Celts

[ProMeTheus112]

Thanks, I know that I'm more curious about the "noble savage" and "tree hugging hippie" stereotype stuff.

 

[Zaarin]

explain?

The Noble Savage--applied with special frequency to Native Americans and a very vague semi-fictitious people known as "the Celts" who have little to do with the historical Celtic-speaking peoples--is a romantic idea that technologically primitive people are somehow happier and better than civilized people. In the case of the Celts, it involves romantic fiddlefaddle about Celts "living in nature" and worshiping trees--based on historical accounts of sacred groves, the use of mistletoe in divination, and the etymological relationship of the word druid to an Indo-European root meaning "oak" and meaning something like "oak-seer." But in fact the Celts were an urban society with skilled craftsmen and a strong warrior caste alongside their druidic caste. In short, rather than the typical Noble Savage depiction of the Celts, I'd prefer to see a more historically grounded depiction.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

Ok that's not what I was thinking about rather the non urbanized tribal lifestyle (though sedentary) without a centralized power.

 

[BojanR 81]

I would like to see the Celts in Civ6. Despite the fact that they never established big, organised Empire they had big influence in world history. The people who forced Rome to surrender (Brenus, and famous words Vae victi... ), the group of people that lived in modern Britain, Ireland, France, Northern Italy, parts of: Balkan, Anatolia, Ukraine, Portugal, Germany, Spain (remember that provinces with names Galicia or Galatia get this name because of them!), deserved to be included in Civ 6 game.

 

[Leyrann]

There are plenty of deserving civs that never made it to to the base game and unlike the celts were never added via DLC/expansion.

Italy for instance has never been in civ (though we have had Venice but is like putting in Saxony instead of Germany )

It should be mentioned though, that Italy didn't become a unified country until halfway through the 19th century, and even after that, they have had far less an impact on the world than Germany (the other European country that unified in the 19th century).

 

[Zaarin]

Ok that's not what I was thinking about rather the non urbanized tribal lifestyle (though sedentary) without a centralized power.

But the Celts were urbanized. Not so much in Britain, but the Gauls and Celtiberians were very urban. The Gauls had an advanced hierarchical social structure, trade networks, schools--in many ways, the Gaulish sociopolitical situation was comparable to a less literate pre-Alexander Greece. I'm certainly not arguing against their inclusion--quite the contrary--but I'd prefer a Gaulish civ focus on their accomplishments as craftsmen (Celtic iron was among the finest in Europe) and warriors, with perhaps spiritual secondary benefits like the Scythians' kurgans.

I would like to see the Celts in Civ6. Despite the fact that they never established big, organised Empire they had big influence in world history. The people who forced Rome to surrender (Brenus, and famous words Vae victi... ), the group of people that lived in modern Britain, Ireland, France, Northern Italy, parts of: Balkan, Anatolia, Ukraine, Portugal, Germany, Spain (remember that provinces with names Galicia or Galatia get this name because of them!), deserved to be included in Civ 6 game.

Yes, but that's still more an argument to include the Gauls than the Celts. The brennus (brennus was a title rather than a name) who sacked Rome also did so long before Rome was a major center of power. But I do agree that the Gauls are the ideal candidates for representing pre-Roman Northern Europe.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

No centralized power as in the celts seemed to identify as a people at large without a leader for them all (tribe or clan as the unit). Non urbanized as in their towns were generally smaller and more spread out, made with more simple materials, leaving more space for nature and they lived with a closer bond to nature from what I remember about how they often did school outside with the druids and stuff, study plants among other things.

Anyway I like the Gauls that's where I'm from and really what I'm talking about, I don't know too much about the differences between them and other Celtic people, they seem to share a lot though. These ancient civs fit the context of a civ game really well in the early game especially. No opinion on whether Celt or Gaul would be more interesting, Gaul is pretty specific but no more than France I guess.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Wanting things like Sweden or Italy over their ancient counterparts in the Vikings or Rome,
or having both incarnations in the game simultaneously is weird to me though.
If you think about them in contiguous terms, they're the same civs.
It doesn't hurt the brain to pick the ancient civ and see that as you progress past their IRL's cutoff date,
that they might develop and evolve into their more modern incarnation as well (Rome -> Italy), (Vikings -> Denmark, Sweden or Norway).
This only doesn't work when two peoples who share an overlapping region have completely different origins,
like say the Lydians and the Ottomans. Or Carthage and the Berbers.
But otherwise, I'm not interested in pointless balkanization of civs and outside of America and Brazil,
I'm definitely not interested in making the game about nations over civilizations.

