Who Were the Celts? (And where are they now?) - Page: 2
These are the modern stereotypes familiar to most North Americans, and no wonder. The Celts were, in fact, widely dispersed throughout the western world and, if archaeologists are correct, wandered all the way from the slopes of the Himalayas to North America, and long before the Potato Famine at that. The Irish monk, St. Brendan, is said to have sailed to Newfoundland in a leather boat in the mid-sixth century. But some believe there are Bronze Age Celtic artifacts in New Hampshire: the Bronze Age lasted from approximately 2,700 to 700 BCE, depending on locale. (Find more information on this controversial issue at http://www.wolflodge.org/visibiliti/meti...
When antiquity’s famous peripatetic author, Herodotus, wrote about the Keltoi in about 450 BCE, he described a race of tall, well-muscled, long-boned and light-haired people. When Julius Caesar later wrote about the Gallic Wars (58-52 BCE), he described the ferocity of the large and well-muscled Celtic combatants. Note that in Rome, the terms Gaul and Gallic were synonymous with Celt or Keltoi. (The statue called “The Dying Gaul,” sculpted contemporaneously from life, is another hint that this was so. The statue can currently be seen at The Capitoline in Rome, or online at http://sights.seindal.dk/sight/766_Juliu...
In 387 B.C., the Celts sacked Rome, scaring the tunics off the leather-shielded Romans by hurling themselves at the Romans clad only in blue paint and weapons, with their light hair molded into fearsome spikes by the application of lime and grease. (Iron Age sculpting gel!) The Celts rarely took prisoners, preferring to behead those they had vanquished. They are said by many sources to have hung the heads above the doors to their dwellings, like so many hunting trophies.
That the Celts were bellicose is evident in these early texts, but the extent of their other abilities—notably in metalworking, wagon-making and, later, horsemanship—has been revealed during the past hundred years or so through excavations of their villages across central Europe and into the British Isles.
Celts had inhabited the Danube River valley as early as 6,000 B.C., wrote T.G.E. Powell in his book, The Celts. Archaeologists working there, with what is known as the La Tene and Hallstatt cultures, rich in both ceremonial and everyday artifacts, showed that motifs used to decorate such objects remained constant across time and place, even into the modern era, even into central Asia. (Most people know Celtic art from the curvilinear, animal-rich knotwork or the very late Celtic-Christian Book of Kells. (See http://www.unc.edu/courses/art111/celtic... for a very brief guide to Celtic artistic motifs.) Many archaeologists now believe that the Celts originated in the shadows of the Himalayas. Mummies with European features dating to 1500 B.C. have been found in central Eurasia. So, until the remaining Celtic peoples were absorbed by the shorter, darker Turkic peoples, identifiable Celts could literally be found from central Asia to central Europe. As the Celts were absorbed in Asia, the ‘wandering’ branches of the group went farther and farther west, until today, most people think of the Celts as Irish, Scottish and Welsh. But when the Celts went wandering across Europe, they inhabited a good part of modern Germany, the central part of France, up to and across the English Channel and across the lower tip of what is now England, and southwest into the northern half of the Iberian Peninsula, or Spain and Portugal.
In fact, the Celts spent a great deal of time in what is now Germany, along the upper Danube. From there, their travels led them into encounters with the Scythians around the Black Sea as early as 700 BCE. From the Scythians, the Celts learned to use the horse to draw wagons and for riding. And that, of course, aided them immensely in their travels.
That the horse became essential to forming the character of the Celts—not to mention spreading their culture and their fame throughout the ancient world—is unassailable even now. Of all the deities of the Celts, only their horse goddess, Epona, was accepted by the Romans, who celebrated her festival on December 18. Part protector, part healer, Epona was called upon to protect both horse and rider by Celts and Romans alike. Fiction author Morgan Llewelyn put these mythic/historical facts to good use in her novel, The Horse Goddess.
Those claiming Celtic heritage do not generally recognize the enormous breadth of the influence of the Celts in central Asia, Asia Minor and vast swaths of Europe today. But the great Irish musicians, The Chieftains, have made a second career of touring with musicians whose heritage is Asian, French and Iberian. In the 1970s, The Chieftains added Breton musicians to their act; in the 1980s, they married the sounds of a one-stringed Chinese fiddle with ‘traditional’ Irish music; in the 1990s, they showcased Galatian musicians from Spain. At the turn of the millennium, Tibetan throat-singers traveled with them. (Find information about their albums featuring some of this music at http://members.shaw.ca/chieftains/histor...
In addition to investigating and presenting a fusion of possibly Celtic cultures, The Chieftains themselves are modern versions of the ancient Celtic bards. Poet Robert Graves once declared that, "English poetic education should really begin not with The Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amergin."
The pseudo-mythic Amergin was a Celtic Bard of the pre-Christian era who made the crossing from Galacia (northern Spain) to Ireland, and composed a commemorative work about the journey. A couple of lines from that poem clearly indicate that the Celtic character is given to exploration:
"I am a lake on the plain; I am the word of knowledge I am the point of a spear; I am the lure beyond the ends of the earth."
In the end, perhaps the question, “Who were the Celts?” is a meaningless question because the Celts are still among us. The Celtic heritage in arts and learning and sport and war and spirituality is scattered across much of the northern hemisphere. Celts today are French, Irish, Welsh, British, Scottish, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Balkan, North American-fusion and even Russian. I’ve known a woman from India who resonates completely with Celtic things, and why not? The race did originate on the slopes of the Himalayas. Indeed, it might logically be said, considering the propensity of victors and vanquished to intermarry, that even the Romans and Greeks are also, at least in part, a little bit Celt. Who, then, are the Celts? Mainly, they are most of us, one way or another.
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