Somewhere around the turn of the eighth century BC a major change happens in
Europe. A new people a new culture appears in the area of Hallstatt in
central Austria and it was completely different than anything that had been
seen before in Europe these people buried their dead in tombs under great
mounds sometimes they were accompanied by grave goods some of these tombs were
very richly endowed to help the deceased move on into the into the afterlife they
worked in iron instead of bronze which was a major advancement in technology
from what had come before and finally probably the most earth-shattering
change that the celts brought to the hallstatt people brought to europe were
horses and not only did they use them for transportation but they worshiped
them they revered them and they rode them into battle so they were highly
skilled Dr. Barry Cunliffe who's a very well-known archaeologist in Britain
describes the arrival or the appearance of the hallstatt culture as a horse
riding aristocracy and the Celts appear in in this area of central Austria but
they don't stay there they travel rapidly they expand rapidly over the
next few hundred years they tend to move west and north and their culture
really evolves quickly to the point where archaeologists give them a new
name called the La Tene culture but the question is where did these people come
from well if you board a boat today in Austria now on the Danube River you
can in a few days sail down the river and at the mouth of the river you arrive
at the Black Sea and it just so happens that in ancient times the cultures that
lived around the Black Sea there was number of them could only be described
as horse riding aristocracies they fought on horseback
there was even chariots in places of the caucuses and around the the Danube
Valley there is a lot of evidence in the ground that seems to indicate that
people moved from the Black Sea region up the Danube corridor into Europe
there's many examples there's arm rings that were clearly Thracian
construction or craftsmanship probably one of the the most impressive artifacts
that they found to date is called the Gundestrup cauldron most scholars
agree that it was crafted in Thrace which was the lands straddling the
Danube River down on the shores of the Black Sea but when they found it they
found it in a bog in northern Denmark in Jutland and so somehow that cauldron
made its way from the Black Sea to Denmark now whether that was the
cauldron itself that was carried there or the craftsman from the Black Sea
moved to Denmark and then made the cauldron it's impossible to tell but it
clearly shows that there was contact between Northern Europe and
the Black Sea area.
that's a very good question because it is one of the most
exciting areas I think in Celtic research today it's really being
spearheaded by dr. Cunliffe and a number of scholars in Europe
recent research seems to suggest that there were multiple pathways of celtic
development somewhere around the same time that the celts begin to appear in
the Hallstatt area of Austria another group with a similar culture
begins to appear in southwest spain in the lands of Tartessos which many people
may recognize as Tarshish some of the same archaeological
markers start to appear in Southwest Spain there was the appearance of what
they call orientalizing material which is material from the Near East
the ancient lands of Mesopotamia ancient Israel Egypt materials that were well
defined in those areas begin to appear in Southwest Spain and we know the
mechanism by which a lot of it arrived in Southwest Spain that the Phoenicians
were trading all over the Mediterranean Sea for centuries even before the
appearance of this material but around the same time that the Celts are
appearing in hallstatt these materials began appearing in Southwest pain
including intimations as opposed to cremations and horse technology
including chariots and we all know that chariots were a Near Eastern weapon they
were used extensively by the Assyrians and even the ancient Israelites had a
very powerful chariot force from the time of Solomon onwards the other very
interesting development is there was they found these standing stones all
over the Tartessos area that have inscriptions on them written
inscriptions as well as pictures and the pictures often are of horses swords
chariots all these indicators of Near Eastern culture the inscriptions
themselves have been analyzed by a dr. John Koch from the University of Wales
and he has analyzed he has done a tremendous amount of work there are
hundreds of these stones all over Spain he has analyzed the inscriptions and has
determined it is a very early form of Celtic in fact it's the
earliest Celtic inscriptions that they've ever found have been found in
southwest Spain not in Central Europe where
we've traditionally thought that the Celts arose he's analyzed the language
and it's it's not purely Celtic and he's determined that it was
interacting very closely and being modified by some Semitic language that
we don't know which Semitic language it was but it was very much like Hebrew so
the Declaration of Arbroath was an important document it was certainly an
important document to the Scots of the 14th century it was written in 1320 as a
plea to the Pope for him to put pressure on the King of England Edward the second
to recognize Robert the Bruce as King of Scots and it was a remarkable document
that included a number of different facets one of which was the history of
the Scots and it paints this picture of a people coming from the Black Sea area
from Scythia travelling along the Mediterranean Sea traveling through the
Pillars of Hercules on their way to Scotland no matter what we might think
of that document today one thing is clear and that is the nobles that signed
their name to that document believed exactly what was written in that
document it was a different time and it was a time of chivalry and a time when a
man's word was everything it was the most important thing and so it's highly
unlikely that these men which included the bulk of the aristocracy really of
Scotland at the time they all signed this document they have fixed their
seals to it and for them to do that that was a big step and they were really
putting everything on the line so it's pretty clear that they believed what was
written in that document and I also don't believe that Bernard de Linton who
was the abbot of arbroath who actually wrote the the document itself i don't
think he pick that information out of thin air
there was a number of documents already pre-existing by that time that he
probably drew much of that content from the Welsh priests or Welsh Monk Nennius
is probably one of the more famous of those sources he wrote the historia
Brittonum in the 9th century The Chronicles of the Picts and Scots which
also reached back to that time the life of st. Cadro wrote The Chronicles of the
Scottish nation all of these talk about migrants coming to the British Isles and
then one of the big ones is the book of Leinster in Ireland which within that
book is a document called the Lebor Gabala Erenn which translates roughly
the book of the invasions of Ireland these invaders travel the same routes
and spend time in Ireland or Gaul depending on the version of the the
story but they all seem to follow a similar path to Britain subscribe and
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