The Origins of the British: The New Prehistory of Britain by Oppenheimer Read Free Book Online

modern Turkey) took celtic languages into the region subsequently known as Galatia. This is borne out by the new systematic place-name work ( Figure 2.1b ). 17 But, as Renfrew points out:
     
Whatever the status of Galatian Celts, they have little significance for the origin of the Celtic languages, since it has never been suggested that a Celtic language was spoken in Anatolia prior to the supposed arrival of these intruders in the late third century BC . 18
     
    To summarize: in agreement with inscriptional evidence for early celtic-language distribution, classical historians seem to place the oldest records of the Celts in Narbonne, southern France, and also Italy and Spain, the earliest dates being written in stone around 600 BC . The simplest interpretation, and the one most consistent with the partially conflicting sources, is that the Celts originated somewhere near the south of France and then spread southwards to Spain and eastwards across the French Alps to invade parts of Central Europe, Italy and even Anatolia by at least the third century BC . The classical writers’ confusing practice of conflating Gauls and Celts was common but acknowledged specifically, even by Caesar. We have to assume that he did intend the reader to understand that there were celtic speakers as far north as the Seine – as evidenced by people who called themselves celtic speakers. Their presence in the areas identified by Caesar is again supported by the distribution of place-names ending in -
briga
. However, it is not clear
when
they got there. The classical view of Celts as people speaking celtic languages and originating in south-west Europe is supported by writers such as Strabo, Diodorus Siculus and Caesar. The modern view, derived from Buchanan, Pezron and Lhuyd, that these classical celtic languages are related to modern insular-celtic languages, is well supported by the finding of extant celtic inscriptions and other primary linguistic evidenceconfined to those areas where Celts were first attested – namely southern France, Italy and Spain.
    On the other hand, it is difficult to infer a clearly Central European origin for Celts from any of the classical writers. To cite the La Tène or Hallstatt art styles as favouring such an origin is an invalid argument, based on nineteenth-century misconceptions. And for twentieth-century scholars to cite those styles as primary evidence for Celts immediately becomes a circular and invalid argument. Further, there is no linguistic evidence whatsoever that those celtic speakers originated in southern Germany or anywhere east of the Rhine. Use of the excuse ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’ is no good either because the original assumption that Celts were associated with the very real spread of La Tène and Hallstatt art styles had inadequate textual or linguistic support in the first place.
    Collis’s only constructive conclusion, in his excellent deconstruction, is grudgingly to acknowledge that if there were a historical-linguistic link between Celts and celtic languages, then their origins would include central and western France rather than south-west Germany.
    So, we are left with objective evidence of the presence of Celts and celtic languages in France, Italy and Spain during Roman times. By combining inferences from early Greek writers with modern linguistic analysis, we can see that the presence of Celts and celtic languages in south-west Europe, and maybe even the western parts of the British Isles, stretches back to before the middle of the first millennium BC .
    In my view, this perspective vindicates Lhuyd’s provisional naming of his clutch of non-English languages of the British Isles as Celtic with a big ‘C’, although I shall continue to use the small‘c’ for language. We can now move on to look at them in more detail.
Celts and celtic languages in the British Isles
     
    I have done my best to vindicate much of Pezron and Lhuyd’s broad linguistic