The Celts:
Among the greatest people of European history, the people we call the Celts were not a single group of people, speaking one language, sharing exactly the same customs, and who called themselves "Celts".
Instead, these peoples - whose lands stretched through Spain, France, Britain, Ireland, southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic and later into northern Italy, the Balkans and even central Turkey - were diverse in many respects. For instance, their kingdoms ranged from small tribal chiefdoms to huge regional superpowers; their houses were round in Britain but square in Gaul; and there were at least 5 main variants of the Celtic language (from which Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh are derived).
Their langauge does define these people though and the most satisfactory definition of "Celts" is "people who spoke one of the Celtic languages". |
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