# Humanities & Anthropology > History & Civilisations >  New Documentary on Celts

## Fire Haired14

Source. Roman coin 48 BC. Probably made because Ceasar had just conquered Gaul. Characteristic spiked hair, goatee, and Torc, which has become an iconic and romantic image of ancient Celts. 
This month BBC aired a Documentary on Celts titled: The Celts - Blood, Iron and Sacrifice. The documentary is lead by Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver who are both perfect documentary personalities. 

It has 3 parts all of whom you can find on YouTube. I watched the first one. For the most part I think it's great. It teaches a lot about what is known about the Celts and debated theories about the Celts. 

What I don't like is exaggerations that are meant to make the film interesting instead of accurate. The documentary at time uses the same biased narrative about the relationship between Romans-Celts as is given between European colonist-Native Americans in my school history book. The exact same phrases are used at times. 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing


The Celts are very mysterious because they didn't write and basically disappeared after (British Isles doesn't count in this case)being conquered by Rome. Most information we have are from remains and writings by non-Celts, so no one knows a lot about them. Lots is guess work. 

It is important to learn about the Celts because..
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...uTiszBN4U/edit

The earliest documentation we have of Celts comes from the Iron age.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

The old-theory that the Hallstatt culture(700-500 BC) was proto-Celtic has been proven incorrect. The Celts have an older origin. Traits associated with the Hallstatt culture are styles that grew in popularity in an already Celtic speaking Central and Western Europe. 

Ultimately Celtic-languages came from modern day Russia/Ukraine like all(most?) Indo European languages but that was way back in 3000 BC. The origin of Celtic languages may not be as simple as IEs arrived from East Europe in 2500 BC then expanded with Celtic languages. Like Slavic languages did in the Middle Ages, Celtic languages could have expanded on top of already existing Indo European languages very quickly.

Now that the Hallstatt=Proto Celtic theory has been debunked, there's many new theories on Celtic origins. 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

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## Sile

> Source. Roman coin 48 BC. Probably made because Ceasar had just conquered Gaul. Characteristic spiked hair, goatee, and Torc, which has become an iconic and romantic image of ancient Celts. 
> This month BBC aired a Documentary on Celts titled: The Celts - Blood, Iron and Sacrifice. The documentary is lead by Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver who are both perfect documentary personalities. 
> 
> It has 3 parts all of whom you can find on YouTube. I watched the first one. For the most part I think it's great. It teaches a lot about what is known about the Celts and debated theories about the Celts. 
> 
> What I don't like is exaggerations that are meant to make the film interesting instead of accurate. The documentary at time uses the same biased narrative about the relationship between Romans-Celts as is given between European colonist-Native Americans in my school history book. The exact same phrases are used at times. 
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing
> 
> 
> ...


My idea of celts , is a beginning in southern germany and some central germany of *Gallic tribes* who turned celtic with incoming different culture from the East circa 3000BC.
they then spread west through alsace into modern france etc etc 
The migration over the top of the alps came in late bronze-age to very early iron age

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## LeBrok

Great, something to watch tonight.

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## bicicleur

there were Celts left in Gaul but they were Romanised

for what it is worth, it is estimated that there were 10 million Celts in Gaul before the Roman invasion, of which some 2 million were killed

but before the Roman arrived, the Celts were allready under a lot of pressure from Germanic tribes
there were no more Celtic tribes north of the Rhine, and about half of the Belgian Celtic tribes were replaced by Germanic tribes
there is also the Germanic warlord Ariovistus, who had crossed the Rhine with his army into Gaul, north of the Alps to interfere in some rivalry between local Celtic tribes

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## MOESAN

there are a lot of things to say about facts and believings around Celts - 
Gallic? what is that??? a new concept? there is no fact for now which could separate the 'celtic' and the 'gallic' concepts. Namings, no more.
concerning Celts and Germans, their frist frontiers were very northern: around Nieder-Sachsen limes with more southern regions (Hessen, Rheinland); in some way and by a slight simplification we could assume the diminant BB cultural world became (or was?) celtic, the ancient dominent Corded cultural world bcame germanic (by a complex process, I imagine);
seemingly, in last times, there have been new combinations between old Germanics tribes, incroportating in some way the ancient Belgae tribes (it's is evident on metrics and in Y-R1b subclades dictributions); by example the conféderation of Franks physically showed a kind of mix between Germanics and Celts elites.
before germanics and Roma domination, but surely under pression of Germanics, a lot of Belgae tribes went southwards, taking some grounds in Gallia but also, very often , in Iberia as far as southern Portugal; it's well documented. sometimes some parts of Germanics tribes followed the same roads trhough Pyreness at the same time.

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## Angela

[QUOTE]


> Source. Roman coin 48 BC. Probably made because Ceasar had just conquered Gaul. Characteristic spiked hair, goatee, and Torc, which has become an iconic and romantic image of ancient Celts. 
> This month BBC aired a Documentary on Celts titled: The Celts - Blood, Iron and Sacrifice. The documentary is lead by Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver who are both perfect documentary personalities. 
> 
> It has 3 parts all of whom you can find on YouTube. I watched the first one. For the most part I think it's great. It teaches a lot about what is known about the Celts and debated theories about the Celts. 
> 
> What I don't like is exaggerations that are meant to make the film interesting instead of accurate. The documentary at time uses the same biased narrative about the relationship between Romans-Celts as is given between European colonist-Native Americans in my school history book. The exact same phrases are used at times. 
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing


Fire-Haired, one way of describing this is through the "Noble Savage" concept. It's quite well known. When sophisticated, advanced civilizations encounter primitive ones there's a tendency in some members of that sophisticated civilization, those who believe that "man" is naturally "good" and only turns "bad" when corrupted by civilization, to romanticize the "native" people whom they encounter. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

Sometimes these native peoples also serve as a foil for the exploration of the problems in their own societies, societies where they see the corruption, perhaps, or the wages of too much wealth. 

What they _don't_ see, or perhaps better said, don't_ choose_ to see are the less "noble" aspects of these primitive societies. For example, you'll never get from these type of people too much exploration of human sacrifice, or head hunting, or incest, or slavery, or how captives are treated and on and on.

In my personal opinion, it's all romantic nonsense. How anyone who has ever raised or taught children can believe that mankind is born "pure" or "good" is beyond me. I'm much more in tune with Hobbes than with Rousseau:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/hobmoral/#H5

After years of readings in history and anthropology, and more exposure than was probably good for me to the seamier side of life, it's my considered opinion that all human societies and groups exhibit both "noble" and not so "noble" traits, although the proportions may change depending on the place and time. The main things that change are technology driven. Those aren't to be sneezed at, however, at least not in my opinion. More crops so more food for more people, tools that make physical work easier, better transportation, better medical care, cleaner water, more literacy, eventually phones and computers etc. are all good things in my book, not to mention heated homes and baths. :)

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## Fire Haired14

> Fire-Haired, one way of describing this is through the "Noble Savage" concept. It's quite well known. When sophisticated, advanced civilizations encounter primitive ones there's a tendency in some members of that sophisticated civilization, those who believe that "man" is naturally "good" and only turns "bad" when corrupted by civilization, to romanticize the "native" people whom they encounter.


I get that. The problem I have is modern historians keep the good aspects of Nobel Savage and take the bad aspects out and claim the bad aspects didn't exist and come only from prejudice outside sources. 




> What they _don't_ see, or perhaps better said, don't_ choose_ to see are the less "noble" aspects of these primitive societies. For example, you'll never get from these type of people too much exploration of human sacrifice, or head hunting, or incest, or slavery, or how captives are treated and on and on.


