New Documentary on Celts

[bicicleur 2]

I really can't believe that's a serious question. Or, from your response to Maleth, that you think Caesar killed, or wanted to kill, more people than Hitler.

Warfare has been a constant in human history down to the present day. I may deplore it, but it's a fact. Probably, to get rid of it, we'd have to get rid of men. I'd personally be sorry to see that happen even if we could solve the procreation issue, but there you have it. Any acquaintance with the philosophy of Hobbes?

Even when talking about war, however, there are differences. Alexander, and Caesar/Augustus, if you want to broaden it out, and even, say, Napoleon, can't be equated with Hitler. They were garden variety conquerors. Once you submitted to their hegemony, as Maleth pointed out, you could accrue all the benefits of the culture or empire on an equal footing with the invaders. In the case of Greece, you became a Hellene, in the case of Rome you became a "Roman". So long as you paid your taxes and didn't revolt, you had all the benefits of the Empire. That's what happened to some of my ancestors, the Celt-Ligurians. Under Napoleon, you got all the reforms that had been introduced with the French Revolution, except for actual democracy, of course.

For a comparison to Hitler you'd have to use someone like Genghis Khan (new biography out on him, which is very interesting), who wanted the steppe cleared of people so that there would be lots of nice pasture land for their herds. Maybe Tamerlane is a good example too. They wanted to exterminate the people they conquered, not just become overlords. We even have more modern examples of that in Europe, with the war in Kosovo, and its "ethnic cleansing" and the use of rape as a weapon of war.

As for the Celts, I would think that their goal when they invaded Italy starting in the first millennium BC, even sacking Rome itself in 390 BC, was sometimes to raid and plunder, and sometimes was to grab some land and become overlords, as was the case with the Greeks, and the Carthaginians, and the Romans. How did they wind up all over northern Italy, otherwise? However, they didn't exterminate the people in the lands they conquered, as can be seen in Liguria, for example. They mingled with them.

The ancestors of the Celts, or those of their ancestors who were Indo-Europeans, might have been a different story. Were the Indo-Europeans just wandering shepherds fleeing drying conditions on the steppe who happened to bring the plague along with them when they encountered the Neolithic Europeans who were already weakened by famine in the relatively sparsely populated northern areas of Europe? Or, were they horse riding hordes who ruthlessly butchered as many of the indigenous men as they could, those who hadn't already succumbed to famine and plague, that is?

I would prefer, given I have some of their ancestry, even if not a lot, the former. Others either just think the latter happened, or positively relish the idea, as they made clear before they were trying to get accepted as quasi-academic researchers.

The jury is still out, don't you think? Although, I find it very suspicious that the mtDna lines survived quite well, but the ylines were almost wiped out.

of course the question doesn't make sense

it is what I told before : these were other times with other morals

but invading a country and killing 1/3 of the population

and therefore being admired and celebrated by all Romans

I simply can't grasp it,
but then I've never lived in their world

 

[Fire Haired14]

of course the question doesn't make sense

it is what I told before : these were other times with other morals

but invading a country and killing 1/3 of the population

and therefore being admired and celebrated by all Romans

I simply can't grasp it,
but then I've never lived in their world

It makes total sense. Just as people like destroying a rival sports team, but instead it involved killing a million of them . It was a more primitive back then.

 

[Maleth]

I'm pretty sure that is incorrect. It was northern Europe defending itself against southern empires. It's always been that way. For example - romanized Britain? Are you suggesting this was originally their territory? It's like me suggesting North America was initially settled by the British 17,000 years ago, or that west Africans were "workers" in America rather than slaves.

Not really.....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Allia#Recovery_and_reform, the south to North invasions came later and as a result.

 

[Twilight]

What's special about him as a man? A lot. Just like there was a lot special about Augustus, and Mark Anthony, and Cleopatra, and Cicero, or the Gracchi, or Hannibal or Alexander, or Vercingetorrix, or Boudicca, for that matter. You don't have to like these people or like everything they did to be curious about them.

What's special about his dna (or that of the others)? A lot, if we could ever get hold of it. I'd love for scientists to be able to tell us in depth about a lot of famous people in history and how their genetic profile might have affected who they became. I have a whole list in addition to the ones above: Lorenzo de Medici, a lot of the great Italian Renaissance thinkers, writers and artists, Verdi, Puccini, then onto to the great men of the U.S., Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and on and on. It's natural. I'm sure everyone would have a unique list.

