Celts, Basques and Picts

While the Roman and German influence essentially defined Medieval culture, there were other ethnic groups around who had some impact, and left some reminders of their presence. The chief among these also-rans were the Celts, Basques ,and Picts. The latter two groups belonged to the original human inhabitants of Europe, people who, several millenia B.C. had established themselves and their cultures throughout Europe. These included the Ligurians (in what is now Germany and France), Iberians (in Spain), Picts (in Britain), the Sikels (in Sicily), and the proto-Latins (in Italy). Up in Scandinavia were the Germans. In what is now eastern Europe were Slavs and Celts. The Germans who later stayed behind became the Vikings and the modern Scandinavians. In the Balkans were more Ligurian peoples. In Greece you had Greeks. Further east you had Etruscans (who later migrated to Italy), Semites, Persians and Dravidians until you ran into the people who looked Chinese .

The ethnic composition of Europe was quite different during the Medieval period, and even more so during the 1st and 2nd Centuries BC, when the Romans were putting their empire together.

In the beginning, there were the Ligurians, Iberians and related peoples in Europe. These peoples developed from the neolithic (cavemen) types that settled in Europe after the last ice age ended some 10,000 years ago. The Celts gradually moved in from the east about 4,000 years ago. By the time Rome was getting established in the 5th Century BC, the Celts were the principal culture in most of France, plus parts of the Balkans and Spain. But the earlier peoples did not disappear, and one of them, the Basques, survives to this day in Spain and France. The Picts held out in part of Scotland until the early Medieval period, being largely absorbed by the adjacent Celts by the 10th century. The Ligurians (except for the Basques), Iberians, and Etruscans disappeared. The Latin peoples, including the Romans, also disappeared as a distinct culture, but many centuries later, become the Italians, Spanish, French and other Romance types. Of course, the people didn't literally disappear, but melded with other groups while losing their unique language and customs.

The Celts still exist today, in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Brittany. Unlike Latin, the Gaelic languages of the Celts can still be heard in parts of Europe.Their earlier wanderings can still be identified by the name Galicia given to certain areas of such widely distant regions as Spain, Anatolia, and Poland

The Celts shared many traits with the Germans and Slavs. Before the Celts settled down in Gaul (as the Romans called France back then), they were very similar in appearance and custom to the Germans. This is not surprising, as the Celts lived in the same environments as the later Germans. When the Celts did settle down, they became quite civilized. They established large, walled, towns and were quite expert at metal working. Unlike the Romans, however, the Celts were not inclined to obey a central authority. The Celts were noted for their considerable individualism. This was what eventually did them in when they went up against the highly disciplined Romans.

The Celts were one of the many Indo-European tribes that migrated out central Asia, migrations that largely ended two thousand years ago, to be replaced by Oriental tribes and armies coming from even farther east in central Asia. Like their cousins the Persians (who established Persia and still inhabit present day Iran), the Ayrans (still noticiable in northern India), the Kurds (who are still stalled in the Middle Eastern mountains), the Celts kept moving until they found a thinly populated place they liked and then set up permanent residence. After passing through Anatolia, the Balkans, northern Italy and central Europe, the Celts found a home in France and Spain, and later on into Britain. In all the areas they passed through along the way, some Celts stayed behind, but were eventually absorbed by the more numerous locals.

Like most ancient invasions, the wandering Celts never amounted to more than a few tens of thousands of people when they moved into a new territory. But the warriors were fierce, and the women and children able to endure great hardship. The Celtic conquest of Gaul was much like later German conquests. The Celts were a small number (under ten percent) of the total population, but established administrative control over the conquered people and soon Celtic was the common language of the more numerous Ligurian, Basque, and Iberian peoples. Yet many of these subject peoples were still speaking their ancient languages when the Romans conquered Gaul. Latin then became the common language. It should be no surprise that yet another common language, French, grew out of this latinized melange of languages.