Good point. These bad characteristics of more primitive societies are sometimes ignored and almost only positive things are said about them. I know it is true many Euro colonist and I'm sure Romans had prejudice and wrongly viewed Native Americans/Celts as more primitive than they actually were, although there was truth in what they said.

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## Sile

> there were Celts left in Gaul but they were Romanised
> 
> for what it is worth, it is estimated that there were 10 million Celts in Gaul before the Roman invasion, of which some 2 million were killed
> 
> but before the Roman arrived, the Celts were allready under a lot of pressure from Germanic tribes
> there were no more Celtic tribes north of the Rhine, and about half of the Belgian Celtic tribes were replaced by Germanic tribes
> there is also the Germanic warlord Ariovistus, who had crossed the Rhine with his army into Gaul, north of the Alps to interfere in some rivalry between local Celtic tribes


As per the program, there was 3 million gauls of which 1 million where killed and 1 million enslaved.

in 1420 "census" via a cambridge publication and another publication , states, france had 11 million, ..................you 10 million is way off
of the others in 1420, Germany 16M, Italy 13M, Spain 5.5M, Portugal 1.5M and England 4M

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## Sile

> there are a lot of things to say about facts and believings around Celts - 
> Gallic? what is that??? a new concept? there is no fact for now which could separate the 'celtic' and the 'gallic' concepts. Namings, no more.
> concerning Celts and Germans, their frist frontiers were very northern: around Nieder-Sachsen limes with more southern regions (Hessen, Rheinland); in some way and by a slight simplification we could assume the diminant BB cultural world became (or was?) celtic, the ancient dominent Corded cultural world bcame germanic (by a complex process, I imagine);
> seemingly, in last times, there have been new combinations between old Germanics tribes, incroportating in some way the ancient Belgae tribes (it's is evident on metrics and in Y-R1b subclades dictributions); by example the conféderation of Franks physically showed a kind of mix between Germanics and Celts elites.
> before germanics and Roma domination, but surely under pression of Germanics, a lot of Belgae tribes went southwards, taking some grounds in Gallia but also, very often , in Iberia as far as southern Portugal; it's well documented. sometimes some parts of Germanics tribes followed the same roads trhough Pyreness at the same time.


As Caesar states in his books, the only place the germanic people crossed the Rhine river was in the north and that led to a gallic and germanic mix which created the Belgae

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## bicicleur

> As Caesar states in his books, the only place the germanic people crossed the Rhine river was in the north and that led to a gallic and germanic mix which created the Belgae


except for Ariovistus who crossed the Rhine near where is now Basel, but this was more an army than a tribe
furthermore there is evidence that before the time of Julius Caesar there were Celts living north of the Rhine too, in the Netherlands

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## Twilight

> I get that. The problem I have is modern historians keep the good aspects of Nobel Savage and take the bad aspects out and claim the bad aspects didn't exist and come only from prejudice outside sources. 
> 
> 
> 
> Good point. These bad characteristics of more primitive societies are sometimes ignored and almost only positive things are said about them. I know it is true many Euro colonist and I'm sure Romans had prejudice and wrongly viewed Native Americans/Celts as more primitive than they actually were, although there was truth in what they said.


Wasn't there a scene where they showed a Horse skull? The archaeologists were mentioning about a dent in the horses brain cavity indicating that the Celts did have rotten heads spiked to a pole. Also, the hosts have been turning to Roman scripture for explanations giving the Romans their due.
Alice Roberts and Oliver don't seem to come across as Propagandists but that is just me.

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## Maleth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA-itb5NwDU episode 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGI6gud8MUo episode 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhkuLeobhXo episode 3

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## MOESAN

> As Caesar states in his books, the only place the germanic people crossed the Rhine river was in the north and that led to a gallic and germanic mix which created the Belgae


Caesar was not a linguist and Belgae were not a mix AT FIRST - but the inhabitant of what begun the "Belgia" of Romans was inhabited by a majority of Celts tribes and a minority of Germanics tribes. Celtic place names were stated very far North in germany (at least Hessen). The very term of Germans given by Caesar is a easy solution to name an imbrication of tribes of several kinds, their common quality being they were not submitted to the Empire. by the way, the less dubious etymology of the term "german" is a celtic one! The Rhine limes cannot help us to figure out with precision which people were on the other side. SO Caesar's Germans # all Germanics: (and Caesar Belgae # all Belgae) - in fact history of Celts and Germanics begun before Caesar, and Caesar constated with more or less accuracy what was occurring in his time. 
I suppose the mix occurred a bit later, when celts had definetly lost their previous military superiority.

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## Sile

the program at one point states the celts origin as portugal and they travelled east , but before that they migrated to britain as their bronze swords found in Britain are far older that the celtic bronze swords of Halstatt.
Also the alphabet , originally phoenician became celtinized in Portugal

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## Sile

> Caesar was not a linguist and Belgae were not a mix AT FIRST - but the inhabitant of what begun the "Belgia" of Romans was inhabited by a majority of Celts tribes and a minority of Germanics tribes. Celtic place names were stated very far North in germany (at least Hessen). The very term of Germans given by Caesar is a easy solution to name an imbrication of tribes of several kinds, their common quality being they were not submitted to the Empire. by the way, the less dubious etymology of the term "german" is a celtic one! The Rhine limes cannot help us to figure out with precision which people were on the other side. SO Caesar's Germans # all Germanics: (and Caesar Belgae # all Belgae) - in fact history of Celts and Germanics begun before Caesar, and Caesar constated with more or less accuracy what was occurring in his time. 
> I suppose the mix occurred a bit later, when celts had definetly lost their previous military superiority.


caesar said his grandfather told him these facts, Caesar just stated them

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## bicicleur

> caesar said his grandfather told him these facts, Caesar just stated them


there is no proof Caesar ever has been in Belgium himself

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## bicicleur

> Caesar was not a linguist and Belgae were not a mix AT FIRST - but the inhabitant of what begun the "Belgia" of Romans was inhabited by a majority of Celts tribes and a minority of Germanics tribes. Celtic place names were stated very far North in germany (at least Hessen). The very term of Germans given by Caesar is a easy solution to name an imbrication of tribes of several kinds, their common quality being they were not submitted to the Empire. by the way, the less dubious etymology of the term "german" is a celtic one! The Rhine limes cannot help us to figure out with precision which people were on the other side. SO Caesar's Germans # all Germanics: (and Caesar Belgae # all Belgae) - in fact history of Celts and Germanics begun before Caesar, and Caesar constated with more or less accuracy what was occurring in his time. 
> I suppose the mix occurred a bit later, when celts had definetly lost their previous military superiority.


the southward push of the German tribes was allready going on before Julius Ceasar
the Romans actually stopped this movement for a few centuries till presure became to big
for a few decades they even occupied big parts of Germany, till they were beaten by Arminius in 9 AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius
Arminius lured 3 legions into a forest and no Roman ever returned from that forest
later Germanicus tried to reconquer Germany, but his campaigns were not a big succes and to costly for the Roman treasury

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## Twilight

> caesar said his grandfather told him these facts, Caesar just stated them





> there is no proof Caesar ever has been in Belgium himself


I don't know, I could totally see a Roman elder like Senetor Julius II telling tall tales to his Grandchildren Emperor Julius Ceaser. However Gaius Julius Ceasar II acquired the information is quite an enigma. Senetor Julius II seems like a humble man for not much of his careers was written down and recorded.

This maybe a little off subject but I think this would be good to test Julius Ceaser's honesty. If we are going to prove that Emperor Julius Ceaser was being honest or not, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to check out his Ydna. If Julius Ceaser has a Anatolian Haplogroup, then there is at least some substance that Julius was descended from "real life" Venus' Grandson; alas not trying to make up stories for the sake of bolstering Julius' claim to the throne.

