Europes Oldest Civilization Discovered

[john]

These are the statements Marduk made FIVE pages ago:

The picts are an ancient pre celtic people
they started off in the North of scotland wales and ireland
Life in Britain predates the romans and the celts by quite a margin
the Celts arrived around 2000bce
and the picts were already here
in many cases Celtic gods are in fact of pictish origin

He has been given plenty of evidence to prove it's rubbish. He has been given plenty of opportunity to provide supporting evidence of his own. He can't, because there isn't any! Instead, he prefers juvenile attempts at ridicule and insults, because when it comes down to it, he's just an
immature troll. He claims to be 37, but act likes a 7 year old.

not quite up to date with this argument. the rubbish is that the celts have ALWAYS occupied britain? seems to me, and i should start saving stuff like this, that there was a relatively recent report linking the dna of iberians to wales, ireland and scotland. well before the celtic invasion. and, sorry, the celts seem to be a relatively late addition to the british fauna. there would appear to be approximately 400,000 years of previous occupation......................


john

[john]

These are the statements Marduk made FIVE pages ago:

The picts are an ancient pre celtic people
they started off in the North of scotland wales and ireland
Life in Britain predates the romans and the celts by quite a margin
the Celts arrived around 2000bce
and the picts were already here
in many cases Celtic gods are in fact of pictish origin

He has been given plenty of evidence to prove it's rubbish. He has been given plenty of opportunity to provide supporting evidence of his own. He can't, because there isn't any! Instead, he prefers juvenile attempts at ridicule and insults, because when it comes down to it, he's just an
immature troll. He claims to be 37, but act likes a 7 year old.

not quite up to date with this argument. the rubbish is that the celts have ALWAYS occupied britain? seems to me, and i should start saving stuff like this, that there was a relatively recent report linking the dna of iberians to wales, ireland and scotland. well before the celtic invasion. and, sorry, the celts seem to be a relatively late addition to the british fauna. there would appear to be approximately 400,000 years of previous occupation......................


john

holy underwear, batman. just read through all the pages. didn't realize that i had stepped into the tail end of a major scholastic pissing match. from much previous experience, i must say that posession of a degree, or degrees, is no guarantee of either intelligence or ( and i do make the differentiation) wisdom.

so are you folks arguing about the actual chronology of of the celts, and their precursors, or just who it is can pee further off of the scholastic front porch?

for myself, i'm simply fascinated to understand, as best i can, the last hundred thousand years of the human race, no matter which continent.

john

[Minimalist]

didn't realize that i had stepped into the tail end of a major scholastic pissing match.

[Beagle]

RK wrote:

ta!

Gosh, nobody's ever said "ta" to me before!

Sure they have Stan. Just not RK - she has never said before to my knowledge.

[Guest]

not quite up to date with this argument. the rubbish is that the celts have ALWAYS occupied britain?
john

Nobody said anything of the kind, John. Marduk claimed that the Celts arrived in Britain c.2000BC and found the Picts waiting for them. I posted evidence to disabuse him of that notion.

[marduk]

I posted evidence to disabuse him of that notion.

nope
you just posted abuse then complained that i wouldn't talk to you
awwww

[Guest]

Well, here it all is again...

"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.
Now, what part of that was abusive?

[Frank Harrist]

Looks like evidence to me, Marduk. Your turn. For what it's worth I don't know who to agree with. I had assumed that the picts were there first, but I have never done any research on the subject. The extent of what i know is probably wrong. I heard the picts were small people and were almost always painted with woad to give their skin a blue tint.

[marduk]

When St columba travelled through Scotland around 550 ACE he sought an audience with King Bridei the pictish high king
the irish and the scots spoke languages that were known to Columba namely Gaelic and Celtic
however
he needed an interpreter because the Picts spoke a language he didn't understand
Andaman notes that the Picts were a matrilineal society
the Celts were patrilineal

this is a matter of historic fact and not an interpretation by a historian with a nationalistic agenda 2000 years later