Like the Kurds of today, the Celts were disorganized because of the multiplicity of clans, tribes and dialects. Only a major outside threat could unite them. The Romans were one such threat, and after centuries of skirmishing and sundry wars, Julius Caesar finally subdued the Celts in France with several years of hard campaigning during the 1st Century BC. The Celts had momentarily united to oppose Caesar, and the Romans marveled at their success against huge Celtic armies. But the Romans were better organized and led. Rome enslaved up to a million Celts (out of a total population of five millions) and killed hundreds of thousands during the conquest that crushed all resistance.

Many Celts fled to Britain and Ireland. Here they found sparsely inhabited lands (some 400,000 people in England and Wales at the time), inhabited by a mixture of ancient peoples (related to the Picts) and Celts who had wandered over earlier. Soon, the Celtic culture became dominant in England. When Rome conquered Britain in the 1st Century AD, they found the population largely Celtic, with the more ancient Picts holding out far to the north in Scotland.

The Romans were only in Britain for a little over three centuries before their empire collapsed. Romanized Celtic culture survived in many places, particularly Wales, while a more purely Celtic tradition survived in Scotland. The Picts, another Liguran people, were gradually absorbed by their Celtic allies. The Romans never tried to conquer Scotland, a poor area which never supported more than 100,000 people during this period. A principal occupation of the "Scots" was raiding the wealtheir Roman lands to the south and most Roman military activity in Britian was against the Pict and Celtic tribes in Scotland. The Romanized Celts in Britain sometimes rebelled, or at least a a few of them did. Until the Romans withdrew the last of their legions in the early 5th Century (to deal with the Germans, and civil war), the Romans always had the upper hand. This should come as no surprise. The Romans were supreme organizers and managed to keep up to 60,000 trained soldiers on duty in Britain. No one was able to repeat this feat until near the end of the Medieval period.

After the Romans left Britain, the Germans began coming in, the Angles, the Jutes, and the Saxons, wild fellows from northwestern Germany After a century or so, eastern Britain was controlled by these Germans, who were much less civilized than their cousins who overran the rest of the Roman Empire. More Celts fled to Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Brittany. These four areas became the final redoubts of Celtic language and culture into the 20th century.

The Basques are the last of the Iberians. Although many Celts moved into Spain, the Iberians proved a tougher opponent than the Ligurians in France. Moreover, the Romans gained control of Spain during the 2nd Century BC, but never completely romanized the Iberian tribes. When the Germanic Visigoths overran Spain in the 4th and 5th Centuries they set up an impressive kingdom, building on the Roman base with a minimum of fuss. But they weren't as good organizers as the Romans, and in 711 were unable to prevent the Muslims from overruning Spain.

The Muslim armies invading Spain were led by the Amazigh peoples. These folks were called "Berber" by the Greeks and Romans. In other words, they were called "barbarians" (meaning not necessarily uncivilized, but definately foreigners) because they were not Greek or Roman. The Berbers called themselves Amazigh and were pagans until coverted to Christianity or Judaism in the late Roman period. In the late 7th century they first resisted, and then embraced Islam. The Amazigh came from the Atlas mountain area of North Africa and many were fair skinned and blue eyed. How they ended up in North Africa thousands of years ago is anyones guess. The Islamic conquest of Spain initiated an on-again, off-again centuries long struggle between the remnants of the old Visigothic kingdom (perched precariously in the Pyrennes) and the Iberian Muslims for control of the real estate. By the 13th Century the Christians were decided in the asendency, although the Muslims still held Granada, in the south. Meanwile, fair skinned German and the blue eyed Amazigh warriors, along with the swarthy, brown eyed Ligurians (except for the Basques) turned into Spanish speakers. Spanish, of course, is another one of those languages that evolved out of all those local Latin dialects.

The Basques were a mountain dwelling people, and that may account for their cultural survival. They tended to keep to themselves and the Celts, Romans, Germans, and Moslems had no compelling reason to go up into the mountains after them, except at their own risk (Charlemagne's heroic champion Roland died in battle against the Basques). Thus the last of the truly ancient languages of Europe survives. During the Medieval years, the Basques were a power to be contended with. Many Basques lived under the rule of the kings of Navarre, who, prudently enough, usually knew how to speak Basque. The local nobility had a lot of Basque blood and the Basque mountaineers were known as fierce warriors who were better befriended than made into enemies.