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Ancient Ties: An Overview of Celtic Culture

The term Celtic has been used so loosely and so often to describe all manner of people that it is easy to lose sight of who the Celts really are and what Celtic culture really means. However, it is precisely this sort of vagueness that you will not find in this article, and the next time someone mentions Celtic culture, you will be on to it!

Very broadly speaking, Celtic is a term used to describe a large loosely knit community of ancient people in Europe who use the Celtic branch of Indo-European languages. However, the matter is complicated because Celtic also describes a group of people whose languages may not belong to the Celtic branch, but who share certain cultural affinities with Celtic peoples as proved through archeological excavations.

Have I confused you thoroughly? To put you out of your misery, let me say that today, the term Celtic culture describes the cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and the former French province of Brittany, where about a quarter of the population speaks Breton, a Celtic language similar to Cornish and Welsh. Put another way, the areas under Celtic culture would be those where Celtic languages, i.e., Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Breton, Cornish and Manx, are still spoken.

Because the Celtic language belongs to the Indo-European family, some scholars believe its original speakers came from the Caspian steppes. This is open to dispute, though, because some of the earliest records of Celts appear around 600 BC, by which time they had divided into several language groups and spread over much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, Ireland and Britain, and modern studies aim to prove that today’s Celtic nations may trace their roots back to the Paleolithic era.

However, some scholars believe Celtic culture as a cultural branch of the Indo-European family has its roots in the Urnfield culture, which dominated central Europe from about 1200-700 BC. This era saw great advances in technology and agriculture, and the growth of iron working gave birth to the Hallstatt culture, which followed the Urnfield and lasted from about 700-500 BC. After Hallstatt came the La Tène culture, which coincided with the last stage of the Iron Age and morphed into a recognizable Celtic culture.

By the time the Romans arrived on the scene, the Celts already had a strong presence in Europe, including France and Italy and it was not until 192 BC that Roman armies were able to subdue the last remaining independent Celtic regions in Italy. Under Julius Caesar, the Romans conquered Celtic Gaul (modern France), and Emperor Claudius began the series of expeditions that helped the Romans conquer parts of Celtic Britain. The subsequent Romanization of the natives resulted in Celtic art that drew upon both classical subjects and traditional themes dominated by Roman motifs. In the case of Gaul, however, Romanization led to a complete extinction of the Gallic language.

As the Roman Empire adopted Christianity, so did the regions under its rule, but the unconquered Celtic cultures of Scotland and Ireland also began a move from polytheism to Celtic Christianity. This caused an early medieval renaissance of Celtic art between 390 and 1200, giving birth to several styles that we know as typically Celtic, through large parts of Ireland and Britain. The arrival of Roman Catholicism and the Normans effectively ended the renaissance, but the Celtic languages and some secondary influences of the art survived.

In the dying stages of the Roman Empire, Germanic invaders overran the Celts of Gaul, Iberia and Britain, while elsewhere, Celtic populations were absorbed by others, leaving behind place names, legends and folklore, many of them from pre-Christian times. Historical records show that pre-Christian Celts had well knit social structures based on class and kinship, and followed a polytheistic religion. Society was divided into three groups: the aristocracy; the intelligentsia including druids, poets, and jurists; and others.

Most Celtic societies were non-urban and built around warfare, but this seems to have been more a form of sport rather than a means of territorial conquest. Instead, they used trade as a method of expansion, and archeological evidence suggests that pre-Roman Celtic cultures were part of a network of overland trade routes that spanned a vast region from Ireland to China. Celtic traders were also in contact with the Phoenicians as early as 1600 BC.

Though Celtics had a written language, but it was only used for ceremonial purposes and they preferred the oral tradition. Records indicate that the oldest rhyming poetry in the world is of Irish origin and is a transcript of a much older poem, thus leading some scholars to claim that Celts invented rhyme. Whether this theory is true, it is a fact that Celtic culture did give birth to a great deal of beautiful metalwork.

On a darker note, early Celtics have also left behind a reputation as head hunters, and the Celtic practice of head hunting is well documented archeologically as well as in Celtic mythology. The Celts believed that if they attached the head of their enemy to a pole near their house, the head would issue warnings when an enemy was near. The severed head was also seen as a source of spiritual power.

I could go on, but there just isn’t space for more, and we still have a lot to talk about! So check out the related articles.