	•	Continental Celtic

	•	Insular Celtic

	•	Disappearance of the Celts

	•	The Irish are not Celts, say experts - The Sunday Times - Ireland

The Vends and the Celts

The bearers of the Hallstatt culture (Vends) and the La Tène culture (Celts)

In relation to the pre-Roman period

by Dr. Jožko Šavli

Lately, several countries and nations are putting special emphasis on their Celtic origin, without researching if it is substantiated on reality or assumption, either way, such condition can sometimes border on Celtic mania. Beside the Celts, no other peoples should have existed in Europe before the Roman period? They mention archeological findings of a culture belonging to the Hallstatt period and their bearers, without quoting that we are dealing with the Veneti here. It is true, that in Europe the Celts were bearers of the late iron era (La Tène, ca. 400 - 15 BC). Nevertheless, the bearers of the early iron era (Hallstatt, ca. 900 - 400 BC) were not the proto-Celts but the Vends or Veneti (Wenden, Winden, Windische), in Greek records described as Enetoi or Henetoi.

After 1200 BC, as it is already known, the great migrations of the Veneti began, who had their origin in the area of the Lusatian culture (Lusatia, Poland). They bore the so-called Urnfield culture into all parts of Europe. In the following Hallstatt period, at last, the Veneti settled also the area, which some centuries later was formed by the Celts, i.e., the western part of Switzerland, France, and Great Britain. Among other evidence, proof is also provided by several Venetic names, which remained preserved until today. In Great Britain: Venedotia (Walles), Windsor, Ventnor... in France: Vendèe, Vienne river, Vienne city (south of Lyon)... Moreover, archaeology brought forward many Hallstatt findings that confirm the settlement of the Veneti in this area.

Of course, at one time these settlements in ancient Gaul formed Venetic isles among the ancient inhabitants, who must be called proto-Celts. But the language between the two tribes did not differentiate much, it was the same more or less. The difference between the Celts and the Veneti existed in their ethnological characteristics. For example, the Celts were organized in clans (like the German Sippe); they venerated the oak... The Vends were organized in village communities and their tree of life was the linden, and so on.

After 400 BC, with the invention of more resistant iron weapons and implements, the Celts began their victorious march throughout Europe. Celtic tribes invaded the Iberian Peninsula, the Padania (Po basin, except Veneto) and Middle Europe. But they did neither colonize the Middle and Eastern Alps nor Scandinavia, in this territory the ancient Venetic people lived onward. However, they occupied Great Britain and Ireland.

After the occupation of Etruria (Toscana), they encountered in a battle with the Romans and were defeated near Telamon, in 225 BC. Thereafter, the Romans began their march toward north.

The relation between Celts and Vends was not always a clear thing. When the Celts occupied Padania, the Vends (Veneti) from the area of the Este culture, today's Veneto, prevented them from entering their territory. On the other hand, both tribes coexisted in harmony in the territory of present-day Bavaria, which after the Roman occupation was not considered a Celtic, but a Vendic country and was called Vindelicia. It seems that such coexistence prevailed also in Bohemia and in southern Poland. The name Bohemia derives from the Celtic people called Boji (pronounce boyi), that also gave the name Bologna to the Etruscan town once called Felsina. However, the Boji tribe was driven away from there and found refuge in Bohemia. Here and in the south of Poland, many characteristic Celtic graves were found. The Celtic element in the Polish people is still today perceived, among others, the simple fact remained, that the neighbouring Germans call them "Lechen" and on the other hand the Ucrainians are called by a very similar name "Ljahi". The meaning of this name is "Volcae", who were a Celtic tribe, in general called "Welsche" by the Germans. The Vends, as it seems, called them Lahi.

Continental Celtic

	Cernunnos, the deer god of the Celts. His shape is to be found on a relief plate of a silver kettle, found in Gundestrup (Denmark) and is kept in the Nationalmuseum in Copenhagen. The kettle was elaborated in a Celtic workshop. It appeared to the Germans as a captured object or donation.

German scholars ignored the Vends. But they individuated that the Celts on the European continent spoke a language, that they called Continental Celtic (Festlandkelitsch), and which was different from the Celtic on the British Isles. However, their research stopped at this point and did not bring the question to a conclusion. Thus, they should have state here, that this Celtic language was identical with the Vendic one, from which the Slav languages derived (cf. article The Vends and the Slavs).

