Did the britons come from gual france ?

Fighting leprechaun 20

I ask this because the iron age archaeology of the area such as stone artwork buildings artifacts show a striking resemblance to the Briytonnic finds later found in britain .surely there was heavy trade and the areas across gual would have been linked extensively with Britain culture and people. The idea that a small group of britons could culturally convert large regions people to brytonic p Celtic Briton to Armorica ect .. seems very unlikely.. Hill forts from around c800BC – cAD60) show no changed in architecture . While britons did most certainly migrate to britanny fleeing from germanic tribes l think its more likely they were joining britons that already lived there .

Im wonder if theres any evidence of a cultural takeover or some type of invasion . Surely there existed native cultural celts in the area desipte the romans and all .

Can somebody shed light on this and explain to me how a small band of britons could culturally convert entire regions like that and explain why the iron age archaeology show similarities Britain's despite not being Brytonnic .sure all celtic but considering the close links it seems weird to me how there apparently was no brytonnic that would later move into britian as opposed to the other way around which seems to be accepted .

mzungu

Mod note: This thread has been moved from Anthropology, Sociology & Culture to Archaeology. Question asked by the OP more suited to the Archaelogy forum.

Aelfric

We know nothing of the language of the peoples of Ireland, Britain, Brittany, France and the Iberian peninsula in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, but given the vast similarities in the material culture and art, it is highly likely that they were a broadly common people. Rather than an Iron Age people coming in to these areas and supplanting the indigenous, it is more likely to have been a cultural shift, possibly with take-up of a different religion, but certainly a great influence in material culture, art and general economy & trade. Consider that the artistic style 'La Tene' is attributed to a site on a Swiss lake, and is found in artefacts in Ireland. Also, during the entire Romano-British period (55BC-c.410AD), the Iron Age traditions continued in parallel.

Similarly, when the Germanic tribes on Saxons, Jutes, Frisians and Angles started pouring in to Britain from the early 5th Century AD, they didn't kill every Iron Age person in sight, but everyone eventually integrated and intermingled. In Ireland, there was no 'Saxon' invasion, and so the indigenous Iron Age folk slowly became Christian, and it wasn't until the Viking invasions in the 8th & 9th Centuries, and the Cambro-Normans in the 12th Century, that there was any significant influx of 'foreign' peoples.

markesmith

Some of the current thinking on this is that 'Celtic' culture and languages developed in the Bronze Age - gold / copper in Ireland and tin in Cornwall were highly valued, and there was multidirectional cultural contact between Ireland, Britain, Spain and France.

Genetic studies seem to point to an invasion of Europe in the Bronze Age that extended all the way to the Atlantic shores. We just don't see the archaeological evidence for such movement of peoples into Ireland in the later Iron Age.

My hunch is that the maritime trade networks - both sea and river - spread languages that overlayed the older languages of the region, and that this happened in the Bronze Age. The later Celtic innovations of Hallstatt and La Tene are very sparse in Ireland.

So yeah, some Britons came from Gaul, riding chariots and having superior bronze weaponry. But the guys who came from Gaul were part of an invasion that started way further east, around where modern Ukraine is, and they spread all over Western Europe, Ireland included.

I'd love to hear the others response to this.

Ipso

There may be some good info on this website.
http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/celtictribes.shtml#languages

ScumLord

markesmith wrote: »

Some of the current thinking on this is that 'Celtic' culture and languages developed in the Bronze Age - gold / copper in Ireland and tin in Cornwall were highly valued, and there was multidirectional cultural contact between Ireland, Britain, Spain and France.

I saw a documentary on BBC called "Britains pompeii", they found a bronze age settlement that was so well preserved there was still food in the bowls, all the timber work was still perfect (bar fire damage), it sank into a river and got perfectly preserved. They found that materials were coming from Germany, and there were many links with that part of Europe.

They also found ostrich egg necklaces.

I don't think there was any one significant invasion, I think people were probably trading back and forth from the moment they set foot in Britain and that continued throughout history. The first people probably would have needed the support of established settlements on mainland Europe.

I wonder has anyone ever shown an area of influence that a tribe might have at a particular time. Today we can have global influence and can trade globally. If you go back to bronze age Europe I think a person living in a settlement would probably still be able to trade over thousands of miles and were probably held up more so by unfriendly people than natural obstacles.

Ipso

Speaking of unusual/exotic things turning up.
http://irisharchaeology.ie/2014/05/a-barbary-ape-skull-from-navan-fort-co-armagh/

markesmith

That Barbary Ape most likely came via trade with the Phoenicians / Carthage, whether directly or indirectly.