Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Dec 17 - 08:16 AM

Red, I've never heard of a language called "Roman" in Brittany (or anywhere else).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Mr Red
Date: 13 Dec 17 - 05:25 AM

the Breton 'Roman' was described to me as "as in Romany" to distinguish it from Gallo. Neither would be thought of as connected to French by Bretons. They don't regard themselves as French!

Much as referring to Scots as English instead of saying Brittish (if you are brave enough!). or Scotch!

Or referring to North Eastern Brittish as Geordie. They might be Makems from Sunderland where they made the ships. As opposed to building them.

If people want to annoy me they mention Brummie to me. I ay frum Brum, I is a Black Cuntry waller, owr kid. It goes deep, especially now with globalization .

And I well remember being told that with Scandi ships in harbour the crew would shout instruction over the side and be fully understood by the Geordies on the quay. They share a lot of words that serve. Don't forget Danelaw (when Denmark ruled Scandinavia), some things linger longer. Like language.

NOW

Any bold opiner care to posit the origin of Basque?
If the Picts (et al) came from Iberia wouldn't we have a legacy of a few of there words? Do we? or the alleged Celts? ;-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: DaveRo
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 05:35 PM

David Carter (UK) wrote: Sam Willis is quite a passable musician

In his earlier series, Outlaws I think it was, he performed a song in each episode. I thought he might do it in this series too - but sadly no.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 11:09 AM

Gallo is closely related to French, both having descended from Latin rather than Proto-Celtic. (Celtic) Breton descends from insular Brittonic.

I know "Romany" only as the language of the Rom, not as a language spoken particularly in Brittany.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 09:40 AM

Sam Willis is quite a passable musician, although there is someone with the same name who is better known as a musician. You can find some of the tracks of this Sam Willis by searching for Dr Sam Willis music.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Iains
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 08:58 AM

?The work of lifetimes has been put at risk, reputations have been damaged, an astounding amount of silliness and even profound stupidity has been taken as serious thought, and always lurking in the background of all the argumentation and gnashing of tenets has been the question of whether the field of archaeology can ever be pursued as a science.?
J. M. Adovasio

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 07:24 AM

I relish a quote heard when visiting Ancient Greek temples. "Whenever an archaeologist finds an object he doesn't understand he says it must have a ritual purpose!"
RtS
(Anglosaxon surname and 2 Norman forenames)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 04:50 AM

Romanian is a Romance language like French. Romania is known as "an island of Latins in a sea of Slavs".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 04:49 AM

Surely you mean Breton?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Dec 17 - 04:03 AM

Where does that leave Brittany? With its languages? It has two you know.

Gallo (Gaulish?)
Roman (Romany)

And why does Romanian sound a bit French for that matter?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Dec 17 - 03:35 PM

The Gauls descended from at least two groups: Celts who were living in what is now eastern France by about 600 BC, and presumably non-Indo-European native populations, about whom we know very little.

As the Celts moved into the rest of Gaul, they intermingled and interbred with the native populations. The replacement of earlier languages by Celtic-based Gaulish by Caesar's time indicates that, as in Britain, the Celts had achieved social and political domination over the area.

All the people we're talking about lived in tribal rather than national societies, so Celtic "invasions" could not have been military operations decreed by a central government. They resulted instead from   tribal migrations in search of new territories. Local levels of violence depended on the degree of resistance of the locals, which presumably varied.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Dec 17 - 09:22 AM

I remember being a little American kid in French school in Ivory Coast where we all, Africans and Europeans, learned in history class about "our ancestors the Gauls" - and there is a panel in an Asterix somewhere where the bard, acting as a teacher for the little kids, asks a little boy So, young man, who were our ancestors?

French history never goes back beyond the Celts. Who *were* the Gauls' ancestors? And how did they get to what would become France?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Dec 17 - 08:48 AM

you have to wonder how the Beaker people came by their name.

Perhaps they always ordered a large capucinno.
Perhaps they all had long noses, like the Clangers.
Maybe they always carried beakers for a picnic.
Perhaps they were fans of Gardeners Question Time, and its a phonetic pronunciation of BBC.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Penny S.
Date: 10 Dec 17 - 02:38 PM

I suspect that if you asked the Beaker People what they called themselves they would tell you, in their own tongue, whatever it was, that they were "The People".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 08:46 PM

"Celts" are not a "race" in the modern sense but a culture.

Like "Americans," for example. (Nineteenth and early twentieth century historians and archaeologists often used the word "race" to denote a cultural or national, rather than a genetic, group: e.g., "the Irish race." The word's meaning has narrowed considerably since then.)

The Celts discussed by the Greeks and Romans were united by a common language and other forms of culture (with local variations, of course), no matter what part of Europe they were in.

