home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Greek Keltoi. a member of a people of alpine
- Europe and Iberia whose first known territory
- was in central Europe about 1200 BC, in the
- basin of the upper Danube, the Alps, and
- parts of France and S Germany. In the 6th
- century they spread into Spain and Portugal.
- Over the next 300 years, they also spread
- into the British Isles (see Britain,
- ancient), N Italy (sacking Rome 390 BC),
- Greece, the Balkans, and parts of Asia Minor,
- although they never established a united
- empire. In the 1st century BC they were
- defeated by the Roman Empire and by Germanic
- tribes, and confined largely to Britain,
- Ireland, and N France. Between the Bronze and
- Iron Ages, in the 9th-5th centuries BC, they
- developed a transitional culture (named the
- Hallstatt culture after its archaeological
- site SW of Salzburg). They farmed and raised
- cattle, and were pioneers of ironworking,
- reaching their peak in the period from the
- 5th century to the Roman conquest (the La
- Tene culture). Celtic languages survive in
- Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man,
- and Brittany.
-
