and as I conjecture, judging of what is not known by that which is evident to the view, it starts at a distance from its mouth equal to that of the Ister: for the river Ister begins from the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Heracles and border upon the Kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those who have their dwelling in Europe); and the Ister ends, having its course through the whole of Europe, by flowing into the Euxine Sea at the place where the Milesians have their settlement of Istria.



33. [1] ὁ μὲν δὴ τοῦ Ἀμμωνίου Ἐτεάρχου λόγος ἐς τοῦτό μοι δεδηλώσθω, πλὴν ὅτι ἀπονοστῆσαί τε ἔφασκε τοὺς Νασαμῶνας, ὡς οἱ Κυρηναῖοι ἔλεγον, καὶ ἐς τοὺς οὗτοι ἀπίκοντο ἀνθρώπους, γόητας εἶναι ἅπαντας. [2] τὸν δὲ δὴ ποταμὸν τοῦτον τὸν παραρρέοντα καὶ Ἐτέαρχος συνεβάλλετο εἶναι Νεῖλον, καὶ δὴ καὶ ὁ λόγος οὕτω αἱρέει. ῥέει γὰρ ἐκ Λιβύης ὁ Νεῖλος καὶ μέσην τάμνων Λιβύην, καὶ ὡς ἐγὼ συμβάλλομαι τοῖσι ἐμφανέσι τὰ μὴ γινωσκόμενα τεκμαιρόμενος, τῷ Ἴστρῳ ἐκ τῶν ἴσων μέτρων ὁρμᾶται. [3] Ἴστρος τε γὰρ ποταμὸς ἀρξάμενος ἐκ Κελτῶν καὶ Πυρήνης πόλιος ῥέει μέσην σχίζων τὴν Εὐρώπην· οἱ δὲ Κελτοὶ εἰσὶ ἔξω Ἡρακλέων στηλέων, ὁμουρέουσι δὲ Κυνησίοισι, οἳ ἔσχατοι πρὸς δυσμέων οἰκέουσι τῶν ἐν τῇ Εὐρώπῃ κατοικημένων· [4] τελευτᾷ δὲ ὁ Ἴστρος ἐς θάλασσαν ῥέων τὴν τοῦ Εὐξείνου πόντου διὰ πάσης Εὐρώπης, τῇ Ἰστρίην οἱ Μιλησίων οἰκέουσι ἄποικοι.#



city of Pyrene: The Heuneburg is a prehistoric hillfort by the upper Danube. It is located in Hundersingen near Herbertingen, between Ulm and Sigmaringen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is considered one of the most important early Celtic centres in Central Europe. Apart from the fortified citadel, there are extensive remains of settlements and burial areas spanning several centuries.
He got some rite and some wrong. Celts did go from the sources of the Danube to western Spain but the Nile is not in Libya.

Ridiculous. The city of Pyrene, firstly, can not be simply equated with Heuneburg (there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that link, but here we have the kind of woolly thinking that has lead to the notion that we seem stuck with, regardless of the evidence), but that is a mere side issue. Yes, Herodotus has his geography wrong with regards to the source of the Danube. How do we know that? Well we know it because he says it flows through the lands of the Keltoi but then, very clearly, tells us that the Keltoi live beyond the Pillars of Heracles. In what way does that suggest that the Heuneburg is to be equated as having anything to do with the Keltoi? It doesn't. It is as simple as that.

(And, btw, Libya does not equate with the modern country of Libya, but is instead a geographical term meaning, essentially, Africa)





It is also a bit mean spirited to criticize a theory you have not read and don’t know the research behind. But I suppose it made for a good “cheap shot”.

It was the story that I have been familiar with for years, and had no reason to doubt until I started to look at the evidence...


The PCP is an older and more fleshed out theory than what the one from the book is. Researching the research led me to it. I have some links to it in previous posts and you might find it interesting, or a least entertaining.

Fleshed out with nothing much, certainly not evidence. You have failed to show sources for information, failed to provide evidence for the claims of what you seem to believe the ancients have told us (and it seems clear you have not bothered to check them) so it comes as no surprise that you finish with....


As for Celts from the West, I am done with it. I have spent too much time already.

I thank you for the discussion, which I started in order to discover if I was missing something; some hard evidence I had overlooked; something substantial that actually accumulated to an evidenced proposition. It transpires that no such argument exists.


By the way, did you mean this http://www.ecares.org/ecare/personal/ginsburgh/papers/130.genes....pdf ?

If so, I'm not sure what it's supposed to show me. Much of the conjecture is highly debate-able, as the author notes. What about the spread of the Celtic language am I supposed to glean from that?

[Fisherking]

Sorry, wrong book. It was accidental, that one is only in Italian.

What I actually meant to recommend was: Population Dynamics in Prehistory and Early History:
I am pretty sure that since it is an interdisciplinary team you can find more members than just those two. Look at who did the work on genetics and migratory patterns.
I didn‘t link Pyrene with anything. Archeology did that. I just did a search using the name. Guess what came up?
My guess would be the age of the settlement and that it was on a major trade route.
I am not the one who drew the map of his idea of Europe and Africa either. You welcome to research the source material on that too.

My guess is that now there will be a new book where Koch shows that the 120 Galician names and words know are no longer Celtic. Of course that may be a bit more difficult to prove than just taking his word for it.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Sorry, wrong book. It was accidental, that one is only in Italian.

What I actually meant to recommend was: Population Dynamics in Prehistory and Early History:
I am pretty sure that since it is an interdisciplinary team you can find more members than just those two. Look at who did the work on genetics and migratory patterns.

I shall look it up, always interested in information and ideas. Cheers.


I didn‘t link Pyrene with anything. Archeology did that.

Archaeology does not link Pyrene with Heuneburg. Given the name it may refer to somewhere near what we know as the Pyrennes, or it may be Heuneburg, but archaeology does not make a link between Pyrene and Heuneburg.


I just did a search using the name. Guess what came up?
My guess would be the age of the settlement and that it was on a major trade route.
I am not the one who drew the map of his idea of Europe and Africa either. You welcome to research the source material on that too.

And I'll bet that the links that you found probably claim a far greater surety to the link between Pyrene and Heuneburg than actually exists. The guess that you make would rest upon firm evidence only if one were to believe that the Heuneburg site was at this time the only major settlement on a major trade route between Spain and Miletos. How likely do you think that is.

But,, whether Pyrene is there or some other place is, ultimately, irrelevant in terms of placing the Keltoi, for it is Pyrene that Herodotus links with the Keltoi. He very clearly places them beyond the pillars of Hercules.


My guess is that now there will be a new book where Koch shows that the 120 Galician names and words know are no longer Celtic. Of course that may be a bit more difficult to prove than just taking his word for it.

And this is the weirdest thing about this 'argument'. How has it come to be that one must 'disprove' something that was never evidenced, let alone 'proven' in the first place. It's a bit like demanding that we prove that the Romans aren't related to Aeneus of Troy, or that Caesar isn't related to the Gods. Just because somebody made up a story, on a rather flimsy and misunderstood basis, and that has been extrapolated over time, does not make that story true.

By the way, do you mean Galatian? Galician is a language spoken in Spain. I'm going to assume you mean Galatian. So the question really is; On what basis is the language of the Galatians, linked specifically with the Treveri, in any way evidenced as Celtic. Let's put that question into perspective. The Keltoi are placed beyond the pillars of Hercules; as the mercenaries of the un-warlike Tartessians (ie of Iberian origin); there is no placing of the Keltoi in the Danube basis, at any point by any ancient writer; the earliest written Celtic is to be found in South-West of the Iberian peninsula (precisely where Herodotus tells us we will find them) prior to the expansion of Halstatt material culture. There is, in fact, no reason to link the two languages - other than a PIE base.

[Fisherking]

The link between Pyrene and Heuneburg is speculation. You can see that from my link. I didn‘t over do it, all I did was report it. Please don‘t shoot the messenger. Then again, much of what we are discussing is based on speculation especially when we are told to credit some sources and discredit others without a clear picture as to why.

For the life of me I can not figure out why anyone supposed to be a scholar of such topics would have used the quote from Herodotus to show anything on this topic.

Hecataeus of Miletus was the first to mention the Celts, whom he placed near “Massilia”(Marseille). http://mappery.com/map-of/Hecataeus-World-Map

The quote used is not to show the location of the Celts but to promote his theory of symmetry between the continents. He is not moving them to Iberia. http://www.livius.org/a/1/maps/herodotus_map.gif He just places them on the Atlantic Coast.

This is just wishful thinking on the part of those suggesting it.

On the names that the Greeks and Romans used for the Celts, could you provide some deeper insight into where they appear to be of peoples other than them and the document they are drawn from?

I have not run across or found any references to anything along those lines, and as it seems to be an important part of the argument it would be helpful were it clearly shown.

