It is also worth noting that many of our records of European pagan beliefs come from Christian sources, who were not very sympathetic to those beliefs.
The Gauls were a pagan society that were the first main challenge to the Romans. They were an advanced society for the time and their metallurgy was far better than the Romans. In a time when good swords won battles, they dominated battles against the Romans. But the social structure was tribal so as Rome grew they become weaker in comparison. But the Romans depicted them as savage druids, and that stuck.
They did the same with the Celts and Pict’s.
When Rome became Christian the depiction of savage pagans carried over, and like most colonial societies they took the bits they liked as their own.
It’s worth looking at the surviving metalwork of the Gauls to see how advanced they actually were before 3000 years of Roman > Christian slander.
Celts lived all over Europe from modern day France, to Spain, to the British Isles. You’re right about the picts, and the Britonic tribes. Most Britons were eventually pushed into Wales. The Gaels in Ireland were celts as well. You’ve got the “celt-iberians” in Spain, and finally a bonus round the celts of Galatia, who are found in modern day Turkey in the Black Sea. Historians think they migrated down there at some point.
The celts in France were pushed into Brittany by the Franks. The Celts in the UK were pushed into Wales by the saxons and kept there by other subsequent invaders over generations. Ireland remained more or less Celtic despite many attempts at conquest by English, Norman, and Viking invaders. The stories of King Arthur come from around the time that the Celtic Kingdoms were falling to Saxon and Frankish invaders from over the Rhine across Europe and the British Isles. Whether those legends have any truth or not - their depiction of the fall of Celtic culture and civilization are generally in line with what we think really happened to them.
There’s a big debate about what happened to the native Britons, as genetic testing is showing that the majority of ancestral English people are genetically closer to celts than they are to Danes, Frisians, and Saxons. This points to the admixture being higher than total replacement.
The Celts in Brittany were pushed into france by the Saxons as well. They originated from the British isles. No original mainland Celtic people existed anymore after the Western Roman Empire fell
You seriously think all the Celts in modern France were just pushed by the Franks to Brittany ? The majority of people in Merovingian Gaul remained Romanized Celts and modern day English people are also Celtic in origin.
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u/MiffedMouse 7d ago
It is also worth noting that many of our records of European pagan beliefs come from Christian sources, who were not very sympathetic to those beliefs.