If all you care about is the yDna and mtDna because your only interest is the Indo-Europeans and who is and who is not descended from them, then I suppose a representative sample from the Republican Era would do. You would have to get patrician dna, however, as well as plebeian dna and make sure it wasn't from foreign merchants, servants etc. Caesar's would come in handy there, as the family was patrician.

of course the question doesn't make sense

it is what I told before : these were other times with other morals

but invading a country and killing 1/3 of the population

and therefore being admired and celebrated by all Romans

I simply can't grasp it,
but then I've never lived in their world

The big difference is that Julius Ceaser won the Gallic Wars and Hitler lost WWII. It's animalia instincts that the more powerful is more "just and worthy to rule" than the loser, no matter how immoral the victor was behaving.

Another difference is that Hitler just showed the world that attacking a race off the face of the earth is no way to glorify yourself. Ceaser and the Romans just conquered civilizations and converted the natives to their "civilization", alas diluting their Italic genes over time.
I hope this helps

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nrW7PLvCQ9k

 

[Angela]

Not really.....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Allia#Recovery_and_reform, the south to North invasions came later and as a result.

Maleth, are we dating ourselves? Do they no longer teach ancient history in European schools, or American schools, for that matter? I've lamented before that American universities, even the most prestigious ones, no longer require students to take Western Civilization courses. I should inquire what is happening in Europe now.

Still, I don't understand how one can discuss population genetics in a vacuum without knowing anything about the culture and history of the peoples involved.

The books are there, or chapters in books, for those interested. There are whole books on the Celtic invasions alone. They even wound up in Central Anatolia, for goodness' sakes. They dominated the north of Italy and then struck south to take over lands south of the Po, eventually attacking and sacking Rome itself, as you link explains.

For those who don't have sufficient interest, this is a sort of cheat sheet, summary of their invasions as pertains to Italy.
https://www.skidmore.edu/academics/classics/body.html

Fire-Haired: It makes total sense. Just as people like destroying a rival sports team, but instead it involved killing a million of them . It was a more primitive back then.

Well, somebody is paying attention in history class. At least it isn't news to you that empire followed empire for all of human history as soon as societies were sophisticated enough to have empires. Before that it was loosely grouped bands of pastoralists attacking farming settlements, or one farming settlement against another, or one group of hunter-gatherers against another one, or even brother against brother. Strike a chord? The more scarce the resources, the more violent the conflicts. It wasn't always just about resources either. Sometimes, and perhaps increasingly as time went on, it was about glory, prestige, the accumulation of luxury goods.

I would only quarrel with your implication that this only happened thousands of years ago, and Europeans are now much too civilized for this kind of behavior. Imperialism, the conquest of the Congo, North Africa, South Africa, India, and on and on only ended after World War II. It happened sixty years ago with the Nazis, and twenty-five years ago in Kosovo, and in those cases they didn't just want conquest and the attendant glory, and booty, and power, to be followed by incorporation of the conquered countries. They wanted to exterminate them.

I also don't quite understand how an attempt to clarify what has happened in human history up until the present means that one approves of the behavior one is describing.

Originally Posted by Twilight
How can a Roman Upperclassmen be able to track to Gaul without much documentation and then suddenly mention his trip to young Julius Ceasar.

I asked for documentation that there are historical sources which clearly state that Caesar only learned about the Belgae from a grandparent instead of, as we would expect, his own experience and the intelligence that was brought to him. If it didn't happen in the first place, I didn't think it was necessary to go into much detail. If your question is would it have been possible for a Roman to travel into Gaul, yes, of course it was possible. As for why we might not have a record of it, we don't have records for a lot of what happened in Republican or even Imperial Rome. There was this little thing called the Germanic invasions. The Forum became a cow pasture. Thousands of scrolls were lost. The only reason we have what we have is because a few were saved by the Church, and there were some copies in the east which were saved by the eastern Empire and the Arabs, and "rediscovered" during the Renaissance.

I'm sorry to say it but your statement that Hitler only looks worse because he lost is just nonsense revisionism, in my opinion. It all happened within living memory; I've spoken to the survivors, some in my own family. We know exactly what went on. Obviously, we have to rely on other kinds of evidence for empires of the past, but still, we know there was a difference between Alexander and Caesar on the one hand, and Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, and yes, indeed, Hitler, on the other. There is absolutely no doubt about it.