Most of the ancient authors place the Celts at once in the region of the source of the Danube and on the Atlantic Coast. They were renowned as mercenaries and used in Mediterranean wars as early as the 4th century BC. They are written about in their expansion into the Balkans and as mercenaries in the wars of others, to include in the Peloponnesian War, along with Iberians and others. Is it surprising that people, presumably with a sense of geography and direction, might consider raiding or expanding into areas of fabled wealth? We know they traded with them. Should we doubt that they could find them? Should we doubt they were of sufficient warlike disposition to raid or expand in other directions?

This is the part that is most baffling. I can agree that there is sufficient reason to examine a western origin of the Celts but can’t understand the reason to doubt those who move eastward as different from those who stayed closer to home.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

The link between Pyrene and Heuneburg is speculation. You can see that from my link. I didn‘t over do it, all I did was report it. Please don‘t shoot the messenger.

But what you said was; "city of Pyrene: The Heuneburg is a prehistoric hillfort by the upper Danube. It is located in Hundersingen near Herbertingen, between Ulm and Sigmaringen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is considered one of the most important early Celtic centres in Central Europe. Apart from the fortified citadel, there are extensive remains of settlements and burial areas spanning several centuries. "

When I questioned the validity of the link you stated that; "I didn‘t link Pyrene with anything. Archeology did that. "

At no point do you make clear that it is simply conjecture, you presented it as a firm argument.


Then again, much of what we are discussing is based on speculation especially when we are told to credit some sources and discredit others without a clear picture as to why.

The odd thing is I have not presented any case where we should discount a historical source. You are the only one who seems to question the sources, and you seem to be quite felicitous in your approach to this. You were, for example, keen to show how Herodotus may have got some wrong but got some of it right when convinced that Pyrene=Heuneburg appeared to confirm a Celtic origin of Heuneburg, but now you argue that;


For the life of me I can not figure out why anyone supposed to be a scholar of such topics would have used the quote from Herodotus to show anything on this topic.

Id say that we should always use the sources within context, and Herodotus is not alone in placing the Keltoi within the same area of the first known written Celtic language...


Hecataeus of Miletus was the first to mention the Celts, whom he placed near “Massilia”(Marseille). http://mappery.com/map-of/Hecataeus-World-Map

What Hecataeus says is that Massilia is within the lands of the Ligurs and near to the Keltoi, you are right. And where does he place those Keltoi? Narbo, he says, is a town of the Keltoi. This does not at all detract from the argument being made (and in fact is in keeping with another ancient source, Caesar, who describes the partitioning of 'Gaul' and that only in Gaul Proper do the people call themselves Keltoi.)

The Atlantic contact zone during the spread of the Bell beaker is highlighted by three major zones; thew Tagus river(SW Iberian peninsula), the Morbihan (Southern armorica) and, via the Garonne axis, the North-West mediterranean - (as well as Southern England, the Paris Basin and in an area to the North-West of the Rhine) As I have said, I don't discount that Gaulish is likely a Celtic language.


The quote used is not to show the location of the Celts but to promote his theory of symmetry between the continents. He is not moving them to Iberia. http://www.livius.org/a/1/maps/herodotus_map.gif He just places them on the Atlantic Coast.

This is just wishful thinking on the part of those suggesting it.

He places them beyond the pillars of Hercules, that is, very clearly, in Iberia. I'm not sure how you can argue that stating (from a Greek perspective) beyond the pillars of Hercules could mean somewhere other than Iberia. Perhaps you could explain how you have come to this conclusion.


On the names that the Greeks and Romans used for the Celts, could you provide some deeper insight into where they appear to be of peoples other than them and the document they are drawn from?

Yes, as usual I will provide the sources and you can keep ignoring any suggestion that you might provide the counter-evidence (ie where we find ancient authors describe any Northern invaders/Danubians as Celtic, or a clear pattern whereby we might deduce that the ancient authors used the terms Keltoi and Galla as synonymous)

Not only does Herodotus place the Keltoi where he does, Strabo (3.1.6) gives us; "The sea-coast next the Sacred Promontory forms on one side the commencement of the western coast of Spain as far as the outlet of the river Tagus; and on the other forms the southern coast as far as the outlet of another river, named the Guadiana. Both of these rivers descend from the eastern parts [of Spain]; but the former, which is much larger than the other, pursues a straight course towards the west, while the Guadiana bends its course towards the south. They enclose an extent of country peopled for the most part by Kelts and certain Lusitanians, whom the Romans caused to settle here from the opposite side of the Tagus."

He goes on to tell us (3.2.15) that; "Along with the happy lot of their country, the qualities of both gentleness and civility have come to the Turdetanians; and to the Celtic peoples, too, on account of their being neighbours to the Turdetanians, as Polybius has said, or else on account of their kinship; but less so the Celtic peoples, because for the most part they live in mere villages. The Turdetanians, however, and particularly those that live about the Baetis, have completely changed over to the Roman mode of life, not even remembering their own language any more. And most of them have become Latins,and they have received Romans as colonists, so that they are not far from being all Romans. And the present jointly-settled cities, Pax Augusta in the Celtic country,"

Strabo, again (3.3.5) "Last of all come the Artabrians, who live in the neighbourhood of the cape called Nerium, which is the end of both the western and the northern side of Iberia. But the country round about the cape itself is inhabited by Celtic people, kinsmen of those on the Anas; for these people and the Turdulians made an expedition thither and then had a quarrel, it is said, after they had crossed the Limaeas River; and when, in addition to the quarrel, the Celtic peoples also suffered the loss of their chieftain, they scattered and stayed there"

From Pliny ; "Celticos a Celtiberis ex Lusitania advenisse manifestum est sacris, lingua, oppidorum vocabulis, quae cognominibus in Baetica distinguntur." (Celts from Celtiberi and from Lusitania are evidennced by their rites, language and the names of their towns which are distinguished from the names of Baetica)

The first use of the self-references of Celticos is to be found in Spain.


I have not run across or found any references to anything along those lines, and as it seems to be an important part of the argument it would be helpful were it clearly shown.

This, as I have hinted at above, is a strange request. Is it not, rather, incumbent upon you to show some text that pertains to the Celt/Gaul synonym that you claim is widespread in ancient sources? Should you not easily be able to find an example or two.


Most of the ancient authors place the Celts at once in the region of the source of the Danube and on the Atlantic Coast.

Do they? Could you, then, provide an example - as this is something attributable to most of the ancient authors this should not be too difficult to do.



This is the part that is most baffling. I can agree that there is sufficient reason to examine a western origin of the Celts but can’t understand the reason to doubt those who move eastward as different from those who stayed closer to home.

I think the question, really, should be; on what basis should they be linked? What makes you think that they did move East (at least, as far as the Danube) and that the Danubian culture is not a separate entity? The ancient authors do not, despite your claims to the contrary (and the fact that you cannot find any reference to this effect by any ancient author ought to be getting you to ask the questions yourself) refer to Celts from the Danube. They simply do not. You have simply defined the term 'Gaul' as equivalent - still without providing any reference as to why that link should be made.

[Fisherking]

But what you said was; "city of Pyrene: The Heuneburg is a prehistoric hillfort by the upper Danube. It is located in Hundersingen near Herbertingen, between Ulm and Sigmaringen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is considered one of the most important early Celtic centres in Central Europe. Apart from the fortified citadel, there are extensive remains of settlements and burial areas spanning several centuries. "

When I questioned the validity of the link you stated that; "I didn‘t link Pyrene with anything. Archeology did that. "

At no point do you make clear that it is simply conjecture, you presented it as a firm argument.

Then you should have read to the end where it actually mentions the city of Pyrene.


The odd thing is I have not presented any case where we should discount a historical source. You are the only one who seems to question the sources, and you seem to be quite felicitous in your approach to this. You were, for example, keen to show how Herodotus may have got some wrong but got some of it right when convinced that Pyrene=Heuneburg appeared to confirm a Celtic origin of Heuneburg, but now you argue that;

No not exactly. The book does that by using selected sources while ignoring others that would disagree.

You wish to place Pyrene in the Pyrenees because they sound similar but it was a city the Greeks traded with at the time. The location is speculation to support the theory of Herodotus, that the Danube and Nile are of equal length. Reread the passage carefully.



Id say that we should always use the sources within context,…

Yes, that is what I mean.
the river Ister begins from the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Heracles and border upon the Kynesians
World according to Herodotus: http://www.mediterranees.net/geographie/images/spruner2.html or: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Herodotus_world_map-en.svg&page=1

Also the sources of the Danube, Rhone, Rhine and Po are in close proximity to one another. All within about a 60 km radius IIRC. We know who occupied this location. They were Celts. Caesar places them there. Also Livy and those before him have them moving from here into the Po valley. La Téne is in the same area. All you need do is look.


He places them beyond the pillars of Hercules, that is, very clearly, in Iberia.