then theres the Dagda
considered to be a Celtic God and a king of the Tuatha Danaan
the Tuatha are linked to the 1700bce period because the legend states that they built Newgrange in ireland and in the 19th century that was dated to 1700bce. this was to bring its construction date in line with Bishop Ushers chronology which states that the world was created by god in 4004bce
but the celts didn't enter england until 400bce and they arrived from the east.
how did they jump to ireland 1300 years earlier or as it actually turns out to the new scientific dating of newgrange how did they jump to 3300bce
so they inherited the Dagda from a different race of people.
who were those people
it wasn't the Gaels because as the say themselves the Tuatha landed in Connaught on the nw coast of ireland and then travelled east
once again i reiterate the celts arrived in england in the 4th century bce and travelled west
After the Tuatha left ireland with the arrival of the milesians in 1600bce they headed east to england and disappear from history altogether

so if the 19th century ecclesiastical dating is accurate how did the Tuatha become the gods of great antiquity in ireland when they'd only been present for 100 years in which time they are attributed with building passage tombs.
One thing the Church did do was changed the status of the Tuatha from Gods (1st commandment "though shalt have no other god but me")
to mythological legend
they also changed the name of the structure in Co Kerry from "Si An Bhru" to Newgrange. "Si An Bhru" means the "stone womb of An"
in ireland the memory of the Tuatha and the twisting of the church changed the name of the Tuatha from Danaan to daoine.
they became the Daoine sidth (pronounced sith)
http://sounds.wavcentral.com/movies/starwars/master.mp3
which in english means people of the fairy mounds.
fairies as you all know are associated with circles http://www.contemplator.com/tunebook/mi ... rrison.mid
in Presli in north wales the picts settled near a quarry which later turns out to be the source of the bluestones at stonehenge
the Irish already say that the Tuatha built the henges in ireland along with the passage tombs which local legend says they vanished into on their way back home which is the source for the fairy circle connection
in orkney the passage tombs are accompanied by henges as well
Orkney is on the northern tip of scotland and settled by an unkown race in 3500bce who were maritime in nature and believed to have come from scandanavia.
The Tuatha Danaan were also believed to have come from four cities from the north of Britain across the sea. so its either scandanavia, or the north pole. And santa claus being a christianised version of the Slavic god Veles i find that a little unlikely
the Tuatha danaan built henges and passage tombs and were maritime in nature

the celts neither built passage tombs nor henges and certainly weren't a maritime culture


so you have some explaining to do don't you as to how a non maritime race that came from the east in the 4th century which were patrilineal in nature and who never built anything with megaliths could become a matrilineal maritime race in scotland famous for megalithic sites who are known to have spoken an entirely different language

this is all of course without even mentioning what the Picts were really famous for
which the celts weren't
I'm sure you know what that is but didn't mention it because it wouldn't be the cherry picking that we've all become accustomed from you or because you know so little about the subject that you didn't realise that it was important


oh and before you claim this is all a load of new age bollox
its actually all from either
Lebor na Nuachongbála (1150 ACE) written by Áed Ua Crimthainn
Vita Columbae (6th century Ace) written by Andoman
with extras about the purported origins of the Orcadians from the Orkney archaeological trust

[Guest]

So the best you can do for evidence is quote from MEDIAEVAL texts?!
Most of that is LEGEND; do you actually have any scientific evidence? I mean, you've just contradicted yourself; you insisted that the Celts arrived in Britain around 2000BC. Now you say they arrived around 400 BC. Which is it?
If the Celts didn't have maritime knowledge, why were there major trading ports established at Hengistbury Head, Dorset, and Mount Batten, Plymouth, before the Romans even conquered England? ( Graham Webster:'The Celtic Britons under Rome' in Green, M (ED.): The Celtic World p624 (London. Routledge. 1995) ISBN0415057647
Of course the Celts arrived from the East; that's where Europe is-unless you're suggesting they could have come from America?
The Picts didn't settle at or build anything near Prescelli, since the Picts didn't exist at that point.
Astronomical knowledge had improved by the time of the Celts-look at the bronze calendar recovered from a town in France (forget the name-Coligny?). There was no need to go to the time and trouble of building passage tombs, since there were easier ways to mark the passing seasons.
The Celts built hillforts to consolidate their hold on a territory, and these were the focus of the Celtic aristocracy. Tribal chieftains, their families and retainers occupied the fort; craftsmen lived immediately outside. The rest of the tribe may have lived further down the hill, or in widespread farms; the only time most of them would have had cause to enter the fort would have been to pay tribute, or at the chieftain's command. The forts were used to accept tribute, celebrate religious festivals and most importantly-show how much wealth and privilege the chieftain had.
Frank, Picts-and British generally-used woad as 'warpaint', although the Picts may also have used it to enhance tattoos.