 

[bicicleur 2]

'converting the natives' ?

tell me how it was done

 

[Angela]

For those who still have questions about the incorporation of conquered territories, and the "Romanization" of various peoples, perhaps I could suggest picking up one of the hundreds if not thousands of volumes on the subject.

I'm afraid that due to time restraints I find myself unable to summarize and regurgitate the vast amount of material just for the purposes of this thread.

 

[Twilight]

Maleth, are we dating ourselves? Do they no longer teach ancient history in European schools, or American schools, for that matter? I've lamented before that American universities, even the most prestigious ones, no longer require students to take Western Civilization courses. I should inquire what is happening in Europe now.

Still, I don't understand how one can discuss population genetics in a vacuum without knowing anything about the culture and history of the peoples involved.

The books are there, or chapters in books, for those interested. There are whole books on the Celtic invasions alone. They even wound up in Central Anatolia, for goodness' sakes. They dominated the north of Italy and then struck south to take over lands south of the Po, eventually attacking and sacking Rome itself, as you link explains.

For those who don't have sufficient interest, this is a sort of cheat sheet, summary of their invasions as pertains to Italy.
https://www.skidmore.edu/academics/classics/body.html



Well, somebody is paying attention in history class. At least it isn't news to you that empire followed empire for all of human history as soon as societies were sophisticated enough to have empires. Before that it was loosely grouped bands of pastoralists attacking farming settlements, or one farming settlement against another, or one group of hunter-gatherers against another one, or even brother against brother. Strike a chord? The more scarce the resources, the more violent the conflicts. It wasn't always just about resources either. Sometimes, and perhaps increasingly as time went on, it was about glory, prestige, the accumulation of luxury goods.

I would only quarrel with your implication that this only happened thousands of years ago, and Europeans are now much too civilized for this kind of behavior. Imperialism, the conquest of the Congo, North Africa, South Africa, India, and on and on only ended after World War II. It happened sixty years ago with the Nazis, and twenty-five years ago in Kosovo, and in those cases they didn't just want conquest and the attendant glory, and booty, and power, to be followed by incorporation of the conquered countries. They wanted to exterminate them.

I also don't quite understand how an attempt to clarify what has happened in human history up until the present means that one approves of the behavior one is describing.



I asked for documentation that there are historical sources which clearly state that Caesar only learned about the Belgae from a grandparent instead of, as we would expect, his own experience and the intelligence that was brought to him. If it didn't happen in the first place, I didn't think it was necessary to go into much detail. If your question is would it have been possible for a Roman to travel into Gaul, yes, of course it was possible. As for why we might not have a record of it, we don't have records for a lot of what happened in Republican or even Imperial Rome. There was this little thing called the Germanic invasions. The Forum became a cow pasture. Thousands of scrolls were lost. The only reason we have what we have is because a few were saved by the Church, and there were some copies in the east which were saved by the eastern Empire and the Arabs, and "rediscovered" during the Renaissance.

I'm sorry to say it but your statement that Hitler only looks worse because he lost is just nonsense revisionism, in my opinion. It all happened within living memory; I've spoken to the survivors, some in my own family. We know exactly what went on. Obviously, we have to rely on other kinds of evidence for empires of the past, but still, we know there was a difference between Alexander and Caesar on the one hand, and Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, and yes, indeed, Hitler, on the other. There is absolutely no doubt about it.

well that went way out of proportion, just losing is not the only reason that I stated with all do respect and off course losing isn't the only reason. Eliminating every last man woman and child is not the way to glorify yourself. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the Jews and my Mother's maiden name is even Jewish. However trying to wipe out an entire race is not only plain wrong on Hitler's part but damaging to Hitler's surviving family.

Ceaser on on the other hand accepting the natives once they converted to "civilized life" I apologize if it came out that way.

I don't recall ever getting a Gallic Wars book in school but please feel free to explain the illustrated teaching. Do you know where I can find these books? Come to think of it, there is a lot of info the text books hide from us but my reasons goes into a whole another subject.

 

[Twilight]

'converting the natives' ?

tell me how it was done

The Gauls were Romanized instead of being put into death camps.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_(cultural)

Julius Ceaser vs Hitler

The difference between Julius Ceaser and Hitler is the point to being a good conquer is to win the souls and minds of many not attempt to exterminate them to oblivion and have the world of angry elephants against you. Hitler broke the rules of a good ruler 1,2,3.

Granted, Verbcengeterix won the hearts and minds of many Gauls also so granted hearts and minds are not enough.