As for Celts, I don't feel as radically about their merger into a Pan-Celtic civ as I would for say, the Pan-Native America civ in Civ 4.
At best, a separation of Insular Celts and Continental Celts would be a way to go.
Which makes sense to me and is distinct as say Ottoman Turks and Central Asian Turks.
They shared a common origin but developed differently enough to be considered separate entities.

 

[Depravo]

No centralized power as in the celts seemed to identify as a people at large without a leader for them all (tribe or clan as the unit). Non urbanized as in their towns were generally smaller and more spread out, made with more simple materials, leaving more space for nature and they lived with a closer bond to nature from what I remember about how they often did school outside with the druids and stuff, study plants among other things.

Reading this post the Spinal Tap song 'Stonehenge' started playing in my head.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

No centralized power as in the celts seemed to identify as a people at large without a leader for them all (tribe or clan as the unit). Non urbanized as in their towns were generally smaller and more spread out, made with more simple materials, leaving more space for nature and they lived with a closer bond to nature from what I remember about how they often did school outside with the druids and stuff, study plants among other things.

Anyway I like the Gauls that's where I'm from and really what I'm talking about, I don't know too much about the differences between them and other Celtic people, they seem to share a lot though. These ancient civs fit the context of a civ game really well in the early game especially. No opinion on whether Celt or Gaul would be more interesting, Gaul is pretty specific but no more than France I guess.

What he's trying to say is that you have completely bought into a fake history. You are imposing an imaginary vision you've been given through their modern cultural mis-representation onto a historic people who were comparable in terms of political complexity, economic activity and social development with the roman empire.

You really think Stone Henge was constructed without centralized power? It's literally aligned to the stars and constructed using stone from hundreds of miles upstream. They had such centralization and such a food surplus in their community that they could afford to dedicate serious amounts of time to astronomy, exploration, stone cutting, building heavy loading boats etc.

The only reason we see the celts as any less sophisticated today than the romans etc is because we have no record of a written language and they largely built using wood, which has since decayed. It was a more abundant resource in northern Europe, that's it.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

Not sure what you mean True Candyman, what fake history do you mean? I'm not saying they had no political complexity or economic activity or social development.

Do you know evidence that Celts that built Stonehenge had a form of centralized power?

Or is that a characteristic of the celts and the gauls differ in that? No centralized power for the Gauls as far as I've seen in the museums or what. Like, they refused to have a common leader, Caesar cut Gauls off from German Celts, then he took advantage of the slow regroup and uncertain cooperation (between clans) to (barely) win a military war with his army of paid obedient and organized soldiers. An important battle was lost in Alesia vs Roman army led by Vercingetorix who tried to gather enough people to defend against the Romans, he wasn't mandated by anyone and he wasn't a political leader for all of Gaul.

 

[Zaarin]

Wanting things like Sweden or Italy over their ancient counterparts in the Vikings or Rome,
or having both incarnations in the game simultaneously is weird to me though.
If you think about them in contiguous terms, they're the same civs.
It doesn't hurt the brain to pick the ancient civ and see that as you progress past their IRL's cutoff date,
that they might develop and evolve into their more modern incarnation as well (Rome -> Italy), (Vikings -> Denmark, Sweden or Norway).
This only doesn't work when two peoples who share an overlapping region have completely different origins,
like say the Lydians and the Ottomans. Or Carthage and the Berbers.
But otherwise, I'm not interested in pointless balkanization of civs and outside of America and Brazil,
I'm definitely not interested in making the game about nations over civilizations.

As for Celts, I don't feel as radically about their merger into a Pan-Celtic civ as I would for say, the Pan-Native America civ in Civ 4.
At best, a separation of Insular Celts and Continental Celts would be a way to go.
Which makes sense to me and is distinct as say Ottoman Turks and Central Asian Turks.
They shared a common origin but developed differently enough to be considered separate entities.

All of this, though I think the Insular Celts are best covered by city-states: while the cultural and intellectual contributions of Ireland in the Early Middle Ages can't be overstated, they were also brief, quickly diffused to the rest of Western Europe, and since then the Insular Celts have not been major players in European history, certainly not comparable to the Gauls in iron age Northern and Central Europe.

What he's trying to say is that you have completely bought into a fake history. You are imposing an imaginary vision you've been given through their modern cultural mis-representation onto a historic people who were comparable in terms of political complexity, economic activity and social development with the roman empire.

You really think Stone Henge was constructed without centralized power? It's literally aligned to the stars and constructed using stone from hundreds of miles upstream. They had such centralization and such a food surplus in their community that they could afford to dedicate serious amounts of time to astronomy, exploration, stone cutting, building heavy loading boats etc.

