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The Celts were a diverse group of tribes that dominated much of central Europe until sixteen hundred years ago. Stone remnants of Celtic structures including elaborate burial chambers can be found all over Europe ... Did the Celts come and settle in America one thousand years before Columbus? Weird or What? Human Popsicle, Discovery 2010
The Gauls are tall of body with rippling muscles and white of skin and their hair is blond, and not only naturally so for they also make it their practice by artificial means to increase the distinguishing colour which nature has given it. For they are always washing their hair in limewater and they pull it back from the forehead to the nape of the neck, with the result that their appearance is like that of Satyrs and Pans since the treatment of their hair makes it so heavy and coarse that it differs in no respect from the mane of horses. Some of them shave the beard but others let it grow a little; and the nobles shave their cheeks but they let the moustache grow until it covers the mouth. Diodorus Siculus
They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold. Diodorus Siculus
Graves like this have been discovered throughout Europe and we now know that this man once shared a common culture that stretched from Turkey to Portugal. We know this because he was one of our prehistoric ancestors: a Celt. Alice Roberts & Neil Oliver, The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice, BBC 2015
The Celts seem to below to a shadowy, wilder, more primal time that anything in more recent history. ibid.
Rome: Warrior tribes that would fire the imaginations of Romans for centuries to come: the Celts. ibid.
The Celts left us no written record of their own. ibid.
The ordered structured world of Rome had a storm coming. ibid.
There is evidence liking to Iberian Celts to Britain, Ireland and the Icelandic coastline. ibid.
A warrior culture with a shared language and extensive trading links. ibid.
On the one hand centralised modern Rome, on the other, an Iron-Age culture that had its roots in deep history. Two vast armies and a brutal conflict fought between two of the age’s greatest generals. Alice Roberts & Neil Oliver, The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice II
Caesar set about crushing those hostile to him ... The freedom fighter had finally been outwitted by the wily old strategist. The golden age of the Celts was over. ibid.
A name carved on a gravestone: Bodicacia. Could this be the first reference found in archaeology of our Great British heroine – Boudica? Alice Roberts & Neil Oliver, The Celts: Blood, Iron and Sacrifice III
As well as being extremely sophisticated craftsmen, the Iceni and many tribes like them have long enjoyed ancient trading links. ibid.
Ireland’s museums are rich with treasure, precious artefacts that connect this land to its ancient past. Some are iconic, others overlooked but each one has a story to tell and a unique past in Ireland’s history. Alice Roberts & Gavin Hughes, Ireland’s Treasures Uncovered, BBC 2020
That treasure is the Tara Broach: the broach is on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland … The original Tara Broach was made hundreds of years after the Celts. ibid.
The Bann Disc: this dates from the first century A.D. ibid.
Ireland’s most famous golden treasure: it is the Broighter Hoard, made up of seven gold ornaments … discovered in 1896. ibid.
Ireland’s museums are filled with artefacts, treasures emblematic of the iron age. ibid.
The hoard contained not only the lunula but two gold sun discs pulled from a bog together in Coggalbeg back in 1945. The Coggalbeg hoard sheds new light on our bronze age ancestors. ibid.
The treasure is St Conall Cael’s bell and the shrine that held it. ibid.
Everybody’s heard of the Book of Kells … 680 dazzling pages of illustration and calligraphy. In Medieval Europe it illuminated the story of Christ. ibid.
Waterford’s greatest artefact: the Great Charter Roll. ibid.
In fact there’s no classical source that actually says that the Celts ever came here to northern Europe … but the cultural invasion was overwhelming. Invasion! with Sam Willis e1, BBC 2017
An early European culture whose warriors went into battle naked and kept their enemies heads as trophies … Great art as they waged brutal war. In Search of History s2e9: The Celts, History 1997
390 A.D.: A foreign army approached the gates of Rome: it was a Celtic force who had come across the Alps from France. ibid.
‘The Celts had a definite approach to Life which was rather easy-going.’ ibid.
When Celtic tribes were not fighting they were farming and living in villages. ibid.
Around 1,500 years ago during a period that we used to refer to as the Dark Ages, the Irish played a very different role. Back then, they were the Irish that brought civilisation of Britain. It’s an epic story of decline and renewal. Dan Snow, How the Celts Saved Britain I, BBC 2019
Ireland: One of the most profound social and cultural revolutions that Europe and Britain had ever seen. ibid.
Rome: They spread culture and learning across the known world. From the Red Sea to the Atlantic. ibid.
A tribal Ireland with many kingdom. It was a pagan land whose subsistence and wealth was measured in cattle … Hibernia: the land of winter … Ireland was a place of sacred trees and woods and lakes presided over by druids … a religion of animal and human sacrifice. ibid.
The druid religion had once extended right across western Europe. The Romans were so disturbed by it, they made it illegal on pain of death. ibid.
‘They saw Patrick as the deadly enemy.’ ibid. historian
Patrick was bringing Christianity in a spectacular way to storm yet another pagan stronghold. ibid.
Monasteries had sprung up across the land fostering literacy, technology and a new civilisation. Dan Snow, How the Celts Saved Britain II
They landed on the west coast of Scotland in 563 AD … The Irish kingdom of Dalriada straddled both sides of the Irish sea. ibid.
The mighty legions of Rome: they had conquered Europe by aggression, they controlled Europe by force. Rome’s dominion was cruel. By in Britain, Roman brutality bred a terrible vengeance. And out of vengeance rose a passionate leader desperate to break the chains of oppression. Warrior Queen Boudica, History 2020
Across a vast plain in central Britain tens of thousands of Celtic prepare to go into battle. Their leader was Boudica, Queen of the Iceni. ibid.
‘Right was on their side but they were up against a professional seasoned army.’ ibid. historian
‘Suddenly having to find themselves having to pay for their own army of occupation.’ ibid.
Catus Decianus ordered his men to plunger the Iceni tribal estates immediately [death of king]. ibid.
She was utterly enraged, as a queen, as a mother and as a warrior. For Boudica and her people this was the final indignity after a mounting catalogue of abuse. ibid.
50,000 Celts hung on her every word. Boudica invoked the Celtic goddess of war. ibid.
Rome continued to rule Britain for a further 350 years … Boudica’s story continues to inspire all who hear it. ibid.
The wonderful world of one of Europe’s most fascinating and mysterious people – the Celts. The Celts – a society that thrived over two thousand years ago, a culture shrouded in mystery. A people who continue to fascinate us today. Celts: The Untold Story I: Dawn of the Celts, History 2024
They left no written record … The information we do have comes from the Greeks and the Romans who have their own agenda. ibid.
They arrived on the map in mainland Europe then expanded all across the continent, even spreading as far as Asia. ibid.
The classical Greeks had a name for the people they were training with from this area [Hallstatt] – and they called them the Keltoi. ibid.
It’s Celtic life on an industrial scale. ibid.
What if the Celts built the first hippodrome. ibid.
They were every bit as sophisticated as their Mediterranean counterparts. ibid.