Theory that \'Celts\' are a myth

[authun]

The theory of some scholars (e.g. Venceslas Kruta) is that Celts settled in most of their territories, including Britain and Ireland, during the Indoeuropean expansion (Bronze age). At this time they was not already speaking "Celtic", maybe not even "protoceltic", but a kind of "proto-protoceltic" who evolved in Celtic in most of the regions; in some other regions, it evolved in other languages (like Ligurian) who are not considered part of Celtic group but have strong similarities with it.

So, following this theory (recognised also by Kruta as hypotetic, and refused by some others), there was no Celtic invasion in Ireland during Iron Age because Celts was already there!

According to the hydronymy, there was a language or languages spoken in Britain before the celtic languages arrived, river names such as Hodder, Clun, Calder, Humber etc. If celtic languages did not arrive in the iron age, they certainly arrived earlier and the Chalcolithic and Bronze age are a good starting point for investigation. That doesn't mean more celtic language speakers didn't arrive later as well and as we find more bronze age boats, we are starting to learn that these societies were more mobile and interacted more with the continent than previously thought.

New advances in metalurgical analysis is also throwing up a few surprises. For example, the copper used in the Nebra Sky disk which is associated with the Ún?tice culture was previously thought to have come from the Götschenberg near Bischofhofen. This was based purely on the hypothesis that this copper producing area supplied many bronze using societies in central europe and even Scandinavia, via the Lusatian culture who had tin. The recent analysis however has shown that the copper came from Cornwall, as did the gold used in the same disk.

Sourcing copper ores is one thing, exploiting them is another. How does one persuade farming communities to stop farming and dig ore? The chances are they won't and so miners may have migrated into areas where ores were found. In addition to miners, one needs people involved in the processing and transportion. After copper comes tin. Tin producing areas are rather scarce in europe, you can see the sources on the map on page 276 here: [url:tz5zl67u]http://www.aditnow.co.uk/documents/personal-album-272/Sources-of-Tin-and-the-Beginnings-of-Bronze-Metallurgy.pdf[/url] The distribution of bronze objects, whether weapons or ornamentation, shows that movement of goods, either tin or copper or bronze in the form of ingots must have been far wider than the sources because so many societies used them. There is ample opportunity for small groups to move along these routes and incentive enough for larger groups to seek to exploit and control the sources. It is impossible to state therefore whether the aquisition of the language was cultural or demic but it is certainly possible that speakers of early celtic or even proto celtic languages moved around during these periods.

best
authun