43 Facts About Celtic peoples

Celts or Celtic peoples are a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia, identified by their use of Celtic languages and other cultural similarities.

The relation between ethnicity, language and culture in the Celtic peoples world is unclear and debated; for example over the ways in which the Iron Age people of Britain and Ireland should be called Celts.

Continental Celtic peoples languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names.

Insular Celtic peoples languages are attested from the 4th century AD in Ogham inscriptions, though they were clearly being spoken much earlier.

Elements of Celtic peoples mythology are recorded in early Irish and early Welsh literature.

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Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic peoples-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a reasonably cohesive cultural entity.

Celtic peoples says "If the Gauls' initial impact on the Mediterranean world was primarily a military one typically involving fierce young *galatis, it would have been natural for the Greeks to apply this name for the type of Keltoi that they usually encountered".

However, they spoke Celtic peoples languages, shared other cultural traits, and Roman historian Tacitus says the Britons resembled the Gauls in customs and religion.

Celtic peoples refers to a language family and, more generally, means "of the Celts" or "in the style of the Celts".

Celtic peoples cultures seem to have been diverse, with the use of a Celtic peoples language being the main thing they had in common.

Today, the term 'Celtic peoples' generally refers to the languages and cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany; called the Celtic peoples nations.

Continental Celts are the Celtic peoples-speaking people of mainland Europe and Insular Celts are the Celtic peoples-speaking people of the British and Irish islands, and their descendants.

Mainstream view during most of the twentieth century is that the Celts and the proto-Celtic peoples language arose out of the Urnfield culture of central Europe around 1000 BC, spreading westward and southward over the following few hundred years.

Celtic peoples's theory is partly based on glottochronology, the spread of ancient Celtic-looking placenames, and thesis that the Tartessian language was Celtic.

However, the proposal that Tartessian was Celtic peoples is widely rejected by linguists, many of whom regard it as unclassified.

The earliest records of a Celtic peoples language are the Lepontic inscriptions of Cisalpine Gaul, the oldest of which pre-date the La Tene period.

Evidence of Insular Celtic peoples is available only from about 400 AD, in the form of Primitive Irish Ogham inscriptions.

Whether this means that the whole of La Tene culture can be attributed to a unified Celtic peoples people is difficult to assess; archaeologists have repeatedly concluded that language and material culture do not necessarily run parallel.

Frey notes that in the 5th century, "burial customs in the Celtic peoples world were not uniform; rather, localised groups had their own beliefs, which, in consequence, gave rise to distinct artistic expressions".

The territory of these Celtic peoples probably included the Low Countries, the Alps and present-day northern Italy.

Celtic peoples then became involved in fighting the various tribes in Gaul, and by 55 BC had overrun most of Gaul.

However, since according to the definition of the Iron Age in the 19th century Celtic peoples populations were supposedly rare in Iberia and did not provide a cultural scenario that could easily be linked to that of Central Europe, the presence of Celtic peoples culture in that region was generally not fully recognised.

At the battle of Telamon in 225 BC, a large Celtic peoples army was trapped between two Roman forces and crushed.

Linguists have debated whether a Celtic peoples language came to the British Isles and then split, or whether the two branches arrived separately.

Cunliffe suggests that a branch of Celtic peoples was already spoken in Britain, and the Bronze Age migration introduced the Brittonic branch.

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Celtic peoples art had already incorporated classical influences, and surviving Gallo-Roman pieces interpret classical subjects or keep faith with old traditions despite a Roman overlay.

Celtic peoples art produced a great deal of intricate and beautiful metalwork, examples of which have been preserved by their distinctive burial rites.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the pre-Roman Celtic peoples societies were linked to the network of overland trade routes that spanned Eurasia.

Myth that the Celtic peoples monetary system consisted of wholly barter is a common one, but is in part false.

Celtic peoples individuals buried with both female jewellery and weaponry have been found, such as the Vix Grave in northeastern Gaul, and there are questions about the gender of some individuals buried with weaponry.

Plutarch reports that Celtic peoples women acted as ambassadors to avoid a war among Celtic peoples chiefdoms in the Po valley during the 4th century BC.

Celtic peoples further claimed that "the young men will offer themselves to strangers and are insulted if the offer is refused".

Celtic peoples's claim was later repeated by Greco-Roman writers Athenaeus and Ammianus.

Celtic peoples art is generally used by art historians to refer to art of the La Tene period across Europe, while the Early Medieval art of Britain and Ireland, that is what "Celtic peoples art" evokes for much of the general public, is called Insular art in art history.

Interlace patterns that are often regarded as typical of "Celtic peoples art" were characteristic of the whole of the British Isles, a style referred to as Insular art, or Hiberno-Saxon art.

Celtic peoples warriors are described by Polybius and Plutarch as frequently having to cease fighting in order to straighten their sword blades.

However, Radomir Pleiner, in The Celtic peoples Sword argues that "the metallographic evidence shows that Polybius was right up to a point", as around one third of surviving swords from the period might well have behaved as he describes.

Names of over two hundred Celtic peoples deities have survived, although it is likely that many of these were alternative names, regional names or titles for the same deity.

Some Celtic peoples built temples or ritual enclosures of varying shapes, though they maintained shrines at natural sites.

Celtic peoples often made votive offerings: treasured items deposited in water and wetlands, or in ritual shafts and wells, often in the same place over generations.

In Insular Celtic peoples myth, the Otherworld is a parallel realm where the gods dwell.

Insular Celtic peoples celebrated four seasonal festivals, known to the Gaels as Beltaine, Lughnasa, Samhain and Imbolc .

Some elements of Celtic peoples Christianity developed, or retained, features that made them distinct from the rest of Western Christianity, most famously their conservative method of calculating the date of Easter.