No it is not very clear as the maps show. Outside the pillars of Hercules is a large area not limited to Iberia. Gaul at once lies within and without of the pillars of Hercules.

It is interesting that you quote Caesar and Strabo in these examples because they are also sources for Celts further east. Perhaps Professor Koch failed to tell you this in the book. You might wish to see what they say.

You have in a number of posts also said that the Greeks and Romans somehow confuse the Celts with others or translations were mishandled. I asked you for examples of this assertion and to clarify.

Then you say:
This, as I have hinted at above, is a strange request. Is it not, rather, incumbent upon you to show some text that pertains to the Celt/Gaul synonym that you claim is widespread in ancient sources? Should you not easily be able to find an example or two.

This is what I mean by circular argument. My research is done and you have shown me no reason to change my conclusions.

You have said the eastern Celtic complex is not Celtic or not Celtic enough but you have offered no clear evidence as to why not. This is the sticking point.

With whom did Alexander make a treaty? Who was the opposing side at the battle of Thermopylae? What people attacked Delphi? Who occupied Galatia?
Pausanias and Junianus Justinus, say the Gauls, what do you say?

The argument about the Volcae is circular. Linguists say it is Celtic and you argue it is German. They attributed the German word to Celtic origins and you say otherwise. To say it is German is too weak to credit, as were the other examples you noted.

I guess we are stuck until Koch writes the next book.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Then you should have read to the end where it actually mentions the city of Pyrene.

I'm not sure I follow you. I made the point that you made the argument Pyrene=Heuneburg as if it were a fait accompli. I didn't ram home the point that this is a regular feature of the pan-European Celtic narrative; assume a link and just go with it. In terms of the actual argument, as I pointed out (and will elucidate again below) it doesn't actually matter whether Pyrene=Heuneburg or not, because the Keltoi are not placed by Herodotus at Pyrene.



No not exactly. The book does that by using selected sources while ignoring others that would disagree.

This is a claim you have made on numerous occassions yet have, when challenged, failed to provide any of these sources which are allegedly being ignored.


You wish to place Pyrene in the Pyrenees because they sound similar but it was a city the Greeks traded with at the time. The location is speculation to support the theory of Herodotus, that the Danube and Nile are of equal length. Reread the passage carefully.

Nope, this is pure obfuscation. As I said before (and I quote myself merely to highlight that this is already extant within the discussion); "but that is a mere side issue. Yes, Herodotus has his geography wrong with regards to the source of the Danube. How do we know that? Well we know it because he says it flows through the lands of the Keltoi but then, very clearly, tells us that the Keltoi live beyond the Pillars of Heracles. In what way does that suggest that the Heuneburg is to be equated as having anything to do with the Keltoi? It doesn't. It is as simple as that. "

In other words the location of Pyrene in the Pyrenese or in Heuneburg is completely irrelevent to the argument. Herodotus does not place the Keltoi in Pyrene.




Yes, that is what I mean. World according to Herodotus: http://www.mediterranees.net/geographie/images/spruner2.html or: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Herodotus_world_map-en.svg&page=1

Also the sources of the Danube, Rhone, Rhine and Po are in close proximity to one another. All within about a 60 km radius IIRC. We know who occupied this location. They were Celts. Caesar places them there. Also Livy and those before him have them moving from here into the Po valley. La Téne is in the same area. All you need do is look.

Caesar is very explicit in placing those who call themselves keltoi in a particular portion of Gaul, he does not place them in the Danube basin. This is just out and out wrong. Also Livy (and those before him) have the Gauls moving from there into the Po valley. Given that you earlier accepted that the synonym Gaul=Celt is important to the argument ("I have not run across or found any references to anything along those lines, and as it seems to be an important part of the argument it would be helpful were it clearly shown" - post #43) it seems odd that you should so quickly forget.



No it is not very clear as the maps show. Outside the pillars of Hercules is a large area not limited to Iberia. Gaul at once lies within and without of the pillars of Hercules.

Firstly, this is...clutching. Beyond the pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar) is a very straight-forward geographical locator. Further, you confirm that it is important to take other sources into account (as I suggested as a reason for believing the source) and then completely ignore the other sources that I provided which support that geographical location. What gives?


It is interesting that you quote Caesar and Strabo in these examples because they are also sources for Celts further east. Perhaps Professor Koch failed to tell you this in the book. You might wish to see what they say.

In the Danube? really? Then, yes, perhaps you could provide me with these revelatory sources. I have already mentioned where Caesar talks of the Celts.


You have in a number of posts also said that the Greeks and Romans somehow confuse the Celts with others or translations were mishandled. I asked you for examples of this assertion and to clarify.

No, I have said that the Romans and Greeks refer to Gauls and Celts as separate and that any synonym is a more recent phenomenon. You seemed to have understood this earlier (and asked for evidence, which I provided and has been utterly ignored by you). You, on the other hand, claim that the terms Gaul and Celt were interchangeable terms used by the ancient writers and yet have consistently 'refused' (failed) to provide any evidence of such.


This is what I mean by circular argument. My research is done and you have shown me no reason to change my conclusions.

Your research is done but you have not deigned to share any of it here, it seems. The circularity is in continuously claiming something without providing any evidence for the claim, demanding in return evidence which, when given, you entirely fail to address.


You have said the eastern Celtic complex is not Celtic or not Celtic enough but you have offered no clear evidence as to why not. This is the sticking point.

Really? Really?


With whom did Alexander make a treaty? Who was the opposing side at the battle of Thermopylae? What people attacked Delphi? Who occupied Galatia?
Pausanias and Junianus Justinus, say the Gauls, what do you say?

Eeermm.. the Gauls. What these sources do not say is (and this is, as you seemed able to recognise earlier, an important part of the argument) the Celts.


The argument about the Volcae is circular. Linguists say it is Celtic and you argue it is German. They attributed the German word to Celtic origins and you say otherwise. To say it is German is too weak to credit, as were the other examples you noted.

No, you really don't get how convoluted and illogical the argument for the Celtic root of volcae is, and especially how that contortion is extended to show a Celtic root for a Germanic term which has a perfectly logical internal root. And this 'uolc' is found...where else in the Celtic languages? The root for Volk is proposed as proto-germanic fulkas without any PIE cognate. This seems to ignore the Roman vulgares. But it is precisely because so much effort is put into showing a Celtic form that is a block on linguistic studies within, particularly, central Europe. Have you forgotten Hal as a root for salt? Have you discovered where this Celtic root is to be found anywhere else except after the much later Welsh sound-shift?

[Fisherking]

Look, you are defending the theories set out in the book, are you not?

You have read the book and either own it or have access to it. I do not.

Some parts of what you have said are contained in the book I take issue with.

While I have provided sources, links, and authors that would contradict, at least in part, the theories, as you have explained them, I need not have. I am not writing a paper or going to publish it as a work of peer review.

You, on the other hand have given a few passages and endeavored to explain some of the linguistics. You gave me one link to Koch’s paper on Tartessian.

You should have access to all the citations and foot notes of the book.

I would like an explanation as to why we should no longer count the tribal confederations of the Boii and Volcae as Celtic or Gaulish. To me there is a link between the two terms. We seem to have per Caesar some tribes calling themselves Celts. We also know the Irish, who are deemed to speak a Celtic language call themselves Gaels, which is close enough to Gaul to suit.

Show something disembogues that these peoples were different enough to be excluded from what we think of as Celts and why they should be excluded from the club.

Now for a pyridine shift you need something more than niggling and nit picking over small linguistic differences. This also means we remove Noric and Galatian from the list of Celtic languages and I think you hinted at Lepontic as well.

As you seemingly doubt Celts at he headwaters of the Danube, dose this also mean that the Halvetii were other than Celtic?

Who is left and why should we think of them as the only Celtic peoples?

As to linguistics, a large part of it is no more than speculation. Educated guesswork but none the less it is speculative and reaches conclusions without definitive proof, in large part.

Hall or Hal in Central Europe is a hyponym related to salt. The region was inhabited by people believed to be Celts. The conclusion was that the Welsh later arrived at an approximation of the same term. All based on ancient unwritten language is speculation. All of the supposed Indo-European is speculative. So, one speculation does not over rule another just because of disagreement.

On the other hand we have other sources with link these people at least in common terms. We exclude the Ligures as Celts based on Strabo, Geography, book 2, chapter 5, section 28, because he says they appear to be a different race but live a Celtic lifestyle. He doesn’t mention language. None the less many authors refer to their tribes at least as Celtic-Ligures. The others we link to Celts or Gauls on the same grounds, because they say they were. Disagreements are speculative.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

While I have provided sources, links, and authors that would contradict, at least in part, the theories, as you have explained them, I need not have. I am not writing a paper or going to publish it as a work of peer review.

