The Celts

The First Inhabitants of the British Isles

Some Points of the UK History

Lecture 2

Britain is described as a “multicultural society”. It’s made up of a variety of cultures and peoples. Firstly, Britain consists of 4 countries: England, Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland. Each has its own customs and traditions. In the case of Scotland even a different educational system and different laws. The Royal Bank of Scotland even prints Scottish pounds.

Who were the invaders? When did they come? What makes the Scottish, Welsh, English and Northern Irish different from each other?

Britain has not always been an island. It became one only after the end of the last ice age. The temperature rose and the ice cap melted, flooding the lower lying land that is now under the North Sea and the English Channel.

The Ice Age was not just one long equally cold period. There were warmer times when the ice cap retreated, and colder periods when the ice cap reached as far south as the river Thames.

By about 5000 BC Britain had finally become an island, and had also become heavily forested.

The first evidence of human life is a few stone tools, dating about 250.000 BC.

About 3000 BC Neolithic (New Stone Age) people crossed the narrow sea from Europe in small rounded boats of bent wood covered with animal skins. Each could carry one or two persons. These people kept animals and grew corn crops and knew how to make pottery. They built wooden houses and stone circles called “henges”, which were probably religious, political, and economic centers. They probably came from either the Iberian (Spanish) peninsula or even the North-African coast. They were small, dark, and long-headed people, and may be the forefathers of dark-haired inhabitants of Wales and Cornwall today. They settled in the western parts of Britain and Ireland.

About 2400 BC new groups of people arrived in Southeast Britain from Europe. They were strong and tall. Nobody knows if they invaded or came peacefully. These people made individual graves for their dead. They also put special pottery, beakers, in them. This fact gave the historians the idea to call this folk the “Beaker” people. The y added a new circle of 30 stone columns to Stonehenge. They grew barley and made bronze tools instead of stone ones. Their culture spread all over the British Isles. These were the first of several waves of invaders before the first arrival of the Romans in 55 BC.

Around 700 BC, another group of people began to arrive. Many of them were tall, and had fair or red hair and blue eyes, some men wore beards. These were the Celts, who probably came from central Europe. The Celts were technically advanced. They knew how to work with iron, and could make better weapons than the people who used bronze. They probably drove many of the older inhabitants westwards into Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Celts began to control all the lowland areas of Britain, and were joined by new arrivals from the European mainland. They continued to arrive in one wave after another over the next seven hundred years.

The Celts are important in British history because they are the ancestors of many of the people in Highland Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Cornwall today. The Iberian people of Wales and Cornwall took on the new Celtic culture. Celtic languages, which have been continuously used in some areas since that time, are still spoken. The British today are often described as Anglo-Saxon. It would be better to call them Anglo-Celt.

Our knowledge of the Celts is slight. As with previous groups of settlers, we do not even know for certain whether the Celts invaded Britain or came peacefully as a result of the lively trade with Europe from about 750 BC onwards. But from about 500 BC trade contact with Europe declined, and regional differences between northwest and southeast Britain increased. The Celts were organized into different tribes, and tribal chiefs were chosen from each family or tribe, sometimes as a result of fighting matches between individuals, and sometimes by election.

The Celtic tribes continued the same kind of agriculture as the Bronze Age people before them. But their use of iron technology and their introduction of more advanced ploughing methods made it possible for them to farm heavier soils. The Celts added a few stones to Stonehenge.

During the Celtic period women may have had more independence than they had again for hundred of years. When the Romans invaded Britain two of the largest tribes were ruled by women who fought from their chariots (колесница). The most powerful Celt to stand up to the Romans was a woman, Boadicea. She had become queen of her tribe when her husband had died. She was tall, with long red hair, and had a frightening appearance.

According to the Romans, the Celtic men wore shirts and breeches (knee-length trousers). They put on striped or checked cloaks fastened by a pin. It is possible that the Scottish tartan and dress developed from this “striped cloak”. The Celts were also “very careful about cleanliness and neatness”. “Neither man nor woman, however poor, was seen either ragged or dirty”, as one Roman wrote.

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