A jumble of classifications of Celtic

[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.