{"id":752,"date":"2006-10-29T01:26:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-29T01:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=752"},"modified":"2006-10-29T01:26:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-29T01:26:00","slug":"whos-a-celt-now-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=752","title":{"rendered":"Who’s a Celt now? – 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 1<\/a>, Part 2<\/a>, Part 3<\/a>,Part 4<\/a>, Part 5<\/a><\/p>\n

Everything that we thought we knew about Celtic culture is probably wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But there is still language, right? If “Celtic” is not a genetic code, and it’s not a spirituality, at least there are Celtic languages: Gaulish, Cornish, British-leading-to-Welsh, Irish and Scots Gaelic, right?<\/p>\n

Yes, but who was speaking them? Maybe only a minority, not the whole population of the British Isles before the Roman invasion or, following that, before the Anglo-Saxon invasions. Maybe there was no “genocide.” <\/p>\n

Read this article<\/a> by the British anthropologist Stephen Oppenheimer and prepare to have your preconceptions exploded.<\/p>\n

Some excerpts:<\/p>\n

The orthodox view of the origins of the Celts turns out to be an archaeological myth left over from the 19th century. Over the past 200 years, a myth has grown up of the Celts as a vast, culturally sophisticated but warlike people from central Europe, north of the Alps and the Danube, who invaded most of Europe, including the British Isles, during the iron age, around 300 BC.<\/p>\n

. . . . The other myth I was taught at school, one which persists to this day, is that the English are almost all descended from 5th-century invaders, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from the Danish peninsula, who wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England.<\/p>\n

. . . . But who were those Ancient Britons left in England to be slaughtered when the legions left? The idea that the Celts were eradicated\u2014culturally, linguistically and genetically\u2014by invading Angles and Saxons derives from the idea of a previously uniformly Celtic English landscape. But the presence in Roman England of some Celtic personal and place-names doesn’t mean that all ancient Britons were Celts or Celtic-speaking.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is so much more. I could end up excerpting the whole article. One more:<\/p>\n

A picture thus emerges of the dark-ages invasions of England and northeastern Britain as less like replacements than minority elite additions, akin to earlier and larger Neolithic intrusions from the same places. There were battles for dominance between chieftains, all of Germanic origin, each invader sharing much culturally with their newly conquered indigenous subjects.<\/em><\/p>\n

And they were cheeseheads<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A leading anthopology blogger comments favorably<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, realistically, Americans who fancy themselves “Celts” should be heading for Elko, Nevada, for the big Basque festival<\/a><\/p>\n

But wait, there is more!<\/p>\n

Tags: Celts<\/a>, Celtic spirituality<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3,Part 4, Part 5 Everything that we thought we knew about Celtic culture is probably wrong. But there is still language, right? If “Celtic” is not a genetic code, and it’s not a spirituality, at least there are Celtic languages: Gaulish, Cornish, British-leading-to-Welsh, Irish and Scots Gaelic, right? Yes, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-c8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7469,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7469","url_meta":{"origin":752,"position":0},"title":"“Trace What It Means To Be Celtic”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In their book Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music, Donna Weston and Andy Bennett use the term \"cardiac Celts . . . people who feel in their heart that they are Celtic.\" They are not the only ones who use it \u2014 but I wonder if this new British Museum\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":751,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=751","url_meta":{"origin":752,"position":1},"title":"Who’s a Celt now ? – 5","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4While they wanted to present Wicca as the indigenous religion of Britain, the founders of contemporary Witchcraft were not so much caught up in the \"Celtic\" mythos. Some, in fact, favored the Saxon. By the 1970s, however, \"cardiac Celts\" were everywhere. Writers such\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":755,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=755","url_meta":{"origin":752,"position":2},"title":"Who’s a Celt now? – 7","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A quirky translation of witches' chantsPart 1, Part 2, Part 3,Part 4, Part 5, Part 6Stephen Oppenheimer, the anthropologist who combines DNA, archaeological, and linguistic evidence to argue against any \"glorious Celtic heritage\" in England, further argues that Celtic languages were not widespread there before the Roman invasion.His work reminded\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":750,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=750","url_meta":{"origin":752,"position":3},"title":"Who’s a Celt now? – 4","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 28, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1, Part 2, Part 3There is no gene for \"Celtic,\" and, as we have seen (if you followed the links), \"Celtic culture\" is largely an invention of the late 18th and 19th centuries--created by the English and\/or of Welsh, Irish, and other tradition-inventors who went to London to make\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":740,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=740","url_meta":{"origin":752,"position":4},"title":"Who’s a Celt now?-1","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"When I blogged the recent local Celtic music festival, I promised more on the tangled web of Celticity. This foggy, rainy, sleeting night seems a perfect time to begin.Take the assertion of Stephen Oppenheimer, an anthropologist who has published on the ancient populations of the British Isles:\"Celt\" is now a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":380,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=380","url_meta":{"origin":752,"position":5},"title":"Religion being made An interesting\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 9, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Religion being made An interesting thread on Erynn Laurie's blog shows a group of Celtic Reconstructionist Pagans attempting to move beyond the idea of \"personal gnosis\" (\"It's right for me.\") In comparison to Greek religion, for example, we have almost nothing on Pagan Celtic religion that was actually written down\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}