The only reason we see the celts as any less sophisticated today than the romans etc is because we have no record of a written language and they largely built using wood, which has since decayed. It was a more abundant resource in northern Europe, that's it.

Well, yes, except that the Celts didn't build Stonehenge, Tara, Newgrange, or the other megalithic stone structures of Northwestern Europe--those were built by the pre-Celtic bronze age inhabitants of the British Isles and the coast of France, usually referred to as the Megalith Builders. Genetically they were probably mostly the same people, but culturally and linguistically they were not Celtic and were probably not even Indo-European. Given that we have no positive evidence who the Picts were, one possibility is that they were related to the pre-Celtic Megalith Builders, although it's also possible they were P-Celts like the Britons.

But your point stands: the Celts were not a primitive tribal society analogous to the Native Americans; they were an urbanized, culturally albeit not politically centralized agrarian people not at all dissimilar to the Greek city-states or pre-Roman Italy. And they did leave written records--about 500 Gaulish inscriptions have survived, though many are short. Sadly, this is infinitesimal compared to Latin or Greek literature, but it's huge compared to, say, Celtiberian. (Certainly enough to have written some lines for Boudicca in Civ5, which would have been less egregious than Welsh.)

 

[ProMeTheus112]

I just looked up a definition of tribe lol
"A unit of sociopolitical organization consisting of a number of families, clans, or other groups who share a common ancestry and culture and among whom leadership is typically neither formalized nor permanent."
It fits for Gauls, I guess Celts.

Now urban : "Of, relating to, or located in a city."
City : "A center of population, commerce, and culture; a town of significant size and importance."

Well sure Celts and Gauls had towns, whether or not we can call them cities seems pretty open. Whenever I saw examples of Gaul towns they were really not city-like, very low density, lots of space, totally not the scale of a city state such as Athens, Sparta or Rome or the like. So that's why I called them non urbanized. There are differences but for sure there was a lot of organization and settling of land and towns.

 

[BojanR 81]

But the Celts were urbanized. Not so much in Britain, but the Gauls and Celtiberians were very urban. The Gauls had an advanced hierarchical social structure, trade networks, schools--in many ways, the Gaulish sociopolitical situation was comparable to a less literate pre-Alexander Greece. I'm certainly not arguing against their inclusion--quite the contrary--but I'd prefer a Gaulish civ focus on their accomplishments as craftsmen (Celtic iron was among the finest in Europe) and warriors, with perhaps spiritual secondary benefits like the Scythians' kurgans.


Yes, but that's still more an argument to include the Gauls than the Celts. The brennus (brennus was a title rather than a name) who sacked Rome also did so long before Rome was a major center of power. But I do agree that the Gauls are the ideal candidates for representing pre-Roman Northern Europe.

Zaarin, please, don't be offended but read this about the difference Between the Celts and the Gauls:
Celt is a term applied to the tribes who spread across Europe, Asia Minor and the British Isles from their homeland in south central Europe. Most archeologists date their emergence around 800 b.c., though some feel the date sould be extended backward to 2000 b.c. Celt comes from the Greek word Keltoi. The first evidence of its use is from quotes of the writings of the Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus (his actual works being lost) in the later part of the 6th century b.c. and it is thought by some to be cognate with the Gothic word hildja (to fight). Caesar says the Gauls called themselves Celtae and this is where the confusion sets in. Gaul was a geographic area (modern France and northern Italy) and "Gauls" were the peple who lived there according to the Romans. Linguistically, the people who lived in Gaul were Celts, and this was athe main distinction made by the early historians. Tacitus says of the Cotini and the Osi "(they) are not Germans: that is proved by their language, Celtic in the one case, Pannonian in the other...". The bottom line is that there was no difference between the Celts and the Gauls, they were the same people.
Sources:
Dillon, Miles and Chadwick, Nora The Celtic Realms. New American Library, 1967.
Tacitus The Agricola and the Germania. (98 a.d.) Penguin Books, 1948.
Powell, T.G.E. The Celts. Thames and Hudson, 1958.

And, yes, I read from some sources that the "brennus" was a title and also from other sources that this was a mythic king. Anyway that doesn't matter. Of course that Rome wasn't world power at that time but the Celts were the European power. Their were founding cities even in my country: Belgrade Singidunum (Belgrade), Nais (Niš - bearthplace of Constantine The Great), some other minor cities...

 

[j51]

Reading this post the Spinal Tap song 'Stonehenge' started playing in my head.

