Frank Harrist wrote:Now I'm wondering which of you is right. Why don't ya'll post your best evidence so I can decide who to believe.
Ok, here goes....
"By the end of the Third century (AD297) we are introduced to the Picts (Picti) for the first time by Euminius, who associated them with Irish raiders (Hiberni) as enemies of the
Britanni, and it is clear from a reference in 310 to 'the woods and marches of the
Caledones and other Picts' that the Caledonians were considered Pictish" P43.
AP Smyth
Warlords & Holy Men; Scotland AD 80-1000 (Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press.2003) ISBN 0748601007
"The Picts seem to have been an amalgum of earlier tribes-as many as 12 were recorded by Ptolemy (an Alexandrian geographer) in the Second century...
We also do not know the name the Picts might have used for themselves (if indeed they recognised the concept!). But we can be confident that they were simply the descendants of the native Iron Age tribes of Scotland, most of whom were never part of the Roman Empire, and even when they were, were only affected for short periods of time. The notion of the Picts having existed in Galloway is now recognised as a myth which arose out of a misunderstanding by mediaeval scholars.
Therefore in historical terms, the term "Pictish" might be applied to the period between 79AD...and 842/900AD when the mac Ailpin dynasty came to establish itself. In practical terms, the Picts (and indeed
Dal Riati ) only become truly recognisable as archaeological and historical entities from the Sixth century" pp11-13
SM Foster
Picts, Gaels & Scots (London.(BT Batsford Ltd.2003) ISBN 0713474866
"The Picts have sometimes been seen, like the Basques, as being one of the oldest and longest established of the peoples of Europe, with an origin in the period before the Indo-European migrations into western Europe in the early Iron Age. Such a view depended primarily upon the linguistic analysis of a handful of inscriptions dating from the 7th to the 9th centuries, some elements of which were thought to be non-Indo-European. However, this has recently been challenged, and all of the scanty linguistic evidence relating to Pictish can be interpreted in the light of its being a Celtic language of the 'P' as opposed to the 'Q' family (Welsh, Cornish & Breton as opposed to Irish & Scots Gaelic). Despite some origin legends of probably Irish origin, recorded by Bede, that would make the Picts post-Roman immigrants into Scotland, archaeological evidence supports the continuity of their presence on the Scottish mainland and in the Northern Isles from at least the Iron Age onwards" pp180-1
R. Collins
Early Mediaeval Europe 300-1000 (Basingstoke. Palgrave.1999) ISBN 0333658286
"The Irish
Attocotti and the Picts were probably Celtic peoples, although some linguists claim to be able to detect a pre-Indo-European element in the Pictish language" p263
B. Cunliffe
The Ancient Celts (London. Penguin Books.1999) ISBN 0140254226
"Through patient analysis of personal and place-names and inscriptions, the scholar Katherine Forsyth has convincingly demonstrated that the Pictish language was thoroughly Celtic, and not a throwback or a surviving pocket of a pre-Indo-European world. Different from Irish but a first cousin to British, it was P-Celtic rather than a Q-Celtic and as such a very distant relative of what was developed into the Welsh language" pp288-289
A. Moffat
Before Scotland; the story of Scotland before history
(London.Thames & Hudson Ltd.2005) ISBN 050005133X
So there you have it; there were NO Picts in Britain
before the Celts.