That's just it though, you haven't provided any corroboration to any of the most basic foundations of the narrative that you insist is the 'truth'. You have consistently claimed that most ancient authors regularly use the terms Gaul/Gala and Celt/Keltoi interchangeably and yet - despite this allegedly huge expanse of such evidence - you have not provided one example.

You say that you don't have to, but yet have been clear in demanding such from me, which I have regularly provided. Generally when this has been provided you have completely ignored it and gone off on some other tangent. I have taken part in many such discussions, where one side demands evidence, receives and ignores it and then relates that they are under no obligation to provide anything themselves. Of course this is your right, but it rather weakens your position as being an argument rather than simply an entrenched view which you are unwilling to question.

You claim that;"For the life of me I can not figure out why anyone supposed to be a scholar of such topics would have used the quote from Herodotus to show anything on this topic."

and yet you claim to understand the basis for the 'Celts from the East'; the whole basis of the narrative is a misunderstanding of Herodotus' passage as placing the Celts in the Danube basin. The early authors of this narrative picked up on the spread of Halstatt and La Tene material artefacts across Europe and put two and two together and came up with fifty (which is my way of implying an extrapolation of evidence beyond its countenance). They boiled this idea up on the basis of ideas of their own time - a time of Empires - that indigenous populations do not change except through forced acculturation, and so we had the notion of a powerful central Halstatt 'Kingdom' expanding into the rest of Europe. The narrative is based upon these ideas. These ideas are not borne out by archaeological, historical or genetic evidence. Any form of power bases within the region were based upon control of trade, and were short-lived (sometimes only a generation or two); there is no evidence of significant migrations at this time.

What's odd about this narrative is that it is held so firmly without actually making much sense. There is a wide spread of Etruscan, Greek and later Roman goods throughout Europe, yet it is not argued that the people receiving these goods became 'ethnically', culturally or linguistically Etruscan, Greek or Roman.


I would like an explanation as to why we should no longer count the tribal confederations of the Boii and Volcae as Celtic or Gaulish. To me there is a link between the two terms. We seem to have per Caesar some tribes calling themselves Celts. We also know the Irish, who are deemed to speak a Celtic language call themselves Gaels, which is close enough to Gaul to suit.

First of all you ask me a question that makes little sense, and then tell me that you ask this because of some belief that you hold (which you cannot be bothered to evidence). I'm quite happy to consider them Gauls but then, what does that mean? The Gauls who invaded Greece at the beginning of the third century BC were from somewhere around the Danube basin. When Caesar fought the Gallic wars (ie those in the geographical location called, by the Romans, Gaul) the areas from which those earlier Gallic invaders had come were no longer geographically called Gaul; they were now Noricum, Raetia or Germania. Gaul (coming from Gala) simply referred to fair-skinned northern people initially. What these people are not referred to are Celts/Keltoi.

Gael is an English word derived from Goidel, which itself comes most probably from an old Welsh term Guoidel, meaning Irishman - probably from the PIE *weidh-(e)l-o- ; forest people. One should not be fooled by similarity of words to adjudge their root. So the link Gael and Gaul is misplaced.


Show something disembogues that these peoples were different enough to be excluded from what we think of as Celts and why they should be excluded from the club.

Here you underpin the messed up nature of the whole nature of what Celtic means. Is it a language group? (yes it is) Is it an 'ethnicity'? (it is used in this way) or is it a culture (again, it is used in this way). Firstly I am uncomfortable with the idea of 'ethnic' groups, especially the simplistic nature of the concept, and it is generally this notion that is the politicised aspect of historical propositions. Language, culture and genetics can say very little about each other. Sharing a language does not make one 'ethnically' similar. Sharing a material culture does not make one speak the same language as another. One can basically interpose any two of the terms into any position in those sentences and be correct.

So, from a linguistic perspective the idea of it deriving from the Danube basin makes little sense given its appearance in South-Western Iberia.


Now for a pyridine shift you need something more than niggling and nit picking over small linguistic differences. This also means we remove Noric and Galatian from the list of Celtic languages and I think you hinted at Lepontic as well.

As you seemingly doubt Celts at he headwaters of the Danube, dose this also mean that the Halvetii were other than Celtic?

Who is left and why should we think of them as the only Celtic peoples?

Here you go again, spreading the argument from a linguistic one into an 'ethnic' or cultural identity. Unfortunately we know very little about the cultural self-identification of people outside of the Roman and Greek worlds (in Europe). The people who at an early stage refer to themselves as Keltikoi are to be found in the Iberian peninsula (as attested by epigraphic finds) and Caesar tells us that people who call themselves Keltoi are to be found only within Gaul Proper.

The narrative of a united Celtic pan-European peoples (ethnically or culturally self-identifying) is a fairy-tale invented upon a false (and falsifiable) view of historical change, founded upon a fatuous misinterpretation of an ancient geographical error.


As to linguistics, a large part of it is no more than speculation. Educated guesswork but none the less it is speculative and reaches conclusions without definitive proof, in large part.

Hall or Hal in Central Europe is a hyponym related to salt. The region was inhabited by people believed to be Celts. The conclusion was that the Welsh later arrived at an approximation of the same term. All based on ancient unwritten language is speculation. All of the supposed Indo-European is speculative. So, one speculation does not over rule another just because of disagreement.

Well, there is speculation and then there is wild conjecture. Hal, as a hyponym related to salt, is not attested anywhere else within any Celtic language. It is a misplaced cognate with the Welsh Hal, which is a much later insular development. Only within the realms of forcing a Celtic root to a word could the argument be made that the Welsh simply re-discovered this older form some many, many centuries later.

Koch is particularly circumspect within his appraisal of the origins of Celtic (the language), but what he suggests is that Celtic is a much deeper stratum within Europe. You must be aware of the number of languages now extant in Europe - and when one counts the sub-national languages (Catalan, Alsace, Frisian etc.), let alone the dialects, there is a huge distinction number of them. In the Italian peninsula in the first millenium BC there was Latin, Etruscan, Umbrian, Oscan, Venetic, Lepontic, Cisalpine Gaulish, Raetic, Ligurian, Messapic, Faliscan and Greek being spoken. Within such a compact area, with strong contact between the groups, still there were so many disparate languages - which were not mutually intelligible. Yet, we are supposed to believe that there was a united language, lasting over 4 millenia, that was spoken across the European continent - even when we can deduce limited contact between these groups. It simply does not make any sense.

What Koch suggests means that we must re-address the language families and their relationships. If the Celtic language is to be placed early in the development of European languages then it pre-dates Italic and Germanic. It also means that the languages developed, much later, in the Western Atlantic zones and those that developed (separately) in the Danube basin are only distantly related, probably no more related than they are to Italic and Germanic languages.

This actually would address many of the problematic issues of the currently sprawling Celtic branch. It would explain why Celtic seems to be related in many ways to Italic and to Germanic languages (and also the possible relationship between Italic and Germanic). P-Celtic shares that shift with Germanic and Italic, for instance, and perhaps the many Celtic 'loanwords' in Germanic are because Germanic is derived from this much deeper stratum.


On the other hand we have other sources with link these people at least in common terms. We exclude the Ligures as Celts based on Strabo, Geography, book 2, chapter 5, section 28, because he says they appear to be a different race but live a Celtic lifestyle. He doesn’t mention language. None the less many authors refer to their tribes at least as Celtic-Ligures. The others we link to Celts or Gauls on the same grounds, because they say they were. Disagreements are speculative.

You seem to have hit the nail on the head. Strabo does not refer to the languages spoken but rather to the 'race' of the people. I think this is a flawed concept that we should be moving away from, except to try and understand what the ancient writers meant by those terms.

As to your last points... here you use the term "many authors" again, an example (perhaps even a name) would be welcome. As to the linking of Celt and Gaul being because "they say they were", who do you mean?; do you mean authors or the people themselves? Either way, some sort of corroboration of the claim would be welcome.

[Fisherking]

The people who made up the various tribes of concern were called Galli by the Romans and Galatai or Keltoi by the Greeks, would you disagree?

Diodorus Siculus ,The Library of History, I think you will find the terms used somewhat interchangeably.



As to Gael:

I think you cited this example earlier. I am sure somewhere it was used as an example but it only works in print.

There is no word Goidel in old Irish. It is Goídel. Accent marks are highly important. Irish is also full of consonant mutations. Too, a D (d) in the middle of a word is a signal as to the vowels. It makes no d sound.

The official standard name of the language in Irish is Gaeilge /'geɪlɪk/. Before the 1948 spelling reform, this was spelled Gaedhilge. In Middle Irish the name was spelled Gaoidhealg, and it was Goidelc in Old Irish. What changed was the spelling. The word kept pretty much the same sound.
The Welsh word may look similar in spelling but it also carries a diphthong. When they are pronounced by native speakers you would have no idea that the were similarly spelled. The only similarity would be a G-ish sound in the beginning. The PIE word does not seem to be a good fit either.

