Theory that \'Celts\' are a myth

[Ghostmojo]

I don't really hold any hard and fast views about any of this, but also don't necessarily buy into the accepted and prevailing wisdoms, which I suppose is what being a sceptic is all about.

I have been reading John Haywood's The Historical Atlas of the Celtic World recently, in which he quite fairly tries to incorporate some of the modern reassessment thinking to inform his views, and it struck me that single word he uses most (it litters the volume) when commenting upon the identity, practices and movements of these ancient Celts is ... probably.

He also draws the clear distinction between the Continental [size=85:3r7oiem7](mainland European)[/size] Celts and the Atlantic [size=85:3r7oiem7](British, later Breton & Irish)[/size] Celts, specifically in mentioning that the latter never ever, referred to themselves as Celts during the historic period. Both the Romans observing, and these Britons & Hibernians themselves, viewed them as different from their neighbouring mainlanders. Culturally and linguistically connected yes (probably), but a distinctly different people/s. The denotation is therefore entirely modern, as is the suggestion that the remnant tongues of the so-called Celtic fringes are in fact Celtic languages. How could we compare them to others that no longer exist or we have no record of - just the proposition that Gaelic, Welsh etc are all that survives of once common tongues from right across western Europe from the Bay of Biscay to the Black Sea? The fact that the Bretons settled in Brittany from Britain and not the other way around, suggests to me that their language may be rooted in the British Isles only. Other supposed Celtic groups such as the Galicians don't even speak a (supposed) Celtic tongue at all.

He also takes a very enlightened, and to me, very reasonable view of the modern notion of what being a Celt is all about. The problem is I think it is difficult to view this subject without modern romantic acquisitions/inventions getting in the way. The term these days is both so politically/socially/culturally/nationistically/nostalgically loaded on the one hand and so extremely, widely generic on the other, as to find a central meeting place very difficult.

We know history is written by the victors and bought into by the willing, and in the modern age when information can so easily be propagated - it is often nigh on impossible to get the genie back into the bottle. Sorting out truth from myth, and investigation from propaganda is the devil's own job.