Think of the English-speaking world today.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: mayomick
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 01:12 PM

Looks interesting . I tried downloading it here in Dublin but the BBC says that Invasion: with Sam Willis isn’t available to Celtic regions outside the anglo-saxon pale.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Mr Red
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 05:56 AM

So, we have Celts from Brittany, we have Celts from Iberia**, we have Celts from Austria and environs.

That is quite a spread, culturally, ethnically and genetically. With the Romans in between. History being written by the winners.

IMNSHO that represents a concept more than a body. Like people (eg Roman/Greek) might use the word foreigners. And we are not talking of one generation, we are talking centuries. A lot of power grab, politicing, trading, migration, fashion and genes can morph in that time.

As I usually say, if you weren't there, you can't really know.

** thinking was when I was young, that the Picts (et al) originated from Iberia.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 03:47 AM

Archaeologists.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 09 Dec 17 - 03:46 AM

Prof. Alice Roberts has written a book on the subject which will settle the matter for me, as I believe anything she tells me.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: leeneia
Date: 08 Dec 17 - 10:11 PM

I found a good article about racial origins here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/theres-no-such-thing-pure-european-or-anyone-else

Well worth reading.

When early archeologists found a new style of pottery or other goods in a region, they often assumed that a new group of people had moved in. For example, I read about the Beaker people decades ago.

That's like assuming that America was invaded by the Tupperware people in the 1950's because their plastic food containers suddenly appeared in landfills then.

===========
Today I had a thought. I've been helping a friend who had a knee replacement. I'm imagining the reactions of the archeologists of the distant future who open 21st-century burials and discover artificial knees and hips. What will they make of us?

[Spell-check doesn't like how I spell archeologists. Isn't it right?]

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Stanron
Date: 08 Dec 17 - 04:04 PM

It has seemed to me, for a long time, that the use of the word 'Celtic' to describe music from the British Isles is suspect. Whether or not the culture that preceded Roman invasion at the beginning of the first century AD was actually 'Celtic' is moot. As a result of Viking expansion, settlement and selling of indigenous populations into slavery in the second half of the first century AD there would have been little of that original culture left. The music is most probably Norse in origin.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Iains
Date: 08 Dec 17 - 03:26 PM

My view is that the group that we like to call Celts arrived with superior technology around 800BC. This date roughly marks the transition between the Bronze age ahd Iron Age of the Hallstatt or La Tène culture
This transition created superior tools as a result of developing higher "furnace" temperature enabling initially blooms to be worked to produce wrought iron, then with higher temperatures iron ores could be melted.
For example tin 232C, Copper 1084C, wrought iron 1492-1583C.
During Bronze Age times many copper mines exported ores, generating trade as far as the middle East.
Sygun
Great Orme
Cymystwth
Parys mountain (all in N. Wales)
Possibly the Mendips
Mount Gabriel in West Cork along the Sheeps head penninsula.
Tin in Cornwall

Iron Age The Scowles in the Forest of Dean.
With the transition to Iron it would be on the wish list of everyone.
The pre-existing trade can be demonstrated prior to the suggested date of the Celt arrival and the onset of the iron age was before conventional historical records existed in Britain. Some artifacts can be dated, some can be given a provenance by the fingerprint of their constituents but the nature of the people that created the transition to Iron Age can only be surmised.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Dec 17 - 08:51 AM

You obviously can't assimilate if there's no other group present to assimilate with.

Goidelic and Brittonic replaced pre-Celtic languages everywhere in Britain. So also there must have been a considerable influx of Celtic-speakers ("Celts" by definition).

Since the native population assimilated to the newcomers rather than the other way around, the newcomers must eventually have occupied the dominant sociopoliticalposition.

The usual reason that people abandon their native language is that it's socially advantageous - if not compulsory - to do so.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 08 Dec 17 - 06:30 AM

So the incomers may not have termed themselves 'celts'.
I somehow doubt that they called themselves the 'bell-beaker people' either.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Iains
Date: 08 Dec 17 - 04:39 AM

