Who are the Celts?
In order to answer that question we’ll have to delve back through history a little and ask ourselves “who were the Celts?” Western Europe has been inhabited for many thousands of years but we know little – and nothing of the languages spoken there – before the introduction of writing into the area from the Middle East in the first millennium BC. By around 500 BC writing had reached both Spain (via North Africa) and Italy (via Greece). A number of written texts have survived from this period so it is from about this time that we begin to get some idea of what languages were being spoken. The vast majority of the modern languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European family of languages, descended from a common ancestor – that is, they all started off as no more than regional dialects of a single language. As far as we know, the first Indo-Europeans to reach western Europe were the Celts. By 500 BC Celtic languages were spoken in Austria, Switzerland, southern Germany, northern Italy, mo
There are generally six Celtic peoples recognized in the world today. They divide into two groups, the Brythonic (or British) Celts, and the Gaelic Celts. The Brythonic Celts are the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons; the Gaels are the Irish, Scots and Manx (inhabitants of the Isle of Man). Some people recognize a seventh Celtic nation in the region of Galicia in Spain (their Celtic language died out a thousand years ago, and so the Celtic links are more tenous). Because of the great potato famine in Ireland in the last century, so many Irish migrated to the U.S. that they are by far the largest contingent of Celts in this country. Many people here mistakenly believe that Celtic means the same as Irish (this, of course, does not go down well with the rest of the Celts). The Scots form the next largest group of Celts in the U.S., with the Welsh trailing in numbers. How many Celts are there here? It’s hard to say exactly, because of the number of part-Celtic Americans, but it is at least a quar
The Celts are those people that at one time spoke a Celtic language, including the modern descendants of those people. The word Celt is derived from the Greek keltoi, meaning “secret people,” and is the reason Celt is pronounced with a hard “C” or “K” sound. The Celts are a wide-ranging group of people with diverse geographic and cultural backgrounds. Around 3 BCE, most of Europe was Celtic, and all of these people spoke a common language, Old Celtic. The empire stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to the Scottish Highlands, the Black Sea, and into central Italy. At that time, the massive size of the Celtic empire led to the development of two distinct groups of Celts. Those people near the Iberian Peninsula were known as the Celtiberi, and those who lived near the Black Sea were the Galtae. Eventually, the invasion of the Romans, Saxons, Angles and Jutes forced the Celtic people to the north and west of Europe. As the Celts dispersed, the language fragmented as well. The first wave of
by Barbara Ryan (of IONA) © Copyright Barbara Ryan 1997 (Reproduced on This Site by Permission of the Author) The Celts began as a loosely associated series of tribes that migrated gradually westward from their origins in the Middle East, around 5,000 years ago. Because their record keeping was a highly formalized oral tradition passed down from generation to generation, very little evidence of their ancient customs exists. A continuity of design, however, and observations recorded by Greeks and Romans enable us to form some idea of their lifestyle. The Etruscans, early inhabitants of what is now Italy, were believed to be Celtic in origin, and important archaeological excavations at Hallstatt in Austria and La Tene, Switzerland, document Celtic habitation of central Europe some 2,500 years ago. Basically an agrarian society, the Celts were defined as socially stratified tribes each claiming descent from a common ancestor. Led by a warrior aristocracy, their learned class of poets, pri
The Iron Age Celts lived in Britain before and after Jesus. We’re going back a very, very long time – two thousand years ago, in fact. Our years are numbered by starting at the year Jesus Christ was born – and the Iron Age Celts lived here 750 years before that. The Iron Age ended in AD43 (43 years after Jesus was born) when the Romans invaded Britain. The name ‘Iron Age’ comes from the discovery of a new metal called iron. We can find out a lot about the Celts through looking at objects made of iron and other materials which have survived over time, such as the Tal-y-Llyn plaque. The brass plaque was found in 1963 on Cadair Idris in north Wales. The pair of plaques are decorated with human faces. The faces have staring eyes, and straight hair. Archaeologists believe that the head was greatly respected by the Celts. The Celts lived across most of Europe during the Iron Age. Today the Celts live in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Cornwall and in Brittany, France. Their cultur
