Re: Toddler hurt after man lets off huge firework in shop

On 2007-11-01, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tim <timjim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell wrote:

No it wasn't. The Celts never came here in significant numbers. The
Celtic and Saxon alleged invasions of Britain have been thoroughly
debunked.

Can you provide some references re this 'thorough debunkment'?

A good place to start is `Britain BC' by Francis Pryor, pub. Harper
Perennial, ISBN 0-00-712693-X. £9.99 for the paperback I've got here.
He's a mature field archaeologist.

[...]

My own opinion is that the Romans are largely to blame for inventing the
term 'Celts' as a broad collective classification of tribes who were (to
the Romans) similar to each other and distinct from others (eg 'Iberians'
'Germans' 'Greeks' etc).

Seems about right; although they were a bit potty on the subject in the
18th and 19th centuries, so it seems. But of course back then, they
paid very close attention to ancient writings, didn't they?
Particularly that of the Romans.

Most of the "Ancient [Celtic|Scottish|Cornish|Welsh] Traditions" seem to
have begun in the 19th century. Including tartans and kilts. Before then
there were "local customs" and 'folklore", both rather disparaged, and
local dialects and languages that were actively persecuted by the legal,
religious, and school, authorities. (The language and dialect persecution
was still normal practice until almost the end of the 20th century and
still influences the thinking of many - one way or the other).

It has taken a long time for 'scholars' and 'historians' to generally
allow for the ignorance and bias of the Roman writers who are often the
earliest written sources of information about the people of Europe (partly
thanks to the Romans themselves having worked quite hard to wipe out all
traces of anything the "natives" did or had that made the Romans feel
inferior).

Probably based on partial understanding of the
languages and religious and cultural practices of the various tribes they
had contact with.

Yep.

I doubt very much if the members of those various
tribes considered themselves to be 'Celts' rather than whatever they
called their particular tribe. There was probably never a 'Celtic race'
as such.

Race, no; according to Pryor, the actual Celts were just one tribe (or
thereabouts) living somewhere near
Marseilles/Massilia/whateverItWasCalledThen.

The name 'Celt' is derived from the Greek 'keltoi' meaning 'barbarian'.
Marseilles was a Greek colony founded in about 600BC and it's quite
possible that the Greeks called the natives 'barbarians' - but that
doesn't mean that that region is where all things or people we call
"Celtic" originated. I don't think it's possible to place the origin of
"The Celts" any more precisely than "anywhere and everywhere between China
and the North Atlantic".

Applying the term "celtic" specifically to the Goidelic and Brythonic
languages and their associated people and cultures, is a very recent
thing, again probably from no earlier than the 19th century.

But there does seem to have been a pan-European culture before the
Romans took over, somewhat as depicted in the Asterix books as far as I
can tell. Everyone's different, but also share a certain set of
cultural values, writing, and so on. They used Greek writing. The
Norse folk turned it into runes, mind; and they nicked the Greek gods
but changed them too.

One thing: not all Norse gods are frozen versions of Greek originals
(not that they originated in Greece, but that's a different matter).
Thor and his wife were probably in Europe long before the Hellenes
appeared at all, for example (the name varies; but Thor's the god of
smiths and farmers - very old, very useful). And what about the Vanir,
eh? That smells like `the religion of the previous culture' to me.

Languages, religious ideas, laws, and other cultural things, can and do
spread widely without the need for any physical invasion. It only takes
one or two people who know how to extract and work copper to move from one
area to another to bring about a change from 'stone age' to 'bronze age'
technology in a whole country,

Copper age, more like. You need to add tin before you get bronze -
which is admittedly a pretty small step once you've got the hang of
copper extraction.

It seems to be usual practice to conflate 'the copper age' with 'the early
bronze age'. The timing of these technological changes was probably
different in different places.

"Ötsi the Ice Man" (about 3300BC) had a copper axe-blade - and stone
arrow-heads and knife. "The Amesbury Archer" a thousand years later also
came from the Alps and had two copper knives and stone arrow-heads.

and it only takes a bit of 'regime
change' to change the laws and language of a country (England is a prime
example of that - from the ancient British dialects to Latin then to
something resembling German

English is a lot closer to Frisian that it's ever been to German. And
what `regime change' anyway? The same people were in charge here when
the Romans were here as had been in charge before; and when the Romans
left, they just carried on. There had been an overlay of Roman
administrators, of course, and the Romans had re-modelled things a bit
to suit them, but most of what has been done here has always been done
by the locals.

But we/they have always been ready to adopt the ways of the real rulers,
including imposing their language on all 'official' transactions and 'upper
class' conversations. If you wanted to do business or get a legal
decision or an education, you spoke Latin while the Romans were in the
ascendant (and for a long time afterwards), or French while the Normans
held sway. If your local leige-lord spoke something like German or
Icelandic, then it was in your interests to be able to do so too even if
you still preferred Cornish at home.

I wonder how much of the Germanic influences landed here in the form of
Roman legions? - I wouldn't be surprised if that's the root of most of
the Germanic stuff in Britain.

There were almost certainly German 'auxiliaries' in the Roman invasion of
Britain; there were also probably British 'collaborators', and it's
unlikely that eastern 'England' and the 'Germanic' area just across the
North Sea were anything other than in constant close communication long
before that (as they still are, of course).

and eventually to modern English after a
dalliance with Norman-French; all the while with local dialects and
languages coming and going).

