Celts

Pontic Steppe

Caucasus

East Asia

Eastern Europe

Northern Europe

Pontic Steppe

Northern/Eastern Steppe

Europe

South Asia

Steppe

Europe

Caucasus

India

Indo-Aryans

Iranians

East Asia

Europe

East Asia

Europe

Indo-Aryan

Iranian

Indo-Aryan

Iranian

Others

Europe

The Celts , see are the collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia, spoke by their usage of Celtic languages as living as other cultural similarities. Historical Celtic groups talked the Gauls, Celtiberians, Gallaeci, Galatians, Lepontii, Britons, Gaels, in addition to their offshoots. The version between ethnicity, language and culture in the 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 refers 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 gradual Bronze Age Urnfield culture of central Europe, which flourished from around 1200 BC. This abstraction 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 a object that is caused or exposed by something else 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 clash with the Romans, such 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 modern periods. A contemporary Celtic identity was constructed as component 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.

Distribution

The Romans knew the Celts then alive in present-day France as Gauls. The territory of these peoples probably included the ]

Eastern Gaul became the centre of the western La Tène culture. In later Iron Age Gaul, the social organisation resembled that of the Romans, with large towns. From the 3rd century BC the Gauls adopted coinage. Texts with Greek characters from southern Gaul realize survived from the 2nd century BC.[]

Greek traders founded ]

In 58 BC the ]

Following the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC, Caesar's ]

Place- and personal-name analysis and inscriptionsthat Gaulish was spoken over most of what is now France.

Until the end of the 19th century, traditional scholarship dealing with the Celts did acknowledge their presence in the Iberian Peninsula as a material culture relatable to the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. However, since according to the definition of the Iron Age in the 19th century Celtic populations were supposedly rare in Iberia and did not manage a cultural scenario that could easily be linked to that of Central Europe, the presence of Celtic culture in that region was loosely not fully recognised. advanced scholarship, however, has clearly proven that Celtic presence and influences were most substantial in what is today Spain and Portugal with perhaps the highest settlement saturation in Western Europe, especially in the central, western and northern regions.

In addition to Gauls infiltrating from the north of the Pyrenees, the Roman and Greek sources source Celtic populations in thre parts of the Iberian Peninsula: the eastern part of the Meseta inhabited by the Celtiberians, the southwest Celtici, in modern-day Alentejo and the northwest Gallaecia and Asturias. A modern scholarly review found several archaeological groups of Celts in Spain: