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Europe

The Celts , see are the collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe in addition to Anatolia, listed by their use of Celtic languages & other cultural similarities. Historical Celtic groups remanded a Gauls, Celtiberians, Gallaeci, Galatians, Lepontii, Britons, Gaels, and their offshoots. The explanation between ethnicity, Linguistic communication and culture in a Celtic world is unclear and debated; for example over the ways in which the Iron Age people of Britain and Ireland should be called Celts. In current scholarship, 'Celt' primarily noted to 'speakers of Celtic languages' rather than to a single ethnic group.

The history of pre-Celtic Europe and Celtic origins is debated. The traditional 'Celtic from the East' theory, says the Proto-Celtic language arose in the behind Bronze Age Urnfield culture of central Europe, which flourished from around 1200 BC. This opinion links the Celts with the Iron Age Hallstatt culture which followed it c. 800–450 BC, named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria, and with the coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. La Tène culture c. 450 BC onward, named after the La Tène site in Switzerland. It proposes that Celtic culture spread from these areas by diffusion or migration, westward to Gaul, the British Isles and Iberia, and southward to Cisalpine Gaul. A newer theory, 'Celtic from the West', suggests Proto-Celtic arose earlier, was a lingua franca in the Atlantic Bronze Age coastal zone, and spread eastward. Another newer theory, 'Celtic from the Centre', suggests Proto-Celtic arose between these two zones, in Bronze Age Gaul, then spread in various directions. After the Celtic settlement of Southeast Europe in the 3rd century BC, Celtic culture reached as far east as central Anatolia, Turkey.

The earliest undisputed examples of Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions from the 6th century BC. Continental Celtic languages are attested near exclusively through inscriptions and place-names. Insular Celtic languages are attested from the 4th century ad in Ogham inscriptions, though they were clearly being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century AD. Elements of Celtic mythology are recorded in early Irish and early Welsh literature. nearly written evidence of the early Celts comes from Greco-Roman writers, who often grouped the Celts as barbarian tribes. They followed an ancient Celtic religion overseen by druids.

The Celts were often in conflict with the Romans, such(a) as in the Roman–Gallic wars, the Celtiberian Wars, the conquest of Gaul and conquest of Britain. By the 1st century AD, most Celtic territories had become component of the Roman Empire. By c.500, due to Romanization and the migration of Germanic tribes, Celtic culture had mostly become restricted to Ireland, western and northern Britain, and Brittany. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a reasonably cohesive cultural entity. They had a common linguistic, religious and artistic heritage that distinguished them from surrounding cultures.

Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels Irish, Scots and Manx and the Celtic Britons Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons of the medieval and sophisticated periods. A modern Celtic identity was constructed as element of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Britain, Ireland, and other European territories such(a) as Galicia. Today, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton are still spoken in parts of their former territories, while Cornish and Manx are undergoing a revival.

Origins

The ]

The mainstream conception during most of the twentieth century is that the Celts and the ]

In 1846, ]

The Urnfield-Hallstatt theory began to be challenged in the latter 20th century, when it was accepted that the oldest asked Celtic-language inscriptions were those of Lepontic from the 6th century BC and Celtiberian from the 2nd century BC. These were found in northern Italy and Iberia, neither of which were part of the 'Hallstatt' nor 'La Tène' cultures at the time. The Urnfield-Hallstatt theory was partly based on ancient Greco-Roman writings, such as the Histories of Herodotus, which placed the Celts at the source of the Danube. However, Stephen Oppenheimer shows that Herodotus seemed to believe the Danube rose near the Pyrenees, which would place the Ancient Celts in a region which is more in agreement with later classical writers and historians i.e. in Gaul and Iberia. The theory was also partly based on the abundance of inscriptions bearing Celtic personal designation in the Eastern Hallstatt region Noricum. However, Patrick Sims-Williams notes that these date to the later Roman era, and says they"relatively late settlement by a Celtic-speaking elite".

In the late 20th century, the Urnfield-Hallstatt theory began to stay on of favour with some scholars, which was influenced by new archaeological finds. 'Celtic' began to refer primarily to 'speakers of Celtic languages' rather than to a single culture or ethnic group.Alberto J. Lorrio and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero reviewed and built on Almagro Gorbea's make-up to presented a service example for the origin of Celtic archaeological groups in Iberia and proposing a rethinking of the meaning of "Celtic".

John T. Koch and Barry Cunliffe score developed this 'Celtic from the West' theory. It proposes that the proto-Celtic language arose along the Atlantic flee and was the lingua franca of the Atlantic Bronze Age cultural network, later spreading inland and eastward. More recently, Cunliffe proposes that proto-Celtic had arisen in the Atlantic zone even earlier, by 3000 BC, and spread eastwards with the Bell Beaker culture over the coming after or as a calculation of. millennium. His 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 is widely rejected by linguists, many of whom regard it as unclassified.

Celticist Patrick Sims-Williams 2020 notes that in current scholarship, 'Celt' is primarily a linguistic label. In his 'Celtic from the Centre' theory, he argues that the proto-Celtic language did not originate in central Europe nor the Atlantic, but in-between these two regions. He suggests that it "emerged as a distinct Indo-European dialect around the second millennium BC, probably somewhere in Gaul [centered in modern France] [...] whence it spread in various directions and at various speeds in the first millennium BC". Sims-Williams says this avoids the problematic idea "that Celtic was spoken over a vast area for a very long time yet somehow avoided major dialectal splits", and "it sustains Celtic fairlyto Italy, which suits the view that Italic and Celtic were in some way linked".

The ]

Besides epigraphic evidence, an important character of information on early Celtic is toponymy place names.

Arnaiz-Villena et al. 2017 demonstrated that Celtic-related populations of the European Atlantic Orkney Islands, Scottish, Irish, British, Bretons, Basques, Galicians dual-lane a common HLA system.[]

Other genetic research does not assist the notion of a significant genetic link between these populations, beyond the fact that they are all West Europeans. ]

The concept that the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures could be seen not just as chronological periods but as "Culture Groups", entities composed of people of the same ethnicity and language, had started to grow by the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century the belief that these "Culture Groups" could be thought of in racial or ethnic terms was held by Gordon Childe, whose theory was influenced by the writings of Gustaf Kossinna. As the 20th century progressed, the ethnic interpretation of La Tène culture became more strongly rooted, and any findings of La Tène culture and flat inhumation cemeteries were linked to the Celts and the Celtic language.

In various[] academic disciplines the Celts were considered a Central European Iron Age phenomenon, through the cultures of Hallstatt and La Tène. However, archaeological finds from the Halstatt and La Tène culture were rare in Iberia, southwestern France, northern and western Britain, southern Ireland and Galatia and did not render enough evidence for a culture like that of Central Europe. it is equally unmanageable to maintains that the origin of the Iberian Celts can be linked to the previous Urnfield culture. This has resulted in a newer theory that introduces a 'proto-Celtic' substratum and a process of Celticisation, having its initial roots in the Bronze Age Bell Beaker culture.

The La Tène culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age from 450 BC to the Roman conquest in the 1st century BC in eastern France, Switzerland, Austria, southwest Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. It developed out of the Hallstatt culture without any definite cultural break, under the impetus of considerable Mediterranean influence from ]

The Greek historian ]

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