Nor is Gael an Anglicization. Gael is an Irish word as in Gaeltachtaí, an area of native speakers. It doesn’t mean Irishman so much as it means “people like us” a “non-foreigner“.
When you write about the Goidelic languages that spelling is fine but when you are speaking about them you would say the Gaelic languages. Making it a three syllable word and pronouncing that d would not help your linguistic creditability.

You seem to be confusing the issue with references to ethnicity. This carries a Racial connotation which I in not way mean to imply. We have, at the least, indications they spoke a similar language and practiced a similar culture. I think that your earnest and zealous support for the book and its theories my be leaning you in to reading into my questions and arguments that I am unaware of.


Koch is particularly circumspect within his appraisal of the origins of Celtic (the language), but what he suggests is that Celtic is a much deeper stratum within Europe. You must be aware of the number of languages now extant in Europe - and when one counts the sub-national languages (Catalan, Alsace, Frisian etc.), let alone the dialects, there is a huge distinction number of them. In the Italian peninsula in the first millenium BC there was Latin, Etruscan, Umbrian, Oscan, Venetic, Lepontic, Cisalpine Gaulish, Raetic, Ligurian, Messapic, Faliscan and Greek being spoken. Within such a compact area, with strong contact between the groups, still there were so many disparate languages - which were not mutually intelligible. Yet, we are supposed to believe that there was a united language, lasting over 4 millenia, that was spoken across the European continent - even when we can deduce limited contact between these groups. It simply does not make any sense.

What Koch suggests means that we must re-address the language families and their relationships. If the Celtic language is to be placed early in the development of European languages then it pre-dates Italic and Germanic. It also means that the languages developed, much later, in the Western Atlantic zones and those that developed (separately) in the Danube basin are only distantly related, probably no more related than they are to Italic and Germanic languages.

This actually would address many of the problematic issues of the currently sprawling Celtic branch. It would explain why Celtic seems to be related in many ways to Italic and to Germanic languages (and also the possible relationship between Italic and Germanic). P-Celtic shares that shift with Germanic and Italic, for instance, and perhaps the many Celtic 'loanwords' in Germanic are because Germanic is derived from this much deeper stratum.

This is what I was looking for!
Is this the theory in a nutshell or are there any parts of it missing in the quote?
I would rather see it complete before discussing this part. Is there anything to be added?

As to my last line, I only meant that those we call the Continental Celts, we know of only through authors in antiquity. This is our reason for designating them as a group. Where we have found inscriptions in their own language they seem to verify the Celtic linguistic connection.

Let us just dispense with what are peripheral issues, at this point, and get down to Kotch‘s theory of Celtic and its development.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

The people who made up the various tribes of concern were called Galli by the Romans and Galatai or Keltoi by the Greeks, would you disagree?

Diodorus Siculus ,The Library of History, I think you will find the terms used somewhat interchangeably.

Yes I disagree. That shouldn't come as a surprise to you as it is an important aspect of the discussion we have been having. The terms Gaul and Celt are not used interchangeably. You bring up Diodorus Siculus as an example but you must know that what we know of his work is incredibly fragmentary and much of that though later authors whose knowledge of the relevant geography and motivations need to be taken into account.




As to Gael:

I think you cited this example earlier. I am sure somewhere it was used as an example but it only works in print.

There is no word Goidel in old Irish. It is Goídel. Accent marks are highly important. Irish is also full of consonant mutations. Too, a D (d) in the middle of a word is a signal as to the vowels. It makes no d sound.

The official standard name of the language in Irish is Gaeilge /'geɪlɪk/. Before the 1948 spelling reform, this was spelled Gaedhilge. In Middle Irish the name was spelled Gaoidhealg, and it was Goidelc in Old Irish. What changed was the spelling. The word kept pretty much the same sound.
The Welsh word may look similar in spelling but it also carries a diphthong. When they are pronounced by native speakers you would have no idea that the were similarly spelled. The only similarity would be a G-ish sound in the beginning. The PIE word does not seem to be a good fit either.

Nor is Gael an Anglicization. Gael is an Irish word as in Gaeltachtaí, an area of native speakers. It doesn’t mean Irishman so much as it means “people like us” a “non-foreigner“.
When you write about the Goidelic languages that spelling is fine but when you are speaking about them you would say the Gaelic languages. Making it a three syllable word and pronouncing that d would not help your linguistic creditability.

So, what you have described here, firstly, in no way supports an argument that Gael is from the same root as Gaul - which was the initial point of centention; secondly, you seem to ignore some pretty fundamental notions within linguistics. Written formalisms usually lag behind spoken forms. So, it might be correct to say that the d was not pronounced as a consonant prior to the spelling reform at some point it would have been - in other words there is a reason the d is there.

This is part of the problem of unravelling the evolution of languages. If one takes Classical Latin, for example, one might believe that there was a spoken language that spanned a huge area of Europe that seemingly lasted intact for nigh on 1000 years. Look a little closer and one sees signs that the very formalised written standard was a poor reflection of the language(s) spoken in those areas, including within Rome itself. The rapid changes between, for example, Primitive Irish and Old Irish, and that between Old English and Middle English, are likely to correspond with a written (elite) language that does not conform with the actual spoken dialects, and those differences are reflected within writing, possibly by a change of elites, in the later written form.


You seem to be confusing the issue with references to ethnicity. This carries a Racial connotation which I in not way mean to imply. We have, at the least, indications they spoke a similar language and practiced a similar culture. I think that your earnest and zealous support for the book and its theories my be leaning you in to reading into my questions and arguments that I am unaware of.

You, at one point, asked a question about whether it was right to say which people were the purest. You keep referring to 'the Celts', as if they are an 'ethnos' - I am just very wary of such propositions.


This is what I was looking for!
Is this the theory in a nutshell or are there any parts of it missing in the quote?
I would rather see it complete before discussing this part. Is there anything to be added?

As to my last line, I only meant that those we call the Continental Celts, we know of only through authors in antiquity. This is our reason for designating them as a group. Where we have found inscriptions in their own language they seem to verify the Celtic linguistic connection.

The widely held belief (as conjured upon the mistaken identity of the Celts living in the Danube basin (as per mis-reading Herodotus) and built upon with the idea of 'imperial' acculturation) is that Halstatt culture represents the 'Celtic Homeland' and that they, through expansion, have 'celticised' the majority of Europe. Cognate to this narrative is the idea that the Celtic language also begins here and is spread by that same expansion.

Problems: There is no archaeological evidence (nor does genetic evidence give any credence to) the expansion of any alleged Halstatt kingdoms into the rest of Europe; the material culture seems to be, simply that - an acceptance of material forms and techniques. Also the recent discovery of (or, more accurately, recent work on understanding the language as being) Celtic languages in South-Western Iberia pre-dating Halstatt culture.

Simply put, if Celtic cultural spread is what it is taken to be, then any evidence of migration is pretty limited. We do know of migration from this area from historical accounts and from archaeological finds, but they are not evidenced within the British isles or the Iberian peninsula. Equally the language argument seems to ignore this lack of migratory evidence, and also the limited contacts between areas.

As for the Celtic cognation....this is a self-circular argument; ie the areas defined as Celtic by the narrative are, therefore, assumed to be Celtic - thus any inscriptions are axiomatically Celtic. This has lead to, for example, the filling out of the limited Gaulish lexicon by Galatian imports. The Galatian language was assumed (on the basis of the narrative) to be the same as Gaulish.

Here's where Koch's argument becomes circumspect. He is aware of how embedded the narrative is (it is taken as the 'truth' despite it's dodgy origins). That the language(s) developed along the Atlantic seaboard must be seen as a distinct development, subject - prior to the Celtic Tartessian inscriptions - to a large degree of isolation from the central European zone, and that what contact there was for the majority of that language's evolution was limited. This comes down to the age of language groups. Neither proto-Italic or proto-Germanic languages are believed to be 6000 years old, nor should any proto-Celtic language be, for it would essentially then be PIE. So, by suggesting that proto-Celtic is a much deeper stratum he is describing something other than the usual context of proto-Celitc which, with proto-Germanic and proto-Italic, are post PIE language groups with separate paths. This deeper stratum would be pre-Germanic, pre-italic and (if it is to be viewed as a separate language path) proto-Celtic. He is, by definition, describing something other than proto-Celtic (as the term is currently understood).

What this amounts to is that the language groups of Europe are probably more finely grained than has been commonly held.


Let us just dispense with what are peripheral issues, at this point, and get down to Kotch‘s theory of Celtic and its development.

very little of what has been argued is peripheral though, if only because whatever evidence is actually produced (linguistic, archaeological, genetic etc.) is always placed within a context of the Celtic-Halstatt expansionist narrative. personally I think that if you remove that narrative and look at the evidence a number of narratives come to light - in other words, the more evidence that is revealed/discovered and interpreted what does not flow from it is a Halstatt-Celtic expansion.

