Gels - descendants of ancient Celts

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In modern Europe, the descendants of the ancient tribes of the Celts live. They are Irish, gels in Highland Scotland, Bretons in France and Welsh in Wales. Small foci of Celtic national culture are still preserved on the Hebrides, on the Isle of Man and on the southwest ridge of the UK, the Cornwall Peninsula.

One of the branches of the descendants of the ancient Celts - gales - is a small ethnic group that now inhabits the mountainous regions of North Scotland and the Hebrides. According to some sources, today the Gaelic population has about 100 thousand people. Modern gels speak Gaelic (Scottish), but almost everyone knows English.

A bit of history

The Celts once occupied the vast territories of Western Europe. It is known, for example, that in the second millennium BC. Their lands stretched from the Rhone River in the west to the upper Danube in the east. Later the Celts settled even farther to the west. In the V-IV centuries BC. they lived on the British Isles, in the territory of present-day France, Spain, Northern Italy, the Balkan Peninsula.

In the beginning of the fourth century BC. in 390 or 387, the Celtic tribe of the Gauls conquered and burned Rome. Only in 334 the Romans managed to push the Gauls northward. In 278-277 BC. part of the Celts broke into the center of Asia Minor, forming there the state of Galatia, which lasted about 250 years.

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Celtic complex

Celts were carriers of a rather high and complex material culture. They knew how to handle metals and use their own weapons. It is noteworthy that the Celtic culture had a significant impact on the culture of the Romans themselves.

At the same time, the fragmentation of the Celtic tribes, the constant internecine wars have weakened the once formidable, militant people. The Celts, who did not have a political community, centralized state power, could not stand the double onslaught of hostile forces - the German tribes from the east and the Romans from the south. As a result, the Germans pushed aside part of the Celtic tribes beyond the Rhine. The Romans first won their northern Italy, then South Gaul, and in 58-51 BC. Julius Caesar, taking advantage of the internecine struggle of the Celtic tribes, captured all of Gaul. Most of the Celts, included in the Roman Empire, were gradually subjected to romanization.

They managed to maintain their independence only on the British Isles, and it will not last long. In the V-VI centuries AD. Anglo-Saxons moved the Celtic tribes to the outskirts of Britain, while the Celtic tribes - Britons, who inhabited some parts of Britain at that time, crossed the English Channel in the 5th century and seized the territory which, thanks to the Britons, received its present name Brittany.

The only Celtic territory, where never stepped foot of the Roman legionary, was Ireland. But even from the end of the 8th century to the end of the 10th century it was constantly ravaged by raids by Norwegian and Danish Vikings.

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Celtic Torques in the British Museum

It was from Ireland came the ancestors of modern gels. In the IV century BC. a group of ancient Celtic tribes settled in Ireland, where, mixed with the pre-Indo-European population of the island, initiated the formation of the Irish nationality. In the 5th-6th centuries AD, a part of these tribes, gales, crossed the Irish Sea and settled on the northwestern shores of Britain. From the gradual mixing of the Irish gales with the Picts, the indigenous population of the north of Britain, a new nationality, the Scots, was formed.

The Gauls steadfastly opposed the attempts of the Romans to take possession of Scotland, including during the largest Roman invasion in the III century AD. In the VII century, as a result of the invasion of the Angles and Scots, the Gaelic tribes, formerly full masters of the whole of Scotland, were gradually pushed into its northern and eastern regions. Completed the picture of the Norman conquest of the XI century. The Scottish Gaels managed to preserve their culture and the Celtic language only in the highlands of Scotland and the Hebrides.

Coin of the Ancient Celts