National Geographic and Celts

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PeterH P
PeterH Mar 12, 2006 19:13:32
Replying to gorseddphungus

Great fun if at times infuriating. I have just watched the repeat of Rudgley's "Celts". Great to see so many locations, infuriating to hear him constantly saying "Celts" when the French archaeologists said "Gauls" and the Irish ones said "Irish". He went on and on and only retrieved things by putting the case in perspective in the last few sentences. Anyone missing the last 5 minutes would have received the same old nonsense unchallenged. I kinda wonder if that last 5 minutes will not be chopped for American television.

As regards language - we really need to look much further back in time to the origins of modern Welsh, Erse, Manx, Cornish etc. Let us stop calling them the "Celtic languages" now and study them and their relationships with each other and with the rest of Europe. Clearly they originated (if language can ever be said to originate anywhere at any particular time) and developed long, long before the brilliant Iron Age cultures mistakenly called "Celtic" ever arose.

The ideas that really fascinate me are along the lines of trade routes and how ideas, goods and people moved around in the ancient world.

G gorseddphungus
gorseddphungus Mar 13, 2006 00:03:28
Replying to PeterH

Regarding rudgley's tv programme, I am sure he is aware of this and is deliberalety *selling* his story. Anything on tv is always highly suspicious.

As regards 'celtic' languages, I believe in a P- and a Q- stream of dialects, but we should also not believe that whoever spoke it was indeed 'celtic' or belonged to the same people. language can tell us a lot, but only in contrast with archeological excavation etc the same goes for the rest of the IE language family, it was adopted everywhere and yet it is highly unlikely that original paleolithic populations were replaced. Perhaps the emphasis should be put on what elements in 'celtic' languages are pre-IE... ie loans from the natives.

"The ideas that really fascinate me are along the lines of trade routes and how ideas, goods and people moved around in the ancient world."

Agreed. I believe that things in the trade department really began to stir on a wide scale in the Bronze Age and many ideas already circulated on a small scale in megalithic times.