In a nutshell, I'm not sure if Ceaser's Grandfather was either telling tall tales or Ceaser's method of bolstering his claim to the throne.
*
Source:
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.181; Broughton, MRR1, p. 437.
** Badian 2009, p. 15*

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## Angela

> I don't know, I could totally see a Roman elder like Senetor Julius II telling tall tales to his Grandchildren Emperor Julius Ceaser. However Gaius Julius Ceasar II acquired the information is quite an enigma. Senetor Julius II seems like a humble man for not much of his careers was written down and recorded.
> 
> This maybe a little off subject but I think this would be good to test Julius Ceaser's honesty. If we are going to prove that Emperor Julius Ceaser was being honest or not, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to check out his Ydna. If Julius Ceaser has a Anatolian Haplogroup, then there is at least some substance that Julius was descended from "real life" Venus' Grandson; alas not trying to make up stories for the sake of bolstering Julius' claim to the throne.
> 
> In a nutshell, I'm not sure if Ceaser's Grandfather was either telling tall tales or Ceaser's method of bolstering his claim to the throne.
> *
> Source:
> Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.181; Broughton, MRR1, p. 437.
> ** Badian 2009, p. 15*


I'm not quite getting this. Who says we know what yDna the Trojans carried? I've seen speculation that some of the levels might have been settled by steppe people. Plus, even if they weren't, and we could prove they carried J2a, for example, there was J2a in Europe by 4500 BC in the transition from the mid-to-late Neolithic. E-V13 was there too. What if he carried one of those? Could we get sufficient subclade resolution that we could figure out when his particular line arrived in Italy?

Plus, it's all academic anyway as we don't have his skeleton and are unlikely ever to get it. If we're ever able to test some Roman remains I'll be very surprised if it's all one y Dna line.

I think what has to be kept in mind is that the Romans were jumped up shepherds before they took on the Greeks, and the Carthaginians and the Celts and everyone else. They needed an illustrious ancestry. The Trojans were about as illustrious as you could get if you weren't Greek. 

The English did a similar thing, claiming descent from Brutus and the Trojans . No doubt feeling left out, the Scots said they were descended from a Greek prince and his Egyptian wife Scota, who brought with her the Stone of Destiny. I don't think anyone uses that as evidence for what yDna the English and Scots Kings carried. Of course, the Aeneid deserves a little more attention since the genes had been flowing from Anatolia into Europe since the early Neolithic, so it wouldn't be totally outlandish.

As for how many Celts Caesar killed or enslaved I would assume that some exaggeration was involved. However, historians don't rely only on the statements of the participants. Plus, he must have gotten a lot of booty and sold a lot of slaves, because he went from being a relatively poor man to one who has incredibly wealthy, a wealth that he liberally bestowed on the Roman populace, which accounts for some, at least, of his popularity, and likewise for the loathing and distrust of the patricians.

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## Twilight

> I'm not quite getting this. Who says we know what yDna the Trojans carried? I've seen speculation that some of the levels might have been settled by steppe people. Plus, even if they weren't, and we could prove they carried J2a, for example, there was J2a in Europe by 4500 BC in the transition from the mid-to-late Neolithic. E-V13 was there too. What if he carried one of those? Could we get sufficient subclade resolution that we could figure out when his particular line arrived in Italy?
> 
> Plus, it's all academic anyway as we don't have his skeleton and are unlikely ever to get it. If we're ever able to test some Roman remains I'll be very surprised if it's all one y Dna line.


I figured, if the Trojans or Ceasar's remains are impossible to find then it's okay :) It was worth a shot. It was an honesty test at best. But good to know that kings made outlandish ancestry claims.




> I think what has to be kept in mind is that the Romans were jumped up shepherds before they took on the Greeks, and the Carthaginians and the Celts and everyone else. They needed an illustrious ancestry. The Trojans were about as illustrious as you could get if you weren't Greek. 
> 
> The English did a similar thing, claiming descent from Brutus and the Trojans . No doubt feeling left out, the Scots said they were descended from a Greek prince and his Egyptian wife Scota, who brought with her the Stone of Destiny. I don't think anyone uses that as evidence for what yDna the English and Scots Kings carried. Of course, the Aeneid deserves a little more attention since the genes had been flowing from Anatolia into Europe since the early Neolithic, so it wouldn't be totally outlandish.
> 
> As for how many Celts Caesar killed or enslaved I would assume that some exaggeration was involved. However, historians don't rely only on the statements of the participants. Plus, he must have gotten a lot of booty and sold a lot of slaves, because he went from being a relatively poor man to one who has incredibly wealthy, a wealth that he liberally bestowed on the Roman populace, which accounts for some, at least, of his popularity, and likewise for the loathing and distrust of the patricians.


 I'm still con-puzzled how Roman Upperclassmen would be able to track to Gaul without much documentation and then suddenly mention his trip to young Julius Ceasar.

Here are Ceasar's Granddaddies 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius...consul_119_BC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus...mus_Messalinus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_...lius_Caesar_II

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## Angela

> caesar said his grandfather told him these facts, Caesar just stated them


Could you please provide a quote for this proposition? Which facts, and about which area of Gaul? 

Caesar was all over Gaul and as a good general would, was, I'm sure, collecting information from all sorts of sources about not only places with which he had no personal experience, but even places where he waged war.

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## Sile

> Could you please provide a quote for this proposition? Which facts, and about which area of Gaul? 
> 
> Caesar was all over Gaul and as a good general would, was, I'm sure, collecting information from all sorts of sources about not only places with which he had no personal experience, but even places where he waged war.


https://books.google.com.au/books?id...belgae&f=false

p196



De bello Gallico ....quote 2.4.1


and here is another quote
*Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.
*All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third

this quote agrees with the documentary ...............so south-france was not celtic , same as documnetary

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## Angela

> https://books.google.com.au/books?id...belgae&f=false
> 
> p196
> 
> 
> 
> De bello Gallico ....quote 2.4.1
> 
> 
> ...



That isn't what I asked. I asked for documentation of the fact that Caesar's knowledge came by way of his grandfather and not through his actual experiences in the Gallic Wars.

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## Fire Haired14

What's so special about Ceasar? If you went back 200 years his ancestors were ordinary people. He wasn't apart of an old royal family, he was an ordinary person who's family recently got powerful. Sampling anyone else who lived around Rome in circa 50 BC would be as interesting as getting his DNA.

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## Angela

> What's so special about Ceasar? If you went back 200 years his ancestors were ordinary people. He wasn't apart of an old royal family, he was an ordinary person who's family recently got powerful. Sampling anyone else who lived around Rome in circa 50 BC would be as interesting as getting his DNA.


What's special about him as a man? A lot. Just like there was a lot special about Augustus, and Mark Anthony, and Cleopatra, and Cicero, or the Gracchi, or Hannibal or Alexander, or Vercingetorrix, or Boudicca, for that matter. You don't have to like these people or like everything they did to be curious about them.

What's special about his dna (or that of the others)? A lot, if we could ever get hold of it. I'd love for scientists to be able to tell us in depth about a lot of famous people in history and how their genetic profile might have affected who they became. I have a whole list in addition to the ones above: Lorenzo de Medici, a lot of the great Italian Renaissance thinkers, writers and artists, Verdi, Puccini, then onto to the great men of the U.S., Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and on and on. It's natural. I'm sure everyone would have a unique list.

If all you care about is the yDna and mtDna because your only interest is the Indo-Europeans and who is and who is not descended from them, then I suppose a representative sample from the Republican Era would do. You would have to get patrician dna, however, as well as plebeian dna and make sure it wasn't from foreign merchants, servants etc. Caesar's would come in handy there, as the family was patrician.