This question produced an ideological connotation. They say that the modern Germans are descendants of the ancient Germans and Celts. In fact, they are descendants of the Vends (cf. article The Vends and the Germans). Nevertheless, because the Vends, from the linguistic point of view, are considered (inferior) Slavs, the Germans, who recognized this, could have suffered an irremediable blow in their national German pride. Therefore, they never will accept their "Slav" component. This is the only reason, why the German scholars desist from the truth and rather leave the question unanswered that deals with the "origin of Festlandkeltisch".

In this regard, the German speaking present-day Austria became likewise a case of Celtic mania. Its academic world and school apparatus are firmly convinced in the Celtic roots of their country, which in reality lead back to the pre-Roman period, when the kingdom called Noricum existed in this area. The scholars pretend, that after the end of the Roman Empire their country was disturbed only for a short time by a Slav incursion. The true fact is, since the time immemorable the inhabitants of the Eastern Alps have been the Vends, and the traces of the Celts must be considered negligible.

Two Gallic inscriptions from the hinterland of Marseille, the ancient Massilia. The inscriptions have been found in Saint-Remy (dep. Bouches-du-Rhône). Dr. Anthony Ambrozic has deciphered the inscriptions among many others, cf. his book Adieu to Brittany (1999) based on Slovenian language.

	•	The inscription on the left transcribed in modern script says: BIL MOC LITOJM ARJE OS (In a wet summer the axle rusts).

	•	The inscription on the right says: OJ RIT TAKO CELO I S KONI OTS (He turned the carriage so sharply that he was left with the horses).

Considering the identical or nearly identical language between the Vends and the Celts on the European continent, I was not surprised to learn, that Dr. Ambrozic (Canada) deciphered many Celtic inscriptions in ancient Gaul based on the Slovenian language, which is close to the ancient Venetic, the parallel language to Continental Celtic. (cf. Anthony Ambrozic's works: Adieu to Brittany (1999), and Journey back to the Garumna (2001)). He found the inscriptions written in Continental Celtic, identical with Vendic and Slav, in 20 regions of the one-time Roman province of Gaul (Gallia). Such coincidence convinced many scholars, that at one-time "Slavs" must have lived in this territory.

Insular Celtic

The invasion of the Celts on the British Isles, which occurred during the La Tène period, is another chapter referred to as the Celtic linguistic identity. They overpowered the autochthon inhabitants there, which originated from the former Atlantic culture. Some names bear witness that there have been also several invasions by the Veneti on the Isles during the Hallstatt era. Those Veneti who remained there, could only have been absorbed among the autochthon people in the course of time.

In my opinion, the Celts imposed their supremacy on the Isles, but gradually they also adopted the language of the locals and left them their Celtic name. The industrious German scholars came to the bottom of this problem and named the language spoken on the Isles Insular Celtic (Inselkeltisch), without discussing the source of its origin.

The today still existing languages belonging to this linguistic family are the Irish (Ireland), the Cymric (Walles), the Gallic (Scotland), and the now already extinct Manx (Isle of Man). Irish is the official language in Ireland. Regarding the spoken tongue, the most numerous group in this linguistic family is the Breton language, which is spoken by over 1 Million people in Brittany (France).

Brittany, in the Roman period, was called Armorica, i.e., a country surrounded by sea. It was settled by the Veneti, distinctive to the nearby Celtic Gaul. Scholars are not in full agreement as to the exact arrival of the Veneti in this country. Some advance arguments for as early as 8th century BC, and I agree, these Veneti could only have been a remainder of Venetic migrations during the Hallstatt era. At that time, the Venetic isles in Gaul were obviously already merged in with the Celts. Thus, the Venetic and the Continental Celtic were almost identical.

In the mid-first century BC, according to Julius Caesar's "Gallic Wars" (De bello gallico III), the Veneti of Armorica had a large fleet, controlling the harbours on the coast, as well as collected tools, and conducting traffic even with Brittany. Dio Cassius reports, that the Romans owe their victory to the Venetic fleet being becalmed rather than the Roman battle plan and courage that Caesar ascribes to. Instead of becoming prisoners, many Veneti committed suicides; some throw themselves into the sea, either to scale the enemy vessels or to perish in the water; still others rather burned to death when their ships were set ablaze by Roman incendiary darts. Caesar boasts himself, that he committed the chieftains to the sword and sold all others into slavery. However, this defeat did not put a spell of extinction on the Veneti. The people and their language lived on in Armorica.