[Fisherking]

So, is this all the elements or the theory or is anything missing?


The widely held belief (as conjured upon the mistaken identity of the Celts living in the Danube basin (as per mis-reading Herodotus) and built upon with the idea of 'imperial' acculturation) is that Halstatt culture represents the 'Celtic Homeland' and that they, through expansion, have 'celticised' the majority of Europe. Cognate to this narrative is the idea that the Celtic language also begins here and is spread by that same expansion.

Problems: There is no archaeological evidence (nor does genetic evidence give any credence to) the expansion of any alleged Halstatt kingdoms into the rest of Europe; the material culture seems to be, simply that - an acceptance of material forms and techniques. Also the recent discovery of (or, more accurately, recent work on understanding the language as being) Celtic languages in South-Western Iberia pre-dating Halstatt culture.

Simply put, if Celtic cultural spread is what it is taken to be, then any evidence of migration is pretty limited. We do know of migration from this area from historical accounts and from archaeological finds, but they are not evidenced within the British isles or the Iberian peninsula. Equally the language argument seems to ignore this lack of migratory evidence, and also the limited contacts between areas.

As for the Celtic cognation....this is a self-circular argument; ie the areas defined as Celtic by the narrative are, therefore, assumed to be Celtic - thus any inscriptions are axiomatically Celtic. This has lead to, for example, the filling out of the limited Gaulish lexicon by Galatian imports. The Galatian language was assumed (on the basis of the narrative) to be the same as Gaulish.

Here's where Koch's argument becomes circumspect. He is aware of how embedded the narrative is (it is taken as the 'truth' despite it's dodgy origins). That the language(s) developed along the Atlantic seaboard must be seen as a distinct development, subject - prior to the Celtic Tartessian inscriptions - to a large degree of isolation from the central European zone, and that what contact there was for the majority of that language's evolution was limited. This comes down to the age of language groups. Neither proto-Italic or proto-Germanic languages are believed to be 6000 years old, nor should any proto-Celtic language be, for it would essentially then be PIE. So, by suggesting that proto-Celtic is a much deeper stratum he is describing something other than the usual context of proto-Celitc which, with proto-Germanic and proto-Italic, are post PIE language groups with separate paths. This deeper stratum would be pre-Germanic, pre-italic and (if it is to be viewed as a separate language path) proto-Celtic. He is, by definition, describing something other than proto-Celtic (as the term is currently understood).

What this amounts to is that the language groups of Europe are probably more finely grained than has been commonly held.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Let's see, the book is 384 pages, has contributions from archaeologists, linguists, genetic analysts; it is the result of a multi-disciplinary conference. In short, no, there is a great deal more than can be put across in a discussion. Part of the reason that this is coming up now is that it is only pretty recently that any significant work has been carried out on pre-Roman archaeology in the Iberian peninsula. It is, as you have amply demonstrated, a very contentious area but really ought not be - Celitc as equivalent to Halstatt/La tene is known to be problematic (ie the narrative really doesn't match the evidence)

I really would recommend the book (you can get it from Amazon for around £31, or perhaps try and get a copy from a library)

One of the problems (as I see it) is that the term 'Celtic' is used too widely; it is used as the name for a language, to describe a number of material cultures (from urnfield to Halstatt to La Tene) and as an 'ethnos' (in many senses of the word). Perhaps if we called Halstatt something like Halstatt (and so on), and begin to describe possible movements of people in terms of the groups they actually represent (tribal/confederate entities, rather than sprawling terms like 'Celt' or 'German') and look at the languages these groups spoke in a little more detail.

Maybe then we could build narratives, understand language contacts and change in terms of the evidence - and stop framing our histories in terms of modern concepts of national/'racial' identities, and in terms, instead, of pre-national self-identification.

[Fisherking]

We have covered most of the rest of the arguments I believe.

What primarily interests me at the moment is the theory in regard to those peoples and tribes of the Danube can Central Europe as well as their movements to the east.
When you tell me that most or all of the main parts are there we can go through them.

We can cover the other points as necessary.
I don’t object to reading the book but still the prices I see from amazon.uk are in the range of £ 50 and it is not likely I will find a library copy other than LMU, Munich when I can get there.

[Fisherking]

I am just trying to narrow things down a bit. We have talked a lot about some of the interdisciplinary studies but not the main idea of the book or books.

Looking over information on the European Bronze Age, I found this:


UPDATE for ‘Megaliths and After’. March 2012 By Guy Gervis


1) Sir Barry Cunliffe proposes that the origin of Indo European languages lies with the Celts, the spread of the language eastwards being due to the wide spread of Celtic trading ventures. This idea was originally put forward in ‘Facing the Ocean’. It was then published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 2009, under the title ‘A Race Apart: Insularity and Connectivity’ It is also covered in ‘The Celts: a very short introduction’

The issue of a Celtic origin for the Indo-European languages (item 1) has become quite a battleground involving a wide spread of disciplines. The original idea developed from the growth of medium to long distance trade, demonstrated by archaeological finds commencing around 9000 BC and in full flow by 5500 BC , indicating strong connectivity for North Western Europe. Genealogical DNA tests have tended to support the archaeological view that there were no significant east-west movements into Europe after about 9000 BC, but historical language studies are also involved, as are Celtic studies.
When thinking about the possibility of this language spread, it is worth remembering that we are not dealing simply with coastal traffic along Atlantic coasts and through to the Baltic, but also movement along a complex network of rivers which was building up around 5500BC, implying an enormous amount of personal contact, vital for language spread.

It is a big claim and I have no doubt it would be the source of a great deal of grant writing.

Instead of saying that those who moved east were not Celts they are saying that essentially they were all Celts until they developed different languages? Or is there province to subdivide the languages arising from a Celtic root?

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

I am just trying to narrow things down a bit. We have talked a lot about some of the interdisciplinary studies but not the main idea of the book or books.

Looking over information on the European Bronze Age, I found this:


It is a big claim and I have no doubt it would be the source of a great deal of grant writing.

Instead of saying that those who moved east were not Celts they are saying that essentially they were all Celts until they developed different languages? Or is there province to subdivide the languages arising from a Celtic root?

I have to say that I don't recognise that argument. I think this is, at best, an over-simplification, based upon the somewhat...nuanced (I would suggest confusing) use(s) of the term 'Celtic'. I'm actually a little puzzled by the continued use of the term to describe what are very separate developments. I can only put this down to what I have described as circumspection - a desire not to upset, or rock the boat too much within established academic circles.

The linguistic argument boils down to this; that the 'link'* between Celtic from the West and the Eastern 'Celtic' language is a much deeper root than previously thought; essentially that this 'Celtic' is pretty much a pan-European stage of post-PIE. What that amounts to, given that this deeper root is pre-Italic, pre-Germanic, is that the Celtic languages of the West, including the insular Celtic that exists today is a later development (as are Italic and Germanic) and so is not equivalent to that deeper root. Quite simply, it couldn't be. I get the impression that they are building a new narrative by 'baby-steps', treading lightly so as not to offend.

*Halstatt in Austria; also Hallstadt in Bavaria (first recorded in the 8th century AD as Halazestat im Radensgove ), Halstead is the name of a number of towns in England. Holland, believed to have evolved from a Hal root - none of these names are Celtic, they are Germanic (or, perhaps, pre-Germanic) in origin. Why were all these other place-names ignored when defining the etymology of Halstatt? Because it was taken as a given that it must be Celtic. There is no proto-Celtic root for salt=hal. This is not a side issue, I am using this to demonstrate how forced the 'Celtic' etymologies of the East actually are, and how they ignore other, perfectly practicable and feasible alternatives. Those alternatives are hardly (if ever) mentioned.

[Fisherking]

No offence, but you too easily dispense with presumed Celtic place names in Central Europe. There are many pre Roman place names and villages along with river names that also seem to occur in France and Spain. Hall may be problematic but there are many current and former names showing Celtic roots. Of course, viewing a Proto-Celtic mother tongue does much to explain this and should also support the theory rather than take away from it.

From what Cunliffe has written he seems to have less of a problem with a wide language distribution than what you say Koch does. (or it is a misunderstanding of some sort)

It would seem to me that Koch favors a highly diverse language pattern in Central Europe like that in Italy. There is no reason this should be so. If a Celtic language was a trading language in the Atlantic zone it could as easily have been the language in Central Europe as well. These things do not show where the language its self originated and we need not have diverse languages over large areas.


The seemingly huge distribution of Celtic languages in Europe are actually not so exceptional. That is not to say there were no dialects or other languages of a Celtic root. We just cannot say for sure.

If we look at North America at about the time of first contact we see areas of very diverse languages and huge areas of one language family. We even see one language and its dialects spoken over an area roughly ebullient in size to the distribution of all the Celtic languages of Europe.

Given the geography of the regions I see nothing exceptional for a wider distribution of Celtic. It very well could have given rise to other languages around it.

Years ago Celtic and Italic were a hyphenated subgroup of Indo-European. Latin in particular seems close in many ways

Language spread from west to east is not so difficult an idea to overcome. At least not for the Northwest groups. The Southeast group and those spoken in Asia seem a bit more problematic.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

No offence, but you too easily dispense with presumed Celtic place names in Central Europe. There are many pre Roman place names and villages along with river names that also seem to occur in France and Spain. Hall may be problematic but there are many current and former names showing Celtic roots. Of course, viewing a Proto-Celtic mother tongue does much to explain this and should also support the theory rather than take away from it.

No offence taken. I used the example 'Hal' simply because it is already within the discussion. What is remarkable (as I see it) is that the alleged Celtic etymology of 'Hal' is stated as a fact; it is not a proposition but accepted as true. This is what any counter-proposition is up against. The etymology has no real linguistic basis - other than a mistaken identification with a Welsh term which is the result of an insular development that took place a thousand years or so after any alleged Celtic root would have been formed, and given other examples (some of which I have given) has its roots in a pre-Germanic group. That there is a whole list of attested 'Hal' place-names within Germanic Europe has been completely over-looked and somehow the 'Hal' as a Celtic denomination has become a matter of 'fact' That is what is so perplexing about it. And it isn't the only explicitly 'factual' Celtic root that is equally as questionable. What has happened is that Celtic has been presumed and what has followed is a push to make the etymologies Celtic. This, as I see it, is a great block on any rigorous linguistic propositions being developed regarding Central Europe at this time.


From what Cunliffe has written he seems to have less of a problem with a wide language distribution than what you say Koch does. (or it is a misunderstanding of some sort)

As I say, Cunliffe seems to confuse the matter by still referring to the central (Danubian) European zone as 'Celtic', though he tends to take some time to explain that the term is used in a particular way when he uses it - ie, because this is how they are currently known. This is what I mean when I say they are a little circumspect - they seem to be pussy-footing around the issue; not surprisingly as I have seen the hostility that questioning the narrative engenders.


It would seem to me that Koch favors a highly diverse language pattern in Central Europe like that in Italy. There is no reason this should be so. If a Celtic language was a trading language in the Atlantic zone it could as easily have been the language in Central Europe as well. These things do not show where the language its self originated and we need not have diverse languages over large areas.

The term 'trading language' is a bit of a misnomer, A 'trading language' is simply a language that other language speakers will learn in order to facilitate trade with foreigners who speak that language. In fact what happens is traders tend to be multi-lingual, and where speakers from both languages interact is where languages are most prone to change. So, in fact, having 'trading languages' (multi-linguism) would result in a greater diversity of dialects developing, leading to languages sharing aspects of two or more language groups. Koch understands that sedentary communities over contact areas develop diverse languages - as we see in the Italian peninsula (and in the Iberian peninsula, and in Northern Europe) language diversity is the norm.



The seemingly huge distribution of Celtic languages in Europe are actually not so exceptional. That is not to say there were no dialects or other languages of a Celtic root. We just cannot say for sure.

That a large area of Europe likely shared common features in their languages dating back to the Neolithic (Indo-European) intrusions of the 6th and 5th millenium BC is not an exceptional claim. That an area as broad as defined spoke one language is, given other known language groupings, a very exceptional claim.


If we look at North America at about the time of first contact we see areas of very diverse languages and huge areas of one language family. We even see one language and its dialects spoken over an area roughly ebullient in size to the distribution of all the Celtic languages of Europe.

If we look at the Nomadic groups anywhere one will find large areas of shared language. Generally, communities with hunter/gatherer lifestyles remain in regular contact with each other, though they will roam seasonally over large geographical areas. I would be surprised if the native American peoples who shared a language over large areas were not those who lived a less sedentary form of life.


Given the geography of the regions I see nothing exceptional for a wider distribution of Celtic. It very well could have given rise to other languages around it.

Given the geography of the area (mountain/hill ranges, wetlands, agricultural 'plains') and how we see the languages of other sedentary communities develop in other areas of similar topology (ie Italy, Iberia, Northern Europe) I think it is a very exceptional proposition that little or no diversification developed.


Years ago Celtic and Italic were a hyphenated subgroup of Indo-European. Latin in particular seems close in many ways

You make this point as if it is in opposition to the wider proposition. Actually if we look at this older pan-European root then it is a precursor to not only whatever languages were actually spoken in central Europe but would also have an effect upon Italic and Germanic languages. This post PIE, European 'base' is a precursor to Italc and Germanic (as well as Baltic, Slavic and Western Celltic) languages.


Language spread from west to east is not so difficult an idea to overcome. At least not for the Northwest groups. The Southeast group and those spoken in Asia seem a bit more problematic.

Precisely the same problems arise, though, regarding any language spread from the west as pertains to the narrative that underpinned language from the Danube. There is little evidence of migration patterns that would lead to a dominant language 'takeover', and at times the contact zones break down which would lead to isolation between formerly communicating groups - leading to insular developments and diversification through alternative contact areas.

[Fisherking]

We can dispense with some of the items for now but as to the extent of the people and the time of their arrival there are a few points to be made.

Assuming the arrival of PIE in the 6th millennium BC is about 3000 years too late. It either arrives in the 9th millennium or we are confronted by an invisible invasion again. There is just no major population moves from this point in time that we can find. We can leave this as the authors are, as you say, making a cautious approach, but it is a point of consideration.

I do not view Celtic and its daughters as trade languages but rather coming form a culture with a strong interest in trade and trade routes. The natural avenues of expansion are river networks.

Please don’t take this personally but very, very few Native Americans were Nomadic until the arrival of the horse, post contact. Nor were many hunter/gatherers. Except in the far north and in the Great Basin area they were sedentary farmers living in villages and planting a variety of crops. The particular people I had in mind were the Objwe. They lived between the Great Planes along the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence Valley. They made copper tools and kept records on wood and bark using a pictographic form of writing. Not Iron Age to be sure but they also sat a the hub of a vast trade network. As I hope you see, there are some parallels to be drawn.

The Geographic are is that primarily north of the Alps and following major river networks. Iberia ( Targus Valley) and the cost of France were linked by sea even in Paleolithic times showing it must have been a part of an overall network of contacts or trade. The Po Valley also is accessible in the same way, by rivers and valleys.

I am failing to fallow you on the proposed times and roots for the development of the other PIE languages. Are you saying that what was spoken in Central Europe is something similar to Celtic and from this root developed Italic and German and so on? If so, I think that is overly complicating matters.

Is it your thought then that P-Celtic and Q-Celtic are also offshoots of this language at different times?

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Assuming the arrival of PIE in the 6th millennium BC is about 3000 years too late. It either arrives in the 9th millennium or we are confronted by an invisible invasion again. There is just no major population moves from this point in time that we can find. We can leave this as the authors are, as you say, making a cautious approach, but it is a point of consideration.

9000BC is somewhere between 1500 to 4500 years earlier than PIE. I'm not sure where you've got this dating from.


Please don’t take this personally but very, very few Native Americans were Nomadic until the arrival of the horse, post contact. Nor were many hunter/gatherers. Except in the far north and in the Great Basin area they were sedentary farmers living in villages and planting a variety of crops. The particular people I had in mind were the Objwe. They lived between the Great Planes along the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence Valley. They made copper tools and kept records on wood and bark using a pictographic form of writing. Not Iron Age to be sure but they also sat a the hub of a vast trade network. As I hope you see, there are some parallels to be drawn.

A number of points to make. First, Objwe is argued by some to be a language family rather than a single language. It has a number of dialects which have decreasing levels of mutual intelligibility the further the distance is between them. Secondly, the Objwe are at the hub of trade networks only within the context of the European colonists. Thirdly, we are talking about a low population density when compared to Europe - likely a reason for the difference in the psychology of their relationship with the land compared to that of Europeans.

That is why I said that in similar areas within Europe we see a diversity of languages. There is very little in common between the situations.


The Geographic are is that primarily north of the Alps and following major river networks. Iberia ( Targus Valley) and the cost of France were linked by sea even in Paleolithic times showing it must have been a part of an overall network of contacts or trade. The Po Valley also is accessible in the same way, by rivers and valleys.

But those roots are varied, and at different periods, due to differing power structures vying with each other - subject to all sorts of other pressures; environmental change, population pressures - the level of contacts within those areas is differentiated. The whole of Europe is accessible via trade roots; the whole of Europe did not and does not speak one single language.


I am failing to fallow you on the proposed times and roots for the development of the other PIE languages. Are you saying that what was spoken in Central Europe is something similar to Celtic and from this root developed Italic and German and so on? If so, I think that is overly complicating matters.