 

[bicicleur 2]

The Gauls were Romanized instead of being put into death camps.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_(cultural)

Julius Ceaser vs Hitler

The difference between Julius Ceaser and Hitler is the point to being a good conquer is to win the souls and minds of many not attempt to exterminate them to oblivion and have the world of angry elephants against you. Hitler broke the rules of a good ruler 1,2,3.

Granted, Verbcengeterix won the hearts and minds of many Gauls also so granted hearts and minds are not enough.

many Celts prefered to commit suicide over getting captured by the Romans
in most cases there were 2 possibilities : get killed or being sold on the slave markets
only the next generations were 'Romanised'
being Romanised often meant being at the mercy of corrupt tax collectors
the Romans didn't invest in winning their hearts, they simply didn't leave them an alternative

 

[bicicleur 2]

I agree animalia instincts played a big role in the Gallic war and many others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrW7PLvCQ9k&app=desktop
But IMO greed was the main driver. It was a greedy and shrude man (Caesar) stirring up these animalia instincts.

As for 'Romanisation', you can find my opinion in the previous post.

For the Nazi's, the Mongols and the Bosnian war, and so many others, I agree there was something more going on : the goal to exterminate some percieved enemy.
How does some perception like that come about? The people feel they are threatened or maybe just marginalised and some leaders adress that feeling. They create a scapegoat.
I suppose it is uncommon in nature, but I've seen a documentary about a clan of apes trying to kill and exterminate some other clan without any obvious reason.

In all cases there is no easy and straightforward explanation for the motives and causes of war.

 

[peccavi]

I'm sorry to say it but your statement that Hitler only looks worse because he lost is just nonsense revisionism, in my opinion. It all happened within living memory; I've spoken to the survivors, some in my own family. We know exactly what went on. Obviously, we have to rely on other kinds of evidence for empires of the past, but still, we know there was a difference between Alexander and Caesar on the one hand, and Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, and yes, indeed, Hitler, on the other. There is absolutely no doubt about it.

Not so - Romans were as ruthless as the Mongols or Tamerlaine. Consider Scipio Africanus who after his victory over the Carthagians wanted every last Carthagian, man, woman and child hunted down and slaughtered. The reasoning was perfectly valid. Left to recover Cathage would seek revenge (Rome would have in the same position) and of course the Romans did completely destroy Carthage, driving a plough through the destruction when she gave signs of recovering (even though a most obedient friend).

For Mongols and Tamerlaine, it was terror tactics - Genghis did not carry out his threat to turn China into grassland - just too much wealth but in retro-spect considering the plight of his people today under Chinese rule, mmmhhh.

Perhaps we can have more about the Celts on this thread - certainly more interesting.

 

[bicicleur 2]

Not so - Romans were as ruthless as the Mongols or Tamerlaine. Consider Scipio Africanus who after his victory over the Carthagians wanted every last Carthagian, man, woman and child hunted down and slaughtered. The reasoning was perfectly valid. Left to recover Cathage would seek revenge (Rome would have in the same position) and of course the Romans did completely destroy Carthage, driving a plough through the destruction when she gave signs of recovering (even though a most obedient friend).

For Mongols and Tamerlaine, it was terror tactics - Genghis did not carry out his threat to turn China into grassland - just too much wealth but in retro-spect considering the plight of his people today under Chinese rule, mmmhhh.

Perhaps we can have more about the Celts on this thread - certainly more interesting.

I agree, the Romans were not like Hitler or Tamerlane, but they were certainly not like Alexander the Great either.
But was the desintegration of Alexanders empire due to his early death, or was his project a fata morgana?

 

[Angela]

I agree animalia instincts played a big role in the Gallic war and many others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrW7PLvCQ9k&app=desktop
But IMO greed was the main driver. It was a greedy and shrude man (Caesar) stirring up these animalia instincts.

As for 'Romanisation', you can find my opinion in the previous post.

For the Nazi's, the Mongols and the Bosnian war, and so many others, I agree there was something more going on : the goal to exterminate some percieved enemy.
How does some perception like that come about? The people feel they are threatened or maybe just marginalised and some leaders adress that feeling. They create a scapegoat.
I suppose it is uncommon in nature, but I've seen a documentary about a clan of apes trying to kill and exterminate some other clan without any obvious reason.

In all cases there is no easy and straightforward explanation for the motives and causes of war.

Opinions on anything, in a forum of this type, should be based on scientific, or, in this case, historical evidence. I fail to see where you have provided any such evidence.

