The Celts

 

To this day the core of Ireland's heritage remains unmistakably Celtic. Writing depicts the Celts as tall and warlike, placing their arrival in Ireland more than two thousand years ago.

Classical Celtic culture emerged in central Europe around modern Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland. The earliest major Celtic settlement, dating from 1200 BCE, was found in Hallstatt, Upper Austria.

The classical Hallstatt culture, and its successor the La Tène culture, spread from the Alps to most of Western and Central Europe between 600 and 400 BCE. People in those areas spoke a similar language, shared a same religion, similar traditions and beliefs, the same arts and techniques.

There were some minor regional differences between Celtic people. For example, houses in Britain and Ireland were typically round, while those in Gaul were rectangular.

The term "Celt" comes from Greek Keltoi or Galatae (Galatian), and Latin Celtae or Galli (Gaul). It is not known how they called themselves, but it is likely to have been a word in between those, maybe resembling the modern word "Gael".

 

Though the Celts did not have their own writing system, Celtic-language inscriptions in Latin or Greek alphabets have been found on Celtic sites.

Contrarily to popular beliefs, Celtic languages were still spoken after the Roman conquest. Saint Jerome (347-420) notes that the language of the Anatolian Galatians in his day was still very similar to the language of the Treveri (from the region of Trier and the border of Germany and Luxembourg).

Celtic languages progressively disappeared during the Middle Ages. They only survived in Brittany, Corwall, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and for a time also in Galacia (north-western Spain). Today, only a minority of people can still speak Celtic/Gaelic languages, and they are mostly confined to Wales, Brittany and western Ireland.

They spread over much of France and part of northern Italy in the sixth century before Christ, invaded northern Spain in the fifth century, sackomg Rome at the end of the fourth century and getting a footing in Greece and Asia Minor in the third century. The Greeks called them Keltoi and the Romans Galli.

The Celts were not the first inhabitants of Ireland. At the end of the Ice Age, as the climate became warmer about 6,000 B.C., early immigrants probably crossed the narrow sea from Scotland to the Antrim coast and gradually moved further south. They lived a primitive existence by hunting in the forests and streams and lakes. Next came the first farmers who used stone implements for felling trees and preparing the soil for grain, they also kept large quantities of cattle, sheep and pigs. Perhaps by 2,000 B.C. a new group of settlers had arrived, metalworkers in search of gold and copper, who fashioned the artistic ornaments now in the National Museum in Dublin, the greatest collection of prehistoric gold objects in Western Europe. These were the dominant people in Ireland in the late Bronze Age when the Celts arrived.

 

The Celts had the advantage of having weapons made of iron. They seem to have moved into Ireland in two waves, one directly from the continent into the west of the country and the other through Britain into northeast Ireland. They may have begun to arrive as early as 500 B.C. and they were well established a century before Christ.

St. Patrick brought the Christian faith in the mid-fifth century. His missionary work was concentrated on the northern half of Ireland. 

Genetic studies determined that most of the ancient Celtic men belonged to the Y-DNA haplogroup R1b-S116 and its sub clades. Two Early Bronze Age migrations brought the L21 subclade to north-west France and the British Isles, and the DF27 subclade to south-west France and Iberia. The third major Celtic subclade is S28 (aka U152), which is associated with the expansion of the Hallstatt and La Tène Celts, as well as with Italic tribes.  Celtic people are believed to have spread the genes for red hair.