What is being proposed is that the 'evidenced' pan-European Celtic links are the result of a deeper pan-European root. I don't actually agree with that, I think that is a cop-out, personally. I think that the majority of those links are forced and that once some real interrogation of the linguistic picture is undertaken - without the presumption of Celtic from a mythical central European origin - that a more coherent picture of language groups and their relationships will be possible. However, that is my perspective, but that is what you asked for.

[Fisherking]

The 9000 BC date is where we have genetic evidence for new people coming in. After that there is just no significant change to allow for population movements. It was modern genetic science that gave rise to the “Paleolithic Continuity Theory”. Thus far it has been largely ignored as a sensational claim but it does create large holes in the prevailing theories that do need to be addressed. This theory also developed from an interdisciplinary study.

While language is independent of genetics if we are left to accept the current prevailing theories then we have to believe that a tiny group of Rambo like conquers came in and displaced all previous languages because they so dominated and amazed everyone with their prowess, others just naturally wanted to be like them. Subsequent studies have only tended to reinforce the view that there was no great migration. I am not going to abandon one idea for the other but ignoring it, to me, seems foolish.

I don’t expect you to defend or attack either theory. I just wanted to clarify why I used that date.

As to Native Americans you are taking the 19th century view of population levels. I think you will find that current pre-contact population estimates range from 50 to as high as 100 million. Larger than those of Europe at the time. There were also large pre-contact trade networks which you discount out of hand. We have found that Great Lakes native copper just about every where. As to the Objwe language, it is subject to change as any language. It has been some 500 years since contact for changes to take place. The language and its dialects have not been under study for most of that time. 300 years was enough for Anglo-Saxon and Saxon German to become unintelligible. On the other hand it took about 800 years for Irish and Scottish Gaelic to diverge into different languages. From what I have read that change may have only taken a generation to take place. Do we need to speculate on how it may have changed pre-contact to the present?

We can not say for sure what may have gone before but we do have widely excepted testimonial evidence of a single language group occupying a wide area in Europe. Until we have reason to doubt the distribution on more than a couple of possibly contradictory lines of text it is best just to leave it be.

I would imagine that given the poor reception that the PCT got, and that their data points in a similar direction, that they will hedge much of what they are willing to say.

I too think it all merits more coherent examination. We should also go into it with preconceived notions and the baggage of 19th century thought. But that won’t happen, for a while anyway. We will always be reliant on Greek and Roman texts. But reinterpreting them with out complete contextual regard is not satisfactory. Translations are seldom as straight forward as we would like to think and most of these should be undertaken by experts in that field alone and then reviewed.

It really is time to assess what we know vs. what we think we know. Not just about the Celts but about so much more.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

The 9000 BC date is where we have genetic evidence for new people coming in. After that there is just no significant change to allow for population movements. It was modern genetic science that gave rise to the “Paleolithic Continuity Theory”. Thus far it has been largely ignored as a sensational claim but it does create large holes in the prevailing theories that do need to be addressed. This theory also developed from an interdisciplinary study.

The PCT may have developed from a multi-disciplinary study but it has to be said that it was a very narrow one, and is based upon some questionable 'logic'. There is a difference between claiming that populations are inherently conservative, but it is something else to suggest that there is virtually no genetic intrusion. That intrusion doesn't have to be huge. It is also based on a false impression of continuity, because there are significant changes in the move from hunter/gatherer lifestylesm to the first farming communities which can be seen in differences in burial styles.


While language is independent of genetics if we are left to accept the current prevailing theories then we have to believe that a tiny group of Rambo like conquers came in and displaced all previous languages because they so dominated and amazed everyone with their prowess, others just naturally wanted to be like them. Subsequent studies have only tended to reinforce the view that there was no great migration. I am not going to abandon one idea for the other but ignoring it, to me, seems foolish.

But a fundamental change, such as that to farming, doesn't have to involve 'rambo' like conquerers. In fact all that it requires is that the new forms of communities are more attractive than the old ways. This is another piece of faulty logic, that one must conquer in order to shift language.


As to Native Americans you are taking the 19th century view of population levels. I think you will find that current pre-contact population estimates range from 50 to as high as 100 million. Larger than those of Europe at the time.

There is a reason that the native American population had, psychologically, a very different attitude toward land use. That there was nowhere near the levels of pressure upon land usage as there was in Europe is certain - and it was this difference in outlook that allowed the Western powers to steal land from the native Americans.


There were also large pre-contact trade networks which you discount out of hand. We have found that Great Lakes native copper just about every where. As to the Objwe language, it is subject to change as any language. It has been some 500 years since contact for changes to take place. The language and its dialects have not been under study for most of that time. 300 years was enough for Anglo-Saxon and Saxon German to become unintelligible. On the other hand it took about 800 years for Irish and Scottish Gaelic to diverge into different languages. From what I have read that change may have only taken a generation to take place. Do we need to speculate on how it may have changed pre-contact to the present?

I don't know enough about pre-conquest North America to make much comment, except to say that our (modern) ideas of trade networks are not the same sort of thing as either early North American or early European 'trade' networks. But it does seem to me that the dynamics between all three vary considerably. And that is the real point to make here. That it makes little sense to establish the dynamics of a geographical area of Europe based upon the possibilities of what was going on in North America. Nor do we need to, as the rest of Europe gives us a pretty good indication of how things were.

As for language change - the vastly reduced number of speakers means that language change is far less likely, except as a result of intrusion from the European colonists - which doesn't seem to be the case. Where there are a small number of speakers and the language survives there is actually greater conservatism within the language. And, let's say that these changes have developed within a short time period, within such a small population - that blows the PCT model out of the water as that relies upon language conservatism of a very high order.


We can not say for sure what may have gone before but we do have widely excepted testimonial evidence of a single language group occupying a wide area in Europe. Until we have reason to doubt the distribution on more than a couple of possibly contradictory lines of text it is best just to leave it be.

I disagree. We have a presumed widespread language group which has been endorsed by false etymologies, contorted in order to fit the presumed language classification. And, again, you say we shouldn't throw it out until we have good reason to doubt it, without taking into account that there was never really any reason to believe it. The narrative is based upon the flimsiest, most whimsical pretence that it should have no bearing whatever, imo, within any meaningful discussion on the subject.


I would imagine that given the poor reception that the PCT got, and that their data points in a similar direction, that they will hedge much of what they are willing to say.

I think it goes a little deeper than just that. there is a whole industry that has built upon around this narrative. People's reputations and livelihoods are intrinsically linked with it - let alone the idealogical/nationalist identities that people have bought into because of it.


I too think it all merits more coherent examination. We should also go into it with preconceived notions and the baggage of 19th century thought. But that won’t happen, for a while anyway. We will always be reliant on Greek and Roman texts. But reinterpreting them with out complete contextual regard is not satisfactory. Translations are seldom as straight forward as we would like to think and most of these should be undertaken by experts in that field alone and then reviewed.

It really is time to assess what we know vs. what we think we know. Not just about the Celts but about so much more.

Now, on this, I am in complete agreement with you.

[Fisherking]

Well, it has been four years. If I remember this all correctly the idea doesn’t seem to have gained much traction.

Professor Barry Cunliffe seems to think that the language was spread or originated in the west of Europe but there is no evidence of migrations of people after the spread of agriculture, which brought only a small population with it.

The idea that the people carrying the cultures south and east were not Celts or Gauls counter to the cultural and linguistic evidence left behind.

If the Celtic Languages were a trade lingua franca then the spread required no migrations prior to the Roman period. Language and cultural spread would be due to the developed trade networks. The Central European river systems were tied to the Atlantic trade networks.

We have Basques as closest genetically to the British Isles population but the Basques lay outside the trade network. However, if we take the theory that Celtic was the trade language it only mans the population was not displaced, the genetics could be different, but the language and culture could be the same.

The same could be said for the Germans. The Baltic trading network. Here there is some overlap.

We have archeological evidence of a wide trade network extending from Spain to the Shetland Islands and east into southern Germany or beyond. There is evidence that Celtic languages, or Celtic influenced languages were spoken as a uniting feature with other features as well.

Maybe this is a remnant of the old bronze network as it extended across Europe. We see the same shift to hill forts there as we see in the isles. This shows some connectedness. It does not mean that all the people in the network are genetically identical or subject to the same influences or pressures.

The pattern of development always seems to occur on the fringes of the heartland. Hallstatt can be seen as that fringe and La Tene developed outside that new center. It is a typical pattern.

Trying to say that Hallstatt is not Celtic is like splitting hairs over whether the Bretons or Cornish are as Celtic as the Scotts or Irish. It should be more like a cultural exchange where a part of the network had ideas that spread through interchange to the rest. Rather more like Watt building the steam engine. He didn’t have to conquer England for it to spread.


I have seen no major news on this in the meantime. Any idea on where it may have gone?