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## bicicleur

> I'm not quite getting this. Who says we know what yDna the Trojans carried? I've seen speculation that some of the levels might have been settled by steppe people. Plus, even if they weren't, and we could prove they carried J2a, for example, there was J2a in Europe by 4500 BC in the transition from the mid-to-late Neolithic. E-V13 was there too. What if he carried one of those? Could we get sufficient subclade resolution that we could figure out when his particular line arrived in Italy?
> 
> Plus, it's all academic anyway as we don't have his skeleton and are unlikely ever to get it. If we're ever able to test some Roman remains I'll be very surprised if it's all one y Dna line.
> 
> I think what has to be kept in mind is that the Romans were jumped up shepherds before they took on the Greeks, and the Carthaginians and the Celts and everyone else. They needed an illustrious ancestry. The Trojans were about as illustrious as you could get if you weren't Greek. 
> 
> The English did a similar thing, claiming descent from Brutus and the Trojans . No doubt feeling left out, the Scots said they were descended from a Greek prince and his Egyptian wife Scota, who brought with her the Stone of Destiny. I don't think anyone uses that as evidence for what yDna the English and Scots Kings carried. Of course, the Aeneid deserves a little more attention since the genes had been flowing from Anatolia into Europe since the early Neolithic, so it wouldn't be totally outlandish.
> 
> As for how many Celts Caesar killed or enslaved I would assume that some exaggeration was involved. However, historians don't rely only on the statements of the participants. Plus, he must have gotten a lot of booty and sold a lot of slaves, because he went from being a relatively poor man to one who has incredibly wealthy, a wealth that he liberally bestowed on the Roman populace, which accounts for some, at least, of his popularity, and likewise for the loathing and distrust of the patricians.


afaik the story about Aenas being of Trojan descend and being the forefathers of the Romans is a totaly fabricated story
Virgil wrote this story at a time Rome was at war with the Greeks and Rome could by no means justify this war
that is why this story was invented

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## Fire Haired14

Of course I know Ceasar is an important person in history. What I'm saying is genetically speaking he was normal for his region and era. It's interesting to learn about the genetic background of famous people but they aren't differnt from other non-famous people in their ethnic groups. So, I don't see the point behind getting his DNA instead of another Roman, besides the stuff Ceasar did in his life which has nothing to do with his ancestry(besides recent geneaology).

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## bicicleur

> https://books.google.com.au/books?id...belgae&f=false
> 
> p196
> 
> 
> 
> De bello Gallico ....quote 2.4.1
> 
> 
> ...


de bello Gallico wasn't writen by Julius Ceasar himself, he hired some ghostwriters for that
and the purpose was not to inform the Romans about the Gauls
his motiviation was to convince the Romans that he was doing a good job for them in Gaul + self-glorification and image buidling

I've read some speaches of Cicero who I was told was one of the best orators eveer
I was not impressed by the skills of the orator, I was surprised how much succes he had with his unproven insinuations he made about his oponents
his public, the Romans must have been a very ill-informed and a very naive bunch

you can imagine how ill-informed and naive other people were

and as for the Bello Gallico, how much we ever should distrust this information, it is still better than no info at all

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## bicicleur

> I'm not quite getting this. Who says we know what yDna the Trojans carried? I've seen speculation that some of the levels might have been settled by steppe people. Plus, even if they weren't, and we could prove they carried J2a, for example, there was J2a in Europe by 4500 BC in the transition from the mid-to-late Neolithic. E-V13 was there too. What if he carried one of those? Could we get sufficient subclade resolution that we could figure out when his particular line arrived in Italy?
> 
> Plus, it's all academic anyway as we don't have his skeleton and are unlikely ever to get it. If we're ever able to test some Roman remains I'll be very surprised if it's all one y Dna line.
> 
> I think what has to be kept in mind is that the Romans were jumped up shepherds before they took on the Greeks, and the Carthaginians and the Celts and everyone else. They needed an illustrious ancestry. The Trojans were about as illustrious as you could get if you weren't Greek. 
> 
> The English did a similar thing, claiming descent from Brutus and the Trojans . No doubt feeling left out, the Scots said they were descended from a Greek prince and his Egyptian wife Scota, who brought with her the Stone of Destiny. I don't think anyone uses that as evidence for what yDna the English and Scots Kings carried. Of course, the Aeneid deserves a little more attention since the genes had been flowing from Anatolia into Europe since the early Neolithic, so it wouldn't be totally outlandish.
> 
> As for how many Celts Caesar killed or enslaved I would assume that some exaggeration was involved. However, historians don't rely only on the statements of the participants. Plus, he must have gotten a lot of booty and sold a lot of slaves, because he went from being a relatively poor man to one who has incredibly wealthy, a wealth that he liberally bestowed on the Roman populace, which accounts for some, at least, of his popularity, and likewise for the loathing and distrust of the patricians.


Caesar was not only involved in the war against the Gauls, he was involved in wars his whole carreer.
I've read once he was estimated to be responsable for the death of 20 million people.
That may be highly exaggerated, but he was a big butcher for sure, with very little scrupules.
There was no reason at all to invade Gaul except that it gave him a big boost for his carreer.
I respect much more someone like Vercingetorix who at least was trying to defend his own people.
But I know, these were other times and other morals ..

----------


## Angela

> Caesar was not only involved in the war against the Gauls, he was involved in wars his whole carreer.
> I've read once he was estimated to be responsable for the death of 20 million people.
> That may be highly exaggerated, but he was a big butcher for sure, with very little scrupules.
> There was no reason at all to invade Gaul except that it gave him a big boost for his carreer.
> I respect much more someone like Vercingetorix who at least was trying to defend his own people.
> But I know, these were other times and other morals ..


I don't agree that the morals of nation states are so different now in most cases. Why did Germany attack Russia barely sixty years ago? Might it have had something to do with all that nice flat land where they hoped to settle industrious German farmers? Well, after they put all the Slavs into the ovens, or starved them or whatever first. 

I think greed and the desire to loot had a big part to play in the decision to invade both the Eastern European and Western European countries. They carted away millions of pieces of art as well as the gold reserves of every country they invaded. Manufactured goods as well, and the best of the agricultural products.

Why did Belgium take over the Congo, or France big chunks of North Africa, or Italy Eritrea and parts of Ethiopia for a while? Going back into French history, why did the French so eagerly follow Napoleon in all his exploits?

Or, why did the Spanish take over huge parts of the New World?

Everyone is so enamored of the Indo-Europeans. How did their yDna come to dominate Europe? With a please, and a thank-you, and a by your leave? How did the Celts come to dominate Gaul, for that matter? How many of the prior inhabitants did they kill?

In the case of Caesar personal motivations for wealth and glory played a part, I'm sure, as it plays a part in the goals of all "conquerors". Wasn't it said of Alexander that when he got to India he wept because there were no more lands to conquer?

The fact remains, however, that there were other considerations. I think you're forgetting a little thing like the Celtic invasions of Italy. Both the Celts and the Romans were jostling for supremacy, as were the Greeks and the Etruscans and the Carthaginians. I won't go into more detail as it's a bit off topic, but see...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallic_Wars

 
The reality of all these historical events is complicated, and one best approaches that reality if one tries not to see everything through the prism of one's own ethnicity. It's difficult not to do that, but it can be done, and it's essential, in my opinion, if one wishes to approach the material with integrity.