You sir, are a hero.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Zaarin, please, don't be offended but read this about the difference Between the Celts and the Gauls:
Celt is a term applied to the tribes who spread across Europe, Asia Minor and the British Isles from their homeland in south central Europe. Most archeologists date their emergence around 800 b.c., though some feel the date sould be extended backward to 2000 b.c. Celt comes from the Greek word Keltoi. The first evidence of its use is from quotes of the writings of the Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus (his actual works being lost) in the later part of the 6th century b.c. and it is thought by some to be cognate with the Gothic word hildja (to fight). Caesar says the Gauls called themselves Celtae and this is where the confusion sets in. Gaul was a geographic area (modern France and northern Italy) and "Gauls" were the peple who lived there according to the Romans. Linguistically, the people who lived in Gaul were Celts, and this was athe main distinction made by the early historians. Tacitus says of the Cotini and the Osi "(they) are not Germans: that is proved by their language, Celtic in the one case, Pannonian in the other...". The bottom line is that there was no difference between the Celts and the Gauls, they were the same people.
Sources:
Dillon, Miles and Chadwick, Nora The Celtic Realms. New American Library, 1967.
Tacitus The Agricola and the Germania. (98 a.d.) Penguin Books, 1948.
Powell, T.G.E. The Celts. Thames and Hudson, 1958.

And, yes, I read from some sources that the "brennus" was a title and also from other sources that this was a mythic king. Anyway that doesn't matter. Of course that Rome wasn't world power at that time but the Celts were the European power. Their were founding cities even in my country: Belgrade Singidunum (Belgrade), Nais (Niš - bearthplace of Constantine The Great), some other minor cities...

In Zaarin's defence, he is using the word Gaul to specify one particular group in the mass that is commonly termed Celtic. The same particular group you picked out. The fact that they called themselves Celtae makes no difference to the fact that they are a distinct individual group, as you yourself point out by showing they are different to the germanic groups etc.

Celts and Gauls are not the same thing. The fact that the Gauls use the word Celtae to describe themselves just goes to show where we got the word from. It doesn't mean any other group we now call celts also called themselves Celtae. So to be particular about it, we could call the Gauls 'Celts', but this would be confusing to the majority group of those in society who recognise celtic as anything european outside of rome and greece. We can't however call Celts 'Gauls' for precisely the same reason. Celts have become something more than simply one people, and it becomes a huge conflating mess.

 

[BojanR 81]

In Zaarin's defence, he is using the word Gaul to specify one particular group in the mass that is commonly termed Celtic. The same particular group you picked out. The fact that they called themselves Celtae makes no difference to the fact that they are a distinct individual group, as you yourself point out by showing they are different to the germanic groups etc.

Celts and Gauls are not the same thing. The fact that the Gauls use the word Celtae to describe themselves just goes to show where we got the word from. It doesn't mean any other group we now call celts also called themselves Celtae. So to be particular about it, we could call the Gauls 'Celts', but this would be confusing to the majority group of those in society who recognise celtic as anything european outside of rome and greece. We can't however call Celts 'Gauls' for precisely the same reason. Celts have become something more than simply one people, and it becomes a huge conflating mess.

With all respect but I do not agree with you about this. Anyway, this is a forum and anyone can have and say their opinion. History is a little bit problematic because it is written by winners.
"History is a set of lies agreed upon - Napoleon Bonaparte"

 

[Zaarin]

I just looked up a definition of tribe lol
"A unit of sociopolitical organization consisting of a number of families, clans, or other groups who share a common ancestry and culture and among whom leadership is typically neither formalized nor permanent."
It fits for Gauls, I guess Celts.

Now urban : "Of, relating to, or located in a city."
City : "A center of population, commerce, and culture; a town of significant size and importance."

Well sure Celts and Gauls had towns, whether or not we can call them cities seems pretty open. Whenever I saw examples of Gaul towns they were really not city-like, very low density, lots of space, totally not the scale of a city state such as Athens, Sparta or Rome or the like. So that's why I called them non urbanized. There are differences but for sure there was a lot of organization and settling of land and towns.

Well, Greek city-states are not the large metropolises we envision them as, either. A city-state involves a centralized administrative center and a lot of farms. Yes, a Greek polis was larger than a typical Gaulish polis, but the concept is the same.