The first recorded use of the name of Celts – as ?e?t?? – to refer to an ethnic group was by Hecataeus of Miletus, the Greek geographer, in 517 BC, when writing about a people living near Massilia (modern Marseille). In the 1st century BC, Julius Caesar reported that the people known to the Romans as Gauls (Galli) called themselves Celts, which suggests that even if the name Keltoi was bestowed by the Greeks, it had been adopted to some extent as a collective name by the tribes of Gaul.
That this group of people existed is not disputed. The problem is to identify conclusively what this grouping represents. Is it an ethnic, linguistic or cultural linkage, or a combination? A definitive answer cannot be given. As a result ideas of immigration or invasion may be mythical unless the ethnicity link can be proven, culture can spread by diffusion. To make the same argument for linguistics is a bit of a non starter, I would argue assimilation would be the only way this could occur. Another problem with the idea of invasion is population density.
To invade you have to find someone to fight. Estimates of population around roman times estimate 4 million. This could be wildly exaggerated, but even if true, it makes for a scattered population.
Another problem is dating the arrival in the uk.
    The idea that Celts migrated through Doggerland presents a problem with dates. Doggerland drowned roughly 6500BC. If a linkage is postulated with the Beaker people instead of the Hallstatt culture or La Tène culture there is still a discrepancy of about 3000 years.
A further complication is the Victorian romanticism that encouraged numerous flaky ideas about the Celts that I suspect modern archeology has not quite totally divorced itself from. That there is a linkage between peoples of the NW Atlantic seaboard is clear. Archeology has yet to provide a comprehensive and definitive study of these links.S
But for me the biggest problem I have with the program is that the BBC have an agenda and a message to send. This is well exemplified by the closing remark of the second post. The propaganda worked well!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: ollaimh
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 10:01 PM

welsh ans gaelic are definately related. the term celti first occurs in spain among the celriberians who called them selves celti, and inscriptions of theirs go back to 1200 b.c., in a script derived from phoenecian and iberian use of phoenician. julius caesar refered to the people between the loire and the pyrennes as celti as well. it's an old well know term.

there is a lot of british empire hangover racism when the english try to prove celts didn't exist. not unlike south africans proved that the blacks of the cape didn't exist.

geneticlly there are identifiable familial lineages unique to the celtic fringe on england and scotland as well as ireland.

the celts were probably one of the two first peoples in the celtic isles. the other a mediteranean farming people in ireland first.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 09:30 PM

Celts my arse. Romanticated nonsense!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 01:44 PM

I think I have to class this as non-music/BS. Good topic, though.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Lighter
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 12:46 PM

Hi, Tom

Caesar's "Celtae" were called "Keltoi" by the Greeks 500 years earlier.

The derivation of the name is very certain.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Stu
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 11:21 AM

I was thinking about the Roman view of Britain last night, after watching a programme where they were discussing archaeological evidence that the Picts traded with the Romans rather than simply mounted raids across Hadrians Wall.

One of the archaeologists made the point that much of our information come from early Roman writers who were, in effect, propagandists for the empire. It suited them to portray the Picts as savages to the closeted citizens of Rome, I guess (though this wasn't mentioned) because their tax dinari were paying for everything out at the far flung edges of the empire and had to be justified.

It appears the picts appreciated some of the finer things in life, including roman glass etc.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: doc.tom
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 10:19 AM

Wasn't it Ceaser (one of them anyway) who first used the term Celtae for one of the Germanic tribes? 'Celticism' seems to get reinvented every 30-50 years! Fascinating programme and my comment does not alter the thesis behind the programme.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Lighter
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 09:42 AM

One point among several:

Welsh and Scots Gaelic and Irish and Manx and Cornish and Breton (and some others, mostly extinct, including Gaulish) certainly are related, though you wouldn't guess it just from reading or listening to them.

All can be shown to descend from a common ancestor spoken before roughly 500 or 600 BC and known to linguists (but not to the speakers) as "Proto-Celtic." Proto-Celtic evolved into two later languages, known to us   as "Goidelic" and "Brittonic." These led to the development of the modern Celtic languages.

The Wikipedia article looks pretty reliable but definitely isn't for the faint-hearted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Celtic_language

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Stu
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 05:59 AM

"Ireland must have been on their radar."

You've heard of Dublin, right? Ivar the Boneless? etc etc

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: GUEST,Desmond
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 05:24 AM

You have to remember that most this evidence comes from archaeology - as far as I'm aware, there is no history for the 'Celts' and very little for Roman Britain and the Vikings. And, the one thing archaeologists excel at it's jumping to conclusions; creating vast narratives from the slightest of evidence then peddling it as 'fact'.

Des

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Mr Red
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 04:25 AM

Iceland:
Vikings went round the top of Scotland. Orkney, Shetland and Isle of Man were fair game. Indeed the Manx Parliament is the Tynwald - old and sounding very Scandi.
Ireland must have been on their radar. I would bet that more men than women would have braved the sea and pillaged. The raping might have been consensual in some cases. Her man is dead, and their is this hunk looking at her - negotiate or be negotiated. Mitochondrial DNA explained.