----------


## LeBrok

> I don't agree that the morals of nation states are so different now in most cases. Why did Germany attack Russia barely sixty years ago? Might it have had something to do with all that nice flat land where they hoped to settle industrious German farmers? Well, after they put all the Slavs into the ovens, or starved them or whatever first. 
> 
> I think greed and the desire to loot had a big part to play in the decision to invade both the Eastern European and Western European countries. They carted away millions of pieces of art as well as the gold reserves of every country they invaded. Manufactured goods as well, and the best of the agricultural products.
> 
> Why did Belgium take over the Congo, or France big chunks of North Africa, or Italy Eritrea and parts of Ethiopia for a while? Going back into French history, why did the French so eagerly follow Napoleon in all his exploits?
> 
> Or, why did the Spanish take over huge parts of the New World?
> 
> Everyone is so enamored of the Indo-Europeans. How did their yDna come to dominate Europe? With a please, and a thank-you, and a by your leave? How did the Celts come to dominate Gaul, for that matter? How many of the prior inhabitants did they kill?
> ...


Spot on Angela. Should we mention that men are wired for war. Give young guys weapons and a reason to fight. Forget a reason, give them weapons and they will invent a reason to use them.

----------


## Maleth

> What's so special about Ceasar? If you went back 200 years *his ancestors were ordinary people*. He wasn't apart of an old royal family, he was an ordinary person who's family recently got powerful. Sampling anyone else who lived around Rome in circa 50 BC would be as interesting as getting his DNA.


Well that is exactly what was special, the same pattern we have today. Most leaders and prominent people these days are the sons and daughters of ordinary folks visa vi to the other status quo of having Monarchs (a form of dictatorship no?). Today's Monarchs are only puppet like anyway as the ancient model is not compatible with our system of democracy. Like it or not, good or bad, Rome has presented a model (a continuation of the Greek) similar to what we have to day.

----------


## Maleth

> I don't agree that the morals of nation states are so different now in most cases. Why did Germany attack Russia barely sixty years ago? Might it have had something to do with all that nice flat land where they hoped to settle industrious German farmers? Well, after they put all the Slavs into the ovens, or starved them or whatever first. 
> 
> I think greed and the desire to loot had a big part to play in the decision to invade both the Eastern European and Western European countries. They carted away millions of pieces of art as well as the gold reserves of every country they invaded. Manufactured goods as well, and the best of the agricultural products.
> 
> Why did Belgium take over the Congo, or France big chunks of North Africa, or Italy Eritrea and parts of Ethiopia for a while? Going back into French history, why did the French so eagerly follow Napoleon in all his exploits?
> 
> Or, why did the Spanish take over huge parts of the New World?
> 
> Everyone is so enamored of the Indo-Europeans. How did their yDna come to dominate Europe? With a please, and a thank-you, and a by your leave? How did the Celts come to dominate Gaul, for that matter? How many of the prior inhabitants did they kill?
> ...


and not to forget the genocides in Africa, they were neither Roman or Celts, and to be fair anyway for historical correctness, it was the ferocious Celtic attacks from the North that prompted Rome to Unite and defend itself, and it seems they did much more then that. ;)

----------


## bicicleur

so Julius Caesar was Hitler
or was it Hitler trying to be Julius Caesar?

----------


## Maleth

> so Julius Caesar was Hitler
> or was it Hitler trying to be Julius Caesar?


A very big difference bicicleur, Hitler was based on Race, Ceaser had a much more inclusive empire and generals were not promoted according to race but anyone 'romanised' irrelevant of their race had same privileges. And so was Alexander the great prior to the rise of the Romans. Its was also known for Roman legions to have had African generals, defiantly not something that Hitler would find fit to do. Big difference

----------


## bicicleur

> A very big difference bicicleur, Hitler was based on Race, Ceaser had a much more inclusive empire and generals were not promoted according to race but anyone 'romanised' irrelevant of their race had same privileges. And so was Alexander the great prior to the rise of the Romans. Its was also known for Roman legions to have had African generals, defiantly not something that Hitler would find fit to do. Big difference


yes racism is a difference

but both tried to create an empire
and Caesar was more pragmatic

if Caesar organised a revenge raid and you just happened to live in the wrong village, you had bad luck
he slaughtered whole tribes
all in all Caesar commited much more homicides

and it continued till after emperor Nero

after Sulla et al, Rome was a derailed society
and so was Germany after WW I and the Great Depression

but to me my point remains,
it is hard to compare then with what happened in recent times

with what society today would you compare the Celts then?

----------


## Angela

> so Julius Caesar was Hitler
> or was it Hitler trying to be Julius Caesar?


I really can't believe that's a serious question. Or, from your response to Maleth, that you think Caesar killed, or wanted to kill, more people than Hitler.

Warfare has been a constant in human history down to the present day. I may deplore it, but it's a fact. Probably, to get rid of it, we'd have to get rid of men. I'd personally be sorry to see that happen even if we could solve the procreation issue, but there you have it. Any acquaintance with the philosophy of Hobbes? 

Even when talking about war, however, there are differences. Alexander, and Caesar/Augustus, if you want to broaden it out, and even, say, Napoleon, can't be equated with Hitler. They were garden variety conquerors. Once you submitted to their hegemony, as Maleth pointed out, you could accrue all the benefits of the culture or empire on an equal footing with the invaders. In the case of Greece, you became a Hellene, in the case of Rome you became a "Roman". So long as you paid your taxes and didn't revolt, you had all the benefits of the Empire. That's what happened to some of my ancestors, the Celt-Ligurians. Under Napoleon, you got all the reforms that had been introduced with the French Revolution, except for actual democracy, of course. 

For a comparison to Hitler you'd have to use someone like Genghis Khan (new biography out on him, which is very interesting), who wanted the steppe cleared of people so that there would be lots of nice pasture land for their herds. Maybe Tamerlane is a good example too. They wanted to *exterminate* the people they conquered, not just become overlords. We even have more modern examples of that in Europe, with the war in Kosovo, and its "ethnic cleansing" and the use of rape as a weapon of war.

As for the Celts, I would think that their goal when they invaded Italy starting in the first millennium BC, even sacking Rome itself in 390 BC, was sometimes to raid and plunder, and sometimes was to grab some land and become overlords, as was the case with the Greeks, and the Carthaginians, and the Romans. How did they wind up all over northern Italy, otherwise? However, they didn't exterminate the people in the lands they conquered, as can be seen in Liguria, for example. They mingled with them.

The ancestors of the Celts, or those of their ancestors who were Indo-Europeans, might have been a different story. Were the Indo-Europeans just wandering shepherds fleeing drying conditions on the steppe who happened to bring the plague along with them when they encountered the Neolithic Europeans who were already weakened by famine in the relatively sparsely populated northern areas of Europe? Or, were they horse riding hordes who ruthlessly butchered as many of the indigenous men as they could, those who hadn't already succumbed to famine and plague, that is? 

I would prefer, given I have _some_ of their ancestry, even if not a lot, the former. Others either just think the latter happened, or positively relish the idea, as they made clear before they were trying to get accepted as quasi-academic researchers.

The jury is still out, don't you think? Although, I find it very suspicious that the mtDna lines survived quite well, but the ylines were almost wiped out.

----------


## Angela

Razib Khan discusses this, along with a lot more, in this blog post.
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/fires-in-the.../#new_comments

----------


## Aaron1981

> and not to forget the genocides in Africa, they were neither Roman or Celts, and to be fair anyway for historical correctness, it was the ferocious Celtic attacks from the North that prompted Rome to Unite and defend itself, and it seems they did much more then that. ;)


I'm pretty sure that is incorrect. It was northern Europe defending itself against southern empires. It's always been that way. For example - romanized Britain? Are you suggesting this was originally their territory? It's like me suggesting North America was initially settled by the British 17,000 years ago, or that west Africans were "workers" in America rather than slaves.