Zaarin, please, don't be offended but read this about the difference Between the Celts and the Gauls:
Celt is a term applied to the tribes who spread across Europe, Asia Minor and the British Isles from their homeland in south central Europe. Most archeologists date their emergence around 800 b.c., though some feel the date sould be extended backward to 2000 b.c. Celt comes from the Greek word Keltoi. The first evidence of its use is from quotes of the writings of the Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus (his actual works being lost) in the later part of the 6th century b.c. and it is thought by some to be cognate with the Gothic word hildja (to fight). Caesar says the Gauls called themselves Celtae and this is where the confusion sets in. Gaul was a geographic area (modern France and northern Italy) and "Gauls" were the peple who lived there according to the Romans. Linguistically, the people who lived in Gaul were Celts, and this was athe main distinction made by the early historians. Tacitus says of the Cotini and the Osi "(they) are not Germans: that is proved by their language, Celtic in the one case, Pannonian in the other...". The bottom line is that there was no difference between the Celts and the Gauls, they were the same people.
Sources:
Dillon, Miles and Chadwick, Nora The Celtic Realms. New American Library, 1967.
Tacitus The Agricola and the Germania. (98 a.d.) Penguin Books, 1948.
Powell, T.G.E. The Celts. Thames and Hudson, 1958.

And, yes, I read from some sources that the "brennus" was a title and also from other sources that this was a mythic king. Anyway that doesn't matter. Of course that Rome wasn't world power at that time but the Celts were the European power. Their were founding cities even in my country: Belgrade Singidunum (Belgrade), Nais (Niš - bearthplace of Constantine The Great), some other minor cities...

Gauls are Celts, Celts are not Gauls. There were many Celtic groups: Galatians, Gauls, Lepontii, Belgae (who seem to have been a mix of Gauls and Germans), Cisalpine Gauls, Celtiberians, maybe Lusitanians, Britons, Gaels, maybe the Picts--"Celt" is a term for a wide group of linguistically and culturally related peoples, one particular set of whom were the Gauls. It's also something of a wastebin category for non-Germanic, non-Italic Indo-European peoples of Western and Central Europe, and the idea of a Celtic language family is increasingly coming under scrutiny--especially since the relationship between the Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic languages is opaque to say the least, and efforts to link them have been controversial.

Also note that Caesar made a distinction between the Celtic Gauls (Gallii), the Germano-Celtic Belgae, and the Vasconic Aquitanians, clearly recognizing cultural and linguistic differences among the groups. He also never referred to the Britons as Celts, even though linguistically they spoke a Celtic language and, according to some linguistic theorists, Brythonic may even form a dialect continuum with Gaulish (as I mentioned before, this theory is controversial, but it exists).

 

[SMcM]

Wanting things like Sweden or Italy over their ancient counterparts in the Vikings or Rome,
or having both incarnations in the game simultaneously is weird to me though.
If you think about them in contiguous terms, they're the same civs.
It doesn't hurt the brain to pick the ancient civ and see that as you progress past their IRL's cutoff date,
that they might develop and evolve into their more modern incarnation as well (Rome -> Italy), (Vikings -> Denmark, Sweden or Norway).
This only doesn't work when two peoples who share an overlapping region have completely different origins,
like say the Lydians and the Ottomans. Or Carthage and the Berbers.
But otherwise, I'm not interested in pointless balkanization of civs and outside of America and Brazil,
I'm definitely not interested in making the game about nations over civilizations.

As for Celts, I don't feel as radically about their merger into a Pan-Celtic civ as I would for say, the Pan-Native America civ in Civ 4.
At best, a separation of Insular Celts and Continental Celts would be a way to go.
Which makes sense to me and is distinct as say Ottoman Turks and Central Asian Turks.
They shared a common origin but developed differently enough to be considered separate entities.

The most powerful Viking leaders were mostly Danish, and some Norwegian, but Swedish less so. Sweden only became prominent far more recently. Whilst Cnut probably marks the apex of Danish power at his death in 1035, being one of the most powerful men in western Europe at the time, and Denmark clearly the most powerful Scandinavian nation at the time, and Norway was probably most powerful under Haakon IV who died in 1263 (though this too is significantly later than the time of the Vikings), Sweden was arguably most significant following the expansion Sweden underwent during the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, who died in 1632, nearly 600 years later than Cnut's death. Besides Cnut, Denmark has several other sensible Viking leader choices also; Harald Bluetooth, Sweyn Forkbeard and Horik I being some of the most prominent. These could work well for Demark Civs based on raiding Cities and maritime dominance. Their contemporary Swedish leaders would work less well in this regard, being a more land based group. Vikings being in the game is therefore in my view not exactly relevant to whether or not Sweden is in the game, as Norway and Denmark would both make more sense as Civs with Viking leader themes.

 

[AvantInvader]

Let's be clear about something. Celtic people did not build Stonehenge. Druids did not build Stonehenge. Stonehenge was built long before the arrival of Celtic peoples. The British isles and Ireland have been inhabited by humans for many thousands of years, and Celts only arrived a few thousand years ago.