"Celt" Conjecture

[Conal]

So you're suggesting Caesar heard in Gaul the authentic name of the 'Celtae', which happened to be exactly the same name (*kelt-) the Greeks gathered from some other tribesmen some 4-5 centuries before? Was there a persistent, pan-European Celthood spanning from Atlantic to Asia Minor, lasting from the age of Herodotus to Caesar's time in which all its members identified themselves as Celts, so that each author writing about them in Greek or Latin could rightfully maintain this name? Or was there just an amazing coincidence, that all Romans and Greeks happened to interrogate the same tribe and they always came up with the same name?

Have a think about it ... the Greeks knew the Keltae from their interactions via Massilia, which is at the southern end of the area said to be held by those calling themselves Celtae in Ceasars time. What is so difficult about that?

I'd rather believe most generals are similarly ignorant, because ethnography is useless to them just for the sake of it. I also don't see how can they get reliable ethnographic data, unless they would set foot in the villages they are bombing, which I really doubt they'd do. Just to keep things at the surface, can you a name one American general who can speak Iraqi Arabic, Kurdish, Neo-Aramaic and Azeri Turkish (just to name the four most important local languages in Iraq)?

I think if you are going to belive what you would rather believe rather than what the evidence (or lack of it shows) then a starting point would be to ask why you would rather believe that? I would suggest that ethnography is very useful to any general going to war, now as in the past, however you can persist in that stance if it suits you but please consider that getting reliable ethnographical information does not require presence in a partucular villiage by a general, he has guys who can help him. If you are not aware that the US has a large information gathering service please take this as notice that it has and so did Ceasar.

Why would a general need to speak a language to need to understand its existance? There are plenty of soldiers who are specially trained in languages and of course there are always local translators. I dont speak Lakota but I know a tribe who do.