Hallstatt Culture; Old Celtic; Gothic
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In Sweden, Old Uppsala was the centre of both religious and political life. It had both a well-known sacred grove, a royal estate (Uppsala öd) and great Royal Mounds. From the Nordic bronze age, Pictavium in Franconia led to Pre-Roman Celtic tribes throughout the Iron Age and the Germanoi, which after the Vendel era was succeeded by the Viking age. The Iron Age clan society, bonded together by an all-encompassing system of laws and social customs, known as the Brehon Laws, which lasted intact for centuries. There were about 150 tuatha, or kingdoms, in ancient Ireland. The Brehons, or judges, were of the Druid priesthood caste. Then the Migration Period was at the same epoch as the Germanic Iron Age and its parentage was the Roman Iron Age which descended from six periods of the Nordic Bronze Age (1800 BC-500BC). The separation of the four main groups of Celtic languages outside of Hellenic civilization [Gaulish, Celtiberian, Goidelic, Brythonic] occured before 1000 BC. The Insular Celtic branch spoken across ancient times are commonly associated with the Urnfield culture. |
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Celts traces of these date back to the final stages of the Hallstatt culture (c. 700-500 BC), which was based in the area around Upper Austria and Bavaria. By the sixth century BC, Greek authors wrote of a people called the keltoi in southern France and, a century later, Herodotus located them in the region around the Danube; Greater Scythia. In time, their settlements stretched from Turkey and the Balkans right across to western Europe from Georgia. At the peak of their power, they were strong enough to sack both Rome (386 BC) and Delphi (279 BC). By the rise of the Roman Empire they were overrun or expelled from their territories, were pushed back to the western fringes of the continent. By the 2nd century AD, Celtic Iron Age art disappears under Roman influence. The lands occupied by Celtic peoples, whose existence can be traced over more than 25 centuries, were vast. Celts occupied land in modern day Eastern Europe, Greece, Spain, Northern Italy, Western Europe, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. They were a non literate culture whose history and literature was preserved through oral tradition. The only written records of their civilization are the texts left by classical authors, the first of which appear circa 500 BCE.
In Pre-Celtic Britain, there are many ancient places that were elaborately and decorated and carved with many different styles of spiral, zigzag, diamond, line and curve but nowhere do these separate symbols and designs overlap or interlace and nowhere is there to be found an example of knotwork as part of their Celtic regalia and ritual but the ancient symbols are are Pictish. Symbols to be found, carved on stones etc, are in the North East of Scotland and they are, as foreign to the British tribes as the 'Celtic' knotwork is. The British Celts simplified and stylised the art into what is now known as, Curvilinear, or insular British art. This style of design and decoration was in fact brought to Britain in the 6th century AD by Saxon Christian monks and was used exclusively to illuminate the hand-written Christian Gospels.
The Celts were a non-literate culture in some areas of the Ogham alphabet and Latin Roman numerals together, having only written records of their civilization are the texts left by classical authors, the first of which appear circa 500 BCE. Their lands on the account that Celts came into cultural contact with the Greeks and Romans, as can attribute a classical age of any number of hagiographies most visible being characters of the later Dark Ages. From celt, there is no such thing as the term from a language without a linguistic heritage so the peoples called Keltoi and Galatatae by the Greeks, and Celtae or Galli by the Romans; a kind is similiar of a Goidelic example of the Insular branch in the window of 2000 to 1200 BC.
The first historical recorded encounter of a people displaying the cultural traits associated with the Celts comes from northern Italy around 400 BC, when a previously unkown group of barbarians came down from the Alps and displaced the Etruscans from the fertile Po valley, a displacment that helped to push the Etruscans from history's limelight. The Celts then sent their own envoys to Rome in protest and demand the Romans hand over all members of the Fabian family, to which all three of the original Roman envoys belonged with the Senate, be given over to the Celts. The people who made up the various tribes of concern were called Galli by the Romans and Galatai or Keltoi by the Greeks, terms meaning barbarian. It is from the greek Keltoi that Celt is derived. Since no soft c exists in greek, Celt and Celtic and all permutations should be pronounced with a hard k sound as it is by the Brythonic branch of P-Celtic outside of Ireland and Scotland and a node of no patronymic form of word.
One of the distinguishing pronunciational differences was to make many of the previously hard k sounds move to a soft s sound, hence Glasgow and an almost Got or Geat for Scot or Goth. It is the soft c pronunciation reserved for sports teams since there is nothing to link them with the original noble savegery and furor associated with the Celts. Old Celtic's descendence from the original Ur-language and from the Indo-European language tradition in genre is one removed from Italic, a distance from Latin and a cousin to a number of alphabets. Got is the largest island in the Baltic Sea, including the Karlsö Islands and Gotska Sandön. Before a Gothic alphabet could be considered, the Latin name of Gotland, which may occasionally be encountered today, is Gotlandia. The region is also part of the traditional origin of the Goths; Götaland. Gotland came as a fiefdom to the Teutonic Knights to fight Victual Brothers at their fortified sanctuary.
An eastern Hallstatt cultural zone including Croatia, Slovenia, western Hungary, Austria, Moravia, and Slovakia can be distinguished from a western cultural zone which includes northern Italy, Switzerland, eastern France, southern Germany, and Bohemia. Exchange systems or folk movements (probably both) spread the Hallstatt cultural complex into the western half of the Iberian peninsula, Great Britain, and Ireland. It is probable that some if not all of this diffusion took place in a Celtic-speaking context.