When most Americans think of Celts, they think of basketball players in Boston. Everyone else in the world knows that the Celts were an early tribal people who dominated the British Isles before the arrival of the Romans. Several hundred years later, the descendants of those Celts migrated to America from Scotland and Ireland in large numbers.  Anthropologists estimate that around twenty percent of the American people today can trace their ancestral roots to Scots-Irish Celts, but adding in Celtic people from other places in Europe, the number of Americans with Celtic ancestors jumps to well over two- hundred million.

Origins

But where did the Celts come from?  In the modern sense, they came from Spain, France, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, and Belgium — and Great Britain, of course.

The Celts were not the earliest human group to settle in Europe.  That honor goes to the Sumerian people whose empire dominated the landmass beginning around 6,000 B.C.  Both Sumerians and Celts emerged from the earlier human groups dating to around 10,000 B.C., following the last major ice age.

We refer to these post-ice age cultures as megalithic.  Note that the term Megalithic refers to cultures using prehistoric monuments of large stone or rock; Mesolithic refers to people that emerged during the middle part of the stone age between the Paleolithic (old stone) and Neolithic (new stone) periods.

Megalithic cultures stretched from Ireland (note the oldest stone structures at Newgrange (3,200 to 3,500 years B.C.) to southern England (Stonehenge (2,500 years B.C.), to Egypt — the land of the pyramids (2,700 years B.C.) — and across South Central Europe where we find Celts dominating Hungary, eastern Austria, and the Balkans.

In search of fertile land by which to feed themselves, these early people migrated over lands now covered by the Aegean and Black Sea (which back then were small freshwater bodies of water) to Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.  Some of these made their way into the southeast, where they flourished and created a city they named Sumer (present-day Iraq).

What prompted this migration was the melting of large glaciers that flooded the headwaters of the present-day Danube (Austria).  Somewhere around 7,300 B.C., sea levels rose 150 feet.  Two-thousand years later, sea levels had increased to the point where they flooded over the Dardanelles, depositing salt water into the Black Sea.

The natural occurrences separated Europe from the southern human groups and isolated the northern people, allowing them to develop independently.  They formed new cultures and languages, including Greek and Etruscan-Roman, around the Mediterranean Sea and as Celts in the rest of Europe.  By the time the Sumerian Empire broke down (4,000 years ago), the Minoans were creating their unique empire (3,000 years ago).  What makes the Minoans significant was that they were the seagoing people who created settlements in the islands and coastal areas of the Mediterranean.  Note: Sicilian-Maltese cultures may have pre-dated the Minoan by 2,000 years.

There are some who may credit Christopher Columbus with discovering America in 1492, but scientists now conclude the Minoans were mining copper along the shores of Lake Superior in North America around 3,000 B.C. — and may have also contributed to the megalithic settlements in Ireland.  In time, these Minoans became Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Trojans.

Natural phenomena created these early cultures — and destroyed them, as well.  The Minoans came to an end with a gargantuan volcanic explosion around 1,400 years B.C., which, given the size of its tsunami, may have killed millions of people living along the edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

In the subsequent period, Mycenean Greeks shared a root language with European Celts for a period of around 1,000.  When the Celts brought Iron Age culture to Ireland and Scotland around 1,000 years B.C., the monuments already existed in Ireland and England, so one theory holds that the Celts inherited them from earlier cultures.

Interestingly, there is a split in language between the Mediterranean countries and the Celts in the rest of Europe.  The country mostly in the middle of these two worlds is western and northwestern Spain, where Celtic languages are still spoken. 

Urnfield Celts

The first group with a culture and language identifiable as Celtic appeared in Switzerland, Austria, southern Germany, western Hungary, Croatia, and southeastern France around 2,000 years B.C.  They were preceded by the megalithic culture (already discussed), which buried their dead in mound tombs.  They are called the Urnfield Culture because they cremated their dead and buried remains in urns in flat graves.  Given the period, this behavior was quite sophisticated. 

The Hallstatt Celts

Anthropologists differentiate the Hallstatt people from the Urnfield by the content of their graves.  Academics believe these latter people buried their notable citizens in mound tombs, often timbered and reminiscent of those found in Viking settlements.  The artifacts reflect a common culture and a (likely) common language, as well.  Note: These people were salt miners.  The ancient word for salt is “hall.”

The La Tene Celts

We love the ancient Greeks because they left us with their keen insight into things that, up until then, no one gave much thought to.  Around 550 B.C., Greek historians considered these people whom they called “Celtoi.”  The Greeks thought they were related to Thracians but more war-like owing to the sophistication of their weapons.  The Celtoi were thought to have overcome the people living in present-day Austria — and modern archeologists say there is a basis for thinking so.  Researchers call them La Tene Celts because, by around 400 B.C., most of Europe north of the Mediterranean coast dominated everyone else.  They were fierce warriors and boat-builders — and these were the people who terrorized the British Isles and sacked Rome at every opportunity.

By the time of the Punic Wars, Hallstatt-Iberian Celts had adopted the La Tene culture.  In what is now Northwest Spain, Celts constructed tall, round stone towers on their city walls.  They called themselves Castello’s (makers of castles), which gave them an exceptional defensive advantage over their attackers and made the conquest of Galicia Rome’s most difficult campaign.

When the Romans finally defeated Carthage and moved on to conquer most of the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain), some Celts in Galicia went to the British Isles.  Most, however, remained in Galicia because the Romans never quite succeeded in dominating them.  Today, the dominant language in Galicia (and Portugal) is the Celtic-Galician tongue.  In A.D. 410, Celts from Galicia (known as Visigoths) sacked Rome — sending a signal that Rome’s time had come to an end.

The Germanii

Celts, also known as Germanii, continued to dominate Central Europe until the arrival of the Huns — but even they could not exterminate the Celts in the Danube basin and eastern Austria.  What they succeeded in doing, however, was inter-marry with them and absorb them into their armies, and used them in attacking Rome.  When the king of the Huns, Attila, died, he left his kingdom to his four moronic sons, whose squabbling effectively destroyed Attila’s empire.  Within a short time, Celt/Goth warlords reemerged and ran most of the remaining Huns out of Gaul.

The Slavs were a mixture of Celtic, Sarmatians, Scythians, Cimmerians, and Indo-Iranian peoples.  They passed through but were not permitted to settle in most of Hungary and ended up settling in the Balkans.  The primary settlers in Hungary, eastern Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and France were the Celts.  After the fall of Rome, Europe (nearly) became Celtic again — a pathway destroyed by the Franks — another Germanii Celtic group that adopted Roman culture — including Christianity.

Next — The Franks