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## Twilight

> so Julius Caesar was Hitler
> or was it Hitler trying to be Julius Caesar?


Im confused, what does Hitler have to do with the ancient Celts?????





> https://books.google.com.au/books?id...belgae&f=false
> 
> p196
> 
> 
> 
> De bello Gallico ....quote 2.4.1
> 
> 
> ...





> That isn't what I asked. I asked for documentation of the fact that Caesar's knowledge came by way of his grandfather and not through his actual experiences in the Gallic Wars.


That doesn't answer the question I'm sorry to say. Let me reitterate the question again.



> How can a Roman Upperclassmen be able to track to Gaul without much documentation and then suddenly mention his trip to young Julius Ceasar.
> 
> Here are Ceasar's Granddaddies 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius...consul_119_BC)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus...mus_Messalinus
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_...lius_Caesar_II


I apologize in advance, I understand that the Aneas story is likely fabricated for personal gains although there are certain points in the Gallic Wars that still confuses me. :Sad: 



> I figured, if the Trojans or Ceasar's remains are impossible to find then it's okay :) It was worth a shot. It was an honesty test at best. But good to know that kings made outlandish ancestry claims.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm still con-puzzled how Roman Upperclassmen would be able to track to Gaul without much documentation and then suddenly mention his trip to young Julius Ceasar.
> 
> Here are Ceasar's Granddaddies 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius...consul_119_BC)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus...mus_Messalinus
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_...lius_Caesar_II

----------


## bicicleur

> I really can't believe that's a serious question. Or, from your response to Maleth, that you think Caesar killed, or wanted to kill, more people than Hitler.
> 
> Warfare has been a constant in human history down to the present day. I may deplore it, but it's a fact. Probably, to get rid of it, we'd have to get rid of men. I'd personally be sorry to see that happen even if we could solve the procreation issue, but there you have it. Any acquaintance with the philosophy of Hobbes? 
> 
> Even when talking about war, however, there are differences. Alexander, and Caesar/Augustus, if you want to broaden it out, and even, say, Napoleon, can't be equated with Hitler. They were garden variety conquerors. Once you submitted to their hegemony, as Maleth pointed out, you could accrue all the benefits of the culture or empire on an equal footing with the invaders. In the case of Greece, you became a Hellene, in the case of Rome you became a "Roman". So long as you paid your taxes and didn't revolt, you had all the benefits of the Empire. That's what happened to some of my ancestors, the Celt-Ligurians. Under Napoleon, you got all the reforms that had been introduced with the French Revolution, except for actual democracy, of course. 
> 
> For a comparison to Hitler you'd have to use someone like Genghis Khan (new biography out on him, which is very interesting), who wanted the steppe cleared of people so that there would be lots of nice pasture land for their herds. Maybe Tamerlane is a good example too. They wanted to *exterminate* the people they conquered, not just become overlords. We even have more modern examples of that in Europe, with the war in Kosovo, and its "ethnic cleansing" and the use of rape as a weapon of war.
> 
> As for the Celts, I would think that their goal when they invaded Italy starting in the first millennium BC, even sacking Rome itself in 390 BC, was sometimes to raid and plunder, and sometimes was to grab some land and become overlords, as was the case with the Greeks, and the Carthaginians, and the Romans. How did they wind up all over northern Italy, otherwise? However, they didn't exterminate the people in the lands they conquered, as can be seen in Liguria, for example. They mingled with them.
> ...


of course the question doesn't make sense

it is what I told before : these were other times with other morals

but invading a country and killing 1/3 of the population

and therefore being admired and celebrated by all Romans

I simply can't grasp it, 
but then I've never lived in their world

----------


## Fire Haired14

> of course the question doesn't make sense
> 
> it is what I told before : these were other times with other morals
> 
> but invading a country and killing 1/3 of the population
> 
> and therefore being admired and celebrated by all Romans
> 
> I simply can't grasp it, 
> but then I've never lived in their world


It makes total sense. Just as people like destroying a rival sports team, but instead it involved killing a million of them :). It was a more primitive back then.

----------


## Maleth

> I'm pretty sure that is incorrect. It was northern Europe defending itself against southern empires. It's always been that way. For example - romanized Britain? Are you suggesting this was originally their territory? It's like me suggesting North America was initially settled by the British 17,000 years ago, or that west Africans were "workers" in America rather than slaves.


Not really.....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle...ery_and_reform, the south to North invasions came later and as a result.

----------


## Twilight

> What's special about him as a man? A lot. Just like there was a lot special about Augustus, and Mark Anthony, and Cleopatra, and Cicero, or the Gracchi, or Hannibal or Alexander, or Vercingetorrix, or Boudicca, for that matter. You don't have to like these people or like everything they did to be curious about them.
> 
> What's special about his dna (or that of the others)? A lot, if we could ever get hold of it. I'd love for scientists to be able to tell us in depth about a lot of famous people in history and how their genetic profile might have affected who they became. I have a whole list in addition to the ones above: Lorenzo de Medici, a lot of the great Italian Renaissance thinkers, writers and artists, Verdi, Puccini, then onto to the great men of the U.S., Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and on and on. It's natural. I'm sure everyone would have a unique list.
> 
> If all you care about is the yDna and mtDna because your only interest is the Indo-Europeans and who is and who is not descended from them, then I suppose a representative sample from the Republican Era would do. You would have to get patrician dna, however, as well as plebeian dna and make sure it wasn't from foreign merchants, servants etc. Caesar's would come in handy there, as the family was patrician.





> of course the question doesn't make sense
> 
> it is what I told before : these were other times with other morals
> 
> but invading a country and killing 1/3 of the population
> 
> and therefore being admired and celebrated by all Romans
> 
> I simply can't grasp it, 
> but then I've never lived in their world


The big difference is that Julius Ceaser won the Gallic Wars and Hitler lost WWII. It's animalia instincts that the more powerful is more "just and worthy to rule" than the loser, no matter how immoral the victor was behaving.

Another difference is that Hitler just showed the world that attacking a race off the face of the earth is no way to glorify yourself. Ceaser and the Romans just conquered civilizations and converted the natives to their "civilization", alas diluting their Italic genes over time.
I hope this helps :)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nrW7PLvCQ9k

----------


## Angela

> Not really.....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle...ery_and_reform, the south to North invasions came later and as a result.


Maleth, are we dating ourselves? :) Do they no longer teach ancient history in European schools, or American schools, for that matter? I've lamented before that American universities, even the most prestigious ones, no longer require students to take Western Civilization courses. I should inquire what is happening in Europe now.

Still, I don't understand how one can discuss population genetics in a vacuum without knowing anything about the culture and history of the peoples involved. 

The books are there, or chapters in books, for those interested. There are whole books on the Celtic invasions alone. They even wound up in Central Anatolia, for goodness' sakes. They dominated the north of Italy and then struck south to take over lands south of the Po, eventually attacking and sacking Rome itself, as you link explains.

For those who don't have sufficient interest, this is a sort of cheat sheet, summary of their invasions as pertains to Italy.
https://www.skidmore.edu/academics/classics/body.html




> Fire-Haired: It makes total sense. Just as people like destroying a rival sports team, but instead it involved killing a million of them :). It was a more primitive back then.


Well, somebody is paying attention in history class. :) At least it isn't news to _you_ that empire followed empire for all of human history as soon as societies were sophisticated enough to _have_ empires. Before that it was loosely grouped bands of pastoralists attacking farming settlements, or one farming settlement against another, or one group of hunter-gatherers against another one, or even brother against brother. Strike a chord? The more scarce the resources, the more violent the conflicts. It wasn't always just about resources either. Sometimes, and perhaps increasingly as time went on, it was about glory, prestige, the accumulation of luxury goods. 