`The people' never spoke Norman French.

I agree that most of the people of the British Isles probably have a
largely unbroken genetic link with the first settlers here after the last
ice age, but with some admixtures from various migrations since.

One cannot argue with that, not if one isn't mad.

Culturally, there are distinctions between the somewhat
'Germanic/Scandinavian' of most of England and part of Scotland, the
'Gaelic' of the rest of Scotland, and the 'Celtic' of most of Wales and
the farthest south-west of England (ie Cornwall, of course, but also much
of Devon and Somerset although the people who live there might not agree
that they have more in common with the Cornish and Welsh than they have
with the 'rest of England').

While there are cultural distinctions that one can see, I think that
it's a mistake to apply labels such as `Germanic' and `Celtic' and so
on, which are inaccurate, misleading, and heavily loaded.

Hmmm.

It is also possible to discern different physical 'types' more or less
corresponding to those vague distinctions, which does suggest that there
were distinct migrations into these islands who brought with them their
physical characteristics as well as their cultures and languages, but the
demarcations have probably always been blurred and indistinct and somewhat
flexible.

I have an idea that those `types' derive from rather small groupings.
And I've got a very strong suspicion that the legend about Brutus coming
here after the destruction of Troy might have something about it. There
are puzzling cultural links between here and ancient Crete in the
archaeological record. Ancient Crete suffered at least one natural
catastrophe in its life - a nasty shaking that pretty much wiped out the
water supply, thus making any sort of large-scale occupation of the
island a bit impractical from that date.

So what if they hopped on their boats and trundled off somewhere else to
live? They knew about Britain in general terms; why *NOT* come here? -
well, aside from it being the back of beyond with bloody awful weather,
but that does at least mean you're a long way from any enemies you might
have and all that.

The sea and rivers were the principal means of communication from ancient
times right up to the introduction of steam railways and motor cars. It
would be strange if Britain were not in routine contact with the
Mediterranean even in the late stone age.

And they did have a very high level of cultural activity - could *they*
have given rise to legends of Atlantis? I've a fictional (well, yeah)
account of King Arthur which is where I got that idea from - but it
seems to more or less fit what I can see of reality, so it's got to be
worth investigating, I reckon.

I suspect that the 'Germanic' influence in England may be a lot
older than the 'Anglo-Saxon invasion' I was taught about in school - but
of course I have no proof of that.

No-one's got any proof of any of this stuff - it's all `best guesses'
and whatnot.

Exactly when the various original
migrations happened is anybody's guess at the moment, I think.

The thing about a migration of a population is that when they get where
they're going, they bring new farming methods and so on and it takes
them a while to figure out how to get the farming right in the new land.

Francis Pryor isn't just a field archaeologist, but he's a farmer as
well with a close interest in re-constructed ancient farms. And he's
not seen any sign of the above process happening much that he's looked -
and he's been trying to find evidence for it. So whenever there might
have been big migrations, they happened before the archaeological record
shows many things.

I'm not claiming that there were successive 'waves' of migration/invasion,
merely that the first settles in these islands were not of a single or
homogoneous culture or gene pool. I agree that there is scant evidence
for significantly large influxes of settlers, let alone 'invasions', apart
from the Romans - who in practice would almost all have been soldiers and
administrators from everywhere else in the empire apart from Rome.

Yes, the Romans brought new techniques with them, but the farming
continued to be done by the locals who knew how to do it in their
locality.

.... or the Romans adopted local technology but claimed it for their own.
The Romans were better at nicking stuff than they were at inventing it.

btw, Pryor reckons the reason so much land went out of
cultivation when the Romans left, giving the illusion of massive
depopulation, was that the land had been used to feed the legions and
now the *** Romans weren't screwing so much out of the land to
support the empire, the locals just stopped producing all that surplus
that had been demanded once upon a time. It was far in excess of what
the local population needed - so, no sign of population crash: just a
sign of a reduction in taxation.

An interesting and plausible idea. But why abandon the best farmland and
keep to the hills?

I favour the idea that there was a plague [1] affecting the south-east of
England that got there from the near continent, but had much less impact in
the west where trade contacts were with the Mediterranean rather than
'Gaul' and the "Romano-British" culture lasted longest after the legions
left. That would explain the near-total abandonment of Roman London for
generations, much better than Pryor's suggestion. (Early "Anglo-Saxon"
London was up-stream from the Roman city, /outside/ the fortifications,
which would be odd if there was a violent invasion but very sensible if the
city was a dangerously infected place). The Roman city was only
re-occupied after it had fallen into ruins, 200 years after the legions
were withdrawn. Some prosperous Roman settlements seem to have been
abandoned completely - not 'taken over' as would be likely if there was
an invasion.

Another suggestion for why the south-east of England fell into such a
great decline, is that the water-table rose (or fell) for some unexplained
reason, making the land uneconomic to farm. I don't like that one.

I know that St Gildas, a 'Romano-Briton' in the 6th century, described a
violent invasion, but he may not be reliable as a factual reporter of what
really happened, and archaeology has so far not found much to support the
amount of destruction he claims. He was of course writing almost 200
years after the events he describes, and had his own agenda.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
.