The Celts

The Celts were a legendary people. From one thousand before christ, they populated southern and central Europe and left their mark almost everywhere. The Romans forced them to adapt, but many lived an independent life until the Middle Ages.

The term “Celts“ comes from the Greek term “keltoi“ which means “the bold“, “the brave“. In France, they were known as Gauls, in southern Germany and today’s Switzerland as Helvetians and in today’s Turkey as Galatians.

To the Greeks and Romans, the Celts were bloodthirsty barbarians. However, such negative representations from a Roman or Greek point of view are no wonder. After all, since their attacks on Rome and Delphi, the Celts have been regarded as enemies of the civilized world. But the Celts were not as barbaric as the Romans and Greeks described them. The Greeks originally meant by “barbaric“ only “not speaking Greek“.

Appearance:
The Celts were large, blue-eyed people with reddish to blond hair and light skin. They washed their hair with lime water so that it looked like a wild animal’s mane.

Settlement area:
The Celts are among the greatest peoples of European history and prehistory; long before Rome conquered the known world, Celtic peoples inhabited a huge area. They lived not only in Great Britain and Ireland, but also in Spain and France as far as southern Germany and the Alps, and later advanced to Italy, the Balkans and the heart of Turkey. The Celts spread more and more from western France and south-Western Germany. But there was never a Celtic state. However, the individual tribes owned princes and chiefs.

Culture:
Celtic culture is divided into two main epochs:

-The Hallstatt culture around 800-400 BC (early Iron Age) This culture is characterized above all by the fact that the dead were buried in so-called urn fields.

-The La Tène culture from about 450 B. C. (late Iron Age) This culture is oriented towards similarity in the production of jewelry and weapons.

The characteristics of the epochs depend more on the similarity of archaeological finds that on the Celtic way of life.

Early on, the Celtic tribes had a rather highly developed economic life. They not only raised livestock and cultivated cereals and vegetables, but they also mined metals and salt in mines, which they traded with. Money was used for payment, as it is today, because the Celts minted their own coins from about 400 B. C. onward. The Celts were also very skilled craftsmen who worked leather, woven cloths, forged metal and pottered vessels. Roman women, for example, loved Celtic women’s clothes and jewelry. But not only the Celtic women attached importance to jewelry and a well-groomed appearance. Most Celts wore colorful robes of fur and linen. The beards were also doctored. For the Celts, shaved faces with impressive mustaches were in fashion. The Celts learned from other peoples, such as the Etruscan, the processing of metals. They adopted many ways of life of other peoples. Nevertheless, one thing always seemed to remain, religion and the common language.

Religion:
Religion had a great influence on the life of the Celts, but little is known about their exact beliefs. The Celts, like othe peoples such as the Romans and Greeks, believed in several gods, so they were polytheistic. There was a god of heaven and a god of war, a god of light and gods of craftsmanship. The goddesses included a kind of mother goddess, but also a goddess of love and a goddess of hunting and the woods.

Everywhere the celtic people left their traces of their culture, but there are hardly any written traditions left.

Expiration of the celtic people:
Due to the expansion of the Germanic tribes from north-East Europe to west and the spread of the Roman Empire, the Celtic area became smaller and smaller until it ceased to exist completely. Only in Ireland and Wales were the Celts able to hold their own.