The Early Ones – The history of the Scottish people begins in the Northern Isles. There is evidence of human habitation in what is now Scotland as far back as 7,000 BC. Little is known of these early Stone Age people, but it is thought that they migrated from the Low Countries of Europe, and that they were hunters-gatherers.
Around 5000 BC the Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic) people appeared on the scene. These nomadic tribes lived in caves or rough shelters, and used stone implements. They ate what they could find or catch: deer, eggs, berries, nuts and often shell-fish. Some of their village sites contain millions of shells. Beyond the coasts forests covered much of the land, so they traveled by boat as journeys by foot would have been slow, difficult, and often dangerous.
Sometime around 4000 BC The New Stone Age (Neolithic) people from the eastern Mediterranean area reached Scotland. They may have also emigrated from The Danube Valley and parts of the Ukraine. They settled and made their homes along the western coast, in the Forth and Clyde estuaries, as well as in the Orkney and Shetland Islands. They were farmers who understood how to grow crops such as wheat and barley, and they knew about rearing domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. This new way of life involved clearing some of the land. These new settlers were also hunters and fishermen. They fished in the sea, in the rivers and in the lochs. They used stone and flint tools, utensils and weapons, and they were skilled at making simple forms of pottery, which they decorated with grooved patterns. Their settlements have left little or no trace – other than a few caves – except in Orkney where remains of early Neolithic stone houses can still be seen at Skara Brae and Knap of Howar. These dwellings are made of dry-stone masonry and central hearths. The inhabitants also built elaborate chambered tombs, covered by a cairn of stones, to bury their dead.
About 3000-2500 years BC the Beaker People reached Britain and northeast Scotland. They were farmers, and settled where there was cultivatable land.
The Bronze Age began in Scotland about 2300 BC when new invaders arrived from the North Sea area. They introduced swords, knives, chisels, buckles, cauldrons and buckets, all evidence of a high level of civilization and creature comfort that would be enhanced by the metal craft of the subsequent Iron Age. These people lived in round houses, which now only survive as hut circles, or indentations, in the ground. The walls were either of sod or stone, and a wooden post held up a thatched roof. A central hearth contained a fire for cooking and warmth. Remains of their farm systems survive, as wells as the piles of stones they removed to clear their fields for cultivation. Burials were in a stone box-like coffin with a stone lid, the body being placed in the grave in a crouched position, usually with a food pot. Cremations replaced burials toward the end of the Bronze Age, with the deceased’s scorched bones placed in large urns, many of which have survived.
The Celts – The origin of the Celts (pronounced Kelts) is shrouded in mystery, but they were part of the “barbaric hordes” so often referred to in ancient writings. Celt (Keltoi) was the name applied by ancient Greek writers, from the 5th century BC on, to a group of peoples who inhabited central and Western Europe. The Romans called them Galli, or Gauls. The Celts generally spoke two dialects of the Indo-European language family. Gaelic (or Goidelic) – which later included Irish, Scottish and Manx – is spoken even today in parts of Ireland and Scotland and on the Isle of Man. Brythonic (also called British) includes Welsh and Breton, and is spoken in Wales and on the Brittany Peninsula in France.
During the first millennium BC these peoples spread throughout much of Europe. From a heartland in central Europe, they settled an area known as Gaul (France), penetrated the northern Iberian Peninsula (Spain), while at the same time others crossed the body of water that we know as the English Channel, gradually settling an area that would come to be known as the British Isles. Their arrival on the Island of Briton can never be determined exactly, but there is evidence that they were there, and in Ireland, prior to 500 BC. In the Lowlands of Scotland they overran and enslaved many of the earlier inhabitants, and drove the rest into the Highlands.
There are many hill forts throughout Scotland that are believed to have been constructed by the Celts. Often these structures consist of a series of ramparts surrounding a hill. Some were constructed of dry stone walls – using no mortar – and some were made with timber frames. Some were small, suitable only for one family, while others could hold a small town. It is thought that these forts were more to protect against a sudden attack rather than a long siege.
In the fourth century BC the Celts began a series of migrations that increased the size of their territory and brought them into immediate contact with the Greco-Roman world. By about 390 BC the Celts started to push south and east into the Mediterranean lands and Eastern Europe. The archaeological record shows them moving farther south in the Iberian Peninsula, east into present-day Poland and Ukraine, and taking over Illyrian and Thracian lands in the Balkans. They advanced into northern Italy, founding settlements that became the cities of Milan, Turin, and Bologna. Roman historians tell of an invasion of "Gauls" at this time, formidable fighters who defeated Rome's army at the Allia River and plundered the city. These Cisalpine Celts remained a threat to Rome until their final defeat in 295 BC.
Celtic tribes invaded Greece in 279 BC, penetrating as far south as Delphi before they were routed and driven back. Others migrated to central Anatolia in Asia Minor. King Antigonus I settled them, about 275 BC, in an area that became known as Galatia. It was there that the Celts founded the kingdom of Galatia, and it was to the Celts in Galatia that Saint Paul addressed his Epistle to the Galatians. One of their hill forts, Angora, is today Ankara, the capital of Turkey. Many Celts were employed as mercenaries in the armies of the Hellenistic states. A Celtic shield has been unearthed in Egypt, and a representation of a plaid-wearing Celt in Morocco.
Moving south and southwest, the Celts raided communities on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in the fourth and third centuries BC, but by the first century BC they were on the defensive. The Romans, advancing from the south, and the Germanic peoples, moving down from the north, gradually subjugated most of them. Thereafter Celtic culture was confined mainly to the "Atlantic fringe," which included Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the British Isles, and Brittany in France.