This is "Romanization", explained in a simplified form. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. There are thousands of treatments of the subject.
http://anthrojournal.com/issue/octo...tion-the-materiality-of-an-immaterial-concept

As to the Celtic invasions of the first millennium, if one wasn't exposed to the material at university, there are hundreds of treatments of the subject, some in abridged form. They shouldn't be difficult to find.

 

[bicicleur 2]

look at the Aedui, so-called allies of the Romans
they were let down completely in 63 BC
yet in 58 BC it was a pretext for Caesar to invade Gaul

this is playing games
this is not the spirit of Alexander the Great

I repeat my sentence :

But IMO greed was the main driver. It was a greedy and shrude man (Caesar) stirring up these animalia instincts.

yes, this is an opinion and please apologize for the typos

 

[MOESAN]

the southward push of the German tribes was allready going on before Julius Ceasar
the Romans actually stopped this movement for a few centuries till presure became to big
for a few decades they even occupied big parts of Germany, till they were beaten by Arminius in 9 AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius
Arminius lured 3 legions into a forest and no Roman ever returned from that forest
later Germanicus tried to reconquer Germany, but his campaigns were not a big succes and to costly for the Roman treasury

OK I was not debating about dates but about the affirmation Celts had never been living in lands North Bavaria and that Belgae were a mix of Celts and Germanics without nuance in these affirmations

 

[Taranis]

the program at one point states the celts origin as portugal and they travelled east , but before that they migrated to britain as their bronze swords found in Britain are far older that the celtic bronze swords of Halstatt.

I wanted to comment on this. I must say, the "Celtic languages originated in what is now Portugal" scenario strikes me as completely implausible, and I say that after having reviewed John Koch's "Celtic from the West", and after having read reviews of it by other celtologists, notably Joseph Eska, who received "Celtic from the West" very negatively. In particular, an Iberian homeland for Celtic cannot account for the common innovations that it shares with the Italic languages.In my opinion, although I see severely problems with it, the Hallstatt scenario strikes me now as the most likely origin for the Celtic language, if only because it is the least bad scenario currently around.

Also the alphabet , originally phoenician became celtinized in Portugal

No, according to Eska (2014), Tartessian (the language which Koch identified as Celtic) was an "Iberoid" language.

 

[Fire Haired14]

Now that Hallstatt=proto Celtic is dead there are million possibilities. Celtic and Italic's ancestors originated in the East(East-Central Europe) but Celtic could have expanded from the West.

 

[bicicleur 2]

Now that Hallstatt=proto Celtic is dead there are million possibilities. Celtic and Italic's ancestors originated in the East(East-Central Europe) but Celtic could have expanded from the West.

from the arrival of a new type of swords it is speculated that the Goidelic speaking Celts would have arrived in England +/- 1000 BC and spread all over the British Isles

Goidelic may have been spoken all along the Atlantic
the Atlantic (and later British) Celts may have split from the continental Celts before Hallstatt

the Atlantic Celts would then have been pushed away from the continent by the La Tene Celts

 

[Taranis]

Now that Hallstatt=proto Celtic is dead there are million possibilities.

There's not a "million" possibilities. There is a key constraint: Proto-Indo-European evolved in the east (according to the Kurgan model, in the Pontic-Caspian steppe), and this has been my key point of objection to the Celtic-from-the-West scenario.

Another point is that it assumes an unreasonable long time across which a common language (Proto-Celtic) is spoken across a huge arc (the entire Atlantic seaboard), and that these started to diversify only a thousand years later. In my opinion, the "old" Celtic languages are all rather similar to each other, and in my opinion its unlikely that Proto-Celtic broke up much earlier than the Hallstatt period. I know that people are utterly unsatified with the idea of such a "late" Celtization, because it leaves a lot unexplained, but its exactly as I said, the Hallstatt theory is the "least bad" theory out there.

Celtic and Italic's ancestors originated in the East(East-Central Europe) but Celtic could have expanded from the West.

The only way how way for that to work out is to assume that Indo-European as a whole is far, far older and more conservative than we generally believe, which leads us to abandon the Kurgan framework altogether and look for alternatives (e.g. Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis). In my opinion, that is a ways to make Celtic-from-the-West work, because then you can for sure argue that the Neolithic societies of the Atlantic Seaboard were early speakers of Celtic, but as we all know, the Anatolian hypothesis has its own problems (too many to list here briefly), most importantly, the recent genetic evidence does not favour it.