Today, the people of Armorica (Brittany) speak Insular Celtic, and they pertain to the Celts. But where did the Veneti of Caesar's period disappear to? I discovered that the Veneti in Armorica, toward the end of the Roman Empire, withstood anew, but Romans answered with terrible terror. Many people were banished, almost all male inhabitants were exterminated. In the following period the Celts from Britain, who spoke Insular Celtic, settled in great numbers the ravaged and empty Armorica.

Disappearance of the Celts

We are standing in front of a great enigma! Where did the (continental) Celts disappear to? It is certain that the large majority became Romanized. In the peoples tongue they were called Lahi (by the Vends of Middle Europe) or Vlahi (by the Southern Slavs) or Welsche (by the Germans). This name passed over to all Italians and Rumanians. The first group is figured as Lahi or Welsche, and the second as Vlahi. The first Rumanian principality has been Wallachia, which is today a province of Rumania.

It seems that several names of villages in Slovenia like Laško, Lašce, Lahovci, Laška vas etc. bear witness of the one-time presence of Celtic isles in the Vendic (Slovenian) speaking area. However, it is not probable that they belonged to the linguistic isles of the Romanized Celts. In the spoken dialects of the villagers do not appear somewhat characteristic Roman words. Whereas, in Slovenian villages and towns, where later German speaking people settled, numerous German words have been preserved in the local speech. Consequently, the aforesaid village names, which witness the presence of Celts, are not referred to as Romanized Celts, but to the ethnological identifiable Celtic people, who spoke the same language as Slovenians (Vends), i.e., the Continental Celtic.

In this way, the Celts among other Vendic people, like Czechs or Poles, but also among Germans, were not identified by their suppositional "Celtic" or Romanized language, but by their ethnological characteristics. In today's German speaking area their language was Germanized, and only names like Welsch, or family names like Walcher, bear witness of their one-time presence. In the Vendic (western Slav) speaking area, the Celts disappeared among the people speaking the same language.

After many attempts I learned, that the Celtic component is present in considerable measures among the Czechs and Poles. The Czechs even bear the name Bohemian after the Celtic people of Boji. A Medieval charter still distinguishes the people of Bohemia as Vint (Vends) and Beheim (Boji, ie., Celts). Such a distinction is certainly not a linguistic, but an ethnological one. As in the case of the Czechs, the Celtic component in Polish people has never been investigated, due to the pan-Slav ideology and its supposition of the common origin of the Slav speaking peoples. In my opinion, the sound k that was not palatalized in c (tch), for exempla: kwiet (in Polish), cvet (in Slovenian) must be referred to the Celtic component. The presence of the symbolic oak, beside the linden, in the Polish people's tradition must also be regarded as a Celtic inheritance. And so on.

The linguistics and nomenclature cannot identify the Celts on the European continent from a historical point of view, this task can only be achieved through archaeology and ethnology.

Moreover, the Celts or rather the Celtic origin became a fig leaf for the academic circles in the German and Slav world, because the financing of the academic institutions like universities, academies, institutes etc. were constrained to follow the pan-German or the pan-Slav ideology. The ideology was and still is the instrument by which the peoples' thinking is canalized in favour of the state's structure. We already have drawn attention to the Celtic mania, which is still present in the public media and in the educational apparatus, and is even bent to conceal the existence of the Vends and their language (today considered "Slavs") from the prehistoric period.

It makes one wonder that such a standpoint concerning the Celts was also taken upon by those academic worlds, which must have followed the directions of the pan-Slav ideology. Why? In sense of this ideology, all "Slav" people supposedly had their origin in the so-called ancient Slavs, which had their common home somewhere in the Trans-Carpathian region. These "original" people should have been divided later into Eastern Slavs (personalized by the Russians), into Southern Slavs (personalized by the Yugoslavs meaning Serbs), and into Western Slavs (personalized by Poles or Czechs, not decided yet).

The discovery that the Vends (linguistic "Slavs") origin from Middle Europe and that the respectively small nations like Sorbians, Pomeranians (Kashubians), Slovenians or Slovakians are the most original descendants of the Vends (Slavs) are ruining the great-nations image, to which belong also the so-called Slav nations. These images have been painfully constructed since the 19th century. The pan-German and the pan -Slav ideological world, which always have been in contrast with each other, found their common goal in the matter of the Vends and together they are combating the Vends decisively. According to them, there is no room for other nations in the pre-Roman period, except the Celts. Other peoples, first of all the Vends, must assert themselves without their names, they are only seen as "bearers" of different civilisations.