The area occupied by the Celts was never in any sense an empire, but was simply the habitat of different politically independent tribes. Even their name is arbitrary, for it is fairly certain that the people generally known as Celts was actually a group of scattered tribes, much like our North American Indians, but bound loosely together by blood ties, Druidic beliefs and common myths. Celtic societies functioned as groups of autonomous units, each under a paramount chief. The people were organized into loose family units, or clans, which were then subdivided into lineages (fine), stressing the paternal side of kinship reckoning. They were divided into three social classes: the royal clans, the warrior aristocracy, and the common people. Slaves comprised a small portion of the population. Persistent themes in Celtic culture included rural settlement, hospitality feasting, and fellowship drinking. Pork was a common item of diet, and plaid designs in clothing were favored. The weapon of choice was the sword. Archaeological finds corroborate classical authors who described the Celts as using chain-mail armor and a machine for reaping grain.
The druids underwent a training period lasting twenty years. They had priestly duties, but they also bore weapons and had specialties, such as religion, law, astronomy and calendrics, poetry, and music. Writing was known as early as the third century BC but was little used except for coinage and commemorative inscriptions. Calendrics exemplifies the learning of the Celts, who had inherited extensive knowledge about solar and lunar movements from their neolithic predecessors in Atlantic Europe. The bronze Coligny Calendar, found near Lyon, France, was more accurate than the one used by the Romans. Calendars were critical for tracking the main Celtic festivals: February 1, May 1, August 1, and October 31/November 1 (the last of which survive today as Halloween and All Saints' Day).
The Celtic tribes who lived in what we know as Great Britain and Ireland spoke Irish, Manx, Scots-Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and Cornish. There is no way to know what the Celts called themselves, for although they had a written language of sorts around the third century BC, the materials that they may have written on did not survive the ravages of time. No record of their written language survived their subsequent invasion and assimilation by other peoples. Nor have any of the organic materials they used in everyday life survived, such as wood, cloth, leather and foods. Scientists can only gain a partial idea of their culture from the few things that have survived…those which were made from stone, pottery and metal. Although these objects were often decorated, some quite elaborately, they have not given researchers any clue to the Celts’ written language.
To the civilized peoples of the Mediterranean world the Celts were barbarian tribes, but they learned much from their contacts and trade with the civilized world. Over time the Celts had developed a superior knowledge of iron working and iron weapons, and modern historians credit them with spreading their knowledge over the more backward regions of Europe and Britain. And though only faint hints of their spoken dialects remain in the more backward regions of Great Britain and Ireland, there is much evidence of the very striking art.
Much of the folklore of Western Europe – as well as early America – is based on the beliefs of the early Celts. Ancient Celtic trained professionals – bards and druids – using elaborate mnemonic (memory enhancing) devices, transmitted this folklore in oral form. Christian scribes first preserved the rich heritage of the Celts in narrative form. They later wrote down poems praising the deeds of historic rulers, and fictional heroes whose actions and deeds portrayed the behavioral codes of the people. Their poems convey powerful universal sentiments, many of which we find rooted on our own modern western society. There is considerable Celtic wisdom to be found in accounts by later Christian chroniclers, and in the tales and poetry of medieval literature.
The Celts were certainly a warrior race with colonial ambitions, but it seems that their colonization happened peacefully over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Knowledge of the early history of Scotland is thus very sketchy, but much was learned when Jarlshof, an Iron Age village, was discovered in the nineteenth century on the southern tip of Shetland. This is one of the most important archaeological sites in Britain, as it shows the development of civilization from the earliest times through to the medieval age.
The Romans – For centuries the mighty Roman Empire ruled the ancient world, and at the height of its power the far-flung empire controlled western Asia, northern Africa, and in Europe Rome was master – though disputed at times – of all of the land west of the Rhine and south of the Danube River.
North of the area that the Roman Empire controlled in Europe was a vast region of forests, and it extended all the way to the North Sea. In this wild country, beyond the farthest limits of the civilization of the day, lived many barbarous tribes of people. Among them were the Goths, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Lombards and the Franks. Beyond these tribes were the Angles and Saxons; they lived in the northern area of what we know today as Germany. Still farther north dwelt the Norsemen.
These peoples who lived north of the Roman world were very different from the Romans. They were taller, with yellow hair and blue eyes. Their clothing was usually made of the skins of animals or coarsely woven woolen cloth, with the arms and shoulders left bare. Their houses were simple huts of roughly cut timber, often grouped together in a clearing in the forest to form a straggling village. These Germanic tribes were fierce fighters, and the Romans, who had conquered so many nations, were never able to exert control over these barbarians. The Roman Army had to content itself with keeping them out of the empire by the use of strong fortifications placed along the Rhine and Danube rivers.
After successfully invading southern Britain in 55 BC under Julius Caesar, the Romans moved north. In 79 AD Julius Agricola, the Roman Governor of Britain, advanced into Scotland and built forts at strategic locations. His Roman legions crushed all opposition, but the Caledonians – the name given the native tribes by the Romans – established a fort at Dumbarton Rock and resisted, and the push north was stopped. Another invasion in 82 AD ended with the almost total slaughter of the Ninth Roman Legion, probably at Galloway.
At the Battle of Mons Graupius in 84 AD the Caledonians suffered a terrible defeat. Calgacus, their chief – if Tactius, the Roman chronicler can be believed – is the first to be recognized as a “Scot” in history. According to Tacitus, Calgacus – whom he described as a “Scot” – was killed in the battle, along with 10,000 of his men, while only 340 Roman soldiers died. Although this defeat was a major setback for the native tribes, the Romans were not able to capitalize on their victory, for although the Caledonian ranks were devastated, they continued to wage guerilla war. By 85 AD, however, the Romans had conquered all Celtic lands except Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland.
by Donald D. Erwin
No comments:
Post a Comment