the order would be , gallic, celtic, latin and lastly germanic
I would throw in illyrian first, but no one knows if this language even existed as there are zero finds
Again according to that German Wikipedia article, East-Alpine IE would over time have lost the proto-IE media aspirate, thereby splitting into two languages, namely Venetic and Illyrian.
- Venetic would turn the mediae aspirate into fricatives: "bh"->f/v; "dh"->th/z, "gh"->x/h
- Illyrian would turn the mediae aspirate into plosives instead: "bh"->b/p, "dh"->d/t, "gh"->g/k
The Tyrolean location names in the article indicate that the border between the two was anything but clear cut. Especially the Val Venosta (Vinschgau) is full of examples for both shifts next to each other. The same applies to the Bozen / Bolzano area, and the Inn valley (e.g. Illyrian "Brenner", Venetic "Zillertal"). Some Austrian linguists have taken that diversity, and additional variation in specific vowel shifts, to postulate up to six East Alpine IE languages (essentially one for each major valley), but that goes a bit too far for my taste.
In any case, to get a feel for the complexity, let's take a look at a few places in the area and their names in several languages:
- Italian: Verona (Venetic), German: Bern (Illyrian)
- German: Villach (Venetic), Slovenian: Beljak (Illyrian), Italian: Villaco (Venetic)
- Italian: Gemona di Friuli (Illyrian), German: Klemaun (Illyrian), Slovenian: Humin (Venetic)
- Italian: Veneto (Venetic "v", Illyrian "t"), Slovenian: Benecji (Illyrian "b", Venetic "cj"), German: Venezien (Venetic)
A wonderful example is also Pozza di Fassa.
While
Continental Celts undoubtedly crossed the Alps and settled in the Po Valley, their contribution to location names in the Eastern Alps is more and more questioned. I doubt that Gallic, anyway part of Continental Celtic, is of relevance in the Eastern Alps. The Celts made their entrance either through the Inn valley, or from the Slovenian coast, and the tribes in question should have been speaking Noric or related dialects. Essentially, we are talking here about the Volcae and the Boii (which might carry the same root in their name).
The
Volcae must originally have lived close to Germanics, who took their name as "Walhaz", which later morphed into "Welsh" as a generic term for Celt-Italics, and variants such as, "Walloons" and "Vlach". Ceaser placed their origin into the Hercynian Forest, i.e. the German low mountain ranges north of the Danube. The upper Weser catchment area, i.e SE Westphalia, Northern Hesse and Southern Lower Saxony, fits the criteria well. That area includes the Siegerland and the Western Harz, both attested bronze-age copper mining and processing areas. Blomberg near Detmold, on the Roman military road and medieval Hellweg (="salt road") from Cologne to Dortmund, Paderborn, the northern Harz and Magdeburg on the Elbe, might have been their original capital. The Dünsberg near Giessen, or the Glauberg north of Frankfurt, are other possible capitals. The map below shows celtic oppida (later often taken over by Germanics) in green, and Roman castles / cities in red; Blomberg is the northernmost green dot a bit west of the map centre.
Belgae and Volcae is obviously the same root - that should also include the Belgae in Southern England. However, Ceasar described the Continental Belgae as a mix of Celts and Germanics. The Volcae were also otherwise quite mobile. South-eastwards, they made it into Greece and Galatia during the 3rd century BC. Ceasar also reports them in Moravia. Towards the south-west, the Volcae Aeromici settled west of the lower Rhone (capital: Nimes), and the Volcae Tectosages in Aquitaine (capital: Tolouse). These migrations probably relate to the breakdown of the Central European Bronze Age trade network due to the progress of iron; Germanics started to process own iron resources and didn't need to import metals from Central and Southern Europe. In addition, Greek establishment of Massilia shifted trans-European traffic (including trade of tin from Cornwall and Brittany to the Eastern Mediterranean) towards the Rhone-Seine axis, and Baltic amber replaced North-Sea amber. The Volcae appear to have to moved closer to the newly emerging trade routes in order to regain a role in transit trade. Germanic southward expansion, especially into the Harz and the Middle Elbe region, during the 6/5th century BC may have increased migration pressure.
Memory of their brethren and allies, the
Boii, is still kept alive in the names "Bohemia" (home of the Boii) and "Bavaria" (where the "Boii were"). They are believed to have originally settled south of the Volcae, between Rhine, Main, and Danube. Boidorum (Passau) may have been their capital; in that case they would have controlled the lower Inn river and access to the North Tirol copper mines, the economic base of the Urnfield culture. Alternatively, their original capital could have been the Staffelberg on the upper Main(see photo above), Ptolemy's Menosgada. In the map above, it is located within the green cluster towards the east of the map center, and controlled the north-south amber route from the Elbe near Magdeburg along the Saale valley to the Danube at Regensburg (Catra Regina), and east-west trade between Bohemia and the Rhine-Main area. The Urnfield culture itself is believed to have emerged from the South-central Alps, i.e. speakers of South-Alpine IE, they would most likely also have controlled the Tirolean mines. The salt mines in the Hallstatt and Salzburg area were probably controlled by the Norici, who lived in today's Austria along the Danube and in the SE Alps.
In the early 4th century BC, the Boii left their homeland towards several directions: One part migrated into Bohemia, and subsequently into Western Silesia (Erzgebirge tin & Baltic amber trade), another one joined the Volcae in their expansion down the Danube. The third group settled in the Po valley, where they established their new capital, Bononia (Bologna). By the first century BC, they had also formed a kingdom around Bratislava, though it is unclear whether that kingdom already originated from the 3rd century expansion down the Danube, or later retreat of Cisalpine Gauls (Boiii) from the Roman advance. The map below shows the distribution of Bohemian heat-resistant black pottery (blue) and standardised Celtic painted pottery that was produced in several locations (red) during the 3rd to 1st century BC. it gives and idea on the area under the economic influence of the Boii, Volcae, Norici and other tribes. The red star marks Manching north of Ingolstadt, which had close to 10,000 inhabitants at that time, and might have been the capital of the Vindelic. Note that there may have been other pottery manufacturers, so the map is probably not displaying all Continental Celtic lands. Note also that economic influence is not necessarily meaning political control.
The Boii, Norici and Vindelici south of the Danube, as the Belgae and the Volcae in Southern France, were gradually conquered by the Romans. Ceasar's conquest of Gallia destroyed the economic base of Manching as the centre of north-alpine east-west trade; north-south trade had probably already decreased after Roman conquest of Cisalpine Gallia. The oppidum was already given up a few decades before the Romans arrived at the upper Danube. Boii and Volcae in Bohemia, Moravia and Western Slovakia got under pressure from the Dacians, but it was the Germanic Markomanni that had escaped up the Elbe from Roman advance across the Rhine, who ultimately took over their last fiefdoms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppidum_of_Manching