Facts about Celts
Tourists from all around the globe flock to the emerald isles of Ireland and Scotland seeking out the mystical, drawn towards the mysteries of the Brittanic peoples known as the Celts.
The oldest recorded rhyming poetry in the world is of Irish origin and is a transcription of a much older epic poem, leading some scholars to claim that the Celts invented Rhyme.
Plutarch reports Celtic women acting as ambassadors to avoid a war amongst Celts chiefdoms on the Po valley during the fourth century B.C.E.
The civilization of the Celts has continued without break over the centuries.
The Celts were described by classical writers such as Strabo, Livy, Pausanias, and Florus as fighting like "wild beasts," and as hordes.
Celts "who had their homes beyond the Alps streamed through the passes in great strength and seized the territory that lay between the Apeninne mountains and the Alps" according to Diodorus Siculus.
Ancient Celts took great pride in ornamenting their lives, from ornate necklaces, earrings, and bracelets to the common kitchen utensils and bowls.
says that the Gauls "originally called Celts live on the remotest region of Europe on the coast of an enormous tidal sea."
The Celts were great warriors, living clannishly for centuries, but they were also deep thinkers.
The Celtiberian group of central Spain and the upper Ebro valley originated when Celts migrated from what is now France and integrated with the local Iberian people.
The Celts did not see their gods as having a human shape until late in the Iron Age.
Diodorus Siculus wrote about the Celts of Gaul and Britain in his first century history.
The Celts had literally hundreds of deities, some unknown outside of a single family or tribe, while others were popular enough to have a following that crossed boundaries of language and culture.
The Book of Leinster, written in the twelfth century but drawing on a much earlier Irish oral tradition, states that the first Celts to arrive in Ireland were from Spain.
The Celts in Iberia were divided in two main archaeological and cultural groups, even if the divide is not very clear.
The Celts were highly skilled in visual arts and Celtic art produced a great deal of intricate and beautiful metalwork, examples of which have been preserved by their distinctive burial rites.
