Early History of the Celts

The Ancient Celts were not an illiterate people, but they transferred their knowledge orally. They had an alphabet of twenty letters called Ogham. Each letter was named after a tree from the land where they lived. Ogham was used on standing stones, primarily on graves and boundary markers.

The primary sources of information about the Celts are, in that light, the texts written by the Romans who were in touch with them and Christian monks, who lived in Irish monasteries in the Middle Ages. Caesar, Livy and Tacitus, wrote about their contemporaries who lived in a way different than themselves and therefore were considered ‘barbarians’, but even though they did not have a positive attitude towards them, they still left some useful information about Celtic society, religion, way of life, and so on. One of the problems that arise from this is that many things in these writings are romanised, e.g. Caesar interprets Celtic gods and calls them by the names of their Roman equivalents:

‘They worship as their divinity, Mercury, in particular, and have many images of him, and regard him as the inventor of all arts, they consider him the guide of their journeys and marches, and believe him to have great influence over the ac

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There was no trade or commerce; everything was in the form of exchange. This people spoke a language that would later develop into Celtic.

- Samhain was the start of the New Year. The Druids were responsible for cultural and religious knowledge as well as the performance of rituals, just as the Brahmins in India. Writing history as such is very complicated and can never be seen as completely accurate.

The functions of the gods were also very important:

The Sky Father The function of this god is that he is, usually, the father of all other gods together with the Earth Mother. Depending on the religion this god is also the head of the pantheon, or at least his father or grandfather and often also the god of thunder and lightning. It was celebrated on October 31 and commemorated the creation of order out of chaos and the beginning of the world. Rank inside the circles of the nobility of the tuath was determined by individual strength and skill. Their influence extended from what are now France, Spain, and British Isles to the shores of the Black Sea from the Ukraine to Turkey.

Social Structure of the Celts (Caesar)

‘The various Celtic tribes were bound together by common speech, customs, and religion, rather than by any well defined central governments. The position in society was determined by the ownership of cattle (there was no land ownership in early Celtic society). To these a large number of the young men resort for the purpose of instruction, and they [the Druids] are in great honour among them. Each individual had his "honour price" which showed his worth in the fine. Land was usually owned in common by the fine, but the leader of the fine probably determined the use of the land.

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