What is "celts"

n. (Celt English)

The Celts (, occasionally , see pronunciation of Celtic) were people in Iron Age and Medieval Europe who spoke Celtic languages and had cultural similarities, although the relationship between ethnic, linguistic and cultural factors in the Celtic world remains uncertain and controversial. The exact geographic spread of the ancient Celts is also disputed; in particular, the ways in which the Iron Age inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland should be regarded as Celts has become a subject of controversy.

The history of pre-Celtic Europe remains very uncertain. According to one theory, the common root of the Celtic languages, a language known as Proto-Celtic, arose in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe, which flourished from around 1200 BC. In addition, according to a theory proposed in the 19th century, the first people to adopt cultural characteristics regarded as Celtic were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture in central Europe (c. 800–450 BC), named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria. Thus this area is sometimes called the 'Celtic homeland'. By or during the later La Tène period (c. 450 BC up to the Roman conquest), this Celtic culture was supposed to have expanded by diffusion or migration to the British Isles ( Insular Celts), France and The Low Countries ( Gauls), Bohemia, Poland and much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula ( Celtiberians, Celtici, Lusitanians and Gallaeci) and northern Italy ( Golaseccans and Cisalpine Gauls) and, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC, as far east as central Anatolia ( Galatians) in modern-day Turkey.

The earliest undisputed direct examples of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions, beginning in the 6th century BC. Continental Celtic languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names. Insular Celtic is attested beginning around the 4th century AD through Ogham inscriptions, although it was clearly being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century. Coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), survive in 12th-century recensions.

By the mid 1st millennium AD, with the expansion of the Roman Empire and the Great Migrations ( Migration Period) of Germanic peoples, Celtic culture and Insular Celtic had become restricted to Ireland, the western and northern parts of Great Britain ( Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall), the Isle of Man, and Brittany. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a reasonably cohesive cultural entity. They had a common linguistic, religious, and artistic heritage that distinguished them from the culture of the surrounding polities. By the 6th century, however, the Continental Celtic languages were no longer in wide use.

Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels ( Irish, Scottish and Manx) and the Brythonic Celts ( Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons) of the medieval and modern periods. A modern " Celtic identity" was constructed as part of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Great Britain, Ireland, and other European territories, such as Portugal and Spanish Galicia. Today, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton are still spoken in parts of their historical territories, and Cornish and Manx are undergoing a revival.

[[Image:Chwe Chenedl Geltaidd.png|thumb|280px|

The six Celtic nations within their modern borders are shown in yellow

]] A modern Celtic identity emerged in Western Europe following the identification of the native peoples of the Atlantic fringe as Celts by Edward Lhuyd in the 18th century. Lhuyd and others equated the Celts described by Greco-Roman writers with the pre-Roman peoples of France, Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish and ancient British languages were thus Celtic languages. The descendants of these languages were the Brittonic ( Breton, Cornish and Welsh variants) and Gaelic ( Irish, Manx and Scottish variants) languages. These peoples were therefore modern Celts. Attempts were made to link their distinctive cultures to those of the Ancient Celtic people.

The concept of modern Celtic identity evolved during the course of the 19th-century into the Celtic Revival. By the late 19th century, it often took the form of ethnic nationalism, particularly within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, where the Irish Home Rule Movement resulted in the secession of the Irish Free State, in 1922. There were also significant Welsh, Scottish and Breton nationalist movements, giving rise to the concept of Celtic nations. After World War II, the focus of the Celtic movement shifted to linguistic revival and protectionism, e.g. with the foundation of the Celtic League in 1961, dedicated to preserving the surviving Celtic languages.

The Celtic revival also led to the emergence of musical and artistic styles identified as Celtic. Music typically drew on folk traditions within the Celtic nations. Art drew on decorative styles associated with the ancient Celts and with early medieval Celtic Christianity, along with folk-styles. Cultural events to promote "inter-Celtic" cultural exchange also emerged.

In the late 20th century a number of scholars criticised the idea of modern Celtic identity, sometimes also arguing that there never was a common Celtic culture, even in ancient times. Malcolm Chapman's 1992 book The Celts: The Construction of a Myth led to what the archaeologist, Barry Cunliffe has called a "politically correct disdain for the use of 'Celt'" The extent to which a modern Celtic identity remains a useful concept continues to be debated.