[marduk]

medievil texts and archaeological societies aren't sources now then
in that case theres no point discussing anything with you if everytime i put something forward you claim it isn't valid because you haven't read it
so
end of
try and be more polite when you start a first post next time and maybe you won't find everyone suddenly hostile to your presence
i could have posted this days ago and backed it up with the rhetoric supplied by modern authors who collaborate it but hey
you know the entire history of england scotland and wales
btw i knew all along that the Celts didn't arrive in england until the 4th century but was waiting for you to correct that
you didn't because it suited you to have everyone think the celts were here a very long time when in fact they were actually pushed into Britain by the roman expansion of the Early Roman Republic
thats shows you have a conniving and nature and cherry pick whatever suits your point of view when you think you have an audience that supports you because they don't know any better
the only people in this forum that know anything about pre roman britain appear to be us two
and yet
not one of your sources pre dates the romans
why is that
don't you actually think that the contemporary history of pre roman britain is liable to be more accurate than the propoganda that was circulated by the Romans themselves
i.e that the people were all barbarians who deserved to be killed
do you speak latin yourself
translate this
Ave et Vale
fatuus femina

If the Celts didn't have maritime knowledge, why were there major trading ports established at Hengistbury Head, Dorset, and Mount Batten, Plymouth, before the Romans even conquered England

Had a celtic fleet did they ROFL

The Picts didn't settle at or build anything near Prescelli, since the Picts didn't exist at that point

you don't get it do you
the romans gave them that name
they certainly didn't use it themselves
try looking up children of Don and see what you can discover for yourself rather than relying on academic sources that admit they haven't got a clue
Y Ddraig Goch a ddyry Gychwyn

[Starflower]

Marduk -
just a couple of questions for clarification purposes.

Which page of Adomnan's Life of Columba did he call the picts a matrilineal society? And are you saying that the Tuatha Danaan are Picts?

[Guest]

medievil texts and archaeological societies aren't sources now then

Mediaeval texts aren't reliable sources, and you know it.

try and be more polite when you start a first post next time and maybe you won't find everyone suddenly hostile to your presence

Like who, for instance?!

i could have posted this days ago and backed it up with the rhetoric supplied by modern authors who collaborate it

So why didn't you? Anyway, rhetoric is opinion, not fact.

but heyyou know the entire history of england scotland and wales

I never made any such claim.

you didn't because it suited you to have everyone think the celts were here a very long time

Again, I never said any such thing.

when in fact they were actually pushed into Britain by the roman expansion of the Early Roman Republic

Would that be before or after a Celtic army crossed the Alps and sacked Rome around 350 BC?

not one of your sources pre dates the romans
why is that

Because the Celts were illiterate

don't you actually think that the contemporary history of pre roman britain is liable to be more accurate than the propoganda that was circulated by the Romans themselves

What "contemporary history of pre-Roman Britain"?! Written by whom exactly?! And you honestly think that texts about "heathens" written by a couple of Christian missionaries are going to be completely impartial and objective, do you?

Had a celtic fleet did they ROFL

I don't know, but feel free to PROVE otherwise, of course.

you don't get it do you

No, YOU don't get it. The only thing around here without a clue what it's talking about is YOU.
You resort to bluster and insults when you're caught out, because you KNOW you should have kept your mouth shut to start with.

[Guest]

Starflower,
The ONLY reference to the Pict's "matrilineal line of descent" was made by The Venerable Bede in AD 731. That's what causes the confusion, because he didn't then explain it.

[marduk]

ah sorry that should read

Andaman notes
he needed an interpreter because the Picts spoke a language he didn't understand
the Picts were a matrilineal society
the Celts were patrilineal

and as for the Tuatha being picts
if you accept that the picts were seperate from the scots who were migrant gaels from ireland
and that because of their later close association with the scots they had some history together
and seperate from the celts who came from europe
then they must have their origins somewhere
personally i don't think the name Picts is valid because it is generally used to describe them in post roman times which i think confuses a lot of people
I've heard the term proto picts bandied around a lot
maybe the other names they were known by would be more valid
Tuatha Nathrach (children of the serpent) or just migrant scandanavian madmen with weapons
The firbolg had a name for them whenever they saw them
it was "aaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhh run away"