Theory that \'Celts\' are a myth

[cagwinn]

I think the arguement is that there was not a body of Iron Age peoples across Europe who identified themselves as a homogenous who were called Celts.

Exactly. The word is first employed by Greek authors who describe a group of people directly north of Marseilles. Their territory expands: to Herodotus, both the Pyrenees and the source of the Danube are in the land of the Celts; to Ephorus, the word means "westerner" or "barbarian", and hence we get Cassius Dio, who uses it as synonym for Germans - the exact opposite of what Caesar says (who distinguishes Gauls/Celts from Germans). In short, the word means everything and therefore nothing.

Use "La Tène" or "Iron Age", I'd say, or use "Celtic languages" while making it clear that you're discussing language, not ethnicity. Frankly, I can't see a reason to use this confusing expression, except the "Celtic" here. :wink:

"Celtic" is a perfectly acceptable term for describing the socio-linguistic group in question - just as acceptable as "Slavic","Greek", "Germanic", "Italic", in fact. No serious Celticist claims that there was one unified ethnic group called the "Celts", by the way - that is a strawman invented by the Celtosceptics, many of whom are woefully misinformed about any fields outside of archaeology.

As we have discussed in another thread here, Greek "Keltoi", Latin "Celtae" were likely borrowed from a Celtic language and certainly had a specific meaning in that language - even if it was occasionally used as a generic term for any western barbarian peoples by later classical authors, this was not its normal usage.

A couple online summaries of the early references to the Celts:
[url:2g6a4z03]http://books.google.com/books?id=f899xH_quaMC&pg=PA845#v=onepage&q&f=false[/url]
[url:2g6a4z03]http://www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi/volumes/vol6/6_4/lorrio_zapatero_6_4.html[/url]