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| Public domain image |
Although the Celtic peoples were a large and influential
society during the classical period of ancient European history, their lack of
a written language makes their culture somewhat difficult to define and describe.
The Celtic tribes never had a common leader and may never have spoken a unified
language. Ancient place-names considered to be in the Celtic language were also
used by non-Celtic tribes, making it seem likely that the language was never
linked to one distinct ethnic or national group.
In the 8th-7th centuries BCE,
approximately the time of the founding of the city of Rome , the Celts are believed to have moved
into the British Isles . Their territory
expanded far beyond England
and Ireland ,
though. It included parts of modern Turkey at the easternmost, much of Central
Europe north of the Alps and Balkans, the Rhine Valley, much of modern France
and Spain, and the whole of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.
The earliest historical mentions of the Celts come from the
ancient Greeks, in about 500 BCE. The Greeks described them as the westernmost
people of Europe . Around 390 BCE, the Celts
sacked Rome .
The Greeks and Romans considered them barbarians, and they bedeviled a number
of civilizations until about 279 BCE. The end of the classical period of Celtic
culture came in the first century BCE, when the Romans under Julius Caesar conquered
the British Isles and Germanic-speaking tribes
attacked Celtic territory from the north. After that time, Celtic cultural
traditions become heavily influenced by the Roman and Germanic cultures.
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| Creative Commons image by Georges Jansoone |
Although Celts from different regions appear to have
worshiped different gods and goddesses, there is some commonality in their
religion. Their goddesses seem to have been associated with the running water
of rivers and streams. They worshiped a horned god, sometimes known as
Cernunnos, associated with deer and bulls. Other gods were represented with a
wheel and with a cauldron.
The writers who lived as contemporaries of the ancient Celts
all agreed their most sacred places were groves of trees, particularly oak
trees where mistletoe grew. A class of priests called the Druids, or “knowers
of the oak tree,” performed their rituals and sacrifices, among other secular
functions. The Druids also memorized the Celts’ oral histories in the form of
genealogies and epic poetry. By the time of the Roman invasion, the common
Celtic people were still largely illiterate, but the Druids were able to read
and write both their own language and Latin.
Archaeologists who study the early Celtic cultures of
central Europe come to these conclusions about
their culture:
*The men wore woolen kilts.
*They lived in square and round huts with thatched roofs.
*Most were cremated when they died and were placed in urns,
which were then buried in neat rows. A few people, perhaps tribal chieftains or
priests/priestesses, were buried in chariots, too flimsy for everyday use,
suggesting the chariot was a religious symbol.
*They tended to be war-like, but apparently never attempted
to build a large empire.
*They were an egalitarian society, without extremes of class
or wealth.
Their later descendants, the ones known to the great
Mediterranean civilizations of classical Europe ,
had the following characteristics:
*Less egalitarian than their ancestors, later Celtic peoples
had a distinct class of nobles.
*Men wore gold, silver or bronze torque-style necklaces.
Although these ornaments have not been found in the graves of women, Celtic
goddesses are depicted wearing them.
*They kept bees, sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs. Wild boar
seems to have been a favorite food.
*The common people drank milk, beer, and mead. Nobles might
import wine.
*Although at one time they were noted for going into battle
naked, the Celts invented chain-mail armor.
*They wore blue body paint for ceremonial occasions and
sometimes in battle. The roots of this custom may lie in the belief among many
Indo-European peoples that the gods’ veins were filled with a blue ethereal
substance, called ichor by the
Greeks. Painting one’s self with blue was a way of asking to be taken in by the
gods in the event of death.
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| Public domain image |
The Romans typically left alone the religious practices of
conquered tribes, yet they were uncharacteristically hard on the Celtic
cultural practices of the British Isles . In
their historical writings, the Romans claimed they were repulsed by the
practices of human sacrifice and beheading of enemies killed in battle. (The
Celts believed a kind of magic resided in the head, even after death.) In fact,
this suppression may have stemmed from Roman fear of the temporal power held by
the Druids, whose secular power within Celtic society had steadily increased by
the time of Caesar.
Today, the remaining outposts of Celtic language and culture
lie primarily in western Ireland ,
the Scottish Highlands Wales , the Brittany region of France, and the Cornwall region of England . These
far corners of the Roman Empire were less
tightly controlled than the empire’s more easily accessible lands.
Common characteristics of Celtic visual arts include:
*An emphasis on geometry, particularly the circle and the
number three. Many Celtic myths and folk beliefs make reference to the number
three.
*Natural forms, such as those of animals and leaves.
*The theme of metamorphosis, evidenced by images that can be
interpreted in different ways when viewed from alternative angles.
Sources
“Celtic Britain (The Iron Age) c. 500 BC -60 AD” http://www.britainexpress.com/History/Celtic_Britain.htm
“Celtic Design.” http://www.unc.edu/celtic/designindex.html
“Celtic Europe.” http://www.watson.org/~leigh/celts.html
Discovery of Lost
Worlds, edited by Joseph J. Thorndike, Jr. Simon and Schuster: New York .
Quest for the Past,
edited by Ann Kramer and Lindy Newton. Reader’s Digest.
The Timetables of
History: The New Third Revised Edition, by Bernard Grun. Simon and
Schuster: New York .
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