Logically you would expect some if not most of the Viking migration to be in stages. If only to recuperate and build/repair resources. Waves of migration may have been in generations, and occasionally in fractions of a generation. Viking long boats held maybe 70 bodies, and some of those bodies may have been less than human. How many boats in a flotilla, and how many made it to Iceland?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Will Fly
Date: 07 Dec 17 - 04:13 AM

Stone me, what a life...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 08:31 PM

Tony Hancock: Of course I can trace my family right back to Rufus Hancock...
Sid James: Who was he?
Tony: My Dad

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: mg
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 08:14 PM

i have read that most / some who knows how much icelandic female maternal dna is irish...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 05:48 PM

I'd certainly believe that Irish people are related to eastern Europeans - definite physical resemblance, not to mention a similar sense of humour and work ethic and family values. Not so much the Hungarians, but the Poles and Romanians, yes. Also the Baltic people - Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians.

There was also a lot of traffic up and down the Atlantic coast - Spain and France especially.

And obviously Britain, lots of back-and-forth between the two islands.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Mr Red
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 04:29 PM

Or am I missing something?

You are missing something. Watch the programme.

The Bell Beaker folk come over as the ice receded over centuries, migrating slowly from the Ukraine area, when the Dogger Bank was Doggerland. The rising North Sea was held back by the ice until it could not hold back any more and the river volume cut the Channel. The influx of Celts** was a trickle, but those in what is now England, Scotland and Wales traded with Europe. And you know how fashion spreads. Technology especially. Human nature hasn't materially changed. We like bling, and farming gave us the spare time to accrue the wherewithal to trade, or build Stonehenge. And what Europe can do, we can do. Copy!

The languages we call Celtic are not necessarily related. Welsh and Gaelic aren't. As near as can be determined, the Scots are more likely to relate to Vikings. And they did invade!

Maybe the Programme chose their experts, but, experts they wus.

So has anyone tried to re-create the Bell Beaker language? Does any of it survive in English, Welsh, Gallic (sic) or Gaelic? Or Manx for that matter. I would wonder on such onomatopoeic words as pebble and babble but am no linguist.

** a term coined by historians.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 12:40 PM

First our ancestors were called Celts
Therefore the shared La Tene culture was "Celtic"
Then they discovered that our ancestors were not of the same ethnic group as the La Tene people.
Therfore our ancestors were not Celts.

By a similar bit of label shifting Stonehenge is no longer categorised as a henge.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: leeneia
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 11:01 AM

Lighter, you manage to agree with the premise and to start a fight at the same time.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Will Fly
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 09:28 AM

The programme stated quite clearly that the name Celt was a much later invention - made up centuries later to describe the beaker people. You're not missing anything - it's just the nomenclature that's in question.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Lighter
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 08:46 AM

Why did the native population switch to Celtic languages from some non-Indo-European language or languages, if no Celtic immigration (and cultural dominance) occurred?

Why were the Bell Beaker newcomers not predominantly Celts?

If the issue is an assumed Celtic ethnic and genetic purity, that, of course, is nonsense, just as there's no evidence of a military Celtic "invasion" that replaced the local populace.

But if it talked like a Celt, made beakers like a Celt, dressed like a Celt, and worshiped like a Celt, it was (wait for it) a Celt. And that's what people were doing in Britain when the Romans got there.

Or am I missing something?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 07:49 AM

And Welshmen are Yorkshire Folk that ran away from the Vikings.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: GUEST,Some bloke
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 06:57 AM

Where is "Brittain?"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: GUEST,Jon Heslop
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 05:00 AM

See also a book "Britain Begins" by Prof Barry Cunliffe.(Oxford) Absolutely superb reading for anybody interested in ancient Britain. I could also recommend "Britain BC" by Francis Pryor (Harper)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 04:56 AM

From: Mr Red - PM
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 03:08 AM The true origin of the Celtic fringes of the UK were Bell Beaker Folk. Pushed to the fringes by an invading Roman empire.

And the Irish are just descendants of Welshmen who could swim :)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 03:27 AM

Absolutely fascinating programme - I too look forward to the others
Having read Magnus Magnusson's 'Vikings', I'm not sure he didn't over-simplify their role in our history, but apart from that, ok so far.
It certainly puts Little England's attitude to immigrants and Travellers under the spotlight when you realise that we are all descents of itinerant incomers to these islands.
Jim Carroll

Subject: Folklore: Celts didn't invade Brittain-shockhorror
From: Mr Red
Date: 06 Dec 17 - 03:08 AM

In a BBC programme last night it was stated that Celtic was an invasion of fashion, not genetics!

Invasion: with Sam Willis first of three progs. More revelations to follow!

The true origin of the Celtic fringes of the UK were Bell Beaker Folk. Pushed to the fringes by an invading Roman empire.

Well! Who'dathoughtit?