The Sunday Times - Ireland

September 05, 2004

The Irish are not Celts, say experts

Jan Battles

THE long-held belief that Ireland's population is descended from the Celts has been disproved by geneticists, who have concluded that they never invaded Ireland.

The research at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) into the origins of Ireland's population found no substantial evidence of the Celts in Irish DNA, and concludes they never settled here en masse.

The study, part-funded by the National Millennium Committee, has just been published in The American Journal of Human Genetics. It was one of four projects funded by the government under the Genetic History of Ireland programme, which aimed to provide a definitive survey of the origins of the ancient peoples of Ireland.

Part of the project's brief was to "discover whether there was a large incursion by Celtic people about 2,500 years ago" as was widely believed. After comparing a variety of genetic traits in Irish people with those of thousands of European and Near Eastern inhabitants, the scientists at TCD say there was not.

"Some people would go as far as saying there was total replacement of the population (of Ireland) 2,500 years ago," said Brian Mc Evoy, one of the authors. "But if that happened we would definitely be more related to people in central Europe, because the Celts were supposed to have come from there. We're just not seeing that. We're seeing something earlier. Our legacy is the result of the first people to settle in Ireland around 9,000 years ago."

About 15,000 years ago, ice covered Ireland, Britain and a lot of northern Europe so prehistoric man retreated back into Spain, Italy and Greece, which were still fairly temperate. When the ice started melting again around 12,000 years ago, people followed it northwards as areas became habitable again.

"The primary genetic legacy of Ireland seems to have come from people from Spain and Portugal after the last ice age," said Mc Evoy. "They seem to have come up along the coast through western Europe and arrived in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It's not due to something that happened 2,500 years ago with Celts. "We have a very old genetic legacy."

While we may not owe our heritage to the Celts, we are still linked to other populations considered Celtic, such as Scotland and Wales. Mc Evoy said: "It seems to be more a cultural spread than actual people coming in wiping out and replacing everyone else." A PhD student in Trinity's department of genetics, Mc Evoy will present the findings tomorrow at the Irish Society of Human Genetics annual meeting.

He and Dan Bradley of TCD took samples of mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the mother, from 200 volunteers around Ireland using cheek swabs. They also compiled a database of more than 8,500 individuals from around Europe and analysed them for similarities and matches in the sequences. They found most of the Irish samples matched with those around Britain and the Pyrenees in Spain. There were some matches in Scandinavia and parts of northern Africa.

"Of the Celtic regions, by far the strongest correspondence is with Scotland," said Bradley. "It corresponds exactly with language." While that could be due to the Plantation of Ulster, Bradley said it was more likely due to something much older because the matches occur throughout the whole of Ireland and not just the north.

The geneticists produced a map of Europe with contours linking places that were genetically similar. One contour goes around the edge of the Atlantic, around Wales, Scotland, Ireland and includes Galicia in Spain and the Basque region.

"This isn't consistent with the idea of a large invasion here around 500 BC," said Bradley. "You would expect some more affinity with central Europe if we owed the bulk of our ancestry to a movement from central Europe but we don't."

Some archaeologists also doubt there was a Celtic invasion because few of their artefacts have been found in Ireland.

Dr. Šavli's Comment:

In my article "The Vends and the Celts" published in Carantha I already called attention to two "Celtic" languages: the Continental Celtic, which was more or less identical with that of the Vends (Veneti), and the Insular Celtic, which has been preserved in the present-day Irish, Welsh and Gallic. Anyway, Insular Celtic is also not the original Celtic language. In my opinion, a part of the Celts, who invaded the British Isles, and who for a certain time dominated the autochthon people there, adopted their language. But they bequeathed the Celtic name to the people and to their language without changing their original ethnical identity. This has been now confirmed by DNA research.

Anyway, where did the Vendic names in the British Isles come from? We find them already in Roman sources. For example: Vennonis (now High Cross in Laicestershire), Venta Belgarum (now Wincester), Venta Icenorim (now Caistor St. Edmunds), Venta Silurum (now Caerwent in Monmountshire), Ventnor on the isle Wight, Windsor… It is possible that they are a legacy of the Vends (Veneti), who invaded the Isles already in pre-Celtic times (Hallstatt). It is also possible, that they are a legacy of the posterior Celts, the language of whom was Vendic. A corresponding research has still to be made.