I would only quarrel with your implication that this only happened thousands of years ago, and Europeans are now much too civilized for this kind of behavior. Imperialism, the conquest of the Congo, North Africa, South Africa, India, and on and on only ended after World War II. It happened sixty years ago with the Nazis, and twenty-five years ago in Kosovo, and in those cases they didn't just want conquest and the attendant glory, and booty, and power, to be followed by incorporation of the conquered countries. They wanted to exterminate them.

I also don't quite understand how an attempt to clarify what has happened in human history up until the present means that one _approves_ of the behavior one is describing. 




> Originally Posted by *Twilight*  
> How can a Roman Upperclassmen be able to track to Gaul without much documentation and then suddenly mention his trip to young Julius Ceasar.


I asked for documentation that there are historical sources which clearly state that Caesar only learned about the Belgae from a grandparent instead of, as we would expect, his own experience and the intelligence that was brought to him. If it didn't happen in the first place, I didn't think it was necessary to go into much detail. If your question is would it have been possible for a Roman to travel into Gaul, yes, of course it was possible. As for why we might not have a record of it, we don't have records for a lot of what happened in Republican or even Imperial Rome. There was this little thing called the Germanic invasions. The Forum became a cow pasture. Thousands of scrolls were lost. The only reason we have what we have is because a few were saved by the Church, and there were some copies in the east which were saved by the eastern Empire and the Arabs, and "rediscovered" during the Renaissance.

I'm sorry to say it but your statement that Hitler only looks worse because he lost is just nonsense revisionism, in my opinion. It all happened within living memory; I've spoken to the survivors, some in my own family. We know exactly what went on. Obviously, we have to rely on other kinds of evidence for empires of the past, but still, we know there was a difference between Alexander and Caesar on the one hand, and Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, and yes, indeed, Hitler, on the other. There is absolutely no doubt about it.

----------


## bicicleur

'converting the natives' ?

tell me how it was done

----------


## Angela

For those who still have questions about the incorporation of conquered territories, and the "Romanization" of various peoples, perhaps I could suggest picking up one of the hundreds if not thousands of volumes on the subject. 

I'm afraid that due to time restraints I find myself unable to summarize and regurgitate the vast amount of material just for the purposes of this thread.

----------


## Twilight

> Maleth, are we dating ourselves? :) Do they no longer teach ancient history in European schools, or American schools, for that matter? I've lamented before that American universities, even the most prestigious ones, no longer require students to take Western Civilization courses. I should inquire what is happening in Europe now.
> 
> Still, I don't understand how one can discuss population genetics in a vacuum without knowing anything about the culture and history of the peoples involved. 
> 
> The books are there, or chapters in books, for those interested. There are whole books on the Celtic invasions alone. They even wound up in Central Anatolia, for goodness' sakes. They dominated the north of Italy and then struck south to take over lands south of the Po, eventually attacking and sacking Rome itself, as you link explains.
> 
> For those who don't have sufficient interest, this is a sort of cheat sheet, summary of their invasions as pertains to Italy.
> https://www.skidmore.edu/academics/classics/body.html
> 
> ...


well that went way out of proportion, just losing is not the only reason that I stated with all do respect and off course losing isn't the only reason. Eliminating every last man woman and child is not the way to glorify yourself. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the Jews and my Mother's maiden name is even Jewish. However trying to wipe out an entire race is not only plain wrong on Hitler's part but damaging to Hitler's surviving family. 

Ceaser on on the other hand accepting the natives once they converted to "civilized life" I apologize if it came out that way.

I don't recall ever getting a Gallic Wars book in school but please feel free to explain the illustrated teaching. Do you know where I can find these books? Come to think of it, there is a lot of info the text books hide from us but my reasons goes into a whole another subject. :)

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## Twilight

> 'converting the natives' ?
> 
> tell me how it was done


The Gauls were Romanized instead of being put into death camps.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_(cultural)

Julius Ceaser vs Hitler

The difference between Julius Ceaser and Hitler is the point to being a good conquer is to win the souls and minds of many not attempt to exterminate them to oblivion and have the world of angry elephants against you. Hitler broke the rules of a good ruler 1,2,3. 

Granted, Verbcengeterix won the hearts and minds of many Gauls also so granted hearts and minds are not enough.

----------


## bicicleur

> The Gauls were Romanized instead of being put into death camps.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_(cultural)
> 
> Julius Ceaser vs Hitler
> 
> The difference between Julius Ceaser and Hitler is the point to being a good conquer is to win the souls and minds of many not attempt to exterminate them to oblivion and have the world of angry elephants against you. Hitler broke the rules of a good ruler 1,2,3. 
> 
> Granted, Verbcengeterix won the hearts and minds of many Gauls also so granted hearts and minds are not enough.


many Celts prefered to commit suicide over getting captured by the Romans
in most cases there were 2 possibilities : get killed or being sold on the slave markets
only the next generations were 'Romanised'
being Romanised often meant being at the mercy of corrupt tax collectors
the Romans didn't invest in winning their hearts, they simply didn't leave them an alternative

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## bicicleur

I agree animalia instincts played a big role in the Gallic war and many others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrW7PLvCQ9k&app=desktop
But IMO greed was the main driver. It was a greedy and shrude man (Caesar) stirring up these animalia instincts.

As for 'Romanisation', you can find my opinion in the previous post.

For the Nazi's, the Mongols and the Bosnian war, and so many others, I agree there was something more going on : the goal to exterminate some percieved enemy.
How does some perception like that come about? The people feel they are threatened or maybe just marginalised and some leaders adress that feeling. They create a scapegoat.
I suppose it is uncommon in nature, but I've seen a documentary about a clan of apes trying to kill and exterminate some other clan without any obvious reason.

In all cases there is no easy and straightforward explanation for the motives and causes of war.

----------


## peccavi

> I'm sorry to say it but your statement that Hitler only looks worse because he lost is just nonsense revisionism, in my opinion. It all happened within living memory; I've spoken to the survivors, some in my own family. We know exactly what went on. Obviously, we have to rely on other kinds of evidence for empires of the past, but still, we know there was a difference between Alexander and Caesar on the one hand, and Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, and yes, indeed, Hitler, on the other. There is absolutely no doubt about it.


Not so - Romans were as ruthless as the Mongols or Tamerlaine. Consider Scipio Africanus who after his victory over the Carthagians wanted every last Carthagian, man, woman and child hunted down and slaughtered. The reasoning was perfectly valid. Left to recover Cathage would seek revenge (Rome would have in the same position) and of course the Romans did completely destroy Carthage, driving a plough through the destruction when she gave signs of recovering (even though a most obedient friend). 

For Mongols and Tamerlaine, it was terror tactics - Genghis did not carry out his threat to turn China into grassland - just too much wealth but in retro-spect considering the plight of his people today under Chinese rule, mmmhhh.

Perhaps we can have more about the Celts on this thread - certainly more interesting.

----------


## bicicleur

> Not so - Romans were as ruthless as the Mongols or Tamerlaine. Consider Scipio Africanus who after his victory over the Carthagians wanted every last Carthagian, man, woman and child hunted down and slaughtered. The reasoning was perfectly valid. Left to recover Cathage would seek revenge (Rome would have in the same position) and of course the Romans did completely destroy Carthage, driving a plough through the destruction when she gave signs of recovering (even though a most obedient friend). 
> 
> For Mongols and Tamerlaine, it was terror tactics - Genghis did not carry out his threat to turn China into grassland - just too much wealth but in retro-spect considering the plight of his people today under Chinese rule, mmmhhh.
> 
> Perhaps we can have more about the Celts on this thread - certainly more interesting.


I agree, the Romans were not like Hitler or Tamerlane, but they were certainly not like Alexander the Great either.
But was the desintegration of Alexanders empire due to his early death, or was his project a fata morgana?

----------


## Angela

> I agree animalia instincts played a big role in the Gallic war and many others.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrW7PLvCQ9k&app=desktop
> But IMO greed was the main driver. It was a greedy and shrude man (Caesar) stirring up these animalia instincts.
> 
> As for 'Romanisation', you can find my opinion in the previous post.
> 
> For the Nazi's, the Mongols and the Bosnian war, and so many others, I agree there was something more going on : the goal to exterminate some percieved enemy.
> How does some perception like that come about? The people feel they are threatened or maybe just marginalised and some leaders adress that feeling. They create a scapegoat.
> I suppose it is uncommon in nature, but I've seen a documentary about a clan of apes trying to kill and exterminate some other clan without any obvious reason.
> ...


Opinions on anything, in a forum of this type, should be based on scientific, or, in this case, historical evidence. I fail to see where you have provided any such evidence.

This is "Romanization", explained in a simplified form. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. There are thousands of treatments of the subject. 
http://anthrojournal.com/issue/octob...terial-concept

As to the Celtic invasions of the first millennium, if one wasn't exposed to the material at university, there are hundreds of treatments of the subject, some in abridged form. They shouldn't be difficult to find.

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## bicicleur

look at the Aedui, so-called allies of the Romans
they were let down completely in 63 BC
yet in 58 BC it was a pretext for Caesar to invade Gaul

this is playing games
this is not the spirit of Alexander the Great

I repeat my sentence :

_But IMO greed was the main driver. It was a greedy and shrude man (Caesar) stirring up these animalia instincts.

_yes, this is an opinion and please apologize for the typos

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## MOESAN

> the southward push of the German tribes was allready going on before Julius Ceasar
> the Romans actually stopped this movement for a few centuries till presure became to big
> for a few decades they even occupied big parts of Germany, till they were beaten by Arminius in 9 AD
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius
> Arminius lured 3 legions into a forest and no Roman ever returned from that forest
> later Germanicus tried to reconquer Germany, but his campaigns were not a big succes and to costly for the Roman treasury


OK I was not debating about dates but about the affirmation Celts had never been living in lands North Bavaria and that Belgae were a mix of Celts and Germanics without nuance in these affirmations

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## Taranis

> the program at one point states the celts origin as portugal and they travelled east , but before that they migrated to britain as their bronze swords found in Britain are far older that the celtic bronze swords of Halstatt.


I wanted to comment on this. I must say, the "Celtic languages originated in what is now Portugal" scenario strikes me as completely implausible, and I say that after having reviewed John Koch's "Celtic from the West", and after having read reviews of it by other celtologists, notably Joseph Eska, who received "Celtic from the West" very negatively. In particular, an Iberian homeland for Celtic cannot account for the common innovations that it shares with the Italic languages.In my opinion, although I see severely problems with it, the Hallstatt scenario strikes me now as the most likely origin for the Celtic language, if only because it is the least bad scenario currently around.


> Also the alphabet , originally phoenician became celtinized in Portugal


No, according to Eska (2014), Tartessian (the language which Koch identified as Celtic) was an "Iberoid" language.

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## Fire Haired14

Now that Hallstatt=proto Celtic is dead there are million possibilities. Celtic and Italic's ancestors originated in the East(East-Central Europe) but Celtic could have expanded from the West.

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## bicicleur

> Now that Hallstatt=proto Celtic is dead there are million possibilities. Celtic and Italic's ancestors originated in the East(East-Central Europe) but Celtic could have expanded from the West.


from the arrival of a new type of swords it is speculated that the Goidelic speaking Celts would have arrived in England +/- 1000 BC and spread all over the British Isles

Goidelic may have been spoken all along the Atlantic
the Atlantic (and later British) Celts may have split from the continental Celts before Hallstatt

the Atlantic Celts would then have been pushed away from the continent by the La Tene Celts

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## Taranis

> Now that Hallstatt=proto Celtic is dead there are million possibilities.


There's not a "_million_" possibilities. There is a key constraint: Proto-Indo-European evolved in the east (according to the Kurgan model, in the Pontic-Caspian steppe), and this has been my key point of objection to the Celtic-from-the-West scenario.

Another point is that it assumes an unreasonable long time across which a common language (Proto-Celtic) is spoken across a huge arc (the entire Atlantic seaboard), and that these started to diversify only a thousand years later. In my opinion, the "old" Celtic languages are all rather similar to each other, and in my opinion its unlikely that Proto-Celtic broke up much earlier than the Hallstatt period. I know that people are utterly unsatified with the idea of such a "late" Celtization, because it leaves a lot unexplained, but its exactly as I said, the Hallstatt theory is the "least bad" theory out there.




> Celtic and Italic's ancestors originated in the East(East-Central Europe) but Celtic could have expanded from the West.


The only way how way for that to work out is to assume that Indo-European as a whole is far, far older and more conservative than we generally believe, which leads us to abandon the Kurgan framework altogether and look for alternatives (e.g. Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis). In my opinion, that is a ways to make Celtic-from-the-West work, because then you can for sure argue that the Neolithic societies of the Atlantic Seaboard were early speakers of Celtic, but as we all know, the Anatolian hypothesis has its own problems (too many to list here briefly), most importantly, the recent genetic evidence does not favour it.

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## Sile

The program states ( I have no opinion yet ), that basically the celts began in the west and settlement of Britain via Portugal/Galicia was over 200 years prior to the creation of halstatt in the Austrian alps ( where they have found over 5000 celtic graves so far ) 

The celtic alphabet was adapted from the phoenician alphabet


IIRC the Phoenicia settled in iberia around 2000BC

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## Diviacus

> ... and in my opinion its unlikely that Proto-Celtic broke up much earlier than the Hallstatt period.


 The fact is that most present historians think that in most part of Western and Central Europe, Celtic languages were spoken before the end of the 2nd millenium. I'm sure that there is at least one present historian thinking the contrary, but I don't have any name to provide.

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## LeBrok

> I agree animalia instincts played a big role in the Gallic war and many others.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrW7PLvCQ9k&app=desktop
> But IMO greed was the main driver. It was a greedy and shrude man (Caesar) stirring up these animalia instincts.
> .


I wouldn't include greed here as the main factor. He was rich already. He wanted power, prestige, recognition of family name, and he might love risk, war and gore on top of it.
See, if someone is already rich, he will never risk his life for few more dollars. Cesar risked his life in Gaul.

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## Taranis

> The program states ( I have no opinion yet ), that basically the celts began in the west and settlement of Britain via Portugal/Galicia was over 200 years prior to the creation of halstatt in the Austrian alps ( where they have found over 5000 celtic graves so far )


As I said before, it strikes me as implausible that you reverse the direction by which the Indo-Europeanization spread in Western Europe (west-to-east, as opposed to east-to-west), especially because this leaves it unexplained how the Celtic languages share common innovations with the Italic languages. 




> The celtic alphabet was adapted from the phoenician alphabet


There was no "_Celtic_" alphabet. If you mean the Celtiberian script, that was not an alphabet, and it was not adapted from Phoenician (it was adapted from the Iberians). If you mean the Ogham script (which was an alphabet), it was developed much later (late Antiquity), and had no direct relation with the Phoenician alphabet, either.




> IIRC the Phoenicia settled in iberia around 2000BC


There were no Phoenicians in 2000 BC. Classical Phoenicia didn't exist before the Bronze Age collapse (it formed only afterwards), and the Phoenicians didn't settle in southern Iberia until circa the 10th century BC.

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