The Celts

I read The Celts (2015) by Alice Roberts in 2024. I had always known the Celts as the original people of the British islands before the arrival of the Romans and the Saxons. Then I read The Farfarers by Farley Mowat, who claimed that they came from Germany and pushed out the real original people there, the Albans. Mowat speaks with authority as if all this is largely settled, showing uncertainty only for his idea that it was the Albans who reached Canada before any other European. In contrast, Roberts speaks with great uncertainty, casting doubt on many theories of ancient Europe, and makes the situation much more complicated.

The theme running through the book is that we can’t study what we can’t agree on the definition of, and the Celts are very poorly defined. Are they defined by genetics? Are they defined by art? Are they defined by language? Are they defined by religion? It now looks highly probable that each of these things began in different parts of Europe and were adopted by other tribes as they exchanged ideas and artifacts.

A big part of the problem is that the Celts never wrote anything down, so much of our knowledge of them comes from Greek and Roman historians. The Greeks referred to people living in and around the Alps as Keltoi, or sometimes Galos, the Celt word for warrior. They had friendly relations with Alexander The Great, king of Macedonia, but when he died and his relatives carved up the empire, the Celts joined with Thrace to attack. Later, a small number of Celts migrated to the Gordion region, where they soon became known as Galatians. The Greeks often referred to them all as Galatians after that. The Romans called the same people Galli, or Celtae. They recognized them as one of the main tribes living in Gaul (France), distinguishing them from the Cynesians, Teutones, and many others who might have been Celtic also. Early Romans did not include the people of Brettanike and Ierne (Britain and Ireland) in their description of Celts, but later linguists noticed the similarities in language.

Since the Celts never described themselves, it is possible that our sources are filled with anti-barbarian propaganda. Archaeologists have searched for confirmations in their physical traces, but what some claim as evidence is highly dubious. According to the literate Mediterranean people, Celts are hard drinkers, crave meat, battle naked (men), wear blue dye (women), conduct human sacrifice, and collect the heads of enemies to hang from their horses (adopted from the east) and houses. How much is true?

If we define those living in the Alps first described as Keltoi to be the true Celts, there is evidence that their culture changed several times. They used to cremate their dead, but later buried them, along with treasures in much the same way that the Egyptians did. Is it possible that they believed one could carry belongings into the afterlife? Many of the brooches and other items were deliberately damaged so as to be unusable. Was this to deter thieves? Or an act of revenge against the dead? What today is called Celtic art actually developed post-Christianization, but it is based on earlier art that also used flowing lines. This kind of art apparently originated near the Alps, as did the making of torcs. The practice of dumping cauldrons and swords in bodies of water also probably originated there and later spread to Britain.

If we define Celts as those holding to the Druidic tradition, this probably started in the islands and then spread across mainland Europe. Druids took apprentices, teaching them all about astronomy, geography, and nature. They settled disputes between neighbors and even between tribes. They believed in reincarnation, sky gods, water and soil goddesses, and mistletoe as the cure to everything. Those stories that survive heavily feature cauldrons, shapeshifting, hybrid animals, and reverence for dogs. There is also a story of a warrior who experienced “war spasms” much like the stories of Viking berserkers.

If we define Celts by their language, the latest theory is that the first Celts were from Portugal and adopted Phoenician consonants as the basis for their alphabet, adding in vowels that they made up. If true, this is the only written Celtic language before the Roman invasion. Place names in Portugal bear some similarities, such as prefixes and suffixes such as “briga” (hill fort) and “eburo” (yew).

So, where did the Celts come from? It is entirely possible that the Celts we know today are the original people of Britain and Ireland (the Albans?), who adopted language from Portugal, art from central Europe, and started and introduced the Druids to the world, before being invaded and influenced by Romans, Picts